The term “enhanced interrogation” was coined by the Nazis…or Verschärfte Vernehmung, in the original German.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The term “enhanced interrogation” was coined by the Nazis…or Verschärfte Vernehmung, in the original German.
We might as well start wearing black and putting skulls on our caps. The Senate Torture Report (it’s chilling that we even have to have a “torture report”) has been released, and it’s just full of the evil crap the CIA has been doing.
New pictures of the surface of Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They’re interesting — what looks like water eroded canyons, very familiar, and exotically odd things like cones of snow produced by windblown eruptions of geysers.
Both Alex and Heina have excellent articles on the association of religion with LGBTQ people. It’s an absurdity that Christianity accommodates both Fred Phelps and Marcella Althaus-Reid, telling us definitively what Jesus’ opinions on homosexuality were, and both of them giving completely contradictory answers. The problem is that Jesus and Mohammed and Moses are completely malleable imaginary authority figures who can be invoked to justify anything — Jesus simultaneously blesses the peacemakers and comes with a sword in that muddled book of myths, the Bible, so pacifists and warmongers are both happy to adopt his ‘philosophy’. It’s not at all surprising, then, that both queer folk and gay-haters happily quote their holy books to justify whatever the hell they believe.
But it’s dishonest. And it invalidates the holy books — they’re obviously just Rorschach blots for any gullible brain looking for an authoritarian fallacy to back up their bullshit.
I really can’t help it — when astrology is mentioned, my lip curls into a sneer, my gorge rises, my vision is clouded over with red, and I start snarling out profanity. But you can’t even imagine how outraged I can be when astrologers start predicting and blaming rape on the stars. Seriously. I think I cut my tongue on my newly erupting fangs, which is why I started spitting blood.
Last night, they tried to turn conservation into a Japanese game show, with a ‘documentary’ about a scientist being swallowed alive…for Science!. I didn’t watch it — I was grading papers, as I will be doing 25 hours a day for the next two weeks, I think — but the reviews are scathing.
Also, master of molluscan anatomy, and clever tool user. This paper, Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving, by Joordens et al. tells an interesting story from some mundane artifacts made half a million years ago.
An interesting post on The Trouble with Jim Watson. Watson and biology are victims of a successful paradigm — you could still argue that that paradigm is partly Watson’s fault! — and you can’t really kick Watson unless you also take a few swings at how molecular genetics has produced a skewed, simplistic, and deterministic view of how life operates.
The trouble with Watson, then, is not how aberrant he is, but how conventional. He is no more—but no less—than an embodiment of late twentieth-century biomedicine. He exemplifies how a near-exclusive focus on the genetic basis of human behavior and social problems tends to sclerose them into a biologically determinist status quo. How that process occurs seems to me eminently worth observing and thinking about. Watson is an enigmatic character. He has managed his image carefully, if not always shrewdly. It is impossible to know what he “really thinks” on most issues, but I do believe this much: he believes that his main sin has been excessive honesty. He thinks he is simply saying what most people are afraid to say.
Unfortunately, he may be right.
