Everyone knew that Krauss had been ill-behaved towards women, and there’d even been that story of him groping a fan at a conference. We all believed it, but it sure took a long time for the powers-that-be to get around to confirming it. Now they have: ASU has released their findings, and confirmed that Lawrence Krauss grabbed a woman’s breast in public.

Arizona State University has concluded that physics professor Lawrence Krauss breached the school’s sexual harassment policy by groping a woman at a conference in Australia.

The incident, which happened at a dinner in November 2016 in Melbourne as part of the Australian skeptics national convention, was revealed in February in a BuzzFeed News investigation that described allegations of unwanted sexual advances, groping, and inappropriate comments by Krauss over more than a decade.

The incident in Melbourne happened when one of Krauss’s fans took a selfie photograph with him. A witness, microbiologist Melanie Thomson, filed a formal complaint with Arizona State in July of 2017, stating that the professor had grabbed the woman’s breast. (The woman in the selfie did not complain to the university.)

Krauss made excuses that were not believed, and also tried to place the blame on his accuser.

Thomson told BuzzFeed News that she felt vindicated. “The original investigation was basically a ‘he said, she said’ scenario, where they believed him over me,” Thomson said. “And that’s the way these things often go.”

She still wants Krauss to apologize, she said, and to withdraw his claim, made to BuzzFeed News and in a nine-page response to the article, that her complaint was “fabricated with malicious intent.”

“I call for him to retract his retaliatory, inflammatory, libelous remarks,” Thomson said.

I find the whole affair disappointing. I’ve had people ask to take a photo with me, I’ve never felt any urge to fondle them in response. It’s just sad when a smart guy is stuck with an adolescent emotional brain that leads him to misuse people that way.

I’ve known of college professors in the past who’ve screwed up this way, and have had to accept restrictions, like denial of promotions and strictly enforced policies with students, but they’ve managed to keep their jobs. I don’t see them getting away with slaps on the wrist anymore — ASU is a respectable university, which isn’t going to want confirmed harassers on their staff. I’m going to guess he won’t be associated with them much longer.

Although I could be wrong — some people seem to lead a charmed life, or maybe Chapman University and Scientific American and the ACSH don’t seem to care what kind of scum work for them. Maybe Krauss can find a position in one of those institutions if his situation at Arizona falls completely apart?

I’m worried, if this is true: Fed Up With Mortal Men, Women Are Having Sex with Ghosts. I’m concerned because I live only a short distance from a cemetery, and even if I didn’t, it might give my wife reason to think she could improve her sex life by translating me to a different realm.

It’s got multiple testimonials from real women! Also, Elayne Riggs told me about it, so it must be true.

…a woman named Amethyst Realm appeared on the British daytime television show This Morning, claiming that she began having sex with ghosts in her home and has not had since with a human being since. Her first erotic encounter with a ghost occurred 10 years ago, while she was still in a relationship with her mortal fiancé. As can occur with affairs, Realm was caught mid-coitus when her husband-to-be returned early one day from a trip away. “He saw the shape of a man through the spare room window,” she explained.

Betrayed, Realm’s fiancé broke up with her, and she and the ghost then decided to fuck everywhere in the house: “Once my fiancé had left, [we had sex] everywhere, [but] always within the building,” she said. That particular ghost romance lasted for a time, until the entity “started to appear less,” and Realm ended the inter-dimensional affair.

After that, Realm began to have regular sex with a variety of ghosts, each as distinct in style and feel than any human mate might be. “I’ve got no interest in men now,” she proclaimed.

Now I’m reassured, though. She’s lying. There’s now way sex with ghosts could be better than sex with real men. After all, ghosts would be kind of gauzy and nebulous, weak and barely perceptible. The strongest kind of interaction they’d be able to have is delicate little butterfly kisses, soft ephemeral strokes along the skin like hummingbird down, quiet, barely audible whispers in her ears, and a bit of moaning — I’ll admit, they’re probably really good at moaning — and no one would enjoy any of that.

Just in case, though, I might want to stock up on bottles of Ghost-Be-Gone.

You remember Comma, the demented Sovereign Citizen who used to write to me frequently, with his peculiar style of phrasing every statement as a question. He’s back. This time he cc’ed his email to a bunch of people, but it’s addressed to…Richard Carrier’s lawyer. I think he wants to form an alliance.

I encourage this consolidation of their forces.

Are you aware that the University of Minnesota is currently illegally withholding Freethoughtblogs CEO & University of Minnesota, Morris Associate Professor PZ Myers’ criminal investigative data for his vandalism of a UMM newspaper from me? The Mirandized audio statement in DSS format and the corresponding transcript along with Myers’ writing sample and the vandalized student newspapers must be extremely damning for Myers’ and the University of Minnesota for them to illegally withholding them, right? How would you like the look at the evidence for the criminal complaint that I filed with the University Police for the the U of M’s data compliance officials willful refusal to provide me with Myers data? See attached. Oh, I’ve also included the Auroa Center data request that the U of M is also illegally withholding from me, haven’t I?

Terry Dean, Nemmers (320) 283-5713

If you’re wondering what he’s talking about, the campus right-wing newspaper accused me, without evidence, of having stolen a bunch of their papers. They had the campus police take a statement from me in which I denied everything. That was it. Ever since, Comma has been absolutely convinced that there is deep dark evidence of some wicked conspiracy in that recording, which the university is now trying to cover up, even though they told him they would make a copy of the tape and give it to him for the fee of $43.50. I guess that’s all it takes to stymie a True Patriot’s defense of the Principles of the United States of America, is a $43.50 fee.

You know, Carrier’s lawyer could go ahead and use Carrier’s money to purchase that recording. I don’t mind. Anyone can get it.

He also included a bunch of pdfs in his email, including the UMM Incident Report about the university’s official response to Comma’s accusation that I was harassing him, and the various correspondence he had to obtain his proof of my perfidy. He’s a very silly, man.

I mentioned yesterday how the Ark Park attendance is falling short of the exaggerated promises Ken Ham made for it. Dan Phelps provides more details, and also presents Ken Ham’s excuse: it’s because they’re counting all the people, like children under 5, that they let in for free.

Therefore, Mr. Ham is claiming that almost 14% of people visiting the Ark are getting in for free. He is also saying that more people visited in the second year. Although possible, Ham’s apologetics for Ark attendance does not sound convincing. In any case, the Ark is not getting even half of the 2 million projected by Ham in the past. This was especially hurtful to the City of Williamstown, which bent over backwards (and apparently forwards) to the Ark with property tax breaks and selling the Ark nearly 100 acres of land for $2 (not to mention Grant County Development giving the Ark nearly $200,000 cash for locating there). Williamstown and Grant County were sold a bill of goods by AiG when they claimed that the Ark would be the panacea for the City and County’s financial woes.

So even if we accept his explanation (I’m willing), he has still fallen far short of the 2 million predicted visitors, and also, it’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. They begged for tax subsidies and community cash on the basis of bringing in all this tourist revenue with millions of paying visitors who would then contribute to the local economy. You don’t get to pad your numbers with all the people with no money that you’re letting attend for free.

Phelps is also not optimistic that the Ark will sink soon. I agree. Ham has money flowing in, even if it’s less than promised and it’s all going to his organization, rather than the community. He’s doing fine. He’s also planning to expand, because one lesson for grifting is that when you’ve got a lot of plates spinning in the air, it’s best to toss up another one, rather than letting one fall.

A caller to the Atheist Experience gives the recipe (skip ahead to 17:20 to hear his explanation). Tracie transcribed the formula and is asking for volunteers.

The subject must do the following:

1. State, “Jesus Christ, if you’re real, come show me that you’re real.”

2. Abstain (again, for entertainment purposes, not barring you from work or necessary interactions) from internet, TV, movies, music, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking, sex/masturbation/any form of sexual pleasure, for a period of 7 days.

Note: You are not required to fast, and are discouraged from doing so.

Bonus: the guy claims that seeing Jesus corrected his vision. Better than Lasik!

Warning: the guy goes on and on about his phantasmagorical hallucinations at tedious length, and doesn’t seem to understand how evidence works.

Last week, I heard about two boring revelations.

The first is that the Shroud of Turin has finally been proven to be fake. Finally? Again. After all the dating evidence and the historical record show that it was ginned up in the 14th century, long after this story has been put to bed, people still thrash about with this crap. The ‘new’ evidence isn’t even that good — they did a blood spatter analysis. Big whoop.

Next week, news agencies will be shocked to learn that chupacabra is a coyote with mange, because they had a vet look at an old photo.

The second oh-god-my-eyes-have-rolled-back-so-far-they-turned-inside-out story comes from a usually reputable source, the Guardian. They ran a garbage article about cell phones causing cancer, full of distortions of the scientific evidence and conspiracy theories. My god, people, there is no brain cancer epidemic. Practically everyone in the country has a mobile phone now, they’re using them constantly to the point where it’s a standard comedic trope about teenagers and housewives and pedestrians and commuters going through their day with phones clamped to their faces, a gigantic shift in human behavior and reliance on these devices that occurred in only about a decade, and you’d think that if they were causally linked to any kind of cancer there’d be a corresponding surge readily detectable in the epidemiological data. There isn’t. This is a causal agent with people casting about absurdly looking for a problem it might be causing, and not finding one. So they invent an epidemic.

Fortunately, David Robert Grimes comes through with a rebuttal to the Guardian bullshit (he’s very polite. He doesn’t use the word “bullshit” or even anything poetically analogous.) He goes through all the basic, obvious evidence — cell phone radiation is low energy, non-ionizing, and multiple papers have shown a lack of correlation between cell phone use and glioma — and shows how the authors distorted in a dishonest way (he doesn’t even call them liars!) the conclusions of major research studies.

There are signs he’s losing patience with them, though.

The authors conclude by stating a “lack of definitive proof that a technology is harmful does not mean the technology is safe, yet the wireless industry has succeeded in selling this logical fallacy to the world”. Such a statement raises questions regarding their grasp of the term “logical fallacy”. The onus here is on the authors to prove their assertion – it is sheer logical contortion to present a lack of evidence as a superficial supporting argument. That the authors attribute this lack of evidence for their claims to the machinations of a nebulous big telecoms is indicative of a mindset more conspiratorial than sceptical.

This is a problem with what I call sinecure skepticism. There is a self-perpetuating market for glib, contrarian nonsense like cell phones causing cancer, or fluoridation as a communist plot, or ghosts, or the Loch Ness monster, or evolutionary psychology, and the skeptical movement has bred a group of shallow thinkers who lurch at the bait and sell cheap articles that ‘debunk’ the most superficial phenomenology (or in the worst case, write in support of garbage, like EP). In fact, the mission of many skeptics is to focus entirely on the easy crap and to neglect the big issues, because they’re too complex. I’m sure Hertsgaard and Dowie, the authors of the original article, consider themselves to be good skeptics, because skepticism has become nothing but criticism of the obvious using very little knowledge or deep expertise.

Hertsgaard and Dowie are well-regarded journalists, writing in the field of environmental journalism. They are not experts on cell biology, or cancer, or epidemiology, or medicine, or any of the fields that would be relevant to their analysis, so it was an easy leap for them to find fault with a ubiquitous technology, and to uncritically promote another round of this nonsense. David Robert Grimes is a physicist and cancer researcher who actually knows his stuff and can see right through the gross errors.

I like skeptics who actually know something — see also David Gorski or Jen Gunter or Jennifer Raff for examples — and who have actually done the hard work of acquiring deep expertise. Otherwise we get endless cycles of lightweight puffery over trivial inanity, which is exactly what the purveyors of trivial inanity want.

Ask yourself, do we really need more analyses of the Shroud of Turin?

Here we go again, with more weird Christian bias from atheists.

Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing? pic.twitter.com/TpCkq9EGpw

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 16, 2018

You know, the first sentence is just fine — please do appreciated the culture and history of a place. Personally, I’m not at all fond of church bells, because I grew up near a church that insisted on playing those obnoxious electronic chimes every 15 minutes, and here in Morris some jerk insisted likewise that the local cemetery play ear-splitting hymns on their electronic carillon all day long (fortunately, no longer). It might be a matter of frequency, too, since the Catholic church 3 blocks away rings their bells every Sunday before mass, and that’s not a problem at all.

Dawkins begins to go off the rails with the second sentence. Why is he comparing church bells to “Allahu Akhbar”? 1) A better comparison would be with the adhan, or call to prayer, of an Islamic mosque. It’s not “aggressive-sounding” at all. It would drive me nuts if I had to hear it every day, but it’s analogous in every way to his church bells. 2) “Allahu Akhbar” just means “God is great”, a phrase you’ll hear all the time in Christian churches. It is awfully arrogant, but it’s exactly the same crap that goes on in the grand medieval building behind Dawkins. Just a different language and a different culture.

Which is why the third sentence is so disingenuously stupid. Exactly, Richard, it’s a matter of your cultural upbringing. What else would it be? This is nothing but a phony call-out to anti-Islamic sentiment.

But wait, his supporters say. He’s Just Asking a Question. Maybe he’s simply acknowledging the varieties of human experience and openly admitting that he has a preference shaped by his history? Read charitably, maybe he’s noting the similarities of these different cultures.

Nice try. Nope. He followed up with this:

The call to prayer can be hauntingly beautiful, especially if the muezzin has a musical voice. My point is that “Allahu Akhbar” is anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a suicide bomb goes off. That is when Islam is tragically hijacked by violence.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 18, 2018

“Allahu Akhbar” is anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a suicide bomb goes off…fine. Relevance? Do you really think the muezzin is urging all listeners to yank the cord on a suicide vest? It’s a call to prayer. Just like the ringing bells of a cathedral. Shall we make the point that the bells of Winchester cathedral are anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a priest yanks down the pants of a little boy? That “Onward Christian Soldiers” isn’t exactly about peace and love? Is it beautiful when Christian America thinks it would a great idea to nuke Mecca?

Talk show host Pat Campbell for WFLA-AM in Orlando, Florida asked the Colorado Republican Congressman Tom TancredoWikipedia’s W.svg how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons; he responded, “Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.” “You’re talking about bombing Mecca,” Campbell said. “Yeah,” Tancredo responded. The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas” and that an “ultimate threat” might have to be met with an “ultimate response.” “What is near and dear to them? They’re willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?” the representative asked, his spokesman stressing he was only speaking hypothetically.

Wow. That sounds just like a Sam Harris hypothetical.

It’s really simply bigotry when you condemn followers of one faith for doing exactly what followers of another faith do, and equate going to a mosque to pray with murder.