Good news: Bill Cosby has resigned from the Temple University board.
US comedian Bill Cosby has resigned from the board of trustees of Temple University in Philadelphia amid ongoing allegations of sexual assault.
He said he wanted to act "in the best interests" of the university where he studied as an undergraduate.
I’m glad to hear it. Temple has a commendable mission, and Cosby was no longer a good representative for it.
It’s not just that Ghomeshi was a sexual harasser, it’s that management worked so hard to protect him from the consequences of his actions. The account by Kathryn Borel is damning — Ghomeshi didn’t rape her, he just made incessant, crude advances in the office, to the point where Borel was desperate for the administrators at CBC to step in and take action, and they didn’t.
Why, oh why, do EP’s defenders rely on throwing up armies of straw men to slaughter? It’s silly. Here’s how he starts:
There are some science-friendly folk (including atheists) who simply dismiss the entire field of evolutionary psychology in humans, saying that its theoretical foundations are weak or nonexistent. I’ve always replied that that claim is bunk, for its “theoretical foundations” are simply the claim that our brains and behaviors, like our bodies, show features reflecting evolution in our ancestors.
This is a surprise: Nature has gone to a limited open access model. Or has it?
All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed or downloaded, the journal’s publisher Macmillan announced on 2 December.
The content-sharing policy, which also applies to 48 other journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG) division, including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics, marks an attempt to let scientists freely read and share articles while preserving NPG’s primary source of income — the subscription fees libraries and individuals pay to gain access to articles.
I’m so ashamed. But it’s local, I got talked into it, and it turns out the subject is actually something I’ve been researching lately, so I figured sure, why not. I still think it’s a bad idea, but I’ve been paying too much attention to that debater guy, Matt Dillahunty, and figured I’d take one more stab at it.
It will be held in Fargo, on 12 February, at the Ramada Inn, with Fuz Rana, an old earth creationist from Reasons to Believe. The topic is “Is There Evidence of a Creator or Not?” (guess which side I’m taking). It’s also being organized by the Seventh Day Adventists, so I expect a house stuffed with preconceptions — do feel free to come and balance the scales to some small degree.
Also, I’ll be in Los Angeles on 15 March, to talk with the CFI-LA crowds, which I think will be a little less crazy than what I encounter in Fargo. You can come to that one, too! I’m still thinking about what to talk about there, so suggestions are welcome.
I guess it’s time to start opening the little doors on your advent calendar, if you have one. If you don’t, I recommend the Cosmic Genome Advent Calendar. It’s free, and every day gives you a new little science clip. Today’s is about a weird little experiment you can do in a dimly lit room with a mirror…which I can’t try yet, because I’m on my way to work, and everything in the science building is brightly lit with Science and Technology and the Fluorescent Glow of the Future.
Later, when I get home…
Relevant to the discussion about whether humanity ought to look to their own home before seeking another, here’s a problem for the techno-fetishists. Solve this very human vexation:
This photo is from a series of French postcards from 1902 illustrating women of the future. My first thought was, “they couldn’t imagine a woman doctor without having her dress like a man?”. But my second thought was that she looks very stylish; I especially like the hat.
Now I don’t know whether to believe this article or not: it claims that self-assessment of narcissism is just as accurate as taking a psychological inventory, because narcissists aren’t shy about saying what they are. So I tried it myself: on a score of 1-7, I gave myself about a 3.
