What seems to be a manifesto by Dylann Roof has been uncovered. I think it’s clear why he murdered 9 people: he was a goddamned racist.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
What seems to be a manifesto by Dylann Roof has been uncovered. I think it’s clear why he murdered 9 people: he was a goddamned racist.
Tim Hunt’s very bad day
Here we go again. Eight Nobel prize winners have come out to defend Tim Hunt.
They warned of a chilling effect on academics’ freedom to speak their minds after Sir Tim was forced to resign his honorary post at University College London amid pressure from social media users.
Sir Andre Geim, of the University of Manchester who shared the Nobel prize for physics in 2010 said that Sir Tim had been “crucified” by ideological fanatics , and castigated UCL for “ousting” him.
The happy promoters of giant space projects are at it again. “Should we terraform Mars?”, they ask — to which I reply that we aren’t even close to being able to implement such an undertaking, so your fantasies are silly, and worse…why do you always express it in such palpably stupid ways?
Before we talk about terraforming another planet like Mars, we have to talk about Earth—and whether we should be spending our resources trying to save it, or moving on to another pale blue dot. It’s a grim debate that some scientists say it’s time to have.
I am full up on science — we had a long day of zebrafish-inspired talks (also sticklebacks! And Amia!), and I am dazzled with how far the science has progressed since my antique days as a graduate student. I’m also impressed with the legacy my graduate advisor has created — great labs live forever.
The science part is done. Tomorrow it’s an all day party at the Kimmel farm. I’ll be home sometime around 5, so if anyone in Eugene wants to get together in the evening (in addition to the meetup on Sunday morning), I’ll probably be hanging about the Valley River Inn bar.
You can stop emailing me now. Everyone on the planet has seen Opisthoteuthis adorabilis, fallen in love, and demanded that I feature it in a Friday Cephalopod. OK!
In a letter to the Times, Richard Dawkins protests.
Along with many others, I didn’t like Sir Tim Hunt’s joke, but ‘disproportionate’ would be a huge underestimate of the baying witch-hunt that it unleashed among our academic thought police: nothing less than a feeding frenzy of mob-rule self-righteousness.
Fortunately, I’ve also already written my reply. It’s a simple question.
If you’re one of those people who called this a “witch hunt”, an “Inquisition”, a “lynching” — what would you have people do differently when an esteemed senior scientist gets up to a lectern and says something sexist, or racist, or simply idiotic?
I’m also curious, and have an additional question. How should we reply when someone says something stupid in public about evolution? If a government official were to spout creationist nonsense, for instance, would a full-throated roar of disapproval from the electorate be appropriate, or would that fall into the category of “feeding frenzy of mob-rule self-righteousness”? Would you propose that after one thought-leader says “tut, tut”, the rest of us should withdraw to a decorous silence?
Sometimes, these lines are hard to draw, and where we draw them says a lot about the biases of the delineator.
I just got here, so I’ve had no time to explore, but it looks like it hasn’t changed a bit in 30 years…which is a good thing. Now to collapse for a short night of sleep, before the science starts flowing in the morning.
I’m in transit with spotty internet access, but clearly we need a thread to discuss the horrific race crime in Charleston. I’m dismayed that not only was this an act of premeditated, racially motivated murder, but the media is slow to even consider that the white perpetrator was a terrorist and a racist (would you believe I’ve even seen the excuse that he had ‘black friends on facebook’?)
I remember Rush in the 1970s — I even have a couple of their albums (in vinyl, so no, I haven’t listened to them in probably 30 years), but they always annoyed me with that selfish Libertarian pseudo-intellectual crap.
In the Seventies, Peart rankled the rock press with an affinity for libertarian hero Ayn Rand — he cited her “genius” in liner notes, and critics promptly labeled Rush fascists. Rush’s breakthrough mini-rock opera, 1976’s 2112, is, in part, a riff on Rand’s sci-fi novel Anthem. There’s nothing wildly controversial about 2112’s pro-individuality message: It’s hard to imagine anyone siding with the bad guys who want to dictate “the words you read/The songs you sing/The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes.” But Rush’s earlier musical take on Rand, 1975’s unimaginatively titled “Anthem,” is more problematic, railing against the kind of generosity that Peart now routinely practices: “Begging hands and bleeding hearts will/Only cry out for more.” And “The Trees,” an allegorical power ballad about maples dooming a forest by agitating for “equal rights” with lofty oaks, was strident enough to convince a young Rand Paul that he had finally found a right-wing rock band.
But now…
Gender Workshop, as ever, is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.
There’s been much talk over the last few years about witch hunts. Targeting Dawkins. Targeting Shermer. Targeting Hunt. Targeting anyone who happens to sit near Adria Richards. And though I think it is far from a witch hunt to be criticized by a lot of people, even by a lot of people at once, because your comments or behaviors merited criticism, for a long time I merely rolled my eyes at the inevitable, defensive backlash: “Witch hunt!”
