Month: January 2013

Tomorrow's Skeptics Today (Update)

Stephanie Zvan13 Comments

It’s a good time to be a good young skeptic. We’re working to make some of them heard, but a number of blog networks/group blogs are coming together to give them a platform like they’ve never had.

I’ve linked to The Heresy Club before, lots of times on Twitter and Facebook, where I do much more linking (hint). They’re an impressive, diverse bunch who manage to hold positions that are both strong and nuanced while still remaining open to debate. This network has a strong atheist bent, but the inclusion of Hayley Stevens (ghost hunter) and Rhys Morgan (anti-homeopathy activist) means the skepticism here isn’t limited to religion.

Originally organized as a group blog with space for students to blog occasionally, Skeptic Freethought has recently reorganized as a blog network. It is still very much centered on students, and it is still eager for guest posts from students who have something to say but don’t necessarily want to start a blog to say it. You’ll see familiar writers there like Dave Muscato and Ellen Lundgren. I expect they’ll grow quickly as they find out how supportive a network can be.

The Young Australian Skeptics have been around for quite a while, but more recently, they’ve been the home of The Pseudoscientists podcast and not a lot more. They’ve just changed this, however, with their relaunch yesterday. You will once again find regular, written science and skeptical content on their site.

These bloggers are the future of our movements. Go pay them some nice attention.

Update: Heh. Following this blog post and some funny chatter on Twitter, representatives from all three of the networks featured here are doing a Google hangout to talk about the current skeptical and atheist communities and about being our future. Alex has the details at The Heresy Club.

Tomorrow's Skeptics Today (Update)
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Reconstructing Criticism: Behavior

Stephanie Zvan3 Comments

I am on a vacation I would like some time to enjoy and, well, this seems timely. A repost of a series.

This post will be a bit of a departure. To date, I’ve tried to talk about constructive criticism in positive terms, to focus on what to do rather than what to avoid. That gets more difficult the more misunderstood a concept is, and keeping the focus of criticism on behavior is one of the more misunderstood pieces of constructive criticism, at least in practice. I can say that behavior is specific, overt actions taken directly by an individual (including omissions of behavior). This is still likely to result in misunderstandings, so let me tell you what behavior is not. Continue reading “Reconstructing Criticism: Behavior” →

Reconstructing Criticism: Behavior

RIP JREF

Stephanie Zvan10 Comments

The first news I got in the new year was that someone at JREF was drunk-tweeting–or that their Twitter account was hacked. Given that two tweets got out, I suspect the latter. They weren’t bad tweets, but the wording wasn’t what I would suspect even if the sentiment had been sincere.

Two tweets from JREF. Text blockquoted in the post.

Tweet 1: New years resolution: don’t attack women for speaking out about feeling uncomfortable.

Tweet 2: New years resolution: don’t mock and scapegoat my allies.

I just don’t think they’d be talking about scapegoating that baldly. Given that the tweets came down very quickly, someone at JREF appears to agree with me.

As a drunken joke involving accidentally pressing Tweet–twice–they would be kind of funny. As someone hacking the @jref account, they are, of course, much less so. The reactions to them from the usual crowd of Twitter anti-feminists, however, are hilarious. Continue reading “RIP JREF” →

RIP JREF

A Taste of 2012

Stephanie Zvan,

There was one fairly obvious theme on this blog in 2012. Anyone who’s been around for most of it knows I did an awful lot of feminist blogging. That started all the way back in January, when I interviewed Melody Hensley on Atheists Talk about the Women in Secularism conference. Feminism is always pretty overt at the ScienceOnline conferences in Raleigh as well.

Things really ramped up at the WiS conference, of course. My most-read post this year is the one I wrote during the conference and on the plane on the way home, when I realized an off-hand comment from Jen McCreight was going to be very big indeed. So I followed up quickly to put some of that energy to good use. I’m very happy to say it was successful, if not entirely easy going. Continue reading “A Taste of 2012” →

A Taste of 2012