In an opinion piece in a Turkish newspaper, Melis Alphan considers the ongoing national debate on the appropriate clothing for women — the veil, for instance, was once imposed on women as a marker to distinguish them from prostitutes and slaves. What’s interesting, in particular, is that she has a view that the West is more liberal than we really are.
All right, Larry Moran, why did you post about this paper now? I finished the unit on the origins of life in my cell biology class over a week ago, and this summary of the metabolism first model of abiogenesis would have been very helpful. I first gave them a review of redox reactions in chemistry, and then some general ideas about events in deep sea vents that generate a source of energy that early chemistry could have tapped, but this paper is full of specifics — probably a bit too heavy going for college sophomores, but they could have appreciated some of the diagrams.
William Dembski spoke at the University of Chicago in August, and a video of the talk is available. I tried to watch it, I really did, but I ended up skipping through most of it (one of the advantages of seeing it on youtube!). Here’s my rather stream-of-consciousness monolog as I was flicking like a damselfly over the stagnant pond of his words:
“Get to the point, Bill. Skip. No biology. Skip. No biology yet. Skip. Wait, that model is anti-biology…evolution doesn’t work like that. Watches a short segment. Nope, nonsense. Skip. No biology, skip. Oh, “specified complexity”…does he define it? Listens intently for a bit. Nope. Skip. Dawkins’ weasel program? He still doesn’t understand it! No biology, no biology, no biology, I’m done.”
I know, that wasn’t very informative, but then, neither was the talk. There were a few shots of the audience, and they didn’t seem particularly enthralled, either.
Joe Felsenstein watched the whoooole thing, though, and has some very sharp observations on Dembski’s model.
I don’t expect to win this one: it’s gotten the attention of github, the core of the dudebro universe, and it’s already gone far in the direction of delusion, with swarms of self-righteous gamer goons rushing to vote for their bias. The poll asks, What do you think is at the heart of GamerGate? (and like all badly designed polls, uses choices to split the vote). Here’s the status so far:
And this is right after the article tells you to go read a summary written by the GamerGate goons which starts like this:
We’ve got years of social justice ideologies, largely radical-feminist rhetoric, once thought safely contained within small blogging communities such as Tumblr, becoming more and more prevalent within games reporting.
How do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning if you are willing to so openly condemn “social justice”? Isn’t it also clear that what bothers these guys most is feminism?
Go vote. Despair that you’re outnumbered, but just remember: you’re atheists. You’ve always been outnumbered. You’ve also always been right.
Watch the fishing lure action right here — also pay attention to the closeups that reveal how transparent Grimalditeuthis is.
It would be so cool to be able to see our own guts like that.
Robyn Pennacchia writes about how the non-bros of progressive communities can be just as bad as the dudebros we spot so easily — she’s mainly addressing the alt-lit community and Stephen Tully Dierks, but she mentions the recent paroxysms in the atheist community as well — and she answers the question about how come just about every time I hear about a new and interesting progressive group, it turns out to be in the context of blatant sexism or sexual assault. It’s because it’s harder to police your own than others.
You want closeups of an erupting volcano? Don’t go yourself, send a drone. These are some amazing shots from Iceland.
Not really. I lied. Steve Stockman made up a bunch of crap, which is only the Republican version of doing science.
You might say this is a cartoon. Steve Stockman didn’t really say anything like that, did he? Yes, he did.
It’s always the fallout that gets ’em. Celebrities too often seem to have the idea that admitting a mistake will diminish their luster, so that an initial small error becomes compounded with denial and evasion afterwards. The latest tarnished star: Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Never tangle with Reddit or 4chan. Their apologists are oblivious and indefatigable. (All comments below are paraphrases of actual email and twitter comments received today.)
