James Tracy fired

That off-his-rocker conspiracy theorist at Florida Atlantic University has been fired, despite being tenured. I would defend the right of a professor to argue for whatever wacky idea he wanted — that’s the whole point of tenure — except that he crossed a line, and there really are lines that even tenure won’t protect you from.

A major factor in Tracy’s firing was an op-ed in the Sun Sentinel by Lenny and Veronique Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, was shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. The couple wrote that Tracy sent them a certified letter demanding proof that Noah had lived, and that when they refused to respond, he blasted them on his blog and accused them of accepting government payoffs to feign grief. In an angry Facebook post, Tracy wrote that the Pozners’ op-ed was an attempt to intimidate his employer into firing him because of the extensive research he’d done on the Sandy Hook shooting. The Pozners, alas, are as phony as the drill itself, and profiting handsomely from the fake death of their son, he wrote.

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Believing that the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook was staged is totally nuts — it belongs up there with believing the moon is made of cheese, the earth is flat, and that there is a god that loves you. But you don’t get to fire professors for that; you also shouldn’t use their weird little hobbies as grounds for not hiring them, if they’re competent at doing the job they’re supposed to do.

But when your obsession turns into harassment, when you start hounding people who, with good reason, disagree with you, then it’s time to stop allowing you to use your position to launch these ill-founded crusades.

Secondarily, that he calls making up bizarre conspiracy theories extensive research also calls into question his competence.

A tale of three arms

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Once upon a time, deep in the Precambrian, this was the planet of worms. Well, actually, this was, is, and always will be the planet of bacteria, but if you filter your perspective to just organisms above a particular size, and if you’re an animal writing about it in the modern day with a chauvinistic attitude that allows you to ignore that it was also a planet of algae, that would become a planet of plants, on a world that also is built of soil formed by lichens and saturated with fungus…if you ignore all that, OK, it was a planet of worms.

Late in the Precambrian, the oceans were full of accumulated muck and it was a good time to be a worm — a slender, plastic body, able to burrow and plunder the detritus of it’s nutrients, digging shelters or writhing in the freshest debris up top. Worms were everywhere, and the family was diverse. There were hairy ones, thick ones, slender ones, spiky ones. There were worms beginning to assemble bits of armor, either extracting calcium from their environment or crosslinking stable sugars to create chitin, because there were also worms that were developing the habit of eating other worms, rather than farming the muck.

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More tears please

I was glad to see Obama show some emotion today, in his announcement of the executive orders to tighten up gun laws. It is right to shed a tear for those killed by our absurd gun laws…or lack thereof.

But it’s only a start. We need to actively reduce the number of guns in our communities; I would like to see more restrictions and confiscations.

I would also ask that Obama should shed a tear for the innocents killed abroad by our military.

Can we all at least agree that Monopoly sucks?

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The latest bit of casual Star Wars stupidity is the dearth of merchandise featuring the central woman character Rey — in particular, that she’s left out of Hasbro’s Star Wars Monopoly game. I agree that it’s indicative of this damned dumb unthinking sexism, and it’s dismaying every time it happens, but…there are collisions of multiple problems here.

It’s merchandising. Somebody slaps the word “Star Wars” on something, and people rush to buy it? Why? It’s the same terrible game as the version with Atlantic City properties on it, putting a different cosmetic face on it doesn’t make it better.

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Scalia going all Catholic again

How Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court is mysterious — oh, wait, no it’s not, he was appointed by Reagan and congress basically rolled over for him — but he’s always saying such stupid stuff. The latest is a dismissal of the right of atheists to exist in America.

[Scalia] told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is no place in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from? he said. To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?

That’s right. I thought it was clear: the government doesn’t get to interfere in private matters of conscience. It’s a concept that really isn’t that hard to understand. There should be no federal bias in favor of Baptists over Catholics, or Christians over Muslims, or religious vs. non-religious — it’s just not their job. It’s worrisome that a Supreme Court justice thinks it is their job.

His excuses are also incredibly stupid.

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Caltech plays hardball

Two graduate students at Caltech complained that they were being sexually harassed by their advisor…and the administration took them seriously!

The Institute followed its formal procedures for evaluating the allegations and per policy the allegations were communicated to the chair of the division. This resulted in a comprehensive investigation of the situation by a faculty committee that reported to the provost. The faculty committee concluded, and the provost concurred, that there was unambiguous gender-based harassment of both graduate students by the faculty member. The faculty member was placed on unpaid leave for a full academic year, and he is restricted from coming on campus. Importantly, in order to make sure that the two students involved and other students are protected against continuation or new instances of such behavior – while also endeavoring to ensure that their academic progress is not adversely affected – communications between the faculty member and members of his group are being carefully monitored. In addition to these professional and financial sanctions, the suspended faculty member must undergo professional coaching and training in how to mentor students before returning to campus. A demonstrable change in behavior and mentoring approach will be required before unmonitored interactions with students can resume. Structural changes in the division’s advising approach are being put in place to ensure that students are properly and effectively mentored. The faculty member appealed these imposed disciplinary actions, but the appeal was denied.

Ouch. First thing I noticed was the penalty: no pay for a year, and booted off campus. If the faculty member was sufficiently prestigious, they may have multiple appointments at other campus so it isn’t the total kiss of death, but still, that’s harsh. Which is good.

The other thing, though, is that it’s not just about slapping down Dr. Handsy — it’s also about making institutional changes that help these students and others. Read the rest of the memo, especially the part about instituting changes in the divisions of the college. That’s how you do it.

It’s a flocculent sort of day

It was snowing lightly this morning, with relatively little wind, and the flakes just seemed to have a kind of magnetic attraction to the trees. So instead of our usual landscape with skeletal black branches everywhere, we got blue skies and black skeletons limned with crystalline white.

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It was actually much more spectacular earlier this morning, when I was off on a walk, and I took these pictures around noon, when the sun was beginning to melt away some of the effect. But here are some branches that were in the shade and still had the full laciness.

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Business as usual

Here’s a little background information that surprised me:

Because the refuge is so remote and no government employees are at risk, law enforcement isn’t likely to immediately confront the militia. But law enforcement will be under great pressure to act because of the Bundys’ confrontation in Nevada. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management retreated from that confrontation and has yet to publicly act against the Bundys to collect $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. That retreat has emboldened militia members as they now face the prospect of another standoff.

A bunch of white religious nuts and far-right yahoos have been pillaging federal property to the tune of a million dollars, and the government does nothing? Don’t try to tell me there isn’t a whole lot of privilege going on.

Has there ever been an analogous incident, where a minority group took control of a remote location? I wonder how the federal government responded then.

On February 27, 1973, a team of 200 Oglala Lakota (Sioux) activists and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized control of a tiny town with a loaded history — Wounded Knee, South Dakota. They arrived in town at night, in a caravan of cars and trucks, took the town’s residents hostage, and demanded that the U.S. government make good on treaties from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Within hours, police had surrounded Wounded Knee, forming a cordon to prevent protesters from exiting and sympathizers from entering. This marked the beginning of a 71-day siege and armed conflict.

Of course, that was completely different. The Bundy gang is asking for property and the right to exploit the land, and demanding that a pair of arsonists be set free.

AIM was asking for respect and that the US honor their word. That can’t be allowed.