Smears and smudges

Jenny Kutner at Salon also reports on Dawkins’s unfamiliarity with the Men’s Rights movement.

Noted evolutionary biologist and atheist thinker Richard Dawkins addressed questions of gender discrimination in science head-on at a recent event at Kennesaw State University, responding to a question about the value of feminism in science and the necessity of the men’s rights movement. Dawkins, who has been criticized for contributing to the atheist community’s endemic sexism, said he believes feminism to be “enormously important” — but he wasn’t so sure about men’s rights. [Read more…]

Officers too often escalate incidents with citizens

The Justice department released the conclusions of its civil rights investigation of the Cleveland Police Department yesterday. Techdirt reports on some of what it says.

The DOJ’s report opens with the de rigueur statements about how dangerous policing is and how grateful the nation is that there are men and women willing to do this difficult job. But this is mercifully brief. The token belly rub doesn’t even last a full paragraph. The generic praise that makes up the two first sentences is swiftly tempered by these curt sentences. [Read more…]

The man was in respiratory arrest

A doctor I know said this on a Facebook thread about the way the police treated Eric Garner, especially after they slammed him to the sidewalk:

Diabetic or not, the man was in respiratory arrest, an immediately life-threatening situation and one which any emergency responder with first aid training should recognize. Prone positioning with hands behind the back is a significant risk factor in inducing sudden respiratory arrest, which is why the hog tie position has been outlawed in many jurisdictions. Garner showed visibly obvious signs of severe respiratory distress. His diabetes was about the 987th issue on his list of Problems. If police officers are unable to recognize that a man they had just arrested is in respiratory arrest, they are a danger to public health in the conduct of their duties.

I find that compelling (so I got permission to quote it). You would absolutely think that would and should be part of police training. How could it not be? They train to use physical force and restraint; how could they not be trained also to recognize the potential dangers of that physical force and restraint, and what to do about them?

Drop that plate right now

Well merry Xmas to you too, Fort Lauderdale. (Look, I said it! I’m an atheist and I said merry Xmas. Booya.)

Fort Lauderdale was, until a judge suspended operations, happily arresting people for feeding the homeless in city parks. Nöfuckingel.

A Florida city that made it illegal to feed homeless people on the street and arrested a 90-year-old charity volunteer for defying the ordinance must sit down for mediated talks with opponents of the law after a judge issued a 30-day stay of the law on Monday.

[Read more…]

Buoyed by something that feels like knowledge

Steve Novella did this piece about Dunning-Kruger last month. Is it wrong that I find some of it extremely funny?

Like this, quoting Dunning…

What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.

[Read more…]

Guest post: Of course porn is normative

Originally a comment by Marcus Ranum on Oops I forgot to do a title.

TRIGGER WARNING: serial killer, murder

1. The audience is different. Porn is for adults, whereas video games are generally at least in part intended for younger audiences.

Apparently you haven’t heard of the internet. Which is amazing, since you’re using it to post your comments.

2. Porn isn’t intended to be normative. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t function that way, of course, but it generally isn’t intended as such by either producer or consumer.

Intent is totally magical. Because if I don’t intend to hurt anyone when I drive drunk, it doesn’t count if I actually run over a dozen nuns, right? Of course porn is normative. Indeed, we have been effectively mainstreaming it and removing age controls for the last decade. [Read more…]

If you shoot in haste, cuff everyone afterwards

Another bit to add to the pile of awful.

As Tamir Rice’s 14-year-old sister rushed to her brother’s side upon learning he’d been shot, police officers “tackled” her, handcuffed her and placed her in a squad car with the Cleveland officer who shot Tamir, her mother and a Rice family attorney told reporters Monday.

The mother, Samaria Rice, was threatened with arrest herself as she “went charging and yelling at police” because they wouldn’t let her run to her son’s aid, she said.

[Read more…]

Guest post: Nearly all knowledge is provisional

Originally a comment by John Horstman on Knowing v accepting.

All knowledge is functionally Bayesian – it’s a matter of probability of being true, which we can sometimes even formally quantify, but it’s never 100%, with the exception of constructed abstractions (like mathematics or other formalized abstract systems, where things can have definite truth values because we construct them that way) and the existence of at least one ‘mind’ – some system capable of cognition such that I can even be here considering the questions. [Read more…]