It took me a minute to figure out what this diagram was trying to say.
Then I figured it out. Ewww, yuck. Fundie Christians.
(via Spa_yediMonster)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It took me a minute to figure out what this diagram was trying to say.
Then I figured it out. Ewww, yuck. Fundie Christians.
(via Spa_yediMonster)
This is Maurice Williamson, a member of the New Zealand parliament, speaking in defense of marriage equality.
I would like him to leave New Zealand, move to anywhere in the US, run for the Senate or House, win, and bring some sense and humor to American politics. If he’s not willing to do that, can we at least have a few more Americans with that attitude replacing the pious nitwits we’ve got now?
And then the bill passes, and…everyone stands up and starts singing?
Damn. It’s so weird to see politics working and doing good. The equivalent over here would be a session opening with some loud stupid prayer, the majority of the politicians napping or skipping out, a few ludicrous bureaucrats droning pro forma over whether we should torture distant brown people or drop bombs on them, or tweaking a bill to give more money to the rich.
Then they don’t sing or express any joy at what they’ve done. I could imagine them standing up and maybe singing some grim dolorous hymn, or better yet, humming the Imperial March from Star Wars, but that’s about it.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have politicians who were pursuing their career because they wanted to make the world a better place?
I’m beginning to get geared up for the summer research season, and I have to count myself as fortunate. I’m one of those bench guys; I’ll be fussing over embryos and computers in an air-conditioned lab, and mostly sitting in front of a microscope. The field researchers will be out hiking, and facing other privations: heat, humidity, man-eating mosquitos, ticks, summer rainstorms, sexual harassment, assault, and rape.
Oh, wait, those last three…not a problem here at UMM, we’ve got a good group of faculty we can trust to respect the students. But elsewhere, in fields like anthropology where groups of men and women might be out in remote areas for long periods of time, Kate Clancy reports that they are big problems.
We heard many reports of women not being allowed to do certain kinds of field work, being driven or warned away from particular field sites, and being denied access to research materials that were freely given to men (and men who were given access were the ones telling us these things). Ultimately, not being able to go to certain field sites, having to change field sites, or not being able to access research materials means women are denied the opportunity to ask certain research questions in our field. This has the potential to limit the CVs of women and given them permanently lesser research trajectories. This can lead to not getting jobs, or getting lower-tier jobs. It also means certain research questions may get primarily asked by one gender, and reducing the diversity of people doing research has been shown to reduce the diversity and quality of the work.
Don’t be discouraged from going into anthropology if that’s the field you love, but just be prepared: women have an extra duty piled on top of all the research work, to slap down privileged offenders…who may be their superiors.
Hey, wait a minute: Clancy is focused on the field work situation, but even in my cozy climate-controlled environment, there is the possibility of harassment — I’ve even heard tales of faculty (at other universities, of course) who were dirty old men who made life hell for their women students. Is anyone doing work similar to Clancy’s in places like medical schools? Maybe we should be sending teams of anthropologists in to study the indigenous cultures of the biomedical establishment. I fear it would be scary stuff, but at least you wouldn’t have to deal with mosquitos.
Just another 15 year old girl getting gang-raped by some of her peers, just a few boys proudly taking photos of their rape victim and passing them around on their cellphones, just another episode of bullying and torment, and just another girl killing herself. Tragic, but we’re done now — she’s dead and not complaining any more. Those boy rapists need to get on with their lives.
But wait. What’s this? The police actually arrested three high school boys who perpetrated the crime? Think of the potential being lost! Those boys might have grown up to become investment bankers, used car salesmen, or Boy Scout troop leaders, and now they’ll have a few years as wards of the juvenile court system, and will probably have their records locked away when they turn 21…oh. I guess they can still fulfill their destiny then. But the inconvenience!
That girl, Audrey Pott, though…she would have just grown up to be a woman. Don’t we have enough of those already?
I have to say, though, that I can still hope the recent high-profile cases that all sound so tragically similar might someday have an effect on the culture. Boys might, after a few years, learn not to take cell phone pictures of their rapes.
What? You thought I’d suggest that boys might learn not to rape? Silly optimist. Get real.
(Please note: Sarcasm turned up to nearly lethal levels in the above post. I’m now dialing it down to tolerable levels before the sarcasmal lobe of my brain melts.)
Oh, joy…yet another bible-walloping lackwit claiming that god hates gay marriage…and this time he claims to have a biological justification.
“You only have 15 percent of the middle who are hypocrites, who think, Jesus is cool, but I don’t agree with how he defined marriage,” Klingenschmitt said. “When Jesus talks about one flesh, he’s really being a scientist, he’s being a biologist. Because he realizes and he’s articulating simple biology, that when a sperm and an egg form together, they match in a zygote and a new DNA is formed and it becomes one new human flesh.”
“[W]e’re not reading our biology textbooks,” the former chaplain added.
“Which were written by Jesus, as you say,” Pakman pointed out. “Jesus was a biologist.”
“Well, he defined marriage between one man and one women, becoming one zygote, becoming one flesh,” Klingenschmitt insisted. “And that’s the only way in the next 100 years that humans are going to be able to procreate. If you get two men together and they mate, they’re not going to have a baby. If you get three women and a dog together, and they all mate together, they’re not going to have a baby.”
Wait, wait there. I can read Matthew 19 just as well as Satan can, and that’s where he claims Jesus is discussing biology. Here’s the relevant passage:
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Jesus is talking about the man and woman becoming “one flesh”, not sperm and egg. He also doesn’t mention zygote even once.
He’s not describing fertilization at all. That’s the plot of The Human Centipede!
Most racism isn’t represented by a redneck screaming racist slurs from his pickup truck. It’s the casual demeaning of the importance of “other people’s” problems (Heck, even using the word “other” in that context is a problem.) It’s about letting stereotypes dictate your response to a person, not even necessarily negatively.
You really have to watch this video of a rough experiment in human behavior: white kid trying to break a bike lock, passers-by assume he’s got a legitimate reason; black kid doing the same, shouting and cell phones and calls to the police.
It’s fascinating. Although I’ve got to say that one flaw in the experiment is the time it took the kid to fail to get the lock off…with the amazing array of tools he has in his bag, I would have been off with that bike in 10 seconds flat, so I was wondering why their experimental accomplice was so incompetent.
Ladies, this is a delicate subject, and I’ll have to ask you to step out of the room for a bit while the men talk among themselves.
Brad Paisley is just a plain ol’ straight up racist.
He’s trying to defend Southern pride with sentiments that are almost reasonable.
I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done
Which is fair enough — there’s nothing wrong with being from the South. But the beginning is about flaunting the traitor’s flag: the confederate banner which wave to defend slavery. Guy, if you’re looking for vestiges of the Southern past that you’re not proud of and that you’re willing to reject, start with that flag. It’s not hard.
Even more bewildering, though, is that LL Cool J joins in late in the song.
If you don’t judge my do-rag
I won’t judge your red flag
If you don’t judge my gold chains
I’ll forget the iron chains … Let bygones be bygones.
WTF? He’s equating wearing a scarf on your head with waving the Confederate battle flag, and worse, comparing a fashion choice with slavers shackling people in iron chains?
That is about the most screwed up song I’ve ever heard. Not to mention that it’s boring derivative C&W.
But this video might help. This woman took one photo a day in the worst year of her life, as she was living through a relationship that got progressively uglier. It starts off easily enough, and when the first blush of a bruise appears one day, you think it doesn’t look so bad — she still smiles frequently. But holy crap, by the end she looks like she’s been in a war. This is not something to watch if you’re easily triggered.
I’m mainly wondering what has happened to the disgusting piece of shit who was doing this to her.
It has now been revealed that the injuries were done with stage makeup, as part of an advertising campaign to highlight the problem of domestic abuse.
