We told him to do that

Ian Cromwell has some fun with the mythology outsiders have about Freethoughtblogs — did you know it’s a radical feminist hive mind here? I have to say, whenever I see someone talk about “radical feminist” unironically, I have the same frisson of rising ridicule I get when I see them babble about “militant atheist”.

By the way, despite all the furor lately (or because of it), I’m getting a number of requests from people wanting to join Freethoughtblogs, and asking how to do it. It’s not easy, especially right now.

We have a vaguely defined limit on how many blogs we want to take on. I think the major limitation is that right now, Ed Brayton has all the administrative duties, and we don’t want to break him. We’re getting close to what he can handle already.

Up to this point, we’ve been rather casual about it all — the bloggers discuss it, every once in a while someone emerges from those discussions as really good, and we send an invite. It’s worked exceptionally well so far, and I think we’ve got a great collection of people here, but it is going to have a significant failure rate, as we’ve recently discovered. We’re in the process of tightening up our procedure right now. That means we’re a closed shop for a little while, until we’ve resolved everything.

We don’t and won’t have an admissions boss — no one will have unilateral say on who gets in. We have an admissions committee to do preliminary review, but I’m not on it (and I won’t tell you who is), so there’s no point to sucking up to me. Again, it’s a consensus thing.

So don’t ask us, we’ll ask you is really the answer.

Your best strategy: write a really good blog. Write well. Write consistently. Talk about subjects the FtB bloggers are interested in. But of course, if you can do all that, you don’t need to be on FtB.

Also, did I ever tell you that early in my science career I was a surgical assistant, and my main job was carving into animals’ skulls with dental drills and using a stereotaxic to insert probes and cannulae that I’d then fix into place permanently with great globs of dental acrylic? Check our bloggers heads for little lumps of pink plastic with wires dangling out.

Preemptive disclosure

I just had to send a complaint to one of my fellow bloggers here at FtB. And since he likes to post his email publicly, I just thought I’d do it myself and get it out of the way.

Justin:

I looked over the shenanigans on your latest post, “the pits”. I am disgusted and appalled.

You claim to be so knowledgable about this anonymous/4chan “culture”*, but for someone so savvy you are being so thoroughly manipulated that it offends me to see the raging stupidity and naivete.

Do you even realize you have been manipulated into providing a forum on FtB for these jerks to engage in a long, tedious, abysmally contemptible discussion of the appropriateness of kicking your colleague Ophelia “in the cunt”? They don’t care what position anyone takes — they are having a gigglingly good time just dwelling on it. And you’re happily going along with it. You are encouraging it.

Most normal human beings resolved that question in kindergarten. No, you do not get to kick girls or boys in the crotch. No, it’s not debatable. No, we do not need your new friends to chatter for a few hundred comments about whether it’s reasonable or a real threat or just for lulz or whatever pathetic non-excuse they’re giving — it’s wrong. And your response to this prolonged exercise in gaming Justin’s blog?

“Cute. I actually did laugh.”

I’m not impressed. It’s not just that you are indulging these people, it’s that you’re being so stupid — literally, I MEAN STUPID — that you don’t even see how you’re being played.

Jebus. I wash my hands of you.

Maybe you should try cleaning up the mess you’ve created. I’m sure not going to do it for you, and I’m sure not going to regard your efforts charitably otherwise.

*We had these same people back in the olden times, before there were computers and networks, only we didn’t dignify them with the title of “culture”. We just called them assholes.

Pharyngula Podcast #2: The silly things those creationists say

I’ll be starting our second Pharyngula podcast on Google+ in one hour, at 10am Central time. You can look for it on my google+ stream, or wait patiently and I’ll post a link to the Google+ hangout and the youtube live stream somewhere early in the process. So get your webcam and your headset ready if you’d like to join in the conversation about those silly creationist claims.

I’ll also embed the video right here when the recording is all done.

We’ve started. I think these links will work:

The Google+ hangout, if you have a Google+ account.

The YouTube stream, for everyone else.

I think you can leave comments in real time at either place, I’ll try to monitor them and bring up any interesting points people might want to make.

Anybody want to try those and let me know if they’re working? Leave a comment if I need to fix something.

Hey, we sort of got it working. I think the problem was that I have to send invites to a discrete set of individuals, and a lot of people weren’t getting that and couldn’t log in. Next time, we’ll arrange it better ahead of time, and I’ll have a group of 8 or 10 people lined up to participate.

Here’s the video anyway. Ignore the first half hour or so (make that the first 15 minutes — it didn’t take as long as I thought), it’s just me and Russell Glasser floundering as we try to figure out why we’re not making contact.

Pharyngula podcast tomorrow

Remember! Tomorrow (Saturday) at 10am Central I’ll be opening up Google+ and setting up a public chat about those silly creationists. The resulting youtube video will be posted here, if you want to sleep in, or you can watch it streaming live, and even join in.

If you want to talk, come prepared with your favorite creationist foolishness…and also, your refutation of it.

(If you’re reading this shortly after I’ve posted it, you’re awake for it: it will be about this same time tomorrow. Or you can convert US Central time to your time zone.)

The next Pharyngula podcast…

I’m going to try it again. I’m scheduling it for 10am Central time on Saturday, 30 June, in the usual place, Google+. I think that works for a large part of the world; west coasters will have to be up early at 8am, it’s late afternoon/early evening in Europe, and evening for Australia (you can check your time with this Time Zone Converter.)

I’m experimenting with the format still. I’d like to have some regulars confirm that they’ll be available then, so I know we’ll have a core of people to chat, but I’m also going to make it public, so anyone can join in, up to the limit of 10 participants. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a creationist trolling through.

Which would be appropriate. The theme will be “Creationists say the silliest things” — come prepared with your favorite/goofiest creationist arguments, and tear it apart in a few minutes on air.