Some of the worst people in America

Gun fondlers are contemptible. Smug sexist men are despicable. But the intersection of gun fanatics and misogynists is the worst.

Ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, a small but vocal faction of the gun rights movement has been targeting women who speak up on the issue—whether to propose tighter regulations, educate about the dangers to children, or simply to sell guns with innovative security features. The vicious and often sexually degrading attacks have evolved far beyond online trolling, culminating in severe bullying, harassment, invasion of privacy, and physical aggression. Though vitriol flows from both sides in the gun debate, these menacing tactics have begun to alarm even some entrenched pro-gun conservatives.

The article in Mother Jones is a depressing litany of all that is awful about our second amendment lunatics. Just one example: Jennifer Longdon is an advocate for responsible gun ownership — she wants more background checks, registration, and gun safety. She’s also a victim of gun violence herself, paralyzed in an attack. This is how the gun fondlers react to such people:

After a fundraiser one night during the program [a gun buy-back program], Longdon returned home around 10 p.m., parked her ramp-equipped van and began unloading herself. As she wheeled up to her house, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in black and had a rifle, "like something out of a commando movie," Longdon told me. He took aim at her and pulled the trigger. Longdon was hit with a stream of water. "Don’t you wish you had a gun now, bitch?" he scoffed before taking off.

"It was like a mock execution," Longdon says, recalling the intense surge of adrenaline and how the incident triggered her PTSD from the 2004 attack that nearly killed her and her fiancé. She called the police, but they were unable to track down the perpetrator. By the following Saturday, Longdon was back at her post helping run the buyback.

Jebus. Those people are sick and fucked-up.

Since when is overthrowing the government constitutional?

Today is the day that Operation American Spring, Restoring the Constitution of The United States of America commences. This is a proposal by teabaggin’ wingnuts to march on Washington DC, depose Obama, all the Democrats, and those establishment Republicans who don’t follow Tea Party extremism with adequate zeal, and also repeal all taxes and declare America a Christian nation.

They are utterly bonkers.

They aren’t managing expectations very well, either. Here’s their proposal:

Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.

Phase 2 – One million or more of the assembled 10 million must be prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.

Consistent with the US Constitution, as required, the U.S. Congress will take appropriate action, execute appropriate legislation, deal with vacancies, or U.S. States will appoint replacements for positions vacated consistent with established constitutional requirements.

Phase 3 – Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President.

So, supposedly, ten million “patriots” are supposed to arrive in DC today. One million are expected to camp in the Capitol for an indefinite period of time. The Moonie Times is expecting more.

The group expects between 10 million and 30 million similarly thinking Americans to meet them in the capital on Friday for a rally that’s being billed as a sort of “Arab Spring” for Americans.

The logic behind these huge numbers is a little weird. They don’t actually have verified numbers, instead, it goes like this. Only 3% of the American population participated in the Revolutionary War. They were True Patriots™. We are True Patriots™ too, so 3% of the American population will actively join in our cause. 3% of 310 million is about 10 million, more or less, so we should expect about 10 million people to join us in our assault on the Washington establishment.

I don’t know where the 30 million comes from. Unbridled optimism, perhaps, or maybe just poor math skills.

I may have to turn on the television news today, to catch sight of the tens of millions of lunatics swarming the Mall. I wonder whether, if the numbers don’t come anywhere near their expectations, we’ll see the same kinds of rationalizations made that end-of-the-world cults make when their doomsday dates pass without a cataclysm?

I don’t think the kooks are helping.

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I am also reminded that there is much I must do to prepare

Brianne reminds us all that CONvergence is coming — only a month and a half until the big event in Bloomington, with 46 panels on science, all-night party rooms full of nerds blissed out on fantastic science, and thousands of SF/Fantasy conversations going on nonstop. I overdid it a bit last year, and this year I’m only in eight events, including two with Mary in which we teach kids about bones and DNA.

Y’all are coming, right? It’s the greatest swarm of Skepchicks and Freethoughtbloggers in the known universe.

We must be a force for change

There is a very limiting and very human tendency to focus on one issue at a time, and think, once that issue is dealt with, that all the problems have been fixed. We elect Obama, we have a black president, racism must be over. The Supreme Court affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, therefore reproductive autonomy for all women has been achieved. We had a cold winter, therefore global warming is a myth. Many Muslim women are oppressed to a greater degree than American women, so America has achieved perfect sexual equality. We are short-sighted and self-centered and eager to see any signs of progress as an ultimate triumph.

One of the sobering things about Zinnia Jones’ latest video is that she reminds us that we have a thousand problems, not just one, and that you haven’t fixed transphobia by legalizing gay marriage. We have very far to go and we shouldn’t confuse taking a first step with reaching the destination.

Another myth: by freeing yourself of one superstition, god, you’ve freed yourself of them all. Zinnia has a special message for atheists, because she has long identified with that group and has seen it all, with proudly self-proclaimed atheists joining in the denigration of transgender people. And worst of all, they use “science” to justify their bigotry.

When you look at what these atheists are actually saying, their claims have nothing to do with religion. If you’re wondering how they can be transphobic despite being atheists, you’re asking precisely the wrong question. They aren’t transphobic in spite of their atheism. They’re transphobic because of their atheism.

And I don’t mean that their atheism has made them merely indifferent. No – it’s actively made their transphobia worse. As unlikely as that might sound, it’s pretty obvious from the way they structure their arguments. It’s not an appeal to faith – far from it. They appeal to the values of science, observation, and reality, because they feel that these values support their transphobia. In many cases, they actually compare being trans to believing in God. They’re not speaking the language of religion, they’re speaking the language of secularism.

This is not my atheism. There are many atheisms out there — one of the side-effects of believing in freethought — and some of them are narrow, elitist rationalizations for maintaining the status quo and preserving the privileges of those lucky enough to be economically secure, blessed with an education and a healthy body, marked with the right color of skin and the correct kind of genitalia and the proper sexual orientation. It is a kind of self-satisfied country club atheism. These are atheisms that look at all the human beings in the world and says to most of them, “You can not be one of us,” instead of, “You could be one of us,” or better yet, “We can be free together.”

Good atheism, like good science, is disruptive — it says tradition and dogma are not sufficient, that we have to look critically at reality to determine the best answer, and often we’ll get answers that contradict what you want to be true. By their very nature, they must necessarily identify and criticize the dysfunctional elements of society and provoke change to improve them. And if you’re one of those atheists who thinks your job is to hector people different from yourself into conforming, then you’re one of those dysfunctional elements.

Zinnia is going to be speaking at Women in Secularism 3 today — I wish I could have gone this year. I think it’s one of the best examples of atheism being true to its nature and demanding better of all human beings.

But they’re too complicated!

That dirty open secret in biomedical research: bias gets built into the study design.

For decades, scientists have embarked on the long journey toward a medical breakthrough by first experimenting on laboratory animals. Mice or rats, pigs or dogs, they were usually male: Researchers avoided using female animals for fear that their reproductive cycles and hormone fluctuations would confound the results of delicately calibrated experiments.

“Delicately calibrated” seems to be used as a synonym for “not robust”. If your results are so finicky that they don’t hold true in translation from male to female rats, why would you expect them to hold up in translation from rats to people? There are detectable differences in male and female physiology that turn out to matter, so this business of ‘simplifying’ by focusing entirely on one sex means women’s medicine suffers.

There is good news. Now the NIH is cracking down and telling researchers that they must test mixed sexes, or no money for you. That’s an effective incentive.

It also turns out that the decision to ‘simplify’ by studying only male experimental animals is a bad one, borne of a bias that women are hypervariable because of their menstrual cycle — other studies find that male animals tend to be more variable.

Bias in mammalian test subjects was evident in eight of 10 scientific disciplines in an analysis of published research conducted by Irving Zucker, a professor of psychology and integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. The most lopsided was neuroscience, where single-sex studies of male animals outnumbered those of females by 5.5 to 1.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom in laboratories, there is far more variability among males than among females on a number of traits and behaviors, Dr. Zucker has found. Yet even when researchers study diseases that are more prevalent in women — anxiety, depression, thyroid disease and multiple sclerosis among them — they often rely on male animals, according to another analysis led by Dr. Zucker, who has written extensively on gender bias in scientific research.

At least I can say I’m safely innocent of this bias: all my work is on zebrafish embryos between fertilization and about 48 hours, and they don’t have sexes yet. I couldn’t sort out male and female embryos if I wanted to.

Another entry in the Republican insensitivity sweepstakes

Last week, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter were mocking efforts to publicize the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram. (Jon Stewart did an excellent job puncturing those blowhards). Apparently, we’re all supposed to shut up and be silent about any deplorable action in the world, because it’s pointless to communicate, say a couple of right wing bozos who’s entire business model is about complaining over left wing perfidy.

Here’s another one. Ben Shapiro thinks publicizing villainy is a bad idea because it doesn’t magically eradicate it.

Also ironically, on his twitter page he advertises his book, BULLIES: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America. How dare we encourage talking about world problems, that’s the same as silencing everyone on the right!

The danger of correlational studies

My doctor had me on fish oil pills for quite a while — they were a popular supplement that was supposed to reduce the incidence of heart disease. She told me not to bother any more about a year ago, as more information was coming out that they didn’t really do anything. Now it looks like the original study that started the fish oil fad is falling apart.

The original study, by Danish physicians H.O. Bang and D.J. Dyerburg, claimed Inuit in Greenland had low rates of heart disease because of their diet, which is rich in fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids from eating fish and blubber from whales and seals.

"I reviewed this original paper and it turned out to be that they actually never measured the frequency of heart disease in [Inuit]," said Dr. George Fodor, the new study’s lead researcher.

If you’re going to do a correlational study, you have to be fairly rigorous in exactly what you’re measuring: if you’re going to claim that Substance X has an effect on Disease Y, it’s kind of important that you’re actually measuring Disease Y. In this case, the correlation wasn’t what they claimed it was: it was more like, poverty-stricken indigenous populations with limited access to public health facilities poorly document their incidence of disease.

Fodor and his team of three other researchers found that the chief medical officer’s annual records were likely deficient because the inaccessible, rural nature of Greenland made it difficult to keep accurate records, and also because many people didn’t have access to doctors.

The 2014 study has found that Inuit do have similar rates of heart disease compared to non-Inuit populations, and that death rates due to stroke are “very high.”

The study also shows that the Greenland Inuit overall mortality is twice as high as non-Inuit populations.

This is almost as bad as the claim that the paleo diet must be good for you, because public health records from the paleolithic are even scantier than those for the Inuit.

It’s heresy all the way down

Uh-oh. Pat Robertson has been sniping at the Young Earth Creationists again, and Ken Ham is pissed off.

Well the secularists love Pat Robertson today! A number of them are posting a section from CBN’s "700 Club" program today (Tuesday) on YouTube and on various websites. They love it that Pat Robertson has once again used his "700 Club" program to engage in name-calling as he attacks those of us who take Genesis as literal history (as it is meant to be taken—as Jesus takes it).

Actually, no, none of us secularists love Pat Robertson. That he rejects one absurd tenet of far right Christianity does not mean he’s on our side — he’s still a mad theocrat.

But OK, let’s go through Ham’s rebuttal of Robertson’s denial of young earth creationism.

If you watch the CBN "700 Club" program from 37:50 to 40:56 on Tuesday (see link below), you will hear Pat Robertson:

1. … claim that: “The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that this earth that we live in only has six thousand years of existence."

So, Robertson has called all of you who believe God’s Word as written in Genesis as “deaf, dumb and blind.”

Let’s get one thing out of the way: deaf, dumb, or blind people are quite smart enough to see through the bogosity of creationism. What he should have said is that you have to be in active denial of the evidence to be a creationist…a creationist of any kind, young earth, old earth, or intelligent design.

2. … express his utter ignorance of science as he equates radio carbon dating with millions of years! He just has no idea! Carbon dating has nothing to do with millions of years—he’s using the wrong dating method to even discuss millions of years. Yes, it’s his ignorance that abounds.

Ha ha! Yes, he got that wrong! He cited the wrong radiometric method for dating Mesozoic rocks. Radiocarbon dating is only good for about 50,000 years…oh, wait, Ken. It’s not good for millions of years, but it does date objects that are eight times older than the purported age of the Earth given by you Bible-wallopers.

You’re so concerned about citing the right technique, so I take it you should be fine with potassium-argon or uranium-lead or rubidium-strontium dating? Those do give us dates in the millions and billions of years.

You’re even goofier than Pat Robertson if you simply reject all those other methods. He made an error of range, but you make the error of outright rejecting all of physics.

3. … give an explanation of the first three days of creation that is, well, beyond ignorant! Frankly it is ridiculous.

Robertson said a Biblical day could be millions or billions of years long. The day-age excuse for Bible chronology is pretty silly, but even more so is demanding that the creation week actually involved 6 literal 24 hour days 6000 years ago.

4. … state that: “There was a point of time after the earth was created, after these things were done, after the universe was formed, after the asteroid hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, and after all that there was a point of time that, there was a particular human being that God touched. And that was the human that started the race that we are now part of. I think prior to that who knows what was here."

So, he appears to be saying there were other human beings before Adam, but only one that “God touched" who started the human race! He doesn’t know his Scripture! For instance, in I Corinthians 15:45 we are told Adam was the “first man.” There were no other men before him.

Your Scripture is incoherent mess that is not an accurate description of world history, so who cares? You are objecting to an interpretation of the book of Genesis that is different from yours — but you’re both interpreting and twisting and making a hash of the book. There are also an awful lot of Christians who interpret it like Robertson.

5. … state that “To deny the clear record that’s there before us makes us look silly.”

Sadly, it’s Pat Robertson who makes Christianity look silly, which is why the atheists love him today. What a travesty! This man uses his position on a major Christian TV program to help the atheists mock God’s Word!

Oh, stop that. We atheists don’t love Pat Robertson. I think you all make Christianity look silly.

And again, you have no evidence that this is “God’s word” — given that everyone seems to have a different understanding of “God’s word,” I’d have to say God seems to be a piss-poor communicator.

6. … claim: “There’s no way that all you have here took place in 6,000 years. It just couldn’t have been done. It couldn’t possibly have been done.”

Really Pat Robertson? You mean there is no way God, the infinite Creator, could not have created the universe in six days just six thousand years ago? God could have created everything in six seconds if He wanted too! And it’s not a matter of what you think anyway–it’s a matter of what God has clearly told us in His infallible WORD!

Pat Robertson illustrates one of the biggest problems we have today in the church—people like Robertson compromise the Word of God with the pagan ideas of fallible men! That’s why a big part of the AiG ministry is to call the church and culture back to the authority of the Word. Pat Robertson is not upholding the Word of God with his ridiculous statements — he is undermining the authority of the Word. And any attack on the WORD is an attack on the person of Jesus Christ, who IS THE WORD!

You’ve invented this magical all-purpose explanation called God — who can do anything you want. That is not an explanation. Just shouting louder and louder that your explanation is the only correct one is not at all convincing.

Nice to know, though, that every single Christian on the planet is a heretic, except for Ken Ham.