All these rape flavors…

So far we’ve had honest rape, legitimate rape, and now forcible beat-up rape. Oh, and let’s not forget forgotten rapes, although everybody else seems to have.

How about if we keep it simple? There’s sex without consent. That’s rape, period. It’s not somehow ameliorated if the target is drunk, unconscious, too young to know better, or if you were so kind as to not beat them up, tie them up, or kill them during the act.

It’s also still rape even if you intimidate the victim into silence, get social collusion to shame the victim, or otherwise suppress the evidence that you did it.

If you force someone to eat shit, it doesn’t matter if you put sugar sprinkles on it, or worse, if you put ground glass on a different piece of shit and try to excuse yourself because you didn’t make them eat that.

Don’t be that guy

There are really bad, dogmatic ways to defend evolution, and every once in a while I run into them. And because I’m a wicked jerk, I criticize the people who do that, even when they announce that they are atheists. So this morning I ran into this nonsense on Twitter:

@DrewJPS ‘Evolved from mokeys’ is theist bollocks. As is ‘Macro/micro evo’. Never been uttered in by scientists. Ever. Ignore.

And with that, mine eyes looked up, and beheld Steven Stanley’s Macroevolution: Pattern and Process on my bookshelf before me, and I did query @DrewJPS.

Damn. So all my books about macro/micro don’t exist?

And I listed a few well known authors who have written books on this topic. Not creationists, but respected scientists and science journalists. And @DrewJPS doubted me.

@DrewJPS .@pzmyers So you’re willing to defend macro/micro evo’? Show me peer-reviewed papers. Not yours.

And therefore did I drop the PubMed bomb upon him. And I waited, expecting retraction and apology, and new learning to dawn in the brain of @DrewJPS. Instead, I got an abrupt change of subject.

@DrewJPS @pzmyers Ok, read it. How, as a a free-thinker, did you get rapped up in this ‘RadFem’ bullshit? Atheismplus is bullshit.

I think I can regard his authoritative contempt for feminism with the same low esteem I hold his opinion on evolution. Bye. Blocked.

Fellow atheists, don’t be that guy. Please. It’s embarrassing.

It just gets funnier. Now his friends are joining in the act.

@Brazen_Thinks
@DrewJPS clearly he’s a creation scientist. No main stream scientist recognises that term. Francis Collins is a theist and rejects that term

@DrewJPS
@Brazen_Thinks Also a witch-hunting twat that will send you to prison with no evidence #AtheismPlus

@DrewJPS
@DFCW It’s an group of ‘RadFem’ that call themselves Altheists. Mental. Not in my name http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheism_Plus …

@DFCW
@DrewJPS militant feminists are really annoying.

Clearly, the only possible reason that I would point out their ignorance of a body of thought about evolution is that I’m an annoying militant feminist.

Let’s all celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. with gunshots!

Is Laura Ingraham the worst person in the world, or what? She had a show to dismiss racism as something in the past, and she featured a clip of Rep. John Lewis speaking…which she interrupted with a gun-shot sound effect. What was she thinking? Here’s the clip:

That’s not all. While denying that millions of black people are oppressed by racism, her guest was flagrant racist Patrick Buchanan…and tell me, does this commentary sound at all familiar to you?

While Ingraham’s gunshot interruption was emotionally destructive, the remainder of her show’s segments on the 50th anniversary events was intellectually destructive. Ingraham complained that speakers at the rally discussed the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, but, "No one talked about the black crime rate at the rally."

Ingraham’s guest Buchanan recently appeared on Fox News to distort black-on-white crime rates and imply that African Americans are an inherently violent race. On the radio, the two bemoaned the idea that, in Buchanan’s words, "white males are the only group … against whom it’s legitimate to discriminate against."

Just a hint to JT: I like you, man, and I think you’ve got great promise…but when you make it easy to draw comparisons with Laura Ingraham and Pat Buchanan, you done screwed up.

I’ve just OD’ed on irony

In yet another article about obsessed harassing fuckwit “elevatorgate”, we get an interesting revelation.

In the Google doc briefly viewed by Mother Jones, elevatorgate wrote that he does not use his real name on social media because doing so could make him a target of harassment.

Yeah, we might storify him or photoshop his face into compromising images or send non-stop email notifications to him — you know, the stuff he does to his targets.

We haven’t had much Kwok ’round these parts in a while

But he has sent me a couple of email missives. Here’s one for your entertainment: he hasn’t changed a bit.

Hey Myers –

Speaking of kooks, you and Laden are poor judges especially since you’ve been busy sliming Michael Shermer who is far more respectable than either of you will ever be. No, I haven’t read either of your lame online attack pieces on me. But these confirm why I have advised certain people and organizations never, ever, to have anything to do with either you or Laden at any future events in which either of you may be a key participant.

I do wish Shermer much success in making you answer finally for your shameless, ridiculous attacks on very credible people which have been part of Pharyngula ever since you started it. Nor am I the only one who thinks so. I’ve been in touch with other, more prominent, people in the secular humanist and atheist movements who are looking forward to seeing you earn your just desserts. Contrary to the claims expressed by yourself and your delusional fans, you have not been a good advocate for public understanding of science, period. Your bizarre behavior towards Sheril Kirshenbaum when she condemned you for allowing a delusional fan to post a threat at Pharyngula to rape and to kill her and Chris Mooney as well as your recent allegation against Shermer are two major reasons why you have never been a good advocate.

Respectfully yours,

John Kwok

P. S. If Greg wants to post a picture of Stuyvesant High School, he’s chosen the wrong edifice. That wasn’t the building I went to high school; instead, it was the former location on E. 15th Street which is featured on the dust jacket of Frank McCourt’s “Teacher Man”.

P. P. S. In lieu of a Leica M7 rangefinder camera, I would prefer you donate an equivalent sum to one of Stuyvesant’s alumni organizations so that current and future students who have interests in pursuing careers in the sciences will have some financial support for their student research.

Stay gold, Jonnyboy, stay gold.

Magic RNA editing!

One of those wacky Intelligent Design creationists (Jonathan McLatchie, an arrogant ignoramus I’ve actually met in Scotland) has a theory, which is his, to get around that obnoxious problem of pseudogenes. Pseudogenes are relics, broken copies of genes that litter the genome, and when you’ve got a gang of ideologues who are morally committed to the idea that every scrap of the genome is designed and functional, they put an obvious crimp in their claims.

So here’s this shattered gene littered with stop codons and with whole exons deleted and gone; how are you gonna call that “functional”, creationist? McLatchie’s solution: declare that it must still be functional, it’s just edited back into functionality. He uses the example of GULOP, a gene responsible for vitamin C synthesis, which is pretty much wrecked in us. Nonfunctional. Missing big bits. Scrambled. With missing regulatory elements, so it isn’t even transcribed. No problem: it’s just edited.

As I mentioned previously, the GULO gene in humans is rendered inactive by multiple stop codons and indel mutations. These prevent the mRNA transcript of the gene from being translated into a functional protein. If the GULO gene really is functional in utero, therefore, presumably it would require that the gene’s mRNA transcript undergo editing so that it can produce a functional protein. It’s not at all difficult to understand how this could occur.

Yes, RNA editing is a real thing. RNA does get processed before it’s translated into protein. McLatchie has a teeny-tiny bit of knowledge and is abusing it flagrantly.

I’ve hammered out dents in a car, and I’ve touched up rust spots with a little steel wool and a can of spray paint. My father was also an auto mechanic and could do wonders with a wrench. Auto repair exists, therefore…

old-wrecked-car-outback-australia-14466708

…patching up that vehicle should be no problem at all, right? I expect to see it cruisin’ down the highway any time now.

Maybe two cans of spray paint this time…?

If Dr. Phil is a fraudulent hack, is it OK to respect his opinions?

No.

This has been a brief example of easy answers to stupid questions. For the longer version, take a look at Dr. Phil’s recent excursion into JAQing off over rape, where he asked if it’s OK to have sex with a drunk girl.

What’s also awful about that notorious tweet is that his twitter history shows what he’s doing: he’s trolling for story ideas for his ghastly little show. If you think that stupid question was bad, just imagine an hour of folksy Dr Phil trying to sympathize with a rapist who uses drugs to remove women’s ability to deny them.

Remember when TV was called a “vast wasteland”? That was in 1961. They hadn’t seen anything yet. If the FCC had seen Dr Phil coming then, they would have shut down all the networks on the spot.

And here I thought all Canadians were nice

The mother of a 13 year old boy with autism discovered this letter from a neighbor.

To the lady living at this address: I also live in this neighbourhood and have a problem!!!! You have a kid that is mentally handicapped and you consciously decided that it would be a good idea to live in a close proximity neighgbourhood like this???? You selfishly put your kid outside everyday and let him be a nothing but a nuisance and a problem to everyone else with that noise polluting whaling he constantly makes!!! That noise he makes when he is outside is DREADFUL!!!!!!!!!! It scares the hell out of my normal children!!!!!!!!! When you feel your idiot kid nees fresh air, take him to our park you dope!!! We have a nature trail!! Let him run around those places and make noise!!!!!! Crying babies, music and even barking dogs are normal sounds in a residential neighborhood!!!!! He is NOT!!!!!!!!!!!! He is a nuisance to everyone and will always be that way!!!!!! Who the hell is going to care for him????????? No employer will hire him, no normal girl is going to marry/love him and you are not going to live forever!! Personally, they should take whatever non retarded body parts he possesses and donate it to science. What the hell else good is he to anyone!!!! You had a retarded kid, deal with it... properly!!!!! What right do you have to do this to hard working people!!!!!!!!! I HATE people like you who believe, just because you have a special needs kid, you are entitled to special treatment!!! GOD!!!! Do everyone in our community huge a favor and MOVE!!!! VAMOSE!!! SCRAM!!!! Move away and get out of this type of neighborhood setting!!! Go live in a tralier in the woods or something with your wild animal kid!!! Nobody wants you living here and they don't have the guts to tell you!!!!! Do the right thing and move or euthanize him!!! Either way, we are ALL better off!!! Sincerely, One pissed off mother!!!!!

To the lady living at this address:

I also live in this neighbourhood and have a problem!!!! You have a kid that is mentally handicapped and you consciously decided that it would be a good idea to live in a close proximity neighbourhood like this???? You selfishly put your kid outside everyday and let him be a nothing but a nuisance and a problem to everyone else with that noise polluting whaling he constantly makes!!! That noise he makes when he is outside is DREADFUL!!!!!!!!!! It scares the hell out of my normal children!!!!!!!!! When you feel your idiot kid needs fresh air, take him to our park you dope!!! We have a nature trail!! Let him run around those places and make noise!!!!!! Crying babies, music and even barking dogs are normal sounds in a residential neighborhood!!!!! He is NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

He is a nuisance to everyone and will always be that way!!!!!! Who the hell is going to care for him????????? No employer will hire him, no normal girl is going to marry/love him and you are not going to live forever!! Personally, they should take whatever non retarded body parts he possesses and donate it to science. What the hell else good is he to anyone!!!! You had a retarded kid, deal with it… properly!!!!! What right do you have to do this to hard working people!!!!!!!!! I HATE people like you who believe, just because you have a special needs kid, you are entitled to special treatment!!! GOD!!!!

Do everyone in our community huge a favor and MOVE!!!! VAMOSE!!! SCRAM!!!! Move away and get out of this type of neighborhood setting!!! Go live in a trailer in the woods or something with your wild animal kid!!! Nobody wants you living here and they don’t have the guts to tell you!!!!!

Do the right thing and move or euthanize him!!! Either way, we are ALL better off!!!

Sincerely,

One pissed off mother!!!!!

Speaking as a scientist here, I’m not at all interested in dismantling young boys for their organs, so I’m going to have to reject that suggestion. However, I do think someone with such a serious case of exclamation point abuse and hatefulness ought to be condemned to live in a small trailer in the wilderness with no other people about, with the Canadian government airdropping occasional packages of supplies (moose meat and poutine? Timbits for dessert? Whatever Canadians eat) so that she can live without the interruptions from other human beings. It’s the only humane thing to do. We’d all be better off.