How awful can Alessandro Strumia be?

He’s one of those physicists — the ones who despise the humanities and are quite confident that white men are the crown of creation because he is one. He gave a talk at CERN that was basically about how his analysis of citation indices proves that women are inferior at physics, but they get hired over men anyway.

The talk was so appalling that CERN stripped it from their website and chastised Strumia for it without naming him.

CERN considers the presentation delivered by an invited scientist during a workshop on High Energy Theory and Gender as highly offensive. It has therefore decided to remove the slides from the online repository, in line with a Code of Conduct that does not tolerate personal attacks and insults.

The organisers from CERN and several collaborating Universities were not aware of the content of the talk prior to the workshop. CERN supports the many members of the community that have expressed their indignation for the unacceptable statements contained in the presentation.

CERN is a culturally diverse organisation bringing together people from dozens of nationalities. It is a place where everyone is welcome, and all have the same opportunities, regardless of ethnicity, beliefs, gender or sexual orientation.

Lucky (?) for us, someone grabbed a copy of the slides and uploaded them for all of us to see. CERN may have made a mistake by deleting the original copy, because they’re demonstrably bad.

An example:

The first thing that jumped out at me when browsing the slides was just how incoherent and badly laid out they are, full of bad grammar and numbers for the sake of numbers. We did three job searches last year, for positions which require clarity and teaching ability as well as great scientific content, and we wouldn’t have hired anyone whose idea of a presentation was to vomit up that kind of incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness, and apparently the slides are less incoherent than the talk.

As for the content…he claims to be using citation analysis to distinguish between two theories explaining asymmetries in the hiring of men and women in physics. The “M” or “Mainstream” theory is that it’s broken by discriminatory hiring practices; “C” or “Conservative” theory is that it’s not unfair, that it’s a meritocracy and men bubble to the top because they’re simply inherently superior. To demonstrate that “C” is correct, he really overworks the citation numbers to claim that not only is the number of citations an accurate measure of academic talent, but is also correlated with IQ, and that women are just lacking in both. You see, Physics invented and built by men, apparently on the plains of Africa thousands of years ago, and if you disagree, you’re one of those “cultural Marxists”.

Anyone who blathers about “cultural Marxism” is a fool not qualified for any kind of intellectual position.

Of course, he reveals his real motivations, and they are hilarious. He applied for a job, and he was not hired — but a woman was. And this was despite the fact that he had a much, much bigger Ncit than she did!

You know, job searches would be much easier if we just had a simple numerical metric to assess the candidates. To apply, just send us a piece of paper with your name and your IQ score, and we’ll sort them and hire whoever comes out on top. But no, we insist on meeting the person face-to-face, and looking at all the complexity of their career, and getting recommendations, and looking at how they interact with colleagues and students, because professional positions involve a heck of a lot more than extracting your brain, putting it in a jar, and marveling at how quickly it can do calculations.

Judging from this talk, Alessandro Strumia probably gave an interview that demonstrated that he was a raging asshole, so he wasn’t hired for good reason.

One of the canards he trotted out was the old argument that men exhibit greater variation than women, so we ought to expect that, just as men exhibit a greater frequency of mental deficiencies, they ought also to exhibit a greater frequency of mentally superior individuals.

Why we should believe this, I don’t know. Because we’re supposed to assume biology is fair, and is going to compensate one sex with more talents, just to balance out the problems? I see no reason to think that the genetic biases are going to be symmetric. People who are hit on the head with hammers will experience a greater frequency of crippling health problems afterwards; we don’t predict that, to be fair, nature will give an equal number of victims super-powers. For some reason, though, this idea is common, especially among worshippers of the bell curve.

Just to complicate matters, I’ll propose that personality is multi-dimensional (I doubt anyone will argue), and that if IQ is one dimension, another is the AQ — the asshole quotient. If the distribution of the AQ is also bell-shaped, and men exhibit greater variation, then more men will have a high AQ and are therefore not fit for the company of human beings, and hiring discrimination against men is justified.

We’ve all known that guy

The latest accuser speaking up about Kavanaugh has a horrific tale to tell, but the most horrific thing about it is that it seems entirely plausible.

Swetnick, in the affidavit posted on Twitter by Avenatti, claims that she saw Kavanaugh, as a high school student in Maryland in the early 1980s, and others spike the drinks of girls at house parties with grain alcohol and/or drugs to “cause girls to lose inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No.’ ”

Swetnick said these efforts by Kavanaugh and his buddy Mark Judge were done so the girls “could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”

“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh,” Swetnick said.

She also said in her affidavit sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee that in approximately 1982 “I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”

I’ve mentioned that I was ‘rushed’ by a fraternity once upon a time. It was a whole house packed full of these guys, so I can believe it.

Traps are so manly

I love this video — it speaks the truth.

Although, I have to confess, the bit at the end is a manly punch to the gut, because it’s too true — I never told my father I loved him, and he never said it to me, not because we didn’t, but because Real Men don’t talk about it. I’m not a particularly macho kind of guy, but this poison has affected even me.

I blame the voice of Pappy Jack, and I’m gonna beat him up if I ever meet him.

Being a white man really is a superpower

Wow. We can get away with just about anything.

An Anchorage man who strangled a woman unconscious on the side of a road, all while threatening to kill her, and then masturbated on her, walked out of court on Wednesday with no future jail time under his belt.

How? How can he escape punishment? Well, the judge decided that losing his job was penalty enough, and since he was a “member of the community”, he had faith that he’d never be naughty again.

Let’s just ignore that he said this:

After Schneider’s victim woke up, he reportedly told her “that he wasn’t really going to kill her, that he needed her to believe she was going to die so that he could be sexually fulfilled.”

And this:

“I would just like to emphasize how grateful I am for this process,” Schneider said. “It has given me a year to really work on myself and become a better person, and a better husband, and a better father, and I’m very eager to continue that journey.”

He’s going to do it again. You know he’s going to do whatever he can get away with.

By the way, does anyone still think Kavanaugh won’t be on the Supreme Court soon enough?

The Queen of Evil’s crown is secure

Our REAL problem is that many men have no choice but to rape because they have no opportunities to date attractive women.

An interesting “defense”. So if I can’t land a date with Scarlett Johansson, I can justifiably rape someone? If someone finds Ann Coulter attractive and asks her out, she’d better put out, because turning him down means he’ll go on a rape rampage?

It’s also a curious binary. If you don’t get a date, your only alternative is rape?

Be not surprised, for I bring you tidings that were goddamned predictable

It takes great courage to step out and expose powerful, awful people, and as she knew ahead of time, Christine Blasey Ford is also facing the consequences of her bravery.

Christine Blasey Ford was hesitant to come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because she feared facing public attacks. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said in an interview with the Washington Post.

Her fears were not unfounded. Within hours of revealing her identity, personal attacks were launched against Ford. Some senators expressed their doubts about the truthfulness of Ford’s statements. Senator Orrin Hatch asserted that Ford was “mixed up.”

Now, the New York Times is reporting that Ford is being sent death threats. An unnamed source told the Times that following the threats, Ford and her two teenaged children moved out of their home. Ford also hired private security. One of the messages reportedly said that Ford had “6 months to live, you disgusting slime.”

I hope those two kids are fully aware of the sacrifice their mother made for the truth, and they’re proud of her for it.

When humanists go bad

This guy, Angelos Sofocleous, was elected to head the humanist group at Durham University. He has resigned. He has to blame someone.

In light of recent events, I have taken the difficult decision to resign from the position of President-Elect of Humanist Students.

These events involved a retweet of mine saying ‘RT if women don’t have penises’, and certain other criticisms of the transgender movement, as well as suggestions to improve the movement’s actions. Sadly, these views were taken to be ‘transphobic’ by individuals who cannot tolerate any criticism, either of their movement or their ideas, and are unable to engage in a civilized conversation on issues they disagree on.

Would you believe he’s a philosophy and psychology student? I’m kind of curious about those “certain other criticisms” and about how he defines “woman”, because he seems to treat it as a simple distinction based on the presence or absence of a penis. It seems rather superficial and narrowly phenomenological for someone in either of those disciplines, but on the other hand, I also don’t want to play into his hands and debate the subject with him, because he also says this, along with hiding behind “freedom of speech!”:

Even if one makes statements which are wrong beyond doubt (e.g. ‘Homosexuals shouldn’t have the right to marry’, ‘Nazis did nothing bad’, ‘Slavery is moral’, ‘Women are inferior to men’), one needs to have a conversation with that individual and explain why they are (obviously) wrong. Engaging in a debate does not mean that you give equal status to your opponent.

This is where the fetishizing of free speech and debate goes bad. I get to deny your basic humanity and your right to exist, and you now need to convince me otherwise. I get to freely make assertions that don’t challenge my privileged status but do potentially do great harm to you, and I have no responsibility or obligation to others — others who may even consider those statements “wrong beyond doubt” — to make defensible statements, and the onus is entirely on you to address them, and if you don’t, you are an intolerant tribalist. Why do you get so angry when I merely want to deny your civil rights, or enslave you, or kill you? That’s not very logical.

Don’t you realize that Sofocleous is the victim here?

I hope we belonged in an environment in which we were able to speak up without the fear of being fiercely attacked and silenced.

I think there are a lot of people who would like to be able to simply exist without the fear of being fiercely attacked and silenced. Can we give them priority before your right to define them away?

Make it matter

The woman who was assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh has revealed her identity — she’s a psychology professor named Christine Blasey Ford — and spoken up about the details of ol’ Party Boy Brett’s callous disregard for women. I won’t repeat the story here, but want to mention that she revealed herself reluctantly, and for good reason.

By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.

That’s the looming threat in this story, and you know it’s happening even now. Kavanaugh has no worries, he’s got a mob at his back, but you know that Professor Blasey is looking up at an avalanche of shit coming her way. It’s not fair, but it’s what always happens — we remember Anita Hill, right?

There’s only one thing to do. Make sure that coming forward does matter. Stop that nomination cold.

…too much education fogs the mind up too much…

Three Australian women in 1961 ponder the question, “Is education a waste of time for married women?”

I like how even the woman arguing for the utility of education explains how modern women can get all their household chores done in the morning, leaving them free for the afternoon, until the children get home. She still has a few shackles to break, I think.