Add molecular biology to your list of fields that have a sexual harassment problem. A biologist at the University of Chicago (where only a quarter of the senior faculty are women, the article points out) has resigned in the midst of some damning accusations.

The professor, Jason Lieb, made unwelcome sexual advances to several female graduate students at an off-campus retreat of the molecular biosciences division, according to a university investigation letter obtained by The New York Times, and engaged in sexual activity with a student who was “incapacitated due to alcohol and therefore could not consent.”

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A woman says she was raped by Neil deGrasse Tyson in grad school. She contacted me and asked me to share her story. But here’s the disgraceful exploitation that’s going on.

She did not know who I am, at all. She came to me because she was advised to…by slymepitters. The same people who have been indignant for years that women might speak out against harassers. They are trying to deploy this woman as a weapon.

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Remember “the standard you walk by is the standard you accept” guy, former chief of army in Australia, David Morrison? He has been honored with the Australian of the Year award. That’s good news. Also, there’s some background on that speech.

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A Houston grand jury was convened to decide charges in the case of the faked Planned Parenthood videos. They came to an interesting decision.

A grand jury here that was investigating accusations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two abortion opponents who made undercover videos of the organization.

Prosecutors in Harris County said one of the leaders of the Center for Medical Progress — an anti-abortion group that made secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue — had been indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, and on a misdemeanor charge related to purchasing human organs.

Planned Parenthood was cleared of all charges. Slimeball Daleiden who patched together misleading videos under false pretenses…well, he’s going to court.

Unfortunately, the article also features several blustering Texas Republicans declaring that they don’t care about the decision, they’re going to continue to ‘protect life’ by persecuting Planned Parenthood.

I’ve never been a fan of Top Gear, hearing only at second hand how awful Jeremy Clarkson was, but I am now appalled at both his opinions and the fact that Sunday Times gives him space to spew. I’ve quoted excerpts below the fold — you might want to skip them if a ranting ignorant transphobe would ruin your breakfast.

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Anita Sarkeesian’s latest:

I haven’t played enough of those kinds of games to be able to judge personally, but she makes a good case, and it’s just plain weird — gamers are focused on women’s hind ends, and are averse to viewing men’s equivalent? There’s got to be a psychological study in this.

I noticed something odd for the first time recently: women’s clothing buttons differently than men’s. I’d been previously oblivious, but just noticed because I put on this nice roomy button-down Christmas sweater my wife got, and realized that all the buttons are backwards from what I’m used to. How strange. I asked her if this was normal, and she told me that yes, this was the convention. Which made me wonder…why? It’s not as if women and men differ in handedness, or are consistently asymmetric in different ways. My first thought was that it was another arbitrary signifier of sex, like the absence of pockets in women’s clothing, only more random and less malicious.

And then Mary sent me a link to this article which assigns purposes to the different arrangement of buttons, and I simply found it galling. Their explanations don’t make sense.

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