Everyone has these sexist jerks

I remember when I learned that the skeptic/atheist movement was full of harassing jerks — I was shocked. And then these people started getting exposed in every discipline, from literature and philosophy to physics, and it started to sink in that the entire world is a playground for assholes, which might have been a relief (whew, it’s not just my communities!) but is incredibly depressing instead.

Now add astronomy to the list. One of their most prominent representatives, Geoff Marcy, has been revealed to be a serial sexual harasser, someone who has wrecked women’s careers in astronomy. And it’s a familiar story: the women in that community all knew of his reputation, and it was an open secret.

“He’s had a long history of behaving inappropriately, especially with undergraduates,” said Kirkpatrick, who at the time was a graduate student at Berkeley studying astrophysics. “Women discouraged other women from working with him as a research advisor. It was just something that was talked about pretty frankly among the women in the department.”

Kirkpatrick, who has since left academia, continues to run the Women in Astronomy blog, through which she says three other women have approached her with accounts of their experiences with Marcy.

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Minnesota dinosaurs

It’s front-page news in the Minneapolis Star Tribune today! A dinosaur fossil was found in Minnesota!

It’s kind of a sad thing, though. This is it.

dromeosaurclaw

Yeah, one rather worn claw. But it is rare.

The fully intact claw, thought to be about 90 million years old, is only Minnesota’s third piece of dinosaur remains ever documented, experts say.

We have excuses. Through much of the late Cretaceous, we were under an inland sea — “The most common finds include shark teeth, clams, snails and ammonites, or prehistoric coiled shells” — and then we got bulldozed by these giant walls of ice called glaciers, so this is not the best place to go looking for the remains of large terrestrial tetrapods from the Mesozoic.

But it made the front page! Even if we’re going to get condescending grins from Alberta and Montana and Utah.

OMG, I’d spend all day in bed

So many choices…but I don’t think they’d be to my wife’s less nerdy taste (or in other words, she’s not quite as tasteless as I am). It’s a whole collection of cephalopod themed bedding.

octobedding

And then we’d have to redo the ghastly 1950s-style floral wallpaper in the bedroom…I wonder if they have wallpaper with tentacles somewhere?

It would improve the resale value of the house! Wouldn’t it?

Never get into a land war in Asia…

…or argue with dudebros on Twitter. I made that mistake yesterday.

First problem: they were arguing with me about plagiarism. It’s not so bad, they said.

Have you ever noticed that they tend to focus on trivial interpretations of real problems? They all think that they’re like little cut-rate Malcolm Gladwells, the twerps, and that picking some bit of common knowledge and taking a counter-intuitive perspective makes them brilliant. No, it doesn’t. Most often it makes them wrong.

So they’re yammering at me that it isn’t even a crime — it’s not stealing, because the original creator of the idea hasn’t lost anything, so why should anyone complain about it? Except, of course, that the creator has had credit taken from them, and try telling a writer that they lose nothing if someone else copies their work without attribution. But hey, they were on a roll.

Then, predictable as clockwork, the second problem: stereotyping. You know who else plagiarizes a lot? Asians! Their culture encourages copying. Then, the trump card, gloriously played with a triumphant smirk: When I say plagiarism is bad, I’m accusing all Asians of theft.

Yeah. All Asia. All Asian culture thinks plagiarism is just fine.

asia

That’s where I threw up my hands and blocked them all. There is stupid, and there is impenetrable ignorance.

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Would you like to volunteer to work at the Ark Park?

Notice: I didn’t ask whether you’d like to get paid to work there — just whether you’d like to work totally for free. All you have to do is fill out the application!

This is a non-trivial exercise. It’s a long form, and you also have to be prepared to give your church references. Well, I’m out!

You also need to answer 12 questions, in detail. I’ve filled it out with my answers.

To be considered you must provide answers to the following questions. After those questions you need to utilize the blank space below to provide two detailed statements. The first statement is your Christian salvation testimony. The second statement is your belief about creation. Applicants that do not answer all questions and do not submit both statements will not be considered.

1. How does one get to heaven when they die? (One doesn’t.)

2. Why do you believe YOU will go to heaven when you die? (Nope.)

3. What would cause anyone to go to hell? (There is no hell.)

4. Do you believe suffering in hell is eternal? (No. See #3.)

5. What do you believe to be the main difference between Christianity and other religions? (Irrelevant and silly differences in doctrine.)

6. Do you believe the earth is thousands of years old or millions of years or does it matter? Explain your thoughts. (Billions. The evidence says so.)

7. “I believe that the ONLY legitimate marriage sanctioned by God and given in Scripture is the joining of one natural born man and one natural born woman. All other unions are contrary to clear Biblical teaching.” Do you agree with this statement or disagree? (I don’t really care what the Bible says.)

8. Please provide a brief statement regarding your Christian Testimony of Salvation. (I don’t believe in salvation. Brief enough?)

9. Please provide a brief statement of your position regarding Creation. (It’s nonsense.)

10. Please provide a brief statement about your position as relates to the inspiration, inerrancy (100% accuracy) of the Bible as the ONLY true Word of God. (It is neither inspired nor inerrant.)

11. How would you respond to someone who said “The Koran or the Book of Mormon are equally the Word of God.”? (I agree!)

12. Please confirm that you have a valid email address with regular access and confirm that you will periodically check email for forms and information from AiG. (Eh. Probably not.)

I wonder what the people who apply for paying jobs there have to do?