We don’t mean literal trigger warnings

A Texas law is going to allow students to open-carry guns into the classroom, so the University of Houston administration is doing the responsible thing, and informing instructors how to deal with armed students. Tell me if this sounds like good advice to you.

teachingwithguns

  • Be careful discussing sensitive topics
  • Drop certain topics from your curriculum
  • Not “go there” if you sense anger
  • Limit student access off hours

Good thing there are no sensitive topics in biology. No one gets upset about evolution, or reproductive biology, or biotechnology, or vaccines, or chemotherapy, or birth defects, or bioethics, or heritable traits, or…hey! If the administration ever tells me to drop controversial topics from my curriculum, I’ll be on easy street! I’ll just stroll in to every class, say “Let’s rap”, and we’ll just talk about non-stressful events on everyone’s minds, because all the subjects I teach have the potential to be controversial. This being Minnesota, we’ll just talk about the weather every day.

I feel for you people who teach political science, or sociology, or psychology, or any of those harder topics that everyone gets upset about. I’ve got it easy.

I think professors ought to consider some kind of class action lawsuit (with the reservation that I am not a lawyer). It sounds criminal to turn our profession into a dangerous occupation to the point where administrators advise us to not do our jobs.

Matriarchs building the patriarchy

Vyckie Garrison has a terrifying post about the enforcers of Biblical patriarchy: the women who tell other women to serve men.

Admittedly, the public face of Quiverfull (also known as “Complementarity”) is overwhelmingly male: John Piper of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John MacArthur of Grace to You ministries, Dennis Rainey, radio host of Family Life Today, mega-church Pastor David Platt, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board and author of “Counter Culture” which calls on women to ditch feminism in favor of wifely submission, Voddie Baucham, author of “What He Must Be If He Wants To Marry My Daughter,” Scott Brown of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches (in which “family integrated” is code words for Quiverfull), “Kill The Gays” pastor, Kevin Swanson, the “pissing pastor,” Steve Anderson, and so so many more.

But honestly, no sensible woman would give these misogynistic jerks the time of day if it weren’t for the influence of dedicated Christian female mentors: the “older women” of Titus 2 whom the apostle Paul charged to “teach the younger women” to be obedient keepers at home.

I listened to about a minute of the saccharine-sweet, praise-god lecturing of Nancy Campbell and could take no more. Spare me.

I did laugh at one of Garrison’s explanations for why women actually fall for this patriarchal crap: They’re married to losers. How weak must a man be if he has to invoke the aid of the imaginary all-powerful ruler of the universe to make his marriage viable?

By the way, Garrison’s daughter has a heritable bone disease called Hereditary Multiple Exostosis, and she’s asking for help. That looks like a good cause. She sure can’t expect God to help her out.

Bye, Adam. Bye, Adam. Bye, Adam.

Adam Baldwin, the conservative “actor” who was apparently just being himself in his role in Firefly, has announced yesterday that he is leaving Twitter in protest over their announcement of a Trust and Safety Council to reduce online harassment (I’ll believe they are going to do that, when they actually do that). Unfortunately, after deleting all of his past tweets — but leaving his account open and enabled — he then proceeded to tell us in 17 tweets on Twitter (so far) that he’s going to stop making tweets on the Twitter.

Tell me, O Veterans of the Internet, how often have you seen that happen? It’s classic troll behavior. “Your board/forum/blog sucks! I’m leaving!” Then they keep coming back, sometimes under a new pseudonym, or 40 new pseudonyms (hi, Reap!). It’s so awful that they can’t bear to abandon it.

He’s not really leaving. If he were leaving he’d close his account and stop babbling. But then, hypocrisy never seems to bother right-wing jerks.

A Slovenian disgrace

Yesterday, I got some email from a Slovenian reader to tell me about a developing refugee situation there. I can’t say it better than they can, so I’m just posting it here without identifying information (if the author wants to speak up in the comments, I can verify).

I come from a little place called Slovenia. You can find it on google maps – but you need to zoom in really close. It’s there between Italy and Austria, smack in the middle of the refugee’s path into European heartland.

Recently six refugee children (under 15 years of age) asked for asylum in Slovenia. These kids have no one with them. They are completely alone. Our government is processing their applications but in the meantime they wanted to make sure they are house appropriately. So the ministry asked a local dormitory (Dijaški in študentski dom Kranj), housing high-schoolers, to offer rooms for these 6 misfortunate kids. The dormitory principal, Ms. Judita Nahtigal, agreed and apparently wanted to set up a meeting with someone from the government to discuss the particulars.

In the meantime she also sent a notification letter to the resident’s parents and the teachers employed at the local high school (France Prešeren Gymnasium) informing them of this development. What resulted is as outrageous as it is embarrassing for our country as a whole. The parents and the teachers united against the principal and absolutely refused to accept the fact that refugee children would be allowed to stay there. They put together a petition – signed by ALL 24 teachers to press their case. They then went to the local city council that offered its full support for their bigoted cause. They went to the National Skiing Association (SZS), since a number of the students at the dorm are prospective athletes, and they got warm support for their xenophobia there as well.

It seems like no one wants these poor refugee kids there – not the parents, not the teachers, not the local city council members, not the National Skiing Association – that is no one except the principal, Judita Nahtigal. She commented that, while she did expect some push-back, she never imagined the tenacity and ferocity of what happened.

This is what we’ve apparently come to. Professors at a high school named after our greatest poet, France Prešeren, the author of our national anthem that calls for the unity of all nations, unanimously signing a petition to ban six abandoned refugee children seeking asylum from staying at a dorm.

The reason? They do not want their dorm to get the “stigma” of a refugee center.

Well, I sincerely hope they all do get stigmatized for being bigots and xenophobes.

This is the developing story on our main national media outlet RTV Slovenia (came out yesterday)
http://www.rtvslo.si/slovenija/zaradi-sestih-prebeznikov-mlajsih-od-15-let-obsedno-stanje-v-dijaskem-domu-kranj/386511

and another website (posted today)
http://www.planet.si/novice/slovenija/po-protestih-starsev-mladoletnih-beguncev-ne-bodo-namestili-v-kranjskem-dijaskem-domu.html

It’s all in Slovene of course, as no one abroad is reporting on this yet. But they should be. I’ve tried to recount the facts with no distortions. Use google translate to get some glimpse of it as well. Or maybe you can find another native speaker to corroborate what I’ve said.

This is a national disgrace. Please let it be known. What we need is some well deserved public embarrassment. I can tell you that Slovenes are terribly touchy about their image abroad. We like to pride ourselves as being very accepting and progressive. And I hope most of us are. But the rest need a wake-up call or at least a warning. This is not want we want to be. And sometimes one needs a slap in the face to prevent going too far astray.

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#1! #1! #1!

In this list of every state, ranked by how miserable its winters are, guess who the winner is!

Although I’m suspicious that we beat both Dakotas. I think I’d rather live in Minnesota than either of those places.

I came up with a balancing idea, though: if you suffer through winter in your state, you get to reward yourself by retiring to the complementary state on the list — just look at (51 – your state ranking). That’s the karmic redress you must someday pay. I’m looking forward to my twilight years in Hawaii; Hawaiians might not be as thrilled with the deal they’re getting.

How to avoid the SFCon From Hell

Mark Oshiro had an extremely unpleasant experience at a Kansas City science fiction convention last year: shabby treatment, sexism, racism, the whole works. It’s a sordid read.

But something useful emerges: Rachel Caine has posted some guidelines to individual responsibility for panelists. This is the time of year many of us are planning our summer con schedule — I’m going to Convergence, as always — but I’ll take these suggestions to heart. Except the ones about YA panels. I’m no authority on YA fiction. On the other hand, if I’m asked again to sit on a panel with someone proposing evolutionary absurdities, I’ll be quick to snarl.

Oh, wait. I’m always quick about that.

Top of the Pops in 1400BCE

Care to hear the oldest song in the world, from ancient Sumeria?

It’s not bad. Could be improved with a little Justin Bieber.

If you’re at all interested in music, you should come to the Common Cup Coffeehouse here in Morris tonight at 6. Wes Flinn and I will be talking about music and the brain. We’re trying something a little different: I know nearly nothing about music, but I have a degree in neuroscience; Wes is a guy with a Ph.D. in music theory, but is not a biologist. I figure that between the two of us we can come up with something interesting about how the brain deals with music.

Or possibly I’ll talk about music and he’ll talk about neuro, and the audience can drink coffee and laugh.