“I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.”
Start here. Andrew Breibart attended a white nationalist conference in 2006, with panels by Jared Taylor and John Derbyshire.
He was attending with his protege, James O’Keefe.
O’Keefe has acquired some notoriety for dishonest stunts in the name of far right wingnuttiness. Among them was the Landrieu break-in.
According to reports, on January 25, 2010, O’Keefe and his friends Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan visited the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Basel and Flanagan disguised themselves as repairmen, and attempted to access the office’s telephone system by saying there was something wrong with the phone lines. O’Keefe was in the office and videotaped the some of the events with his cell phone camera. Office workers smelled a rat and called the authorities. The three of them were arrested, along with a fourth man Stan Dai, and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.
Notice the guy on the right? That’s Joe Basel. It’s a bit embarrassing, but he attended UMM a few years ago — we did not get along. I do find it amusing that one of his complaints was that the university ought to remove all reference to me from its website, because I offended him. So if O’Keefe was Breitbart’s protege, Basel was O’Keefe’s — I guess he’s kind of a third rate Breibart imitator, which is not something to be proud of.
Basel previously was the editor (or some such role) at the Counterweight, the conservative alternative newspaper here at Morris a few years ago. He is now the CEO of something called the American Phoenix Foundation, which is yet another wingnut ‘thinktank’ with a mission.
The mission of the American Phoenix Foundation is to protect the American Republic through ethical, innovative, and technologically driven journalism.
A descendant of Breitbart/O’Keefe/Basel is protecting ethical journalism? OK. I’m laughing, but OK.
Thankfully, Basel is now gone from UMM, and the Counterweight is defunct. Unfortunately, its successor is that rather nasty racist rag, The North Star. It’s editor, John Geiger, was named a Phoenix Fellow by the foundation last year.
Breitbart → O’Keefe → Basel → Geiger, all with a nice infusion of racism throughout. It’s all kind of ugly and incestuous, isn’t it?
I wish I’d had this a few weeks ago, when I was telling students how not to present their data. This is a chart illustrating the effects of stand-your-ground-laws on murder in Florida.
I glanced at that and thought, “Whoa, surprise: the stand-your-ground-laws had a pretty dramatic effect in reducing murder. I did not expect that at all.”
And then I was a bit disappointed: “But they really should have set the Y axis at zero. It’s a bit misleading and magnifies the apparent effect, otherwise.”
And then I did a double-take: “They inverted the freaking Y axis!”
That’s right. It doesn’t show a decline, it shows a dramatic spike in murder after the law was passed. The text in the article actually says that clearly, but the chart was actively selling the opposite message. They’ve since added a corrected chart that actually makes the point clearly, instead of obscuring it.
I took away two points. It’s really easy to lie with graphics, and shouldn’t any evidence-based legal system recognize the consequences of passing a bad law and correct itself?
More from a data visualization expert.
I’m a scientist, I believe in proof
Near as I can tell from the trailer for I, Origins, the movie is about an affectless neuroscientist who takes pictures of eyes for Science, and then because he finds someone with similar irises to his dead lover, decides that reincarnation has been proven.
All I know is that whoever wrote this dreck has no idea about how scientists think.
Oh, joy. Another What the Bleep Do We Know, a bad and stupid movie that clueless nitwits will be throwing in my face for years to come to inform me that science is wrong.
The movie Fargo warped the image of Minnesota—and now the FX channel is going to be showing a new, 10 episode miniseries titled… Fargo, starring Bilbo Baggins with a Minnesota accent.
An original adaptation of the Academy Award®-winning feature film, Fargo features an all-new “true crime” story and follows a new case and new characters, all entrenched in the trademark humor, murder and “Minnesota nice” that made the film an enduring classic.
Yep, that’s exactly what living in rural Minnesota is like: funny accents, and grim, understated humor over all the dead bodies littering the snow. It’s a sensibility that has always informed my blog, dontchaknow.
Maybe never. I know a lot of you hate facebook (with good reason), so I’ll just copy this straight from facebook so you can read it here.
From former JREF Outreach Coordinator Brian Thompson:
“Let me explain why I’m supporting Karen Stollznow’s legal defense fund. Maybe some of my Facebook friends don’t know who she is or what this is all about. Karen is a linguist, writer, and investigator who looks into claims of the paranormal, the supernatural, and the outrageous with a skeptical eye. Skeptics like her do a lot of good for the world in ways large and small. They’re the ones fighting against the kind of scientific ignorance that keeps people from vaccinating their kids, for example. And if it weren’t for skeptical investigators, I might still be cowered in fear every night thinking aliens were going to abduct me or ghosts were going to throw things around my bedroom. Now I’m just cowered in fear thinking that I might never be on one of those interior design makeover shows. This is progress.
I believe so strongly in the good work these skeptics do that several years ago I started hanging out with them, working on activism projects with them, and drinking lots and lots of booze with them. I went to their conferences and meetings and pre-swingers’ parties, and for a couple of years I even worked in an official capacity with one of the world’s most well-known skeptical activism nonprofits, the James Randi Educational Foundation.
In that time I got to know a lot of great people. I’m not going to name them all, because I know I’ll leave out Christian Walters, and then our lovemaking will take a passive-aggressive turn. But a lot of people who share this common interest in making the world a better place through rationalism are kind, honest, funny, talented, and valuable friends. Then there are people like Christian who are maybe just two or three of those.
But I no longer identify with this community of benevolent know-it-alls, because not all of them are the best folks in the world. In fact, a good percentage of the top ten worst humans I’ve ever met are prominent members of the skeptics’ club. They’re dishonest, mean-spirited, narcissistic, misogynistic. Pick a personality flaw, and I can probably point you to someone who epitomizes it. And that person has probably had a speaking slot at a major skeptical conference.
I grew particularly disgusted with the boys’ club attitude I saw among skeptical leaders and luminaries. The kind of attitude that’s dismissive of women, sexually predatory, and downright gross. When I first started going to skeptical conferences as a fresh-faced know-it-all, I started hearing things about people I once admired. Then I started seeing things myself. Then I got a job with the JREF, and the pattern continued.
There’s a particular guy popular with the skeptical crowd who writes books, gives talks, and wears bicycle shorts. What’s not to love? Well, a female friend of mine told me she didn’t like it very much when he locked eyes with her from across a room and pointed to his dick. When I started working for the JREF, my boss described this same guy as an “old school misogynist”. Then a friend told me this same skeptical celebrity had groped another speaker at a conference. Grabbed her breast without invitation. Sexually assaulted her. Then my boss told me that not only did this assault happen, but that he witnessed it and intervened. The woman who was assaulted won’t name names for fear of being dragged through the mud. Another woman I know has told me that this same guy assaulted her. Others have confirmed her story to me. I believe her. But she’s remained anonymous for much the same reasons.
I’m tired of this. I’m tired of hearing about sexual predators like Mr. Bicycle Shorts, who has yet again been invited to speak at the JREF’s annual conference. I’m tired of hearing things like what I’ve heard from [redacted]. That my old boss grabbed his junk in a car and said he would be “presidentially displeased” if [redacted] didn’t give my old boss a kiss.
I’m tired of people like Richard Dawkins, whose lashing out at my friend Rebecca Watson for having the nerve to talk about what kind of male attention makes her uncomfortable has led to years of the most heinous abuse being flung at her and her colleagues. Heinous, woman-hating abuse from enthusiastic members of this broken little community of freethinkers.
Pardon my Yiddish, but oy, that shit’s fucked. And it’s also fucked that people are afraid to speak out about their stories for fear that it will become the focus of their careers or that their privacy will be destroyed or that they’ll be sued or that they’ll somehow damage organizations that do a lot of good work.
This makes me sick, and it makes me mad. So of course I’m going to help Karen speak up and fight back.
Here’s the situation in a nutshell: Karen used to work with another writer and investigator named Ben Radford at an organization called CFI. Karen says Radford continually harassed and abused her. She brought the situation to CFI, which found Radford guilty of some of Karen’s charges. Then they let him off with a slap on the wrist. Karen blogged about this. Radford sued her for defamation.
Based on the evidence I’ve seen, my own experience with Radford’s dishonest and creepy behavior, and the assurances from friends of mine who know more about this situation than I do, I’m willing to believe Karen. And more than that, I’m willing to put my money behind her efforts to fight back in court. Because she deserves the chance to make her case instead of having to fold under insurmountable financial pressure. Defending yourself in court isn’t cheap.
Also, I don’t like bullies or creeps. Especially the kinds of bullies and creeps who have been protected by their peers and allies in a community that places pseudo-celebrity and books about how lake monsters aren’t real above the well-being of women who are at least as vital to fighting the good fight. A fight, by the way, that’s about the righteousness of the truth.
So I’ve given to Karen’s fund. You can do the same here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/give-a-voice-to-harassment-victims/x/6875853“
As long as atheism is about nothing but disbelieving in gods, and as long as skepticism is about nothing but demanding evidence, as long as there is no human heart behind the goals of these organizations, this behavior will continue. We must have secular values beyond simply rejecting claims; we must recognize the import and implications of living in a material, natural world; there must be secular values that give us purpose.
Don’t worry, this video is perfectly safe for work, except for the little fact that if you watch to the very end you’ll get sucked into your computer screen and transported to the 19th century. This morning, I had to fight my way through a mob of Norwegian farmers who hardly spoke any English to find a zoetrope and phenakistascope (which were very scarce on the empty Minnesota prairie, I tell you) and play them backwards to get home again. Bracing.
(via The Verge)
The reviews for Aronofsky’s movie, Noah, are coming in, and they’re mixed. There are parts that are brilliant and provocative, and others that are ludicrous, over-the-top, action movie CGI. One thing everyone is agreeing on, along with Ken Ham and me, is that it is decidedly unbiblical, which is totally unsurprising. Don’t people ever read their Bibles? Most of these famous myths out of that old book are short, with little characterization or context, and are more like an elevator pitch than a full narrative…so every Bible story has to be padded. Turning a one page sketch into a two hour movie? What do you expect?
Apparently, this version of the Ark story is more action/fantasy story than reverent Bible worship, which is fine by me. This is pretty much what I expect:
There’s so much delusion and so much delight in “Noah” that I have trouble distinguishing one from the other, or determining whether its most outlandish flourishes qualify as mistakes or as strokes of genius. But let’s be clear that the CGI-animated opening sequence, an “earlier on our show” montage that tells the story of Genesis from the creation through Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, is a mistake. Even there Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique deliver striking images – the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge pulsing like a human heart; the father and mother of us all as golden-hued, naked super aliens – but the net effect is something like a Catholic Sunday-school video mixed with the scenes Ridley Scott rejected as too hokey for “Prometheus.”
I may have to watch it after all. “Prometheus” was so bad it was entertaining.
By the way, Ridley Scott is working on a Biblical movie, too — a retelling of the Moses story. He’s also going to make a sequel to “Prometheus”. Oh, and also, Michael Bay is remaking the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
It looks like it’s going to be a banner year for really bad big-budget movies. I don’t like bad movies all that much.
I’ve spent a long day in a dark quiet room with a red pen in my hand slogging through a mountain of grading, but at least you got something significant accomplished — it only took you 8 hours to completely meet Karen Stollznow’s initial legal fees. Don’t stop now, keep on going! This ink-stained wretch looked up from his labors and felt a twinge of hope, like that there really are good people in this movement.
There was also a bit of schadenfreude. Adam Lee has posted some of the slymey comments he’d been getting after Ben Radford’s premature ejaculation — you know, where some of the gullible haters who succumbed to some motivated reasoning, saw the unsigned ‘apology’ written by Radford in Stollznow’s name, decided the whole thing was over now, and started sniping about, demanding immediate apologies, claiming that they had the confession in hand, etc. I have some of the same noise in my spam queue, so I thought I should share it, too.
Do you think that retraction letter was a fake? Are you a birther as well? Was 911 an “inside job”?
Yeah, they went there, claiming that rejecting the ‘apology’ was equivalent to being a conspiracy nut and denialist. Of course, I was sitting here with inside information — I knew that Stollznow hadn’t signed it.
Guess what, annoying troll? The retraction letter was a fake. Stollznow had nothing to do with it.
For PZ’s rabble: Carrie Poppy, what a piece of work. I bet Herr Myers is regretting ever trusting that ditzy bítch.
Carrie Poppy has been doing good work sharing her knowledge of what happened. Turns out she was right. No regrets, I think I’ll keep trusting her.
This message from Amy Stoker on Ben Radford’s facebook, regarding the retraction letter.
“It’s signed by Karen and notarized. Ben was over at my house tonight. I’m sure Ben will address this in the morning or at some point. For tonight he wanted to focus on those family and friends that have been by his side.
about an hour ago ”I’m not sure who Amy Stoker is, but I’d believe her over anything that lying sack of crap PZ Myers says.
But…the letter wasn’t signed and notarized. That comment from Stoker has since been curiously memory-holed. I don’t think I’ll trust her at all — but that’s OK, I’ve still got Carrie Poppy.
Are you going to apologize to Ben Radford now, PZ? You witch hunting moron. Always believe the accuser, right? Hahahaha.
No.
There’s a lot more, but it gets old fast, and I think my point is made. These loons were just making stuff up and were utterly convinced by a ginned-up, unsigned document. Skeptics. Yeah, right.
The normal explanation would be that the graphics are clumsy and out of date, the character animation is creepily unhuman, the plot is inane, and the preachy moralizing and weird evangelism is off-putting. But to the people at Phoenix Interactive, who are having a hard time getting funding for a game called Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham, those factors are not to be acknowledged. It’s because of SATAN.
"I need to be clear on this point: Are you telling me that Satan is literally working to confound your plans to release this game? You’re saying that the actual Devil is scheming against you?"
I’m sitting in a nondescript office in an unremarkable neighborhood in Bakersfield, CA, interviewing three men about their plans for a Biblical game based on the life of Abraham.
I believe that, 100 percent,replies Richard Gaeta, a co-founder of Phoenix Interactive. He argues that since the launch of the Kickstarter for Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham, trouble has come into all their lives.
It’s very tangible,adds his business partner Martin Bertram.From projects falling through and people that were lined up to help us make this a success falling through. Lots of factors raining down on us like fire and brimstone.Nobody is winking or joking or pulling my leg. There is no irony here. They are absolutely serious.
It’s an interesting rationalization. None of their problems are their fault, it’s all the work of a malignant supernatural entity. But what I found particularly intriguing is the extent to which they’ve taken it: failure is a sign of their importance.
If Satan is rallying some of his resources to forestall, delay, or kill this project, I think, this must be a perceived threat to his kingdom,adds Ken Frech, a religious mentor to the project.I fully would expect something like this to have spiritual warfare. Look at the gospel accounts of demons and so forth. That’s reality. Many Americans don’t believe it anymore. That doesn’t change reality.
Since I’m a nice guy, and very sympathetic, I propose that we all shun every product from this company and the wackaloons running it, just so they’ll all feel very, very important. And if we all point and laugh at them, their self-esteem will skyrocket, because it can only mean that Satan is paying a lot attention to them.
We atheists live lives of sacrifice, working so hard at the request of our master Satan to make Christians feel important.
