Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Last night, they tried to turn conservation into a Japanese game show, with a ‘documentary’ about a scientist being swallowed alive…for Science!. I didn’t watch it — I was grading papers, as I will be doing 25 hours a day for the next two weeks, I think — but the reviews are scathing.
Also, master of molluscan anatomy, and clever tool user. This paper, Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving, by Joordens et al. tells an interesting story from some mundane artifacts made half a million years ago.
An interesting post on The Trouble with Jim Watson. Watson and biology are victims of a successful paradigm — you could still argue that that paradigm is partly Watson’s fault! — and you can’t really kick Watson unless you also take a few swings at how molecular genetics has produced a skewed, simplistic, and deterministic view of how life operates.
The trouble with Watson, then, is not how aberrant he is, but how conventional. He is no more—but no less—than an embodiment of late twentieth-century biomedicine. He exemplifies how a near-exclusive focus on the genetic basis of human behavior and social problems tends to sclerose them into a biologically determinist status quo. How that process occurs seems to me eminently worth observing and thinking about. Watson is an enigmatic character. He has managed his image carefully, if not always shrewdly. It is impossible to know what he “really thinks” on most issues, but I do believe this much: he believes that his main sin has been excessive honesty. He thinks he is simply saying what most people are afraid to say.
Unfortunately, he may be right.
Most Minnesota high schools have settled something well: there will be no further discrimination against transgender students in athletics.
Capping months of emotional debate that brought tens of thousands of e-mails, the board overseeing high school athletics in Minnesota overwhelmingly said yes Thursday to opening up girls’ sports to transgender student-athletes.
The decision by the Minnesota State High School League will take effect in the 2015-16 school year, making the state the 33rd to adopt a formal transgender student policy.
The board set out criteria for determining whether transgender students who were born male but identify as female can be eligible for girls’ teams at the nearly 500 schools in the league’s membership. State law already permits girls to compete in boys’ sports.
Except (there’s always an “except”)…
Philip Kitcher is interviewed about his new book, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism. It sounds interesting, and I’ll probably pick it up…but two things annoyed me about the interview: the misrepresentation of the position of some New Atheists, and the religious apologetics. It’s nothing personal about Kitcher, but they’re just two things I bump into all the time, and it’s exasperating.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
I haven’t been slacking — next week is the last week of classes, and everything is coming due. I just got a stack of lab reports to grade by Monday; I’m giving a lab final next week; I’m giving two unit tests at the end of the week. The students are freaking out a little bit, realizing that all their sins are coming home to roost and they only have a few shots at redemption. So it’s going to be a crazy week and a half.
Chris Rock has been brilliant on race issues lately — he’s been saying some of the smartest stuff on Ferguson, cops strangling black people, and all the other injustices that plague this country. So what’s a no-name white conservative comedian (those two words do not go together) like Stephen Crowder to do? Accuse Chris Rock of being the real racist.
Aamer Rahman has a few things to say to Stephen Crowder.
