Like the president of the United States of America.
As you might guess, some are losing it over such a simple, rational statement.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Like the president of the United States of America.
As you might guess, some are losing it over such a simple, rational statement.
A conservative wackaloon who is very concerned about who uses the bathroom dares us: How to Stump a Liberal: Are Sex Chromosomes Real?. Wow. Do they really think that most of us would be baffled by that question?
The basis of their belief that we can’t answer it is, of all the ludicrous sources, Camille Paglia.
In a 2013 debate at American University, dissident feminist Camille Paglia told a remarkable story of an argument she had with fellow feminists in the early 1970s. When she remarked that males and females have hormonal differences, her colleagues told her that hormones are not real, they were only made up by a conspiracy of male scientists.
Is it possible that Paglia was among a group of left-wing loons? Yes, they exist. Is that view representative of most liberals or most feminists? No, it is not.
Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman. His dad called it a “20 minute action” and seemed to think losing his appetite for steak was punishment enough. Have you been wondering what his mom had to say? The court documents have been released, and now we can read what his heartbroken mother wrote to defend him.
Those happy family times are gone forever, replaced by despair, fear, depression, anxiety, doubt, and dread. I don’t think I have been able to take a deep breath since this happened. My first thought upon wakening every morning is “this isn’t real, this can’t be real. Why him? Why HIM? WHY? WHY?” I have cried every single day since Jan. 18. This is on my mind every moment.
Why HIM?
, as if this was something horrible that just happened to her happy innocent son? He’s a rapist. He raped someone. This wasn’t something that happened to him, it was something he did. He is the subject of the sentence “He raped her”, not the object.
I am sure this event has made her family miserable, but let’s not get confused about who is responsible.
Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the internet, Dan Waddell reminds us of the explosion of nastiness in the Tim Hunt sexism affair. The short summary:
The first part of an in-depth account of how the Tim Hunt saga developed into a furious online backlash against his critics, and escalated from casual sexism into a dangerous mix of racism, misogyny and political and cultural warfare.
The interesting part of this review is that while some are quick to blame a PC culture, what started as a civil rebuke of a sexist remark was enflamed into a conflagration of viciousness by the introduction of alt-right bigots like Yiannopoulos, Mensch, and gamergaters into the mix, and when they refocused the complaints about a safe, secure Nobel prizewinner onto a black woman journalist, all the racism and misogyny by others than Hunt was allowed to flower.
That’s the only positive spin I can put on the awful story of Brock Turner. For those who’ve missed out on the outrage, Brock Turner was a Stanford athlete who found a drunk woman passed out behind a dumpster, and he proceeded to do what any privileged male asshole would do: he raped her. He was caught in the act however, and tried to run away, and was put on trial.
Awful enough so far. But then once he was convicted, the judge decided to give him a light 6 month sentence, because prison would have a severe impact on him
. Yes? Isn’t that the point? Of course, the judge, Aaron Persky, was also a former Stanford athlete, so this is clearly a case of a judge seeing someone who looks like him, so he must be a good boy…
So injustice is compounded. But then, just to make me truly sick to my stomach, Turner’s father made a statement. This is why I say fathers matter — because Dan A. Turner is an oblivious asshole who raised an asshole. This is appalling.
Since form is a consequence of differential growth of tissues, and since different tissues grow at different rates, one of the ways evolution can shape morphology is through changes in growth rate, so changes in timing can produce very different forms. There are genes that affect specific tissues discretely; for instance, the gene ASPM regulates mitotic activity in regions of the brain, so mutations in it can produce smaller brains, or microcephaly. There are also global regulators of growth, and just changing the rate of maturation of the organism can produce changes in the proportion of different tissues, because of allometric variation in different regions.
So, for instance, if developmental maturation of the somatic tissues is slowed, while sexual maturation is maintained at the standard rate, individuals retain juvenile characters at reproductive age, a process called neoteny (similarly, you can get a similar effect by maintaining a standard rate of somatic growth, but accelerating the rate of sexual maturation, a process called progenesis.) Note that what’s key here is that different tissues are regulated differently; if you just slow the rate of development of both somatic and reproductive organs, you get individuals with the standard morphology, it just takes longer for them to get there. Everyone who knows anything about development and evolution understands that neoteny/progenesis requires independent regulation of different tissues.
One of the factors thought to play a role in human evolution is neoteny. Compared to other primates, adult humans retain a juvenile morphology: heads large in proportion to our bodies, larger eyes, smaller jaws, etc. This is not particularly controversial, although I’d really like to see more specific identification of the genes involved. Our shape could, after all, alternatively be explained by character by character changes in gene expression. The neoteny hypothesis implies that a large cranium and small jaw are correlated, that is, by changing one regulator of growth you get both effects. It would also be possible that they’re uncorrelated, that (as a simplified example) one gene that generates larger brains evolved, and that a second gene for reduced jaws evolved completely independently.
Neoteny can also be a mosaic process. Big head and small jaws are a retention of a juvenile character, but other features, like our bigger noses and ears as adults compared to babies (creepy visualization: imagine a baby with a nose as big in proportion to its head as an adult’s; all cuteness disappears). Even if the neoteny hypothesis is generally valid, it can’t explain all the features of an adult human, and does not imply that humans are all big babies in every respect. Donald Trump excepted.
That’s the background. Now for the pseudoscientific appropriation of a concept from development and evolution.
I don’t think I knew him — but then, I’ve met so many people in the atheist movement I might have — but suddenly, many of my other friends in godlessness are openly distancing themselves from Dan Linford. Worse, I’m hearing that there has been a lot of whispering about him for years, with women quietly telling each other to watch out for him…and, as I’m usually totally clueless about these things, I didn’t know about it at all (just as I knew nothing about the warnings about Shermer for so long).
And now Linford has confessed to coercing and assaulting students from his position of authority as a professor of philosophy. Here’s a public comment from Heina Dadabhoy:
This is getting really old. It’s another case of sexual harassment of students by senior faculty, this time at UC Berkeley. Herr Doktor Professor Blake Wentworth seems to have a thing for obsessing over his undergraduates and making life hell for them.
Read this for an extraordinary example of a total lack of self-awareness. He promises to honor student-professor boundaries while calling her “honey” and “honey bear”.
Hemenway tried to minimize contact with Wentworth after a meeting on 17 February 2015 that she said was particularly upsetting. According to the complaint, the professor repeatedly called her “honey” and “honey bear” and put his hands on hers while complimenting her and staring intensely into her eyes.
He also allegedly suggested that he wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with her as soon as she graduated.
“I will always honor professor-student boundaries,” he said, according to the complaint. “Once you graduate, that’s an entirely different scenario. I look forward to the day when you graduate. … But until then, just know that I will never come onto you or make you feel uncomfortable. Got that, honey?”
That’s quite an inducement to graduate he’s given Ms Hemenway, isn’t it?
Wentworth is still at Berkeley, while Hemenway is considering leaving her field altogether.
There’s this new book out, Life: The Leading Edge of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, and Environmental Science, which has a number of people rightfully irate that it has 23 authors, not a one of them a woman. I was also astounded to see among its leading edge authors Ernst Mayr, who died in 2005 at the age of 100.
There are no women in evolutionary biology who can compete with the corpse of a centenarian man? That’s pretty bad.
And Kary Mullis? Good grief.
I guess this article wasn’t humorous after all, but dead serious reporting.
I hadn’t realized that that was a fundamental philosophical dictum, but it’s sure looking that way. Thomas Pogge, a very big name in philosophical ethics, has been accused of being a serial sexual harasser, all while running a high profile Global Justice program at Yale. I say “accused”, but this very well written, very thorough, well documented account from Buzzfeed doesn’t leave him much wiggle room. As often seems to be the case, we’re looking at decades of constant allegations. He’d been accused when he was at Columbia, but of course that was ignored when Yale hired him. And then the accusations kept coming, and they kept being handled by university administrators who had a vested interest in keeping their superstar happy.
“It breaks my heart to have to say it,” said Christia Mercer, a former colleague from the Columbia philosophy department, “but it’s clear that Thomas uses his reputation as a supporter of justice to prey unjustly on those who trust and admire him, who then — once victimized — are too intimidated by his reputation and power to tell their stories.”
It is dismaying that someone can cultivate a public reputation for morality while acting as such a creepy sleaze with students.
