What is wrong with our police? They think they’re an occupying military force trying to control the citizenry. This is a destructive and incorrect perspective, and it’s leading to obscenities like the ongoing oppression in Ferguson and elsewhere, and now this latest absurdity: a women arrested for kissing her husband.
Harvard is filthy rich, with a massive endowment of $32 billion and a constant influx of millions of dollars from wealthy alumni. It kind of skews the public perception of universities, too — no, most of us are nowhere near that rich, and are struggling to make ends meet. But I don’t think that’s enough just yet to justify taking away Harvard’s nonprofit status.
I’m back from Zeteticon 2014 — you’ll all have to go to Zeteticon 2015. It was a well-organized and entertaining conference. Although everyone’s talks were interesting, I just want to comment on David Silverman’s.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
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Oh, so you’re afraid of whites being a minority?
Why? Are minorities treated as second-class citizens or something?
Brilliant.
One of the ways we preserve an illusion of normality is by avoiding looking at changes. You want to deny global climate change? It helps if you avoid looking at maps.
Why aren’t there more women atheists? According to Harris, because atheism lacks that estrogen vibe.
Richard Dawkins: you’re wrong. Deeply, profoundly, fundamentally wrong. Your understanding of feminism is flawed and misinformed, and further, you keep returning to the same poisonous wells of misinformation. It’s like watching creationists try to rebut evolution by citing Kent Hovind; do you not understand that that is not a trustworthy source? It’s a form of motivated reasoning, in which you keep returning to those who provide the comfortable reassurances that your biases are actually correct, rather than challenging yourself with new perspectives.
It’s always the changing story that gives the liar away. We have a couple of accounts of the night in question, when Michael Shermer is accused of taking advantage of a young woman at a conference, and both of them come straight from Shermer himself. Here’s the story from Shermer written shortly after the event.
