The Joe Rogan experience

I was sent this curious collection of recent tweets by Joe Rogan, a comedian I’ve never much cared for, but they’re so bizarre I had to put them up for your amusement/contempt. Click for a larger image.

joerogan

His central point is this one:

I view women that don’t like children the same way I view dogs that like to eat their own shit.

How odd. Personally, I like some children, especially my own, but I don’t automatically melt into affectionate reverence when I see one; I have no problem with someone electing to not have children of their own. I also know from personal experience that, while there are definitely great rewards to raising kids, they are also a giant electrified flaming cattle prod to the butt through most of their childhood. Don’t you remember being a teenager once? Imagine what it’s like living in a house full of scrambled hormones, pimples, tears and frustration.

It’s OK to not want kids, or even to detest the very idea of having kids, as long as you avoid having them and making them as miserable as they’d make you.

But the way it’s phrased by Rogan is so weird: if you don’t like children, it’s equivalent to indulging in process that is disgusting to others. You are socially and psychologically required to want children, or you a morally reprehensible person. That’s a mindset I can’t embrace. We get a lot of the equivalent attitude from right-wingers: if you’re a man who doesn’t like having sex with women, you’re a vile human being.

Which leads into the real repugnant attitude here: all of his comments are addressed to women. Women, you must love children, if you don’t, you’re odd, gross, weak, a “hateful twat”. I have to ask…what about the men?

That’s the more disturbing part of his rant. He’s trying to shame women into doing something he considers vitally important, apparently, but men…eh, they aren’t part of his concern. We men can go ahead and dislike children, and that doesn’t make us weak and gross. That gives the lie to a claim he made in another tweet, that he’s not a feminist, he’s a humanist.

Don’t worry, though. He’s a comedian. He’ll say he’s just joking around.

Just when you thought Libertarians couldn’t get any more revolting

Steven Landsburg carries out three “thought experiments”. They’re all pretty bad — one suggests that we have no grounds to complain about environmental destruction in Alaska if we’re living somewhere else, to which I’d have to reply, “You mean like Mars?” — but the third one…jebus, Mr Creepy McLiberturd is masturbating publicly here.

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?

He provides his Libertarian philosophical answer.

As long as I’m safely unconsious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits? And if the thought of those benefits makes me shudder, why should my shuddering be accorded any more public policy weight than Bob’s or Granola’s? We’re still talking about strictly psychic harm, right?

Maybe we could even talk about a positive advantage. You go in to a hospital for some essential medical treatment that involves anesthetizing you, and while you’re unconscious, the hospital pays for its services by leasing out your body to anyone willing to pay. Free health care! It’s a benefit, right?

It’s a remarkable claim from a Libertarian. If we’re not using our property at some moment, do we forfeit our rights to it? When Landsburg is not driving his car, is it OK if someone takes a joyride in it as long as it’s returned when he needs it, with the gas consumed replaced?

Is there really no cost to a person if their body is abused while they are unconscious? He writes as if this “psychic harm” is meaningless nothing. Reputation, security, trust…these are mere “psychic” phenomena, so they have no significance to a person?

And what gives this hypothetical rapist the right to use someone else’s body? Flip it around and try to justify the rapist’s exploitation of another for his personal benefit — by what right does that person deserve to “reap the benefits” of someone else’s unconsciousness…or for that matter, reap the benefits of the Alaskan wilderness? Mr Landsburg seems to naturally take the side of the takers and looters.

We’ve got a convenient phrase for what Landsburg is doing: it’s called JAQing off. He’s clearly a master.

You’re letting me down, atheists

I’ve never been surprised at a conference by anything like this: Ken Ham got a certificate for fighting the “principalities and powers of darkness.”

He [the creationist with the award] told the conference audience gathered at Quentin Road Bible Baptist Church that his creation group, Midwest Creation Fellowship, had passed a resolution—which they called a “spiritual bouquet.” In the resolution, it stated that because the “principalities and powers of darkness have captured the minds of many in our society, and whereas Ken Ham left his homeland of Australia to confront the forces arrayed against God and His Word,” I was being acknowledged by the MCF.

OK, gang, in order to keep up, I’m expecting an award from you guys for combat against fictitious beings. Maybe a “wrestling with mermaids” framed certificate, or a shiny medallion that praises my competence at squishing angels. We have a spiritual award gap here, people!

Have you noticed that we’re always getting offended?

It’s an extraordinarily common accusation: those #FtBullies are getting offended, they’re reacting to something offensive, they’re so delicate and sensitive and ready to take offense based on moral outrage.

And now I’m accused of proliferating the stupid because I’m offended.

Maybe someone can help me understand the logic in this: P.Z. Myers disagrees with the message conveyed by a stupid meme on Reddit, and instead of ignoring or down-voting the post — or whatever it is people do on Reddit — he brings attention to it and even publishes the offending picture.

If you are offended by something posted on the Internet, why not just move on? Rather, Myers has effectively ensured that this piece of Internet trash will be further proliferated and cached online for years to come from his own site. That’s what I call a good feminist hard at work.

I’m really not used to that peculiar mindset. Why do you assume I’m offended? Why don’t you recognize that I’m pointing out that something is wrong?

I’m waiting for a student to come in and complain that I took points off for an incorrect answer on an exam. “Why were you offended at my answer, Dr Myers? Wouldn’t it have been better to avoid bringing attention to it, so that maybe I’d forget my incorrect answer in a few years?”

Gosh, I hope the author’s brain doesn’t explode when he realizes that by posting about my terrible perpetuation of the ‘offensive’ photo, he’s propagating it as well, and further, he’s promoting my dreadful gaffe! Quick, everyone, go silent and never publicly disagree with anyone ever!

“Pat” is short for “Patronizing”

Pat Robertson is asked why poor people in Africa have more miracles than we do (assumption not supported with evidence), and he gives his condescending answer: Americans know too much science, while people overseas are “simple, humble” and God loves ’em more.

Well, gosh. All we have to do is shut down higher education, then, and we’ll have all the blessings of, say, Somalia.

Hugo, Cesar, so what…it’s one of them Hispanic fellas

OK, you’re not despairing for humanity enough. You need to see this: Google celebrated Cesar Chavez’s birthday yesterday, on 31 March. Wingnuts saw this, and went apeshit on twitter: how dare they honor a foreign communist dictator!

As if that weren’t enough, a subset of them are praising Bing for paying respect to the religious holiday by showing pictures of Easter eggs. All hail the divine ruler of the universe, the Easter Bunny.

Religious people are among the dumbest people on the planet, I’m afraid.

Run, Ben, run!

The far right has lately been gushing over the idea of getting Dr Ben Carson to run for president — he’s their One Black Friend who believes in exactly the same things they do. Among his latest typical conservative faux pas, he recently compared gays to pedophiles and fans of bestiality, and has had to backtrack a little bit. Look at this beautiful not-pology:

If anyone was offended, I apologize to you. What I was basically saying is there is no group. I wasn’t equating those things, I don’t think they’re equal. If you ask me for an apple and i give you an orange you would say, that’s not an orange. And I say, that’s a banana. And that’s not an apple either. Or a peach, that’s not an apple, either. It doesn’t mean that i’m equating the banana and the orange and the peach.

The intelligence of Ronald Reagan, the eloquence of George W. Bush…please make him your candidate!

Oh, wait. Those two guys got elected. Uh-oh.

Reddit: working hard to bury their reputation ever deeper in the slime

A new tasteless meme is spreading across Reddit: good girl college liberal. As usual, I think you can guess what makes someone a “good” girl: it’s the willingness to do anything the guy with a copy of photoshop wants her to do. And what makes her a “college liberal”?

She’s topless.

I’ve never known that to be a common characteristic of women in college, liberal or otherwise, but as we all know, reality never interferes with a misogynist’s fantasies about how women should behave.

I’ve included an example below the fold. Breasts are blurred out, but you might still want to be careful about flashing the picture around the workspace.

[Read more…]

John Logsdon hits the big time

Last night at #nwc36 we were talking about evodevo, and one of the topics that came up was the importance of Drosophila reasearch in providing the foundation for comparative genetic analysis…which led to Sarah Palin. Remember Palin’s ignorant mockery of fruit fly research? This is what we get from the Republican party.

Now Michelle Malkin’s blog chimes in with a similar complaint. John Logsdon got an NSF award to study reproduction in snails. WASTE OF MONEY! CUT THE DEFICIT! HOW DARE THEY SPEND MONEY ON SOMETHING SO STUPID!

Malkin’s blogger, Doug Powers, and the majority of the commenters there are embarrassingly ignorant. They quote the award announcement with some annotations.

The study, first funded in 2011 and continuing until 2015, will study the New Zealand snails to see if it is better that they reproduce sexually or asexually – the snail can do both – hoping to gain insight on why so many organisms practice sexual reproduction.

“Sexual reproduction is more costly than asexual reproduction [just paying for the drinks can end up running into the thousands of dollars over a lifetime – DP] [fucking moron – PZM], yet nearly all organisms reproduce sexually at least some of the time. Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs,” the study’s abstract asks.

And then doubles down on the cluelessness.

“Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs”? Seriously?

Yes. Seriously. That’s an important question in biology. Selfish stupid libertarian/republican idiots ought to understand this clearly.

Look at it this way, Doug. When you go to reproduce, you — perfect, powerful, independent, self-serving you — need to go to a mere woman and in order to produce offspring, you only pass on half your genes, and they are mingled with half the genes from your partner. That’s what we mean by the cost of sexual reproduction. You don’t get to produce a literal self-made man: you need to cooperate with a partner, and your genome will be diluted with that of some other person. That other person is using YOU as well, parasitizing off the perfect efficiency of your genes to propagate her patently inferior genes.

Any good conservative Republican ought to be outraged at this state of affairs. Think about it: your God, President Ronald Reagan, instead of cloning himself, had to randomize his genes with some other person and produced a son, Ron Reagan, who is a politically liberal atheist. You ought to be throwing far more money at this problem!

Snails are an interesting choice to study this problem because, unlike humans, they have options to either reproduce in that familiar sexual way, or to do it asexually and essentially clone themselves. The question is why any individual would elect to throw away half their genes each time they reproduce.

If Doug Powers can explain that, he could get published in some big name science journal instead of the blog of an ignorant political hack.

Hey, we should study that choice, too, except we haven’t yet found any molluscs stupid enough to have to decide whether they want to be published on Michelle Malkin’s site or not.