(via Álfheiður Magnúsdóttir)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Yesterday my father died.
It was a cruel way to die: a stage 4 glioblastoma tumor was pressing on the speech centre of his brain and robbed him of his speech for most of the past year. For a university professor who communicated science passionately this was adding insult to injury. But he generally faced his illness and advancing death with a calmness and acceptance that most would expect from those that know they will be heading off to a better afterlife. And yet he was an atheist from beginning to end.
Clearly, the jokers that have been babbling means that we have to step up a notch to Zombie Clowns.
So did you hear the latest about a presenter at a skeptics’ meeting getting propositioned? Elyse was handed a sexually explicit invitation by a couple of nice strangers to participate in group sex. Guys, don’t do that.
I have a simple suggestion. Think of sex as something two or more friends do; but also keep in mind that most friends don’t have sex together. When you’re at a meeting, plan to make friends promiscuously, but remember: the purpose first and foremost is friendship, not sex partners. And that friendship takes two people interacting, not one setting the expectations and telling the other what’s happening.
Maybe you make friends really quickly, and one evening of conversation is enough to reach mutual agreement and mutual attraction that leads to sex; that’s fine. But you know, playing pick-up artist is not how you become friends. Handing someone a card does not make you friends. Reading someone’s blog does not make you friends. Hearing someone speak at a meeting does not make you friends. Becoming friends takes a lot of work and communication. If you try to take a shortcut past the “making friends” part, don’t be surprised if you find yourself reported for harassment, or your activities outed and shamed on a popular blog.
The first simple guideline is: make sure you’re friends before crossing any borders.
The second simple guideline is, again: you don’t have sex with most of your friends. Sex is not a necessary side effect of friendship.
Be aware of that, and most of these problems will disappear, and everyone will be able to relax around each other a lot more.
They’re doing it again: Ten Bruggencate and Hovind are selling content from atheist interviews, cutting out the parts where they agree to not use it for profit.
The only appropriate response at this point, I think, is to recognize them as frauds and liars, and never participate in anything with them. They call you? Hang up. They stick a microphone in your face at an event? Turn your back on them. Reject them wholesale, and treat them as the dishonest parasites they are.
I’ve been doing the tourist thing this morning, and I bought a hat. I thought it would make me look more like the natives.
Except that it’s warm and sunny, and Icelanders don’t look like madmen. Rats, foiled again.
I grew up in a small village in the country, and so I had the great fortune of being a kid surrounded by nature. I used to play outside everyday and catch frogs and insects – and soon I was completely fascinated by the animals and the plants that lived around me. I took interest in them aided by the lot of books my parents provided me with, and by watching all the documentaries by David Attenborough that aired on the Italian TV (my parents recorded them, so I was never deprived).
So as a child, I knew all about freshwater animals and could identify almost every bird I saw, and though now I’ve forgotten most of those notions – since I later took the Humanities path instead of a scientific one – I guess my self-taught natural history background has played a big part in my actual worldview. The concept of evolution is something I’ve been familiar with since I can remember, I never had trouble accepting it because it made perfectly sense to me, and the evidence for that was just outside the door.
Apparently, I’ve been doing it wrong — I need to demand that you bring me beer.
(Episode CCCXXX: People I’ve talked to.)
The debate on profiling has been going on, and is now published. I think Schneier has rather thoroughly demolished Harris’s arguments. Here’s his wrap-up, if you don’t want to read the whole thing.
The topic of this exchange, and the topic I’ve tried to stick to, is whether it makes sense to implement a two-tiered security system at airports, where "Muslims, or anyone who could conceivably be Muslim" get a higher tier of security and everyone else gets a lower tier. I have concluded that it does not, for the following reasons. One, the only benefit is efficiency. Two, the result is lower security because 1) not all Muslims can be identified by appearance, 2) screeners will make mistakes in implementing whatever profiling system you have in mind, and 3) not all terrorists are Muslim. Three, there are substantial monetary costs in implementing this system, in setting the system up, in administering it across all airports, and in paying for TSA screeners who can implement it. And four, there is an inefficiency in operating the system that isn’t there if screeners treat everyone the same way. Conclusion: airport profiling based on this ethnic and religious characteristic does not make sense.
And while you’ve objected to bits and pieces of this, the only argument you have made for this profiling system is that it’s common sense.
But here’s the real bottom line:
But perhaps most importantly, we should refuse to be terrorized. Terrorism isn’t really a crime against people or property; it’s a crime against our minds. If we are terrorized, then the terrorists win even if their plots fail. If we refuse to be terrorized, then the terrorists lose even if their plots succeed.
The terrorists have won their battles over the last ten years: they’ve got Americans pouring money into showy efforts at security, while convincing everyone to be in terror — when will we all wake up and realize that that’s exactly what terrorists want?
Every time I visit Australia, the inhabitants proudly tell me how every living thing on the continent wants to kill me in horrible, awful ways. Now that I’ve visited Iceland, I can just laugh at them and tell them I’ve visited a place where the earth rises up and tries to kill you in horrible, awful ways. Here’s the first Icelandic word I’ve learned.
