Skepticon success

Some bozo named @RichSandersen on Twitter asserted that

Skepticon att. dropped 1200 to 700. With @PZMyers and @RebeccaWatson there, no wonder people stayed away.

(It’s worth noting that in the twitter thread, DJ Grothe graciously wrote that he’d heard figures of 1600 attendees, and that it was a “great event.”)

Hmm. I was at both Skepticon IV and Skepticon V. @RichSandersen wasn’t. I can tell you that it was a big crowd at both, and the size was a little hard to judge, because this year it moved to a much larger venue, but I had the impression that it was even bigger this year than last — it’s growing steadily.

So I wrote to the organizers and asked them about the attendance figures. Here’s their reply.

Our estimates are 1400-1600 in meatspace. The reason for the variance is that while we know we got a bump in attendance from foot traffic from Meals a Million [a charity convention that was going on next door], but we didn’t have a good metric for tracking them. That said, the live stream was new exciting. We don’t know how many people signed on to it over the course of the event, but during Greta’s talk we had 1,100 people watching. That’s pretty cool.

So @RichSandersen believed that it must have been smaller, since Rebecca Watson and I are so odious, so he decided it was smaller this year, which means that Rebecca Watson and I really are awful horrible people. What a lovely example of confirmation bias!

Since we were going to be responsible if attendance had plummeted, I insist that we now get full credit for the increase in attendance this year. It would only be fair.

Update on the wildlife-torturer

You remember the guy I told you about a couple weeks ago, on the payroll of the USDA’s “Wildlife Services” division, who trapped coyotes, set his dogs on the immobilized coyotes to tear them to shreds, and then posted boastful pictures about it on Facebook and Twitter?

There’s a petition at Causes.com asking Congress to investigate the sadistic jerk, whose name is Jamie P. Olson, and they’re a few thousand signatures from their goal. Update: Some commenters have noted that the causes.com petition requires a Facebook account to sign. At change.org there’s a similar petition you can sign without a Facebook account.

Since I wrote the above-linked post here Olson has gotten some press attention. (No, I’m not claiming credit. A bunch of people have been flogging this.) Perhaps most notably, Olson got a thorough going-over by veteran environmental journalist Tom Knudsen at the Sacramento Bee, who added this observation by one of Olson’s putative colleagues:

Gary Strader, a former Wildlife Services trapper in Nevada, was not surprised to learn about the controversial photos. “That is very common,” Strader wrote in an email. “It always was and always will be controversial. It has never been addressed by the higher-ups. They know it happens on a regular basis.”

Read my old post if you missed it, check out Knudsen’s piece, and then — if you’re so inclined — sign the petition. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t go well past the number of signatures the organizers are hoping for.

It’s time to abort the Catholic Church

Bloody butchers and pious toads who mask their medieval ignorance with a pretense of charity and care; it’s long past time to end the illusion and recognize the barbarism of the church. Shut ’em down.

The latest victim in over a millennium of Catholic abuse is Savita Halappanavar, a young woman who was 17 weeks pregnant when her condition began to deteriorate. She went to a Catholic hospital, a fatal mistake.

…she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

She was clearly miscarrying, she was fully dilated and leaking amniotic fluid, and it was obvious to all, including the doctors at the hospital, that this pregnancy was doomed — there was no hope for the fetus at all. Yet they refused to do the one simple, ethical procedure that would have saved Halappanavar’s life.

Because of a simple-minded, naive, stupid attachment to the magical power of twitching cardiac muscle fibers. Because dogma and superstition stayed their hands.

Because it was a fucking Catholic hospital in a Catholic country.

Because doctors had been indoctrinated since childhood in lies that were shown to be false during their medical training, but which they could not overcome; because hospital administrators put their faith above their obligation to serve patients; because lawmakers in that country shied away from learning how their policies killed women; because a mob of celibate old puppetmasters don’t give a damn about anything other than their theology and will happily sacrifice human beings on the altar of their vile and backward religion.

The end result: a septicemic infection swept through the gaping wound of Halappanavar’s cervix, killing her, after days of agony. The pope and his bishops, and the faithful Catholics in that hospital, killed her as surely as if they’d taken a scalpel to her throat — which would have been a more merciful death than the misery they put her through.

Monsters, every one of them.

Seriously, shut them down. There is no acceptable reason that any hospital in any country should be shackled by the antiquated beliefs of Catholicism. Catholics should no more be permitted to manage hospitals than Jehovah’s Witnesses are permitted to regulate blood transfusions. We are talking about simple, routine procedures that could save lives that are disallowed by a church. What are they doing in the surgery in the first place?

The Catholic bishops have a rationalization.

For those who view life through the lens of their Christian faith, our bodies are sacred; temples of the Holy Spirit, created in the image of God and redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Christians, our bodies are not our own to do with them what we will. Our bodies come from God, are created in God’s image and destined for eternal life with him in heaven. This is our faith and this is what distinguishes us from those who do not share our faith.

Jebus, what blithering tripe, what pious inanities. This is only the latest atrocity. Fuck the Catholic church. Empty every pew, loot every coffer, disband every level of the hierarchy, take all their property and turn it over to secular authorities to be managed ethically and rationally.

And if you’re still attending church…what the hell is wrong with you?

Irony alert

Guess who just “called on Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich”?

Bobby Jindal.

He went on:

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Bobby Jindal. Creationist. The guy who allows state funds to pay to teach children from A Beka Books. That Bobby Jindal — the disaster from Louisiana is complaining about dumbed-down conservatism and insulting the intelligence of the American people.

Does he realize that if the Republican party wised-up and tossed out the anti-intellectual wing, he’d be one of the first up against the wall?

They just weren’t misogynist enough or racist enough to win

I’m feeling so frustrated: I’m buried in work right now (and hey, Skepticon this weekend!), but after the election, it’s a target rich environment for whiny far right conservatives making excuses for their defeat. And I don’t have time to look at them all, let alone savor the schadenfreude. But here’s one that’s got all the sexist and racist tropes Republicans love, and it was on Christian Men’s Defense Network, a blog that is now playing turtle as people point and laugh at it, so you might also try this link if the cached version is gone.

we should have known how the leftists in the media and the Obama campaign (redundant, I know) intended to define the campaign. Because on radio ads, on TV, and on the web, the Democrats tried to make this election about a single issue:

The right to slut.

Or more precisely, the right to slut without the responsibility of consequences. The famous “gender gap” isn’t really a gap based on gender. The right overwhelmingly wins older and married women. The “gender gap” should more accurately be called the slut vote.

I think he just called all the women who voted for Obama “sluts”. Note also how he casually slid in another excuse: the media is all synonymous with the Obama campaign, never mind that Fox News…screw it, we can just end the sentence like that, FOX NEWS, period. Argument refuted. I could also make the case that none of the other networks are exactly liberal.

But wait, this guy isn’t done. It’s not enough to just blame the election on slutty women, he’s also got to make the racist argument.

Contrary to common belief, the primary reason the Democrats own the black vote has nothing to do with civil rights. The Democrats were only partially supportive of civil rights in the 60′s (with southern Democrats advocating “segregation forever”). Lincoln was a Republican, and Republicans in the House and Senate voted for civil rights legislation in the 60s.

Rather, Democrats have won the black vote because the black community is dominated by illegitimacy, and the Democrats are willing to subsidize and support that illegitimacy (as well as provide access to cheap abortions) so as to take away from sluts the consequences of their actions. Consequently, young black people grow up on the dole and not only never realize there might be something wrong with that, but eventually come to believe that’s the way it should be. The Democrats have won the black vote by first “empowering” single black mothers.

Raise your hands if you think the Republicans will learn from their loss and realize that this is an attitude that needs to be repudiated. I predict that in 2016 these losers will be the core of the Republican base, still, and they’ll do little more than try to cloak the more overt expressions of sexism and racism in yet more dog whistles.

Oh, that wasn’t enough demented thuggery for you? Here’s a bracing and NSFW video if you’ve got 20 minutes to spare.

Want more amusement? See Conor Friedersdorf tear into conservative illusions, all promoted by their favorite pundits…who all led their party into the wilderness with bad information.

In conservative fantasy-land, Richard Nixon was a champion of ideological conservatism, tax cuts are the only way to raise revenue, adding neoconservatives to a foreign-policy team reassures American voters, Benghazi was a winning campaign issue, Clint Eastwood’s convention speech was a brilliant triumph, and Obama’s America is a place where black kids can beat up white kids with impunity. Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense — not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there’s no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it’s often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.

On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just
got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.

It ought to be an eye-opening moment.

But I expect that it’ll be quickly forgotten…

Torturing wildlife on the taxpayers’ dime

Bella's babies

Sometimes there just aren’t enough fluffy bunnies in the world.

There’s a U.S. federal agency called “Wildlife Services” that — like many such agencies — has a name about 180 degrees opposed to its actual purpose. Called “Animal Damage Control”  until 1997, Wildlife Services’ job is, bluntly put, to kill or otherwise control wild animals that are perceived as causing problems for humans.

Wildlife Services has a number of different programs, some of them undeniably necessary . The agency coordinates federal wildlife rabies control programs including oral vaccine distribution. It works with airports to deter flocks of geese from flying into jet engines. It plays a role in managing invasive species. Wildlife Services is a division of the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and much of the agency’s mission centers on protecting the interests of American agriculture.

What the agency’s best known for is protecting one specific U.S. agricultural interest — public lands livestock ranchers — from predators. For decades Wildlife Services has worked with ranchers in the American West to kill off predators so that those ranchers’ assets stand a better chance of making it to slaughter. It’s kind of a sweet deal for the ranchers: graze your sheep and cattle on land you don’t own for a dollar and change per head per month and have your competition taken out on the taxpayers’ dime. Never mind that predators can be kept away from most livestock reasonably efficiently by spending a little money, training herd dogs, keeping cattle and sheep together (cattle deter coyotes), or  hiring more herders. That’s out of pocket money for the ranchers. Corporate welfare is just as appealing in Wyoming as it is on Wall Street.

Wildlife Services has taken a lot of criticism for its coyote control methods in the past, including the use of bait stations laced with sodium fluoroacetate, a deadly poison that can inflict significant collateral poisoning on non-target animals if used indiscriminately. Putting a piece of meat out on the range unmonitored, tied to a gun designed to shoot a dose into an animal’s mouth if it tugs on the bait definitely qualifies as indiscriminate, and bait stations intended for coyotes have killed other carnivores from black-footed ferrets to golden eagles.

The agencies has also used leg hold traps and snares to capture coyotes, as well as methods like aerial hunting and use of hunting dogs. All of these are predictably controversial, with sensitive coyote huggers like yours truly taking up positions against and hard-headed pragmatists pointing out that sometimes unpleasant measures are necessary.

I would expect both sides would agree, though, that hiring out the job of coyote control to creepy sadistic assholes is unwarranted. My friends over at Demarcated Landscapes posted yesterday about a Wildlife Services’-employed “wildlife specialist” they’d noticed posting photos of his unorthodox control methods. Those photos are seriously upsetting: the t[disgusting];dr version is that he sets traps for coyotes, then sets his dogs on the immobilized coyotes to rip them to shreds.

[UPDATE: I note that there’s no actual indication that the guy was on the clock with Wildlife Services when he took the photos in question. Still, even if this was “off-duty” recreational torture, hiring him calls Wildlife Services’ screening procedures into question.]

Baby Bunnies

palate cleanser

The Demarcated Landscapes post has apparently stirred up a bit of attention: they’ve been getting hits and image downloads from the USDA office in Fort Collins (which is apparently the “gentleman’s” regional office) including photos this guy has posted to Facebook back to 2010. They cleverly saved screenshots of it all, which is lucky because the guy’s Twitter and Facebook accounts seem to have been closed in the last few hours.

I’m not saying here that it’s uniformly wrong to kill problem coyotes, though Project Coyote has a wide range of excellent resources for people interested in more peaceful methods of coexistence. But if you need to trap a coyote, you’ve got it trapped, you have a gun, and you decide to kill it as a form of one-sided blood sport? I completely agree with Demarcated Landscapes in their summation of the situation:

Please, someone, get this man psychological counseling. Anyone who is entertained or amused by letting his dogs kill a trapped coyote has something very, very wrong with him.

Appallingly enough, this method of killing coyotes seems not to be illegal in much of the west — it’s apparently not even particularly unusual. But on the federal payroll? You can voice your concern, should you be so inclined, to Rod Krischke. Wyoming State Director, Wildlife Services, P.O. Box 59, Casper, WY 82602; (307) 261-5336; rod.f.krischke@aphis.usda.gov.

 

 

Did anyone attend The Paradigm Symposium?

I’m just curious — The Paradigm Symposium was held last weekend in Minneapolis, featuring such remarkable stars of the wacky contingent as Erich von Däniken, Giorgio Tsoukalos, and George Noory. This is the conference I was invited to attend, but didn’t bother.

For such a glitzily publicized event and a large collection of weird “stars”, though, there isn’t much appearing on the web about it. Maybe everyone who attended was sworn to secrecy as they left, or the Men in Black showed up and wiped all their memories.

Anyway, if you were there and would care to submit a guest post, I’d probably put it up here.

I’ve been told that Eve Siebert attended, and also tweeted about it. Surprise, surprise, the speakers didn’t understand evolution.

Stedman being Stedman

Oh, christ, Chris Stedman has an excerpt from his book Faitheist on Salon. It’s classic Stedman, and classic accommodationism: it’s all about Stedman and how awful atheists are. He does a lot of humble bragging — he goes to a party with a bunch of cold, dead-eyed atheists who treat him dismissively, but hey, his socks have holes in them and he’s sad about how rude atheists are! — and he “quotes” a lot of nameless atheists who say unkind things about religion. His message is that atheism is toxic, and you can’t help but feel that it’s all about how they don’t love Chris Stedman and his wise appreciation of the deepitiness of faith enough.

But don’t you worry about Stedman! After his brutal manhandling by the godless zombies of atheism, he just scurries off to his “weekly religion class at Loyola University’s Institute of Pastoral Studies, a Jesuit Catholic-run program for priests, nuns, and lay leaders”, where everyone is loving and tolerant and most importantly, appreciative of Stedman.

It’s something I’ve noticed before in the conflicts between New Atheists and these accommodationists. We’re willing to say that their softer approach is part of the spectrum of tools we need to use to overcome the folly of religion (heck, the UMM Freethinker’s group invited Stedman to speak here last year), and we don’t mind someone with different views working with us towards that, but the accommodationists have a completely different enemy. They consider religion their good buddy and pal, while the real target is…atheism. That shines through in Stedman’s excerpt — everywhere, he makes excuses for religion, while treating atheism as inexcusable.

There’s a reason Stedman gets no respect at atheist parties, and it isn’t his socks.

Larry Moran has got his number, though, and rips into him. Just go read that.

I’m not a believer any longer, but I do believe in respect. The “New Atheism” of Dawkins and Harris is simply toxic.

I’m getting awfully sick of this nonsense. What he really means is that it’s okay to passionately disagree about all kinds of social and political issues (gun control, socialism, capital punishment, quackery, political parties, abortion) but if atheists challenge the existence of god(s) that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Somehow, it’s “disrepectful” to declare that belief in supernatural beings is wrong and it means that intolerant atheists can’t, and won’t, work with anyone who disagrees with them because their position is “toxic.”

As a bonus, read the comments. Lately, I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about why atheists who care about social justice and ethics (like Larry) don’t just become humanists. Larry explains why: he doesn’t find the specific goals of most formulations of humanism to be in alignment with his principles, so he doesn’t identify with them (he sees too much of a libertarian taint to most humanist definitions). In the future, when people pester me with those questions in which they are unable to see any difference between atheists and humanists, I’ll just send them to Sandwalk.

Ian Cromwell has about the same level of respect for Stedman as Moran. Must be the Canadianity.

Ophelia joins in the pigpile! And she’s not even Canadian!

We’ve got a live one here, maybe

Someone calling themselves “averagetruth” has popped in a few times over the last few weeks to dump some garbage in the comments — so far, he or she has just been doing fly-bys, never responding to any arguments, but watch for ’em — the three-comment threshold has been passed and you can tear into these idiot remarks without hesitation. Here’s the latest:

Do you really want the US to sign “treaties” with the UN so that people cannot paint their houses whatever the fuck color they want? Are you aware that globally, temperatures have been *declining* for the past 16 years?

You are aware that entropy will eventually cause all temperatures to drop to a few degrees Kelvin in any case?

One serious faux pas here is that it was posted in the Lounge, which is not a place for argument. Just so averagetruth knows, future attempts to crash the social area will get the comment moved to Thunderdome, a more appropriate area, and if averagetruth can’t learn, we’ll just have to ban the dope.

But I just want to point out that I’ve run across a beautiful visual argument against that claim that temperatures have been declining on Skeptical Science. Just go look at it, it’s devastating to that point (and really, the source is the Daily Mail?)

At least the entropy argument is novel. Hey, averagetruth, you’re going to be inevitably dead in less than a century — does that mean you might as well just curl up and die right now? The heat death of the universe really isn’t a good argument against taking action in the span of the life of a species.