Read what Mano says about Glenn Greenwald. I will simply agree 100% with it.
One of our major problems in the US is that the journalists have mostly curled up and died, and we’re getting our news from lickspittles and news organizations shackled to both corporate interests and political favoritism. I appreciate someone who breaks out of that incestuous relationship.
Because that’s what we are and where we come from — and every cell contains a little ocean…a hot little ocean rich with complex contaminants and lovely energetic cascades. So I’ll share two wonderfully appropriate examples today.
NASA
Tonight at 8pm ET Jennifer Ouellette talks with JPL planetary scientist Kevin Hand about the new film Europa Report and astrobiology. You’ve all seen it, right? It’s a new independent movie that mostly gets the science right, with a scientific crew sent off on a long voyage to Europa to find out what’s going on in the gigantic deep ocean beneath the icy crust. Then it turns into a bit of a horror movie when they do find out. There were a few things that made me go “huh?” — why is the first major manned mission after decades of neglect going all the way to Jupiter? They seem to have an awfully easy time punching through an ice crust that has to be at least several kilometers thick. And shouldn’t the surface of Europa be as inimical to its deep-sea life as the surface of the moon would be to ours? — but I managed to suspend disbelief for most of it, which is a good sign for me, arch-nitpicky-nerd that I am.
You should listen in, it could be interesting. Or watch the movie, it is on iTunes.
The other thing is that while idling in Minneapolis yesterday I read Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross. It had a wonderfully intricate plot about interstellar banking (!) but there were a couple of sciencey bits that tickled me.
One is that the characters are all “robots” — humanity is extinct, we purely biological organisms are called “Fragiles”, and our cultural descendants are all engineered. They defy our usual conventions about robots, though. They’re made of cells called mechanocytes, larger and more elaborate than our cells, but with similar properties of managing thermodynamic flows and forming structural elements. I approve. I think life is always going to be a compromise between rigid durability and flexible plasticity, and modular subunits is always going to be the best way to go for allowing repair and remodeling. So despite being machines, these beings have all the properties of human beings and so can be relatable protagonists.
It also makes them far more malleable. Brain functions are entirely modular and stored discretely in a way that allows them to be maintained independently of the body, so one way to do interstellar travel is to transmit your software at the speed of light to a distant star, where a new body of mechanocytes can be assembled. This requires building an infrastructure at the other end, of course, which can only be done by sending machines at some small fraction of the speed of light to the target first, which is why the story is all about interstellar banking — it turns out that you need a stable way to maintain debt over centuries, and interesting protocols to transfer capital between multiple star systems most of whose inhabitants will never physically meet.
Anyway, the oceanic part: a lot of the action takes place on a water world called Shin-Tethys (Stross on world building). People adapted by engineering new bodies, so many of the near-surface inhabitants are mer-people. Meh. Who wants to have a compromise physiology? But the cool thing is that the robot-people who live very, very deeply and mine dissolved radioactive minerals are…squid-people. Yes, my utopia has a fictional existence. Furthermore, these are altruistic collectivist squid people. Squid people with a plan.
“…we plan to establish a world completely free of money, a world populated by a new teuthidian humanity, with a society based on consensus, not debt, and respect for collective autonomy, not competitive commerce. A world where the word ‘free’ will not be needed because nothing will cost anything and everything will be attainable!” Her skin shone with the pearly luster of her enthusiasm for the radiant future of the communist squid-nation: “I’m going to bring about the Jubilee! For the squid-folk, anyway.”
Wow. I thought I was the only one who had those dreams.
Recommended. Read a book, watch a movie, or listen to an interview tonight, your choice.
But it happened. OK, a couple of youtubers were jerks and grabbed women and gnawed on their leg carried them around, but then the response was damning and rational. And then the grabbers were kicked out of a conference. And people had excellent discussions about rape culture.
There is hope!
The Times has released their rankings of the world reputation for various universities. The news is rather depressing.
Overall, the US continues to dominate the rankings, with seven of the top 10 places and a total of 76 institutions in the top 200 – one more than last year and 45 more than any other nation. The UK has 31 representatives, followed by the Netherlands with 12.
But the US’ dominance of the rankings masks a picture of decline.
Although the US ultra-elite at the summit of the rankings have generally managed to consolidate their positions – with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rising two places to fifth and the University of California, Berkeley moving from 10th to ninth – many more American institutions fell than climbed the table.
“If you only give a casual glance at the top 200, you’re likely to think it’s just a round-up of the usual suspects,” says Ruby. “Yes, many of the big names of US higher education head the list – the ‘super-brands’ still dominate, and they will continue to do so while they attend to core business and protect their image as elite research-based institutions.
“But when you look more closely, most of the flagship US public universities are slipping down.”
How can this be? Slipping? Us? I believe it.
And that’s exactly what’s been happening, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Public universities and colleges in nearly every state have seen their state funding decline sharply. Nationwide, states are on average spending 28 percent less this year than they did in 2008, a decrease of $2,353 per student. As a result, colleges and universities have had to raise tuition, make changes that undermine educational quality, or usually both.
Not surprisingly, the changing position of American universities mirrors the larger political economy of the United States: a few “super-brands” at the top (which educate the sons and daughters of the world’s elite) continue to stay at the top while most of the others (which are supposed to educate the children of the American working-class) are falling behind, both nationally and internationally.
Meanwhile, our Republican masters will consider all this a good thing, and propose more cuts to put those eggheads in their place, and consider more demands to include religious dogma in our science classes, and replace objective sources of information with more right-wing think tanks that give them the answers they want to hear.
The thoroughly discredited Regnerus study has met another ethical challenge. The Regnerus study was a bit of hackwork that tried to demonstrate, using Science, that gay parents were bad parents. It was an ideologically loaded mess endorsed by right wing think tanks that had massive procedural problems, but the conclusions aligned with what the think tanks wanted, so they pushed it.
Here’s an example of the procedural problems. One man, Brad Wilcox, seemed to do everything.
It’s also been alleged that W. Bradford Wilcox, associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia with former ties to the conservative Witherspoon Institute that funded the study, served as a reviewer. He also consulted on the study, according to documents made public by the University of Texas. Wilcox, who also serves on the journal’s editorial board, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That’s only the tip of the problem. It turns out that Wilcox initiated the study, arranged the grant from the Witherspoon Institute, was planning to run the study (but had to beg off because he was too busy screwing science in other ways), was paid as a consultant to the study, and then was one of the reviewers of the paper. I presume he also signed the standard statement on the review that he had no conflict of interest.
You know, in science we make a very big deal about faking data — it can easily cost you your career, and definitely devastates your reputation. Shouldn’t subverting the entire process of peer review and independent evaluation count as something even worse?
Fox News is such a joke, and Michelle Malkin is demented. They are now horrified at passage of bill in California.
“There is such an impetus to pander to political correctness,” Malkin explained. “I think this is social engineering run amuck. Apparently according to the bill that was signed, transgender is defined anyway they way to! As long as a child has the self-perception that they are transgender, they will be able to go into any bathroom that they want. Really, I think it’s a usurpation of local, parental and community control.”
“Five-year-olds are now exposed to — I don’t know — ‘What is transgender? Hey mommy, what is transgender? Am I transgender?’” co-host Eric Bolling asked, adding that it was “very scary, slippery slope.”
“And also, we know that kids like to pull pranks,” co-host Gretchen Carlson pointed out. “Can you imagine now, the boys want to go into the girls bathroom and the girls want to go into the boys bathroom, and they can just say, ‘Oh, well, I was transgender for the moment.’”
So if a person identifies as transgender, which is not something you can casually do on a moment’s notice, they’d rather force them to conform to expected gender identities? Because that’s exactly what this is about. The bill is primarily about ending stereotypes and giving equal support to all genders. It’s all about making schools supportive places for everyone, not just those to conform to majority norms.
Read Assembly Bill 1266 for yourself. The Fox News idiots haven’t.
221.5. (a) It is the policy of the state that elementary and secondary school classes and courses, including nonacademic and elective classes and courses, be conducted, without regard to the sex of the pupil enrolled in these classes and courses.
(b) A school district may not prohibit a pupil from enrolling in any class or course on the basis of the sex of the pupil, except a class subject to Chapter 5.6 (commencing with Section 51930) of Part 28 of Division 4 of Title 2.
(c) A school district may not require a pupil of one sex to enroll in a particular class or course, unless the same class or course is also required of a pupil of the opposite sex.
(d) A school counselor, teacher, instructor, administrator, or aide may not, on the basis of the sex of a pupil, offer vocational or school program guidance to a pupil of one sex that is different from that offered to a pupil of the opposite sex or, in counseling a pupil, differentiate career, vocational, or higher education opportunities on the basis of the sex of the pupil counseled. Any school personnel acting in a career counseling or course selection capacity to a pupil shall affirmatively explore with the pupil the possibility of careers, or courses leading to careers, that are nontraditional for that pupil’s sex. The parents or legal guardian of the pupil shall be notified in a general manner at least once in the manner prescribed by Section 48980, in advance of career counseling and course selection commencing with course selection for grade 7 so that they may participate in the counseling sessions and decisions.
(e) Participation in a particular physical education activity or sport, if required of pupils of one sex, shall be available to pupils of each sex.
(f) A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.
If you experience panic on seeing someone who doesn’t look exactly like you in a public restroom, the problem lies with you, not them. If they’re there to intimidate the users, sure, there’s not good — but that’s not at all a transgender issue. I remember the boy’s room as the place where you had to be wary of bullying by people who identified as boys, so that’s a concern that exists independently of recognizing the reality of transgender students.
The issue of sexual harassment in skeptical organizations is one chaotic uproar right now, but remember back to last week when the floodgates were opened by one person, Karen Stollznow, reporting systemic harassment by Ben Radford and neglect by CFI — well, surprise, surprise, Karen Stollznow’s post has been taken down.
My ed at Scientific American Mind just told me that CFI issued a “legal challenge” for them to take down my article about sexual harassment
There have been suggestions that CFI asked SciAm to remove the Stollznow blog piece. Incorrect. I did write, asking for 3 corrections.
Who do you trust? The fact is, the post is down.
Lindsay’s requests (which read more like demands) are now online.
I request that ScientificAmerican.com issue an immediate apology and a correction which clearly states that:
1. The Center for Inquiry has had a policy prohibiting sexual harassment since at least 2003, and its current policy has been in place since 2007;
2. The employee referenced in Ms. Stollznow’s blog post did not serve his suspension during his vacation; and
3. The Center for Inquiry does not have an extraordinary history of sexual harassment claims, nor is there any evidence to support the allegation that it has a track record of disciplining harassers lightly.
CFI is proving to be a real flop when it comes to diplomacy.
Not having access to the full history of CFI’s engagement with this problem, I can accept the claim that it does not have an “extraordinary history of sexual harassment claims”. But the fact still remains that they did deal with Radford very lightly, to the point that they lost a significant contributor thanks to their attitude, and that they’re reduced to nitpicking over dates and phrases that are of little relevance to subject of concern.
In related news, Richard Carrier explains a New York law that may be stifling the conversation, and also reveals that he’s been blacklisted by CFI. Wait, I thought Ron Lindsay didn’t accept blacklists?
And now Chris Clarke spurns CFI-LA. The informal offer he mentions was the result of a conversation I had with CFI-LA; they were considering bringing me out for a Darwin Day event, and also snagging Chris to share the stage, which would have been excellent.
It may all be moot now, anyway. I suspect I’m on the CFI blacklist along with a few other speakers whose names you can probably guess…but they won’t be the well-known men who have reputations for womanizing. Funny how that works.
The shit keeps flying!
Manboobz finds an explanation for the shortage of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. It’s because women are inferior, of course. It’s written by a guy going by the name “IHaveALargePenis”, which just screams academic authority.
So what’s the problem for women? Many jobs require discipline and stamina.
Many fields have horrible deadlines and any person not finishing their work on time can slow an entire project and become the weakest link. When you’re holding up something that thousands of people are working on, relying on, etc and they’re all waiting for you, not fun. Additionally you’ll be pushed to do overtime, heavy overtime. When it comes to software development for example, in the last few months leading up to release, you’ll be better off bringing extra clothes and a sleeping bag to work. This can apply to virtually all other fields in different ways for different reasons.
OK, that’s nice. As someone who teaches in a STEM field, however, my experience has been that the women, in general, are more likely to be responsible and get their work done on time than men (this is a broad generalization, of course: some women are slackers, some men are meticulous and focused). Somehow IHaveALargePenis thinks the demands of a field predispose it to favor men, when I’d suggest the opposite is true.
But then, men must be just plain smarter than women?
Women and men study differently. Women are great and memorizing but don’t focus on understanding. This is why there’s a relatively equal amount of girls/boys in STEM the first year, but then it significantly favors the boys as time passes. The problem is that women do great on tests, but don’t bother to understand that knowledge, which is fairly important later on and everything you learn will be used in the future (as you move from first to 4th year). This is why girls have been doing better (or so it seems) ever since standardized tests.
Errm, I don’t do standardized tests. In fact, quite the opposite: as students progress from the multiple choice/short answer tests I give to first year students to their senior year, I rely increasingly on open-ended essay tests and take-home exams so that I can better evaluate their deeper understanding. Women do just fine on such exams. In fact, my upper level courses are packed with women, they’re always the majority, and when I look at my grade distributions, women sort out towards the top of the class.
I’m a little confused, though: IHaveALargePenis first claims that STEM curricula favor men over women, but that women are favored by the standardized tests he claims are in use. Which is it?
At this point, IHaveALargePenis’s neurons must have been exhausted, because he lapses into even more degenerate idiocy.
What exactly is there to attack? There’s 50% more women in college than men. Women have infiltrated every major out there outside of STEM. Do you know how HUGE STEM is? Let me tell you how huge it is. Go look up any non STEM focused University out there (MIT or Standord) and check the faculty for STEM or other majors. You’ll find out quickly that the entire STEM curriculum has fewer faculty than a single major like business.
So the source of his argument for the inferiority of women in STEM is basically that there are more men than women in the field, therefore women must have less aptitude. But now he claims that there are many more women in college than men (although I think his 50% is off; my university is a liberal arts college, which historically tends to attract more women, and we have roughly a 60:40 distribution of women:men). Doesn’t that imply by his own reasoning that women must be smarter than men?
I hate to inform IHaveALargePenis of a fact that might cause some shrinkage for him, but we also have more women than men in our biology and chemistry disciplines, although physics and math are still male-dominated; computer science here is interesting because we have more women than men on the faculty. The trends are all going in a way that IHaveALargePenis is going to find very uncomfortable: enrollments by women in STEM are going up, relatively. If I thought like IHaveALargePenis does, I’d have to conclude that men are dumber than women, and getting dumber year by year (fortunately, I don’t think like he does).
I don’t even understand his last point — it makes no sense at all. Since when are MIT and “Standord” [sic] non-STEM focused? What does the size of the faculty in different disciplines have to do with his issues? I can tell you that the math discipline at my university has more faculty than the psychology discipline does, but far fewer majors…and that’s because math has to teach service courses that provide classes to students across many disciplines.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more business than science faculty at some universities — business is a popular major. So? What does that have to do with the relative merits of men’s and women’s brains?
I’m afraid that IHaveALargePenis must learn to focus on understanding, rather than spewing words on a page. Perhaps the fact that he has a penis indicates that he also has some mental deficiencies? I’m going to give his paper an F.
via Jim C. Hines
I’m dyin’ here, people. It’s like people trust me or something.
So I’ve been given this rather…explosive…information. It’s a direct report of unethical behavior by a big name in the skeptical community (yeah, like that hasn’t been happening a lot lately), and it’s straight from the victim’s mouth. And it’s bad. Really bad.
She’s torn up about it. It’s been a few years, so no law agency is going to do anything about it now; she reported it to an organization at the time, and it was dismissed. Swept under the rug. Ignored. I can imagine her sense of futility. She’s also afraid that the person who assaulted her before could try to hurt her again.
But at the same time, she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else, so she’d like to get the word out there. So she hands the information to me. Oh, thanks.
Now I’ve been sitting here trying to resolve my dilemma — to reveal it or not — and goddamn it, what’s dominating my head isn’t the consequences, but the question of what is the right thing to do. Do I stand up for the one who has no recourse, no way out, no other option to help others, or do I shelter the powerful big name guy from an accusation I can’t personally vouch for, except to say that I know the author, and that she’s not trying to acquire notoriety (she wants her name kept out of it)?
I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do, I can do no other. I will again emphasize, though, that I have no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described; all I can say is that the author is known to me, and she has also been vouched for by one other person I trust. The author is not threatening her putative assailant with any action, but is solely concerned that other women be aware of his behavior. The only reason she has given me this information is that she has no other way to act.
With that, I cast this grenade away from me…
At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me. I can’t give more details than that, as it would reveal my identity, and I am very scared that he will come after me in some way. But I wanted to share this story in case it helps anyone else ward off a similar situation from happening. I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously. Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things (5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them) and wanted to just say something and warn people, and I didn’t know how. I hope this protects someone.
Boom.
Further corroboration: a witness has come forward. This person has asked to remain anonymous too, but I will say they’re someone who doesn’t particularly like me — so no accusations of fannishness, OK?
The anonymous woman who wrote to you is known to me, and in fact I was in her presence immediately after said incident (she was extremely distraught), and when she told the management of the conference (some time later).
Women are still writing into me with their personal stories. This one isn’t so awful, but it’s mainly illustrative of his tactics…there’s nothing here that would form the basis of any kind of serious complaint, but most importantly, I think, it tells you exactly what kind of behavior to watch out for with him.
Michael Shermer was the guest of honor at an atheist event I attended in Fall 2006; I was on the Board of the group who hosted it. It’s a very short story: I got my book signed, then at the post-speech party, Shermer chatted with me at great length while refilling my wine glass repeatedly. I lost count of how many drinks I had. He was flirting with me and I am non-confrontational and unwilling to be rude, so I just laughed it off. He made sure my wine glass stayed full.
And that’s the entirety of my story: Michael Shermer helped get me drunker than I normally get, and was a bit flirty. I can’t recall the details because I was intoxicated. I don’t remember how I left, but I am told that a friend took me away from the situation and home from the party. Note, I’d never gotten drunk at any atheist event before; I was humiliated by having gotten so drunk and even more ashamed that my friends had to cart me off before anything happened to me.
But I had a bad taste in my mouth about Shermer’s flirtatiousness, because I’m married, and I thought he was kind of a pig. I didn’t even keep his signed book, I didn’t want it near me.
Over the years as rumors have flown about atheist women warning each other about a lecherous author/speaker, I thought of all the authors and speakers I had met during my time as an atheist activist, and I guessed that Shermer was the one being warned against.
Now there are tweets and blogs about his sexually inappropriate behavior as well as his fondness for getting chicks drunk, so I feel quite less alone. I don’t think he realizes he is doing anything wrong. Men who behave inappropriately sexually never think they are doing anything wrong.
I have mixed feelings about your grenade-dropping. I have heard arguments both for and against what you did. Whether or not I agree with it, I just want to say that the accusations against Shermer match up with my personal experience with him, insofar as he seemed hellbent on helping me get drunk, and was very flirty with me. Take it for what you will. I believe the accusers.
