Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.

Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?

So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, so it didn’t. [Read more…]

From Whistling Vivaldi, an amusing but more tragic than amusing demonstration of the power of identity stereotype cues.

[Paul Davies and Steve Spencer] had men and women college students watch a set of six television commercials, ostensibly as part of a media study. For half of these students, two of the commercials included women depicted in silly gender-stereotyped ways – as a co-ed extolling the party life at her university, for example – and for the other half the commercials had no gender content. After viewing the commercials, each student was taken across the hall to an ostensibly different study where, to help a graduate, they could work on as many verbal and math items as they wanted to. [Read more…]

Jerry Coyne is looking at the AAAS and Templeton influence again, via the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, chummily known as DoSER. Check out that website. The bullshit starts with the first sentence on the page.

AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) facilitates communication between scientific and religious communities.

See, that’s deceptive already. It’s sugar. Who could possibly object to “communication between scientific and religious communities”? No one! That just means sciencey people and religious people talking and maybe throwing picnics together. But that’s far from all that DoSER is about. [Read more…]

PZ is frustrated with all the glitches.

Hipster guy tells Rebecca Watson what’s what. Really funny stuff that nobody’s thought of saying before, like hey you’re an adult and you’re all upset that some guy wanted to fuck you, grow up, people like to fuck, especially at 4 a.m. See what I mean? Witty.

Tim Minchin commented. Hmph. Rebecca has all the fun – well, except for being called a cunt 85 times a day. Anyway Tim Minchin commented.

No permalink – how tiresome. Use CTRL F. Thanks Aratina.

I stay in a lot of hotels and travel in a lot of elevators. They are very helpful, what with their elevating properties and all. Sometimes, I am in an elevator with a woman. Just me and her. In this little, quiet, rumbly box. Actually, this happened this evening here in New York, just a couple of hours ago.

And I thought to myself, “What would it be like right now if I asked this woman for a coffee”? I’ve pondered this many times in the months since Rebecca’s video managed to unlock the secret door into the mysterious fuck-head chamber of the personalities of a thousand commenters, and the answer is always: fucking weird.

It would be really pretty fucking weird. No, not “deserving-of-arrest, definitely-a-rapist, just-as-bad-as-female-circumcision” kind of weird. But just about weird enough to justify, say… a comment. Y’know, the sort of comment you might make if you were, say, a video blogger who talks about life and skepticism from a woman’s perspective.

I have been substantially depressed by the scale and tone of the subsequent brouhaha.

Some advice, if you’ll forgive me, from someone who has, in the past, been rude to people on the internet, and also has been the subject of plenty of abuse:

Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever. On the internet, or in your life.

Just imagine, as you sharpen your pen, that every man is your uncle or your brother, and that every woman is your mother or your sister. Just don’t spread vitriol. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it doesn’t improve anything, it fails to educate, elucidate or encourage debate. It’s lazy. It’d be boring if it wasn’t so awful.

Just stop. Breathe. Don’t be defensive. Think hard about what you think. Clarify your point of view in your head. Try to find a way to articulate it – if you still feel you must articulate it – in a manner that assumes the person you are addressing is an actual human.

Preferably make it rhyme. Rhyming your anger seems to help, in my experience.

Go on, I dare ya – go all fucking Gandhi on their arses. Even if you hate them. It’s a good feeling. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.

You can experiment on me, if this post ignites your ire.

It’s too chilly for sandals right now, let alone the loin cloth, but apart from that – Gandhi R us.

Jamila Bey was asking Rebecca earlier why this stuff happens and why it doesn’t get called out. I don’t know why it happens, although I have some ideas, but – it does get called out now. We’re all over the calling out.

I’m late getting to this (don’t shout at me, it’s been a week full of impediments) but it’s worth not filing under “too late” because it’s so eloquent – James Kirchick at Index on Censorship tells Bruce Crumley why he’s such a weasel. I have little or nothing to add, I just want to quote the juiciest remarks.

As Christopher Hitchens wrote about the death warrant put out for his friend, “I thought then, and I think now, that this was not just a warning of what was to come. It was the warning. The civil war in the Muslim world, between those who believed in jihad and Shari’a and those who did not, was coming to our streets and cities.” [Read more…]

Well I say “don’t panic,” but in truth I want my posts back. It’s today, the site is up, people are awake and talkative, and I had two new posts besides the service announcement…and they’re all just gone. It’s odd how frustrating that is. Or maybe it’s not odd. Anyway, I’m not panicking, but I want my posts back.

Oh shut up and write a new one, is the obvious reply.

There’s a lot of stuff missing from yesterday – posts and comments, both. Don’t panic. It may all be found once the upgrade is finished.

I should at least read to the end before I throw a verbal punch, but you know sometimes it just can’t wait. Rabbi Adam Jacobs, ornamenting the Huffington Post with his wisdom.

He just doesn’t get it about non-believers, he confides. They keep making him jump with surprise.

 Often, I’ve inquired of non-believers if it at all vexes them that nothing that they have ever done or will ever do will make the slightest difference to anyone on any level? [Read more…]