I would not last a day in prison

If you want to see what the capitalist ideal for America is, just look at our for-profit prisons. They exploit prisoners ruthlessly.

Last year, West Virginia contracted with a company, Global Tel Link (GTL), to provide free tablets to prisoners. These kinds of initiatives are rapidly becoming more popular, as states grapple with the legacy of four decades of tough-on-crime policies and renewed public calls for more rehabilitative prisons.

And it sounds great. Until inmates realize the company charges users every time they use the tablets, including 25 cents a page for emails and 3 cents a minute to read e-books. By that calculation, most inmates would end up paying about $15 for each novel or autobiography they attempt to read. To people who have little to no money, that’s not a benefit. That’s exploitation. The only beneficiary, aside from Global Tel Link, is West Virginia, which receives 5% of the profits.

I imagine some team of piggy middle-managers in a corporation that realizes they’ve got the capitalist ideal: captive customers who have to buy what you’re selling, in an environment where competition is not allowed, and they get to charge whatever they want for whatever service they offer. They go hog wild. Let’s charge them for reading! After a trivial investment to pay the ridiculous demands of authors and publishers for royalties, the greedy bastards, we can demand a reasonable recompense for allowing them to view a book.

What else can we charge them for? How about taking the Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness and cranking it up to 11?

Many prisons now ban in-person visits, then allow companies to charge $12.99 or more for video calls. Prison phone calls can cost up to $3.99 a minute. Prison shoes fall apart within weeks, and replacements are only available from a special catalog. Only sweatshirts are provided for the winter. Meals are nutritionally insufficient and, over time, must be supplemented to maintain good health.

All these necessities — shoes, jackets, phone calls, canned tuna from the commissary — rack up fees well above the market rate on the outside. But they often aren’t paid for by prisoners, who have little or no means to earn income. They are paid primarily by families who are often among our poorest. This hidden tax drives already vulnerable communities deeper into poverty and hopelessness.

Oh, yeah, let’s punish people by depriving them of their liberty and gouging every penny we can out of their families, and disincentivize that absurd idea of “rehabilitation”. Prison serves the leeches.

This company, Global Tel Link, calls itself the “Corrections Innovations Leader”. Their only innovations, though, involve coming up with new ways to suck profits out of the pockets of those on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. They see a poor person, they see someone they’ll have power over to steal their last dollar. This is their lying mission statement.

At GTL, our mission is to create impactful connections and provide industry-leading service. We give incarcerated individuals the ability to stay engaged with their support networks by making meaningful connections through our products and services.

If you work for GTL, I hope you are deeply ashamed. If you work for GTL, you’re probably not…because you have to lack a conscience to work for that soul-sucking evil company.

They really, really, really want to use racist slurs

Dennis Prager is upset that he “isn’t allowed” to use the n-word.

He’s wrong, though. There is no n-word police, anyone can use the term any time they want, there isn’t a gang of leftists waiting to kneecap you for saying those two syllables. Go ahead, say it, Dennis!

The only consequence is that it confirms you’re a racist. But then, wanting to say it is sufficient to affirm that, so mission accomplished, Dennis Prager.

Anyway, it’s just the strangest thing to desire.

Look what I’ve got…

Adam Rutherford, lovely gentleman that he is, sent me a review copy ahead of its release date in the US, so I’ve got a head start. It’s looking good so far, although I’m so overwhelmed with work this week I might be a little slow getting through it — I’m the biology coordinator this year, and we’re managing a faculty search this week — but once I’m done, I’ll post a more thorough review.

If you’d like to pre-order it and send a message to publishers that you value this kind of quality science content in contrast to the deluge of racist dreck we usually get, click on the book cover below.

Quite possibly the worst insult ever delivered

That poor woman. Heidi Klum was savagely abused.

Klum told us, “A lot of people got mad at me. I was called, for example, ‘a white woman.’”

I am reeling in shock. How dare anyone slander her by accusing her of have a light-skinned ancestry and certain female attributes. It’s cruel and vicious, possibly the worst thing you can ever say about anyone.

Except…she was at least spared the ignominy of being called a “white man”. Those guys are the worst. I may be one, but it would be mean to remind me of it.

Did this cruel, elaborate prank go too far?

Amazing. A couple of young men set up Katie Hopkins, going to extreme lengths to get her to accept a bogus award — flying her to Prague, booking a fancy hotel, hiring actors to play members of a committee — an award called the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, and she fell for it. I might fall for such a prank if someone were to pay me to travel, of course, but she was totally thrilled with the award. I was starting to feel sorry for her.

Then she gave her acceptance speech.

Ohmygod.

She deserves every scrap of mockery she gets.

Everyone needs more training to deal with racists

Adam Rutherford is coming out with a new and timely book, How to Argue with a Racist, expected here in the US in early February. I’ve already pre-ordered a copy, and if you’re interested, you can get a taste of the story in The Guardian.

In the 19th century, Darwin’s half-cousin Francis Galton and others tightened their scientific arguments for race though, as Darwin noted, no one could agree on how many races there actually were, the range being between one and 63. Galton was an amazing scientist, and a stunning racist. The most delicious irony about him is that the field he effectively established – human genetics – is the branch of science that has demonstrated unequivocally that race is not biologically meaningful. Modern genetics clearly shows that the way we colloquially define race does not align with the biology that underpins human variation. Instead, race is a cultural taxonomy – a social construct. This doesn’t mean it is invalid or unimportant, nor does it mean that race does not exist. Humans are social animals, and the way we perceive each other is of paramount importance. Race exists because we perceive it.

That’s one message I wish I could get across to all the so-called “scientific” racists. The consensus of real, honest science is that the artificial categories people assign to races don’t exist as biological phenomena. You only find it in the pages of racist ideologues like Charles Murray or hothouse niches on the internet for dishonest cranks like Steve Sailer. Or right-wing think-tanks. Or misinformed YouTubers who got millions of views by parroting bigotry.

I think this book ought to be required reading for journalists and other media spokespeople who seem to be responding to the rise of racism among people with power with nothing but rank credulity and reporting that just echoes the biases without criticism. Maybe the Democratic presidential nominee, whoever it might be, ought to read it to be prepared for debates with our racist president.

A dignified white Christian

Check out these tweets from a resident of Kent, Washington, where I grew up.

One of Kayryakoff’s tweets called Mexicans one of the “ridiculous immature vile cruel and extremely evil cultures that need to be genocided!”

Another called Mormonism “an illegally recognized religion that is covertly operating for the Muslim nation.”

“Jews dont belong in Christian countries what do they not understand?” read one tweet. “I only associate with dignified Christian people & more so focus on white Christian people We are the success in the world!” she tweeted on another occasion.

Would you believe she was a first grade teacher? Would you believe she got her job despite having two misdemeanor battery convictions on her record? That she terrorized her students? OK, I know all my fellow Washingtonians will be unsurprised by one fact: she’s a California transplant.

But get this: she wasn’t fired. She was shuffled out of her school, she was demoted to being a PE teacher (those were always the worst), and reassigned to a different elementary school. She also shut down her Twitter account; maybe she’s on Gab now?

WWII was comprehensible as adaptations of the lineages in question. Christ.

I guess Richard Dawkins has limits on where he’ll allow the Intellectual Dork Web to take him. This is a conversation between Dawkins and Bret Weinstein, from a Pangburn debate a few years ago, where Weinstein rambles insanely about World War II as an exercise in population genetics, as if “German”, “Jew”, and “Russian” are distinct, non-overlapping sets of alleles marching off to replace each other.

…you had the Fatherland effectively raping Mother Russia … what this was was a lineage level phenomenon in which a population [Germans] went after two other populations [Jews and Russians] …understood from the perspective of German genes, vile as these behaviors were, they were completely comprehensible from the level of fitness.

That is nuts. “German genes”…what “German genes” acquired an advantage by murdering their neighbors? This is extreme reductionism assembled on a framework of simplistic and false assumptions. It is embarrassing that a biologist would flaunt his ass this nakedly.

One good thing about it is that at least Richard Dawkins demonstrates some good sense. He looks very uncomfortable during Weinstein’s monolog, and manages to utter a hesitant, mild rebuke of the former Evergreen College professor.

I think nationalism might be an even greater evil than religion. And I’m not sure that it’s actually very helpful to talk about it in Darwinian terms.

It was a net gain for Evergreen to get rid of that guy.

The creationist Paul Nelson reviewed the debate, and sad to say, chose to chide Dawkins for being insufficiently Darwinian…because Nelson seems to share with Weinstein a cartoonish version of evolution. Good work, Weinstein, you’ve got the Discovery Institute on your side.

Now I’m physically incapable of seeing Richard Jewell, because of all the projectile vomiting

Never forget.

Richard Jewell was a security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympics, who discovered pipe bombs that had been planted on the grounds. They were disarmed, he was hailed as a hero, and then people became suspicious and wondered if he had put them there, to win attention. He was later cleared of the accusation.

He is now the subject of a Clint Eastwood movie, with the tagline, “A hero’s life is shattered by one massive, misplaced rush to judgement when the man who thwarted the 1996 Atlanta bombing was wrongly accused as the main suspect.” It’s a pretty good summary. I have no interest in seeing the movie, however, given Eastwood’s political bias.

Do you have a bucket nearby? You might want to be prepared.

American Patriot has put up a review of the movie. Given AmPat’s reputation, you might expect it to be jingoistic and stupid, and you’d be right.

Don’t rush to click on the link, though. There’s one more detail that you need to brace yourself for.

The review is written by…George Zimmerman. You know, the guy who murdered Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black kid who went to the store to buy candy and was then tracked and shot by vigilante Zimmerman.

You will not be surprised to learn that Zimmerman loved Richard Jewell, because he identifies with Jewell.

This movie hit home. I absolutely identified. Richard and I were both cop wannabes — or so the media told us. We were both gullible. We both believed law enforcement had our best interests at heart. We both believed reporters wanted the truth. We both believed everyone was basically good and then we both realized what fools we had been to believe all that.

As I sat there in the dark, my stomach in knots, I found myself wishing Richard was still alive so I could reach out and hug him and tell him, “Yes, Richard, you are a hero.”

Aww, poor George. He identifies with a guy who was falsely accused, because he thinks he was falsely accused. Unfortunately, the facts are that Jewell didn’t kill anyone, and in fact saved lives, while Zimmerman literally and accurately shot a young black boy (this is not in dispute) for being in his neighborhood; he was acquitted, thanks to Florida’s unjust “stand your ground” law. He has since sued the Martin family for $100 million, been arrested multiple times for domestic violence and disorderly conduct, and has tried to raise money by auctioning off the murder weapon.

He is no Richard Jewell.

I’d say shame on American Patriot for publishing that self-serving drivel, but AmPat has no shame.

The comprehensive summary of the implosion of RWA

I am impressed with this detailed dissection of the recent collapse of the Romance Writers of America. Not only does it cover all the bases, it reveals a lot of the blatant racism in this country. One thing that surprised me is that the RWA was founded by a black woman, yet there were all these policies put in place that made sure black authors were handicapped in the struggle to succeed. Like this:

This discovery grew into a widespread Twitter discussion about the important institutional role that Grimshaw had played as the romance buyer for Borders, at a time when Borders commonly shelved all African American authors in a separate section together, away from specific genres, like romance. It raised questions about how she’d made her decisions in such an important gatekeeping role, and whether she had given African American writers a fair shot at prominent placement. (Though, to be clear, the policy was the case across Borders—not just in romance.) Milan weighed in, but she was far from the only participant.

Wait, what? Black authors were segregated in bookstores? This is very white of me to admit, but I didn’t have the slightest idea, yet for years they had this discriminatory policy in place. Were they afraid some delicate white lady might accidentally buy a novel that had two black people falling in love? Let’s not even discuss the possibility that she might pick up something with queer characters in it.

These are practices that I would have thought a writer’s organization would have been at the forefront of challenging, but no, they just simmered for decades because they had an unwritten policy of only saying nice things about romance books. They refused to recognize the conflicts, suppressed all complaints, kept everything tightly bound up, until there was no other option but a messy, damaging cataclysm that has all but destroyed the organization.

There’s a lesson there for all of us, even if you aren’t a romance novel fan.