The rifts were widening everywhere

How interesting — Arun reports that the history of atheism in India was pretty much like it was here. A surge of interest sparked by The God Delusion (say what you want about Dawkins, that was an influential book), with an emergent split as one group saw social justice as an essential component of the movement, while another group “expressed abhorrence to the word feminism and propagated the myth that women are inherently irrational”, leading to a current divided movement.

I suspect it’s a reflection of a fault line that was there all along, and not at all unique to atheism. All you have to do is look at the American electorate and see a division that is somewhat independent of religious ideas.

The exception proves the rule, right?

A black scientist writes about James Watson, and it’s insightful. C. Brandon Ogbunu is a computational biologist, so he understands both DNA and statistics, and is in a good position to recognize abuses of both.

Black exceptionalism is a popular and complicated idea. It asserts that a monolithic “average” black identity exists, and that by transcending this average, one is exceptional. While the idea isn’t welded to black achievement, it is related. Successful members of the black community who somehow avoided the regression to the (black) mean are presented as paragons, exceptional ones of their kind. There are backhanded compliments, and then there is black exceptionalism—a racist idea lightly dressed in a pat-on-the-back.

Some of us, in a naïve or perfunctory manner, wear black exceptionalism as a badge of honor, even under the guise of progress: “I will show them what we are capable of.” Good intentions be damned, because to adopt this stance is to walk directly into a pernicious trap. The most effective racist ideas rarely deny the existence of exceptional members of the out-group to which undesirable features are attributed.

On the contrary, the most destructive ideas embrace high-performing members for statistical cover. In order to argue that the mean performance of an out-group is lower for a desirable trait, there should be some high performers. High-performing black people are essential for racism like James Watson’s, and even he might predict a statistical and genetic exceptional negro, because they can’t all be incompetent.

The problem with this argument isn’t only that it avoids critical discussions about the possible sources of group differences, but also that it uses the notion of the exceptional individual to justify racist ideas towards others in the out-group. In general, armchair appeals to statistics often conceal negative feelings that people already have, attitudes forged in the fires of fear and bias, not science.

I’ve seen that routine so often. “I know a Negro with a Ph.D. — in science — therefore I’m not racist.” “I admit that Jews are often academically gifted, therefore I don’t have a bias against them, I just know they’re evil.” “If my statistics don’t convince you that black people are less intelligent, how come they also show that Asians are better at math than white people?” It’s the contrast that is supposed to convince us that they are objectively evaluating real data.

“Intelligence” is an undefinable and complex parameter that changes depending on how you measure it. The only reasonable response to claims that one has characterized the “intelligence” of a large group of people and has some sweeping interpretations is to realize that they are simply expressing their unfounded biases in a pseudoscientific tone, and dismiss them.

Meme War @UMNMorris!

As I was walking through the halls to my lab, I noticed that the students have been waging a little meme war on the corkboards scattered around the building. I haven’t had to work with students much at all this year, so it’s always good to see a reminder of how wonderful they are.

Here’s an example. At the top, just off center, the College Republicans are advertising with the slogan, “Where women are not afraid to be women. While men are not afraid to be men.” That’s an oddly fearful concern — people are not afraid to be who they are in other campus groups. It’s already been defaced, though: someone wrote “bigotry is scarier than human rights” across it. Also they’re surrounded by an “It’s OK to be non-binary” sign and an ad for a discussion in conversational Spanish. Poor babies.

To the right, the College Republicans try again with a sad, limp NPC meme sign. That never worked, people, except in a self-referential way. Your opposition is flamboyantly rainbow-colored, while you’re the boring gray guys.

Meanwhile, in response to the trite & feeble sloganeering of the CR, we’ve got…this awesome bit of over-the-top mockery.

The Gender Binary is an Imperialist Social Construct
Support Trans People of Color

Signed by Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future, one of our many progressive groups on campus.

Yes, it’s a real organization. It’s even been written up in the Daily Caller, which seems to be aghast.

“I’m looking to start a Satanist group at Morris to address the budding conservatism on this campus — which I find abhorrent,” student Reed Larsen explained in the email.

“I’m hoping the group will have a social justice platform and further such a platform through good ol’ devilish revelry,” Larsen also said.

Larsen has christened himself as “Vold Mother” of “Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future.”

For the group’s logo, Larsen chose a classic, circle-emblazoned satanic pentagram festooned with the rainbow colors of the gay pride flag.

Their response is interesting — it’s an attempt to minimize the influence of the campus conservatives who put up that NPC sign, and also tack up TPUSA crap everywhere.

The “budding conservatism” on the University of Minnesota, Morris campus consists of handful of groups — a gun group, a pro-life club — which boast perhaps two dozen members combined, a source who chose to remain unidentified told Campus Reform.

That’s a generous estimate. I don’t think they take into account that it is the same handful of people signing up for all the conservative clubs, so they may be counting some of them two or three times. Also note how they are cowering fearfully, afraid to be identified…not because there is a serious threat to them, but because someone with blue hair might laugh at them.

Have I ever told you how happy I am to be at this campus? Because I am. It’s a good place. If you’re applying to colleges right now, you should consider applying.

I recommend you choose the side that’s winning the meme war, though.

Nobody gets abortions because they’re fun, or they hate babies

The same group of people cheering on the destruction of families at the border are also calling for an end to late term abortions — force those women to bring damaged babies to term, even if it kills them both! Pious politicians are crying over the fact that a woman and her doctor might decide to terminate a pregnancy even shortly before it is due, or during labor, as if they just want to kill babies on a whim. That is not the reality, of course. Read this story of a woman who was 35 weeks pregnant when she got terrible news.

The neurologist delivered more bad news: additional brain anomalies. My little daughter would likely never walk, talk, swallow, or support the weight of her head. She would require brain surgery to extend her life, but no surgery could ever cure her.

“What can she do?” I asked. “Does a child like mine just sleep all day?”

He winced at the question. “Children like yours are not generally comfortable enough to sleep.”

She didn’t have much choice.

Why was she offering me these choices? Didn’t she know how deeply I loved my baby? I tried to respond, but could only manage a question, “There are abortions for women like me?” I was 35 weeks pregnant. I wondered if there had been a mistake.

“We don’t know.” She said. “We used to send women to Kansas. But we can’t anymore.”

I understood. The doctor who performed abortions for women 35 weeks pregnant had been shot by a man who followed him to his church. Somewhere in my brain, the memory of that news story revealed itself along with the stark understanding that I was entering a world in which people might want to shoot me, too, depending on my choice.

There was only one clinic that could take care of her, it was 2000 miles away, and she had to pay $25,000 up front to get it done. That’s the situation we’re in right now, where essential health care is locked up and hidden away by controlling men and Christian bible-wallopers.

But hey, you want a little good news? The city of Minneapolis has approved the construction of a new Planned Parenthood facility.

The commission approved two land-use applications for the three-story building, which will replace Planned Parenthood’s existing Uptown clinic, located at Lagoon & Emerson. The project will allow Planned Parenthood to triple its annual patient capacity in Uptown, according to Jen Aulwes, communications director of Planned Parenthood North Central States.

The organization will provide all of the same services in the new building that are available in the existing building, including OB-GYN exams and pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing, according to Aulwes. The center’s services will include medication abortion.

It looks like a lovely building.

I notice the rendering left out the mob of ignorant assholes with signs screaming at patients trying to get in. That makes it much prettier.

Those must be like the imaginary “good genes” that make him very smart

He lies about everything, no matter how trivial.

Despite his citrusy complexion and raccoon-like pale circles around his eyes — like the ones caused by goggles inside a tanning booth — the company line is that it’s all just “good genes,” a senior administration official told the New York Times.

He must think we’re idiots to believe that.

Unfortunately, he’s right about that, at least for 26% of the country.

You evil bastards

The US government has been separating children from their parents at the border, and at this point they do not even know exactly how many children have been torn away from their families. HHS has admitted that the number “was certainly larger than the 2,737 listed by the government in court documents”, and that they’re going through over 47,000 case files to sort out the mess that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. It’s going so slowly that they’re about to throw up their hands and give up…so they’ve got a new rationalization.

The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who have been separated from their parents and, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed.

Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.

It would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment, and could be traumatic to the children, White said in a court filing late Friday, citing his years of experience working with unaccompanied migrant children and background as a social worker.

Where was your fucking concern for the children when you snatched them from the arms of their mothers, you goddamned pompous bureaucrat? If you sincerely wanted to avoid traumatizing and destabilizing children, the place to start practicing what you should have learned as a social worker was in refusing to tear apart families in the first place. If separating children from their ‘sponsor’ homes would cause them emotional harm, you’ve just admitted that separating them from their natural families had to have been devastating.

These criminal fuckers need to be burned to the ground.