It was a good week to go offline

I’ve had my head in the sand for the last week, so pardon me for arriving late to the recriminations following the violence in Newtown, Connecticut last week. Like everyone, I’m wondering why it happened, and looking for answers: unfortunately, the only people providing answers of absolute certainty are the deranged reactionaries of the far right, who are lining up at the media microphone to babble their rationales. Most seem to involve a neglectful god who is teaching us a lesson.

James Dobson: We elected the wrong presidetn and allow abortion, so: “I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”

William J. Murray: “Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.”

Gary DeMar: “The problem is, our current culture – through the educational system – is telling young people that they are animals, in some cases, less than animals. So genetically we are no different (really) from a worm, a bug, or a dandelion.”

Mike Huckabee: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Bryan Fischer: “I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted; I am a gentleman.'”

On the less ardently god-walloping side of the right wing, though, they’re offering secular solutions. Mad, dangerous, unworkable solutions.

Louie Gohmert: “I wish to God she [the principal] had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids”

Ann Coulter: Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws.”

Megan McArdle: “I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. “

Those are all awful and ridiculous ideas. But the very worst is this anonymous poem making the rounds of facebook. WARNING: dangerous levels of treacle and stupidity! Have a vomit bag handy!

Wait. This is so bad, I better put it below the fold, just to be safe.

[Read more…]

At a loss for an appropriately angry title

machopaw

I wrote here about the accidental 2009 capture and subsequent euthanasia of Macho B, an aging male jaguar who’d wandered across the U.S. border into southern Arizona.

Last week, in a really rather remarkable bit of investigative journalism, Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic reported that Macho B’s capture may not have been precisely accidental:

Although Game and Fish officials claimed Macho B’s capture was accidental, [Biologist Emil] McCain actually set the snare along a favored trail and baited it with scat from a female jaguar in heat. Then he flew to Europe to visit his girlfriend, leaving Smith and another Game and Fish employee to check the traps.

Macho B was caught on Feb. 18, 2009. Smith promptly shared the news with Ron Thompson, the Game and Fish administrator overseeing carnivores, who fired an e-mail to McCain in Spain, announcing: “Thorry did it!” [Thornton “Thorry” Smith, McCain’s colleague]

As word spread, congratulatory messages contained a hint of conspiracy. McCain received one e-mail from a co-worker who wrote, “And just think, he was an ‘incidental’ take. The hell with politics.”

The answer: “Yes, it was incidental, and you know that. Right? I had nothing to do with this right? And neither did Ron.”

Thompson then issued a warning about indiscreet messages: “Emil, be aware that we cannot use the government email to communicate with you. Sky Island (Alliance) is calling it a conspiracy, and for the first time they are right!”

For those of you not conversant in Endangered Species Act jargon, “take” is defined in that act as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect [a listed species], or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” An incidental take is a take that’s not deliberate, but rather a side effect of some other activity.For instance, accidentally capturing a jaguar in a snare you’ve set for pumas.

Which means, if Wagner’s report is accurate, that AZ Game and Fish employees and contractors tried to pass off a deliberate take as an incidental take. In other words, fraudulent violation of Federal environmental law.

Why? Wagner has an idea:

The ability to track a jaguar known as Macho B would make the state agency and its contractors clear favorites to win a multimillion-dollar research grant. It would bring prestige to scientists and administrators involved. And it might provide valuable information about the border travels and habitat of an endangered species.

The last three years have been a festival of conflicting stories and fingerpointing. McCain was convited of violating the Endangered Species Act and given five years probation, during which time he’s not allowed to study big cats in the US. So he’s doing so in the Eastern Hemisphere. Biologist Janay Brun, who had acted as McCain’s assistant, agreed to a plea bargain and is writing a book.

Here’s what that “incidental” take did to an aging cat:

[S]ometime on Feb. 18, 2009, an aged feline known as Macho B stepped on the tripping mechanism with his left front paw. No one witnessed what happened next. Based on injuries and evidence at the scene, however, there is little doubt that the creature’s escape efforts were panicked and prolonged.

One of the jaguar’s legs was cut and severely swollen. A canine tooth was broken off at the root. Claw fragments, hair and fluids were recovered from the tree trunk. A javelina tooth was inexplicably stuck in the jaguar’s tail.

Brun has described the cat’s struggles in an online interview, based on her visit to the site afterward. “Macho B fought,” she said. “I don’t know how long he fought, but he was climbing this tree, clawing the tree, biting the tree, banging himself against (a boulder). He fought and used probably every last ounce of strength he had. … It just absolutely killed him.”

Macho B was tranked, collared, and released, and recaptured two weeks later when his transmitter stopped moving. Despite being gravely ill, with a septic hind leg that was hugely swollen, it took some doing to get him back in custody.  He was euthanized for kidney failure shortly after recapture.

Wagner details further dissembling, both before and after Macho B’s death, by both Game and Fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service staff. It’s a difficult read, but Macho B deserves no less.

STOP DISTRACTING ME, PHARYNGULA!

Oh, yuck. I just looked at the site (haven’t had much time to do that lately), and we’re carrying ads for “Concealed Carry” magazine. A whole magazine, dedicated to people who are obsessed with carrying deadly weapons in public, and whose promoters have put up a general ad buy for any site that has discussions about gun control. Like this one.

Just the fact that such a rag exists and that it has people who buy it says a lot about one of the things wrong with America.

Jeez, I got work to do. I shouldn’t ever look at a site like Pharyngula that works me up into a lathering fury.

And so as not to pollute the previous post with Michelle Malkin

… because I didn’t want to have to use the “Fuckbrained assholes” tag on the last post.

This is how Michelle Malkin started a screed six months ago against public school teachers in Wisconsin:

They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms.

We all use metaphors that turn out in retrospect to have been distasteful.

But this was beyond the pale even before Sandy Hook.  Malkin needs to apologize for this, and she needs to do it now.

Welp, I’m all convinced and stuff now

The ongoing dispute about sexism in the secular community has been settled at last by one incredibly insightful post.

Atheism is a ‘guy thing,’ I would say, like needlepoint is a ‘girl thing.’

We don’t have to consider why the sexes fall (or are pushed) into these particular roles; they just are. And with that simple argument, we’re done. By golly, we ought to make the guy who said it some kind of leader of the atheist movement. We wouldn’t want to have him wasting his time on things like needlepoint, you know.

Jeez, Harding, ease up on the equivocating, OK?

Jezebel justifies its existence every now and then, and today is one of those days. The publication is celebrating a first instance of what will likely become a hallowed tradition, and it starts off with a post by Kate Harding wwith the people-pleasing title Fuck You, Men’s Rights Activists. I really hate when my militant friends start to pull their punches. You know?

Excerpt, with emphasis added for local interest:

 

So fuck you, MRAs. Fuck you for showing up every time women speak, especially about rape and abuse, and trying to make it all about you. Fuck you for derailing threads about the victims of Marc Lépine, a man who screamed about his hatred for feminists as he murdered fourteen women and injured many others, because you also hate feminists and want a fucking cookie for not killing anyone. Fuck you for making rape and death threats against young women who dared to protest a speaking engagement by a man who thinks little girls would enjoy being raped by their fathers if it weren’t for society telling them it’s dirty. Fuck you for whining about how unfair it is that women might wonder if you’re a rapist when you approach them out of nowhere, while completely ignoring how unfair it is that women feel the need to be on guard all the time in public. Or that if we relax and behave normally—drinking, dancing, dressing however we want—you will be the first motherfuckers in line to blame us for getting ourselves raped.

Oh, no, I’ve been exposed!

This video is going around twitter among the usual suspects right now. It’s by Reap Paden, and it’s about how I’m not a feminist. Well, it’s also about “hypocrisy…and a dream”, but it never gets around to showing either. And while it’s by a known idiot, it really is just clips of me and Rebecca Watson at Skepticon 3, with titles that say more about Paden than either of us.

Hmmm. You could argue that I’m a bad comedian, but there’s nothing anti-feminist in any of those clips…that is, unless you think that humor and joking about sex are somehow incompatible with feminism.

It gets worse, though, and Paden left it out — I did have that woman come up on stage so I could have sex with her. Of course, it was in a talk about sex and genetics, where I used a deck of cards to illustrate recombination, so it was a little less provocative than you might think — we swapped cards for a bit. Lasciviously.

And the clip with Rebecca is a bit that John the Other didn’t understand, either — it was Rebecca yanking JT’s chain, and the handler she was “abusing” was in on the joke from day one.

It’s revealing when this is the worst dirt he can dig up on us, isn’t it?

A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies^W^W^W Dalkey Archive Press

Because we here at Pharyngula care deeply about you our readers and commenters, and because we like to share possible rewarding opportunities for professional advancement when we find them, I submit this really rather enticing notice of available positions with the London office of Dalkey Archive Press.

What is Dalkey Archive Press, with additional offices in Dublin and Champaign Banana, Illinois? According to founder John O’Brien,  it’s a subversive organization that publishes books:

 

Several years ago someone in an interview tried to get from me a one-word description for the kinds of books we publish… I finally said that the correct word was “subversive,” which is still the word I would use, though I know it’s rather useless in terms of trying to pigeonhole what it is we publish. My point was that the books, in some way or another, upset the apple cart, that they work against what is expected, that they in some way challenge received notions, whether those are literary, social or political.

 

And as you might expect, the jobs Dalkey Archive has available are also quite subversive in character. For instance, the Archive seems to intend to subvert the notion of wage slavery:

 

The pool of candidates for positions will be primarily derived from unpaid interns in the first phase of this process, although one or two people may be appointed with short-term paid contracts.

 

If an applicant is lucky enough to land one of these positions, they can expect to be challenged by deliberate subversion of any hewing to the patriarchal family model or bourgeois personal success fantasies:

 

The Press is looking for promising candidates with an appropriate background who… do not have any other commitments (personal or professional) that will interfere with their work at the Press (family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.)

 

Aw, hell. When you come right down to it, the whole notion of individuality is really a decadent petit-bourgeois fetish. Same with the dignity of labor. We’d better subvert those too:

 

Any of the following will be grounds for immediate dismissal during the probationary period: coming in late or leaving early without prior permission; being unavailable at night or on the weekends; failing to meet any goals; giving unsolicited advice about how to run things; taking personal phone calls during work hours; gossiping; misusing company property, including surfing the internet while at work; submission of poorly written materials; creating an atmosphere of complaint or argument; failing to respond to emails in a timely way; not showing an interest in other aspects of publishing beyond editorial; making repeated mistakes; violating company policies. DO NOT APPLY if you have a work history containing any of the above.

 

Bold emphasis added.

Oh, and speaking of delights that surpasseth understanding, here’s the first “job” listed:

 

Personal Assistant to the Publisher, part of which will be to learn how to raise funds for the Press, travel with the Publisher to other countries when necessary, meet all key authors the Press publishes, learn the history of the Press and its culture, work closely with all of those the Publisher must work with, be a liaison between the Publisher and other staff, know what the Publisher needs or wants before he does; in brief, do whatever the publisher needs done so that he can concentrate on major projects that this person will also be involved in; this is best suited for a younger person who wants to learn publishing directly from a founder

 

To be honest, as good as all the above sounds, I’ve worked in a different end of publishing for 20 years or so, and based on that experience there are a few other avenues to success in the publishing world that I suspect might be more pleasant and effective. Diving into a tank of electric eels, for instance, or gouging your eyes out with a garden trowel. Your mileage may vary.

Sadly, my work history contains three decades of providing my employers with unsolicited advice regarding how I think they should run things. Between that and my resolution not to seek employment with pathologically shit-headed, psychologically abusive tinpot office dictators with delusions of relevance, I suspect I don’t meet the Dalkey Archive’s HR standards.

Still, I think I may apply. I do have some excellent references that might make up for my admitted deficiencies. For instance, here’s a character reference from John Scalzi:

 

A metaobservation on misogyny

I know this fact hasn’t escaped most of the regulars here, but I just thought I’d note it formally.

1) PZ posts a remembrance of the 14 women killed and 10 injured by the misogynistic murderer responsible for the École Polytechnique massacre that took place 23 years ago today, and points out that the hatred that motivated the murderer is still all too common.

2) 12 comments in, the thread becomes about whether the particular rhetorical trope PZ used to point out the continued existence of misogyny was fair to misogynists, and is no longer about remembering the massacre victims.

There was a briefly popular bon mot that went around a few months back along the lines of “Every online discussion of feminism proves the necessity of feminism.”  Add this to the pile.

In June I put together a hastily designed infographic and posted it to Facebook, where it has since gotten redistributed. It’s about the best, concisest way I can think of to convey how I feel about people one thread over complaining that PZ is being MEEEEEEN.

It’s worth noting that when I first posted it in June I spent the next couple days arguing with people quibbling — not over the facts represented, but whether I was trying to imply that being a woman in a relationship with a man was more dangerous than being a soldier. Or similar diversionary arguments. (No one objected to the design, which I sure as hell wish I’d thought through more clearly. But it’s escaped into the wild now, so oh well.)

Odd are that every one of those 11,766 women murdered — and of course that number has grown since June — was killed by someone who heard, and incorporated, anti-woman talk pretty much identical to the crap whose expression is being defended one thread down as “not the same as killing women.”

Yeah, you’re right: hate speech against individual women based on their gender isn’t the same as being a mass murderer. But it feeds those who commit the murders. And when you post online, or shoot the misogynistic shit in a bar, or complain “all in fun” among friends, they are listening to you, and deciding that you’ve got their backs.

And when you essentially march into a memorial service to complain about that fact, you’re saying the victims aren’t as important as your right to deny the consequences of your actions.

Never forget

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.

The killer, 25-year-old Marc Lépine, was armed with a legally obtained Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife: he had earlier told a shopkeeper he was going after "small game". Lépine had previously been denied admission to the École Polytechnique and had been upset, it later transpired, about women working in positions traditionally occupied by men. Before he opened fire, Lépine shouted: "You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!" One student, Nathalie Provost, protested: "I’m not feminist, I have never fought against men." Lépine shot her anyway.

The gunman then moved through the college corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. By the time Lépine turned the gun on himself, 14 women were dead and another 10 were injured. Four men were hurt unintentionally in the crossfire.

I remember following the events of that day intently, horrified that there are people who will kill women simply because they are women. And these anonymous monsters on the internet who shriek affrontedly about women and feminists and moan that any feminist allies are ‘manginas’ — to me, every one of them has the name Marc Lépine, and is just hiding it in shame and fear and hatred and cowardice.

Since it was mentioned in the comments, here are the names of the murdered women:

Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student