Feds to people: we not hiding the mermaidz

The US government tells us there is no evidence for the existence of mermaids. In other news, the UN issues a press release saying that rain makes things get wet.

There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.

The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.

It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.

“No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,” the service wrote in an online post.

It is thought there might be something amiss with the US education system if people can’t distinguish between a tv show about mythical creatures and a documentary on laydeez with a fish body where their slot is supposed to be.

The petty cash

So how about those funny people at Barclays, huh?

Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, described the outrage that has built up over the bank’s actions.

“The cynical greed of traders asking their colleagues to falsify their Libor submissions so that they could make bigger profits – has justifiably shocked and angered people, in particular when we are facing hard economic times provoked by the financial crisis,” he told the Financial Services Authority’s annual meeting.

Oh well, so they moved a decimal point now and then. Bankers will be bankers.

Last week, regulators in the US and UK fined Barclays £290m ($450m) for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, the interest rates at which banks lend to each other, which underpin trillions of pounds worth of financial transactions.

Staff did this over a number of years, trying to raise them for profit and then, during the financial crisis, lowering them to hide the level to which Barclays was under financial stress.

Oh.

I made something trend on Twitter

There’s glory for you.

I’ve never done that before! And doubtless never will again.

I just settled down to a few minutes of joking, and then people joined me, and then it kept going.

#FTBullies

I had to. Because of this one, by Paula Kirby, which is just too funny –

More RTs coming up. If you are sick of the #FTBullies, it is safe to speak up – YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And if you don’t speak up, who will?

Do admit. Every part is funny. Announcing future RTs, as if to a breathless world. You don’t announce future RTs! You do them or you don’t, but you don’t announce future ones, as if they’re like a book launch. It’s Twitter, people! Well ok if you’re actually trying to topple the mullahs in Iran, fine, you can get all self-important, but short of that – it’s Twitter, not a meeting of the underground.

Then “it is safe to speak up” – well no kidding! Did anybody think it wasn’t? Did anybody think we would murder them if they spoke up? And there was Paula calling me hysterical for being worried about those emails. And then YOU ARE NOT ALONE – again, no kidding! This isn’t The Count of Monte Cristo. No, you’re not alone, there are seventy squillion people on Twitter and no doubt there are some who hate this mysterious blob called FTB.

And the last one is the funniest of all. [breathlessly] I don’t know, who??

Speak up about what? About 35 or so blogs, some of which include articles that say things Paula Kirby disagrees with. Take cover! Pack a lunch! Bring plenty of batteries!

There’s even a post here that disagrees with Paula Kirby herself. Yes it does; yes I do; I disagree with her claim that I’m a totalitarian or like the Nazis or the Stasi. Big woop.

So now it’s trending.

Kate Donovan does another transcript

Of the latest FTB hangout. Kate writes at at Teen Skepchicks and the Friendly Atheist.

PZ Myers: Freethought [after now, to be FtB, for my hands] bloggers, and what we decided to talk about this time was all the stuff other than atheism that concerns us in this movement. So we thought, well, one of the things that unites all of us here concern for social justice! So what we thought we’d do is we’d just sit here and chatter about all these wonderful essential things we thought were a key part of the atheist/freethought movement that need to be acknowledged. And that means things like equality, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, anti-sexual harassment—all this grab-bag of things we’ve been chattering about on our blogs recently. And…here’s a panel! You guys….say something!

Ophelia Benson: So what we’re doing is laying out exactly what people mean when they call us the hivemind and the borg, right? Well, we’re making it easy for them, we’re giving them the list that they can deal with.

PZ Myers: Right. And also one way to think about it is, here we are, laying out a sort of ‘general mission statement’ for FtB.

[Ashley Miller, Al Stefanelli laugh] [Read more…]

On not buying into the LULZer playbook

Someone (handle: tigtog) left a good comment here and then made a blog post out of it for more visibility, so I’ll make a blog post out of it too for more visibility again.

On not buying into the LULZer playbook at FtB (or anywhere) #WeLoveFTB

(This will be teaching many of you to suck eggs, I know – this is mainly for lurkers and newbies, especially newbie lurkers. Apologies in advance for the tl;dr)

The idea that each pocket of cyberspace should be a clean slate for somebody with no reference to what they are known to do elsewhere is a page dusted off from the old USENet alt.syntax.tactical playbook, as is the uber-purist semantic-hacktivist stance that objecting to having one’s argument misrepresented by poo-flinging howler monkeys *really* means that one knows one’s position will not withstand a “rigorous logical challenge”. These faux-purists in fact know very well that it’s not only possible but appallingly easy to rhetorically sandbag *any* line of argument no matter how rigorously supported it may actually be.

This is achieved largely by exploiting the phenomenon summed up as “a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” e.g. their new spin on the meaning of “slimepit”, the year-long lie that “RW cried Rape on EG” etc etc etc. They combine these lies with their other favourite tactic (from the old alt.tasteless playbook) that *nothing should be exempt from being “joked” about*, aiming to provoke an emotional response that buys into their lie instead of scorning it as it deserves. Once someone takes their bait they deploy a hyper-skeptical pose of Just Asking Questions and Just Wanting Evidence to a double-standard far beyond that which they apply to Bigfoot or UFOs.

Repeating the lies and slurs derails any progress in the discussion by diverting the targets’ resources and time to yet again countering the lie/challenging the slur instead of moving the conversation forward, and *that’s exactly what it’s designed to do* (allegedly just for the LULZ of watching yet another thread erupt into a flamewar, which is actually just re-framing getting one’s jollies from bullying and vandalism – disruption for the sake of disruption).

One of the reasons they hate Pharyngula so much is that there are a lot of ‘net veterans there amongst the regulars (largely because PZ is also an old ‘net vet), and the vets see very clearly what is happening when the lies start being told and spoil the LULZ-fun by flatly identifying a comment as a lie without getting sucked into a derailing defence. Denied their jollies there, the LULZers have decided to target the rest of FtB because many of the other blog-owners and their commentariats have not yet become sufficiently acquainted with the LULZ playbook to cut the thread-derails off at the knees i.e. the LULZers are *relying* on their behaviour elsewhere not being known on the target blog, and thus being given more leeway than they deserve.

Ophelia’s Rules spoil the LULZ-fun, thus they’ve added her to their special extra-shitpiling list. Accusing her of “intellectual dishonesty” for refusing to let them fling shit all over her cybersalon is just the cherry on the top of the LULZers’ cake of pointless bile.

Anyone who comes onto an FtB blog and starts repeating the LULZer lies and slurs as part of their oh-so-noble groupthink challenge has already identified themselves as intellectually dishonest. Checking to see whether they’ve misbehaved using the same nym elsewhere before banhammering is actually extending them a benefit of the doubt that is IMO excessively generous.

tigtog

There’s more on the post, so check it out.

 

The tide of history advances only when people make themselves fully visible

Good about Anderson Cooper, huh?

I’ve also been reminded recently that while as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.  There continue to be far too many incidences of bullying of young people, as well as discrimination and violence against people of all ages, based on their sexual orientation, and I believe there is value in making clear where I stand.

Yep, and the same applies to atheists. Boy do young atheists get bullied in this country. Any hidden Name atheists out there? Speak up!

Anderson himself (he doesn’t mind if I call him Anderson, does he? I’ve considered him a close personal friend ever since he interviewed my friend Josh, so he can’t mind) ends with some ooky god-talk, which is unfortunate, but still – good about what Anderson said to Andrew.

The Oppressed Sisters and their Approved Male Chorus

The second part of problems with Why it’s totally fine to call The Sisterhood of the Oppressed Feminazis and Femistasi and totalitarian.

Remember the Women in Secularism conference the other week? How that conference was hailed by the Oppressed Sisters and their Approved Male Chorus!

Wow. I don’t have much more than that.

Well wait, one thing occurs to me. Paula’s counterpart Liz Cornwell was at that conference. Liz and I were both absolutely electrified by the talk that Wafa Sultan gave, and excited about possibilities for RDF to help her get the word out. It seems odd that Paula is willing to be quite so rude about the conference. She’s angry at “the Oppressed Sisters” for dividing the movement, but that remark doesn’t seem very collegial.

But also, wow. She might as well call the “Approved Male Chorus” pussy-whipped – that’s about the level of that remark.

Far from encouraging new women to get involved, all this hysterical and unjustified insistence on how dangerous our conferences are for women, how hostile our movement is to them, the indignities and humiliations they will be exposed to should they dare to set foot over the skeptical threshold could have been calculated to scare them away.

That’s all nonsense. Nobody’s been saying that. That’s ridiculous.

DJ Grothe was, predictably, shot down in furious flames by the Sisters when he dared suggest such a thing recently, yet Ophelia Benson herself would have us believe she’s been scared away from attending a conference because of the exaggerated and over-the-top messages she got about the terrible risks she’d face if she went.

So for the second time she all but calls me a liar, and she presumes to be able to know what it’s like to get a peculiar email that could be read as an exaggerated warning or as mockery or as a threat.

It’s interesting that she calls me out by name twice. I guess she really didn’t like me when we met at QED. She certainly hid it well. I liked her a lot, despite the fact that we’d disagreed sharply over elevator issues and she’d defriended me at Facebook. I must be gullible!

How to oppose the use of any kind of name-calling

Ok so what about Paula’s Google doc?

Sigh. Do I really care?

Oh well. Maybe a point or two.

First, since I gather this has touched a nerve in some quarters, I shall deal with the terms “feminazi” and “femistasi”. As a general principle, I oppose the use of any kind of name-calling.

Well don’t we all, provided we get to resort to it when we really want to.

For the record, I am categorically NOT suggesting that the people I have applied these terms to are, in fact, Nazis or Stasi members, or would ever have sympathized with either of them. There are many of us who are proud to be called Grammarnazis and who know perfectly well that no aspersions are being cast on our intentions towards either Jews or Poland. It might be considered distasteful that the suffix -nazi has come to be used simply to mean “extremist” or “obsessive”, but nevertheless, it has come to be so used, and The Sisterhood of the Oppressed cannot legitimately chalk it up as yet another example of their alleged victimization.

She says, carefully avoiding name-calling as a general principle. But notice that the suffix -stasi has not come to be used simply to mean “extremist” or “obsessive.” Notice that an epithet one can be proud to be called, like Grammarnazi, is not the same thing as an epithet applied out of hostility, like Femistasi. Remember that Paula included the fact that she had spent two years in East Germany to back up her claim that FTB shows “strains of totalitarian thought.” In short, what she said was not similar to saying someone is a grammarnazi. It was an accusation that a few feminists and Freethought blogs are like Nazis and the Stasi.

In the case of the -stasi suffix, it draws attentions to behaviours associated with the thought police, for whom anyone who dares to hold non-approved attitudes is automatically persona non grata and to be treated as an enemy of the people. I am referring, of course, to the unfailing response on certain blogs whenever someone has had the temerity to challenge the claims that have been made there.

Yes, but that’s just it. The comparison is over the top. (That’s an example of understatement, pupils. Make a note of it.) The thought police don’t stop with comments on blogs. The Stasi – as Paula knows far better than I do – didn’t stop with comments on blogs. (Blogs didn’t even exist then! Can you imagine it?)

Sure, comments on blogs can be annoying, or even worse than annoying. When they get very personal and very malicious and go on for months or even a year, they can be a lot worse than annoying. But they’re still not the Stasi! They’re still different from the Stasi in many salient ways. I get a lot more shit in blog comments than Paula does (and who knows, maybe I deserve every bit of it, for being so evil), but I still notice the advantages I get from not being a victim of the Stasi. They are many and various, and I enjoy them a lot. I think Paula should be more alert to this difference – alert enough not to try to defend the idea that comments on blogs are in any way like the Stasi.

Now Paula gets personal.

Good heavens, we have even seen Ophelia Benson describe DJ Grothe’s call for more balance in the discussions as “sticking a metaphorical target” on her!

No, we have not seen that. Bad work, Paula. Be fair. This is what I said:

A few people think I’ve been unfair to DJ Grothe. I don’t. I think it’s the other way around.

I’ll explain why, as succinctly as I explained it to DJ (and Carrie) the day after threat-day.

I think he stuck a metaphorical target on me. He didn’t do anything to take it off. He didn’t do anything to assure me that he still welcomed me to TAM. He triggered a shit-storm, and then let it get worse and worse and worse.

That’s it.

He stuck a metaphorical target on me (in my view) when he blamed the fall in women’s attendance at TAM on

irresponsible messaging coming from a small number of prominent and well-meaning women skeptics who, in trying to help correct real problems of sexism in skepticism, actually and rather clumsily themselves help create a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe.

You see where she went wrong? I quoted exactly the part I meant when I said DJ stuck a metaphorical target on me, and in that passage he doesn’t “call for more balance in the discussions”; he blames a small number of women skeptics who probably include me. There’s not a word about balance in that passage.

Really, Paula. Is that “skepticism”? Not in my book.

That’s the first item. (Yes that was all one item. Don’t be such an itemnazi.) Second item later.

Nazis and Stasi and bears, oh my

Dear oh dear, lots of new assigned reading first thing in the morning; how will I ever catch up.

There is Rebecca’s post on being called Feminazis and Femistasi. (I read that yesterday actually, but late in a long and rather nerve-racking day, so I’m treating it as new.)

There is Paula Kirby’s eagerly-anticipated (since she announced it yesterday) Google doc “Sisterhood of the Oppressed” (gee I wonder what that could possibly be about, and what its take might turn out to be).

There is Alex Gabriel’s unanticipated and lovely mash-note to Freethought blogs. Alex’s note is especially pleasant because it includes detailed accounts of what he likes about a whole slew of particular blogs on the network, which makes a nice contrast to people who simply rant endlessly on Twitter about “FTB” as if it were allonething. It also offers the comradely suggestion to tweet #WeLoveFTB. It offers it for the same set of reasons as the one we were talking about on the video yesterday. (That was only yesterday? It feels like weeks ago now.)

All of these people are tremendous, and so are many of their co-bloggers from the little of them I’ve seen. But none of them is the biggest reason I love FtB.

The biggest reason is the same one other people have been criticizing them recently: that they speak out so often, and so eloquently, on feminism, queer and racial struggles, politics and other Causes That Aren’t Directly Related To Atheism. That while primarily they’re an atheist network, they’re a collective of atheists with other opinions, where atheist discussions on justice, ethics and politics can take place – especially where the perspectives of the marginalized are included.

If we had a word for atheists doing this, what would it be?

Oh yes. ‘Freethought’.

The criticism of religion is a very much older beast than RDFRS, or CFI, or FreethoughtBlogs itself. It’s older than the skeptical movement writers here belong to, and which focuses (don’t get me wrong, correctly) on attacking religion epistemologically.

In Europe, the historic home of freethought, and elsewhere in the world, there exists a long and esteemed tradition of thinkers and writers who called out religion for being unjust and oppressive: traditionally, feminists, Marxists, queer theorists and all the other famous bêtes noires of the Daily Mail have been the first to bash religion. There’s clearly no real dichotomy, and many people who identify with these groups also foreground science, but I relate to that atheist tradition at least as much as to Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. And I love FreethoughtBlogs – I adore it – for representing that contingent.

So here’s my invitation to you, if you love it too. Now that I’ve set out what makes that set of writers special to me, I’m not going to try and stop people calling them bullies or totalitarian. They’re entitled to their opinion – but so are we, and while the FtB crowd are, frankly, being bombarded with abuse, I think we ought to share it.

Remember when Tory politicians said we needed to privatise health, and #WeLoveTheNHS trended? I think it’s time for #WeLoveFTB.

Tweet it. I’m about to. Tweet it so that everyone from that network knows we support them, and find love as well as hate when they search for FtB.

Thank you, Alex.

There are also global standards

At least someone gets it: why if person X – let’s call him Merelyatruck – is a sexist shit at blog Y – let’s call it ARF – a woman Z – let’s call her OB – wouldn’t want him commenting on her blog (let’s call it B&W) no matter how fake-civil he pretended to be while there.

Said eigenperson:

#87 Justicar:

I think it’s very clear what Ophelia is saying there. She’s saying that if you are good in Location 1 and bad in Location 2, then you may act well sometimes, but you are not a good person, because a good person tries not to act badly anywhere.

I would agree with that. While it is entirely appropriate to adapt one’s behavior to the local community standards, there are also global standards by which one ought to govern oneself everywhere, or at least anywhere public. What those standards are is, of course, debatable.

For example, I know of one prominent scientist (now deceased) who was an absolutely raging sexist while he was at work. He did a lot of harm with his sexism in that context. But, in other contexts, he was not a sexist at all; in fact, he was very respectful to women in every location except his own office at the university, where he would recommend rejecting their applications (if they were grad students) or denying them tenure (if they were professors), or if they showed up in person, verbally abusing them until they went away.

I am not willing to say that he was a good person, even though in so many contexts he acted according to standards I would be okay with. Because there was one context in which he consistently did not, even after it was explained to him that his behavior in that context was very harmful. This wasn’t just a case of “Oh, gee, I didn’t realize I had that bias!” No, it was very deliberate.

If Ophelia thinks that the way you act on ERV is willful and harmful, it’s entirely rational for her to say that you are not a good person, even though you behave like one on her blog.

Why yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you, eigenperson.