Harvard wins!

Here’s something they’re really good at: they’re champions at ignoring victims of sexual assault. You can guess from my description that that article might be a bit triggering: a woman describes her assault by a fellow dorm resident, and then her nine month struggle to get Harvard’s administration to even admit to the problem (they actively discouraged her from getting redress), and how they allowed her assailant to continue to live in the same dorm.

"spiritual manipulation runs deep"

Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church is splintering, and the problem seems to be a common one: a charismatic leader, a cult-like following, and the ego and weird psychological flaws of the leader gradually expand until they dominate the discourse. Everyone had to have known from the beginning that Mars Hill is peddling poison.

In Mars Hill theology, female members are viewed through the lens of complementarianism, a theological position that prescribes separate roles for women and men including male headship. A woman being advised to get down on her knees and give her husband a blow job represents just one of a spectrum of submissive behaviors touted for females, who are encouraged to find their meaning in the traditional roles of wife and mother. The virginity of women is prized, and by some reports Driscoll’s late discovery and fury that his wife had sex with another male as a teenager became bizarrely significant in their relationship and in the life of the church even though he himself was not a virgin when he married.

And now we’re finding out that he plagiarized chunks of his ‘bestseller’ book, and that one reason it was a bestseller is that he used church funds to buy up copies, and that many former church members are leaving in protest against Driscoll’s authoritarianism. It’s good to see. You can find more at Mars Hill Refuge, where former cult members share their stories.

A couple of years ago, some Mars Hill church members tried to recruit me to do a debate there — even then I got a creepy cult-like vibe from them, and turned them down flat.

There goes the Minnesota tourism industry

The movie Fargo warped the image of Minnesota—and now the FX channel is going to be showing a new, 10 episode miniseries titled… Fargo, starring Bilbo Baggins with a Minnesota accent.

An original adaptation of the Academy Award®-winning feature film, Fargo features an all-new “true crime” story and follows a new case and new characters, all entrenched in the trademark humor, murder and “Minnesota nice” that made the film an enduring classic.

Yep, that’s exactly what living in rural Minnesota is like: funny accents, and grim, understated humor over all the dead bodies littering the snow. It’s a sensibility that has always informed my blog, dontchaknow.

Skeptech 2 today!

It’s not too late, get signed up at Skeptech (it’s free, but they do hope for donations).

I shall be there, along with my bodyguard, the mighty Connlann, who happens to be passing through on his way in a transfer from California to Georgia. If you’re thinking of arranging a boycott of my talks (you know who you are, you wacky lunatics), please do — no one is going to show up at my talk this weekend, because I’m not giving one. I’m going as an attendee because it looks to be an excellent event.

Any one of you who is going but is not giving a talk, meet with me and I shall do you the honor of organizing a non-boycott of your non-talk, and then we shall sit out our non-existent sessions in the bar.

It’s been a bad month for the creationists

I almost pity them. First there’s the discovery of gravitational waves that confirm a set of models for the origin of the universe — I can tell they’re trying to spin that one (it confirms the universe had a beginning, just like the Bible says!), but it’s obvious which perspective, scientific or religious, has the greater explanatory power.

Then there’s Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos, in which every episode so far has taken a vigorous poke at creationist nonsense. I think they cry every Sunday after church, because they know that later that evening they will be attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture. It’s been great.

And now, look, the Cassini spacecraft has found an ocean beneath the ice of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

For years, the motto among astrobiologists — people who look for life in distant worlds, and try to understand what life is, exactly — has been “follow the water.” You have to start the search somewhere, and scientists have started with liquid water because it’s the essential agent for all biochemistry on Earth.

Now they’ve followed the water to a small, icy moon orbiting Saturn. Scientists reported Thursday that Enceladus, a shiny world about 300 miles in diameter, has a subsurface “regional sea” with a rocky bottom.

This cryptic body of water is centered around the south pole and is upwards of five miles deep. It has a volume similar to that of Lake Superior, according to the research, which was published in the journal Science.

Enceladus

There is hope yet for Space Squid! Or maybe space progenotes. Isn’t it wonderful that we keep finding gloriously natural discoveries in the universe?

The tears will flow again in a few weeks, when Neil Shubin’s new series, Your Inner Fish, premieres on PBS. I’m really looking forward to this one.

It is a good time to be passionate about science.

Those two sentences…they do not fit together

Some dudebros are doing a fundraiser for a camera attachment that makes it easy to take upskirt photos. Besides just the general disgustingness of the concept, they make one of the most remarkably oblivious marketing statements ever.

If you want to take sneaky pictures of people without them knowing, this is the way to do it. Just don’t be creepy about it.

I think, by definition, taking sneaky photos of others is creepy. And a marketing campaign full of photos of closeup shots of women’s legs and cleavage is an admission that the entire purpose of the device is creepy.

Just a thought that those kinds of ad campaigns might just contribute to this kind of feeling.

Thanks, dudebros. It makes me sad that my presence can make women feel oppressed, thanks to you.

The United States is now for sale

Charles Pierce provides some pithy commentary on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.

The remarkable story of how we have come to privatize political corruption in this country reached another milestone today as the Supreme Court, John Roberts presiding, handed down its decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, effectively demolishing the aggregate, two-year limit on contributions by individuals, and taking a big chunk out of Buckley v. Valeo, the misbegotten 1976 decision that got the ball rolling in the first place. It was a 5-4 vote, with the court split exactly as it had in the Citizens United case. In writing the opinion for the court, Roberts further emphasized the equation of money with speech, and also seemed to agree with Anthony Kennedy’s famous assertion in Citizens United that the ability of megadonors to shovel gobs of money into the election process,"We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

We’re done. The only hope would be if legislation were passed to close this giant campaign finance loophole (“gaping wound” might be a better phrase than “loophole”), but in a legislature dominated by kamikaze Tea Party freaks and cautious Democrats who just care about getting re-elected, I don’t see it happening. Goodbye, cruel world, America is standing in the toilet bowl and the Supreme Court just opened the door to selling the right to press the handle. This is Sheldon Adelson’s United States now.

Jesus F. Christ.

Ben Radford has taken the next step in sleaze, dumping all of his and Karen Stollznow’s mutual correspondence to the web, along with various other documents to demonstrate that yes, they once had a relationship, that Stollznow has had some turbulent relationships with others, etc., etc., etc. None of it really matters — does he think that somehow having once had a relationship, it means he can never ever be guilty of harassment ever again?

But I just want to mention one piece of ‘evidence’ he has released to the world. It’s a selfie he took of himself, shirtless, in bed with a woman. Radford has a smug smirk on his face; the woman is covering her face with her hand, clearly not wanting any part of this exhibition. Radford has commissioned an expert in photographic analysis to compare her hand to Stollznow’s hand in other photos, to ‘prove’ that it is her. Note what he has done: he has taken a picture of a woman in an intimate situation, clearly against her wishes, and has now posted it to the web, with evidence to identify her.

And he thinks this vindicates him.

My god. What a revolting narcissistic scumbag.