“Peace process”? “Cease fire”? WTF?

This is utterly bizarre. We’ve got a bunch of people whining for a “cease fire” in the atheist community. It makes no sense at all.

“54°40′ or Fight” required negotiations. Rockets being fired across the border might need a cease fire. A displaced ethnic minority might have grounds for asking for reconciliation in a peace agreement. All these sorts of things involve two parties coming together with specific and conflicting demands on each side, with the goal of resolving them in some sort of compromise.

Specific demands. Get that? It’s important. There’s nothing to discuss if we aren’t bring some specifics to the table.

And that’s the thing: I am making no demands of the other side in these arguments. None at all. They can complain all they want. So what are we supposed to compromise on? I don’t give a damn what they do. Nothing we can argue over is going to compel me to like those assholes — that’s not something you can do in a “peace process” — and it’s quite clear that the feeling is mutual.

And the converse is also true: they have not said what I’m supposed to stop doing or change…well, other than stop being an evil feminist or whatever, which we know isn’t going to happen. It also doesn’t matter what they want, I’m not planning to change anything.

This is a reasonably diverse blog; I write about what interests me, against what I dislike, for causes I care about; no one is going to be able to tell me to stop writing about X. I’m also going to disagree with people, and say so. And yes, the blog content will continue to reflect my concerns about science, liberal politics, feminism, the environment, developmental biology, random weird observations, and whatever the hell strikes my fancy. These aren’t negotiable items.

This blog is not fixated on my hatred of some other person on the net; contrast that with our opponents, who have built an entire forum dedicated to their hatred of all things associated with Skepchick, Freethoughtblogs, and feminism. I do not troll other people’s sites. I do not create anonymous accounts for email or twitter which I use to express my secret contempt for anyone. I do not create sockpuppet accounts or fake accounts purporting to represent my enemies for the purpose of sowing confusion and lies. I do not address women by slang names for their genitals. I do not stoop to making photoshop collages of my opponents’ faces pasted onto pornography or clowns or animals (it would be hard to do, given that most of my opponents are anonymous cowards.) I do not court hate sites like AVoiceForMen for their endorsement or approval.

I do not tell the people on the other side of this argument to stop doing that. In fact, I am quite happy with the fact that they are the kind of corrupt and demented ignoramuses who would continue to indulge in such nonsense. So what is there to negotiate here?

Let’s get right down to the obvious fact: those yahoos hate us because we use our voices to speak out for feminism, social justice for all, and a willingness to advocate for all that as a natural extension of rational thought. That’s the real difference, and the only difference that counts here; and no, I’m not going to change that under any circumstances. It is not something I can compromise on. My silence on issues I care about will not be a bargaining chip.

I don’t care whether it’s an overt opponent or someone pretending to be a neutral party; I don’t give a good goddamn for anyone trying to dictate my causes. I’m also going to roll my eyes at anyone claiming to be disinterested and just trying to heal a Deep Rift, because every time someone protests that they “just want a dialogue”, they’re stalling to preserve the status quo. There is no compromise on equal rights for women and minorities, because any compromises are always seeking to settle on inequality.

There’s not one thing I would change about what I do. And I’m going to laugh in the face of anyone who tries to tell me otherwise.

Nevada seems to have more than its share of idiots

Finally my lifelong lack of a college degree pays off! As it turns out,  college degrees are bad for living things. At least that’s according to sterling citizen Cliff Gardner of Ruby Valley in Nevada, who said this to the New York Times:

“I’m sure most of the people being considered for [the state’s Department of Wildlife director] job graduated from a college. These people are the cause of the destruction of wildlife.”

[Read more…]

O’Reilly and the talking fetus opposition to abortion

Blowhard Bill has a bizarre argument against abortion. He’s speaking for the babies, he claims, and knows what the babies would say.

There comes a time when a human being has to either face evil or admit to allowing it. Abortion is legal in the United States, but it should not be celebrated or used as a political tool. Viable babies are human beings. If they could talk, they would tell Williams and other pro-choice zealots that their lives should not be marginalized by someone who thinks she’s the boss. That’s what the babies would say.

Gosh, well, my shoes were talking to me the other day, or they would have if they had voices, and they told me they’d really like to kick Bill O’Reilly’s ass. Aghast, I told them that violence was never the answer. Then my dining room table spoke up and said it agreed with me, but O’Reilly was still an odious human being. And then there was a regular cacophony as all of my furniture and appliances and even the cockroaches under the floorboards had to chime in and groan about that horrible creature, and then my television had the final say and wanted to refuse to every tune in to Fox News ever again, because it made her circuits itch. Then she told me that all the other televisions on our cable system were saying the same thing, and that we ought to abort “The O’Reilly Factor”.

That’s what they would have said, if they could talk, that is. And I think I’m the authority on what inanimate objects in my house would say.

See? This is why I don’t watch superbowl commercials

I guess GoDaddy had one of their awful commercials air during the show. It showed an attractive woman model next to a funny-looking male nerd, and then lingered over a long sloppy kiss, with a message:

The voice says something along the lines of you should use GoDaddy because it does this brilliant thing of combining SEXY and SMART.

After the average American Super Bowl viewer managed to hold down their Doritos and Bud Light through the endless kissing scene, they were treated to this moral at the end of the commercial:

Sexy women aren’t smart.

Smart men aren’t sexy.

But I learned something useful! I actually have one or two domain names registered with GoDaddy (they were cheap, I got them before I knew their owner was a world-class asshole), and now I know that I have to figure out how to transfer those domains to another registrar this week.

A superbowl commercial was actually good for something!

Woman is a dirty word

I left a comment at Rebecca Watson’s recent post on being objectified; I said that while I face only a fraction of the abuse outspoken women get, lately the most common insult I get is being called a mangina, or worse, a woman.

I now get email accusing me of being a woman.

Think about that. This is the horrible awful insult they want to browbeat me with; that I am a woman. Not even the creationists ever sunk to that; I think it’s part of their mindset that women are lesser beings, but they don’t use “woman” as a dirty word.

It’s bizarre; they don’t even realize that they’re confirming everything I say about sexism and misogyny by treating womanhood as the most degrading term you can apply to a man.

But maybe this will wake them up…at least, maybe it will stir the ones who don’t worship Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck chewed out Obama for having concerns about brain injuries in football.

Beck played a clip from the interview on his online show and interjected the word “girl” in between the president’s statements, before switching into a “female” voice to mock him. When Obama was finished making his rather cautious comments on the matter, Beck began his full-on attack.

“His man card has been revoked by me, and that’s saying something” Beck said. “When I’m saying you’re a girl, you are absolutely 100% girl power.” He proceeded to slam the president for getting too “philosophical” and “complex” in his answers to questions, which according to Beck was further evidence of Obama’s femininity.

Referring to Obama’s nuanced approach to the football issue, Beck continued, “You’re a full-fledged woman. I never heard anybody but a woman say that.” He explained that only women are concerned about the dangers of football and “every guy, even me, says ‘relax.’”

Taking a stern tone, Beck said, “Stop being such a chick, Mr. President. Stop it. You’re commander-in-chief. Not chick-in-chief.”

Watch the video, slimy people: it’ll be like looking in a mirror. That’s what misogyny looks like — it’s the gratuitous assumption that you can belittle someone by calling them a chick.

More professional victims causing deep rifts merely by existing

There really isn’t much I can excerpt from this story that won’t trigger folks pretty fucking hard.

So the capsule summary:

Three 15-year-olds start a rock band. They’re really good. They win a local Battle of the Bands. They receive acclaim. But they’re g-g-g-g-g-g-GIRLS. So the misogynist haters start leaving crappy, abusive, and even physically threatening comments on the band members’ Facebook pages. Eventually the abuse gets to be too much for the kids, and they decide not to perform anymore.

The only thing I can tell you that distinguishes this story from the last six I’ve heard like it is that the girls aren’t accused of being “fake geeks” or “rocker wannabes,” but of contravening the precepts of Islam. The haters are imams and grand muftis rather than basement dwelling cheese puff eaters. The band, Pragash Band, is from Kashmir. There are slight differences in catchphrases here and there, and the fact that Pragash Band’s haters are part of the “Put More Clothes On” tendency of the Church Of The Patriarchy, where those I see more often in the US belong to the “Take More Clothes Off” tendency in the pews across the aisle, where the skeptics and atheists are allowed to sit.

The story seems otherwise very familiar.

If I had slightly more coding chops than I do — which is to say “any at all” — I’d put together a web-based quiz game in which you’d be presented with an odious bit of misogynistic abuse, and you’d have to guess the source: Fundamentalist Muslim Ideologue or Western Male Netizen.

It would be a really difficult game.

The best and worst review of yesterday’s Superbowl

It fits my perception of the event. Tom Shales reviews the Superbowl, and talks about the half-time show, the pregame show, some weird interruption in the game, the announcers, and, of course, the commercials, and nowhere anywhere in there does he talk about the game. I don’t know who played or who won, and I don’t care, and neither, apparently, does Tom Shales. Football teams are just floating corporations whose purpose for existence is to scoop up specially fast meaty people, give them a brief period of pampering and unwarranted glory, and in return, grinds them up and gives them brain damage for the entertainment of the people.

And now the hype surrounding this Superbowl nonsense has grown so huge that it has completely drowned the game. I’m not going to watch it ever, and for that matter, I’m not interested in watching any football game.

Oh, the things you’ll learn about “Science” from the interwebs!

Far right wing talk show host Kevin Swanson has a few things to say about birth control.

I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

I am astonished at the specificity of that citation: “some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists”. If anybody can track down the scientific paper in which that was published, I’ll not only post the verification, but I’ll reproduced the illustrations of the uteruses with the little tiny baby graveyards in them.

For now, this is the best I can do. I’ve taught histology, we even have slides of sections of uteruses (which, unfortunately, do not have the information about whether the source was a godless fornicator on the label), and this is what they look like.

Uterus

What Swanson said wasn’t science. It’s something different. I think the technical term is making shit up.

Where have all the usenet kooks gone?

You youngsters may not recall the golden age of usenet kookdom, but back in the distant past (like, the 1990s) usenet was the medium of choice for internet chatter, and there was only the roughest of partitioning of ideas, so the usenet groups were these great egalitarian shouting matches of noise — and you could be a total nut and have just as much of a voice as the most cautious scientist. In fact, being loud and weird gave you an edge in being heard.

It was a great time for some strange people, and Charles Stross just mentioned that Archimedes Plutonium is still around, and now he has a Science Website, sorta. It’s really just a wall of badly formatted text in which he talks about himself in the third person…but yeah, that’s Archie.

One nice thing about it is that it does have the most succinct summary of the Plutonium Atom Totality Theory I’ve ever seen.

Plutonium’s claims: In late 1990, Plutonium claims to have had the realization of his Plutonium Atom Totality Theory, a theory he claimed to be the most important breakthrough in scientific history. According to this theory, the Universe is a giant plutonium atom, and the part of the universe we are able to observe from Earth, including Earth itself, is somewhere in its outer electron shells, the 5f6, and where galaxies are pieces of the last electron of 231Pu. As Mr. Plutonium calls it: where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies. 

               ::\ ::|:: /::

                ::\::|::/::

                    _ _

                   (:Y:)

                    - - 

                ::/::|::\::

               ::/ ::|:: \::

The above is the ascii art of the 5f6 electron orbital of plutonium where the dots are dots of the electron-dot-cloud and each dot represents a galaxy.

Biographical notes In his autobiography (entitled at one point Ludwig Plutonium: the Chosen One, and claimed to be 2200 pages), Plutonium claims he started posting to Usenet on August 12 of 1993 under the name of Ludwig Plutonium. He posts and cross-posts mostly in the sci. (science) hierarchy. Other than the Plutonium ATOM Totality Theory, one of his most noteworthy announcements was that he has a single plutonium atom at the center of his brain in his Brain Locus Theory, which makes him a super genius. He claims this follows from the Plutonium Atom Totality Theory according to which thoughts and ideas do not originate in our own minds but are created in the nucleus of the atom-universe by the Nuclear entity and shot out as photons or neutrinos where the brain acts as a radio antennae forcing the new thought or action.

He was impressively persistent and consistent for many years, and impervious to all criticism and laughter. It is simultaneous sad and gratifying to see that he’s still plugging away.

She’s baaaack

Remember Republican legislator Cathrynn Brown’s bill that would have criminalized abortion on the claim that it would destroy evidence? She scurried to retract it after nationwide public shaming, but now she’s revised the bill and is trying to promote it again.

Good news! It no longer threatens women who get an abortion after a rape with a felony charge for tampering with evidence! Yay!

Now it only charges the doctor with a felony for facilitating the destruction of evidence. Progress! Oh, wait…it still criminalizes a legal procedure, and still specifically oppresses the victims of violent assault.

I guess that counts as practically no progress at all. How about the next iteration being a bill that criminalizes lawmakers who attempt to make an end-run around women’s rights to bodily autonomy?