You didn’t want Tom Emmer anyway

You know, Tom Emmer (R-loonytown) was elected from the same district that cursed Minnesota with Michele Bachmann, right? He was a bad choice for the house speaker, but the Republicans nominated him anyway.

He got to bask in the glory of possibly becoming the Speaker of the House, 3rd in line for the presidency, before everyone counted the votes and realized there was no way he could be elected to the position.

So Emmer quit. Goodbye, Tom Emmer. We didn’t have time to complain about you.

It’s OK to be indifferent to the lives of Palestinian civilians

I heard that people were walking out on Dave Chappelle’s comedy shows, and I was not surprised — he has a history of being offensive and expressing contempt for gay and trans people. But then I learned why they were walking out.

During his show at TD Garden on Thursday, Dave Chappelle spoke out about the Israel-Gaza conflict, which spurred a walkout by some of his audience members. According to The Wall Street Journal, the comedian first condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel before slamming Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the United States of “aiding the slaughter of innocent civilians.”

Chappelle’s comments were made after he said that he didn’t think students should lose job offers for being pro-Palestine. An audience member then demanded Chappelle to “shut up,” which elicited an emotional response from the comedian. Chappelle proceeded to bash the Israeli government for cutting off water and other essentials to Gaza and accused it of killing innocent people, according to those in attendance at the Boston show.

A few members of the crowd cheered and shouted “Free Palestine” in support of Chappelle, while others yelled, “What about Hamas,” the attendees said. Some individuals got up and left the show. At the end of his routine, Chappelle reportedly added that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” when speaking about Israeli policies and the Hamas attacks.

But wait, I marveled, I agree with Chappelle in this one case. I think that’s the only humane position to take, to both condemn Hamas and their terror attacks, and to condemn the state of Israel for their hateful history. This does not excuse his other views by any means, but he is not approving of Hamas’ cruelty; he is simply also not approving of Israel’s cruel policies.

Fortunately, I am not a comedian, so I’m safe from ‘cancellation’ (not that Chappelle is cancelled — members of an audience have always had the right to disagree with a comic.) And then I read that a prominent academic has lost his editor position for expecting sympathy for the Palestinian people.

Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.

“I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” Eisen tweeted today.

The furor began on 13 October when Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, praised one of The Onion’s fake news stories on X, formerly Twitter. The story bore the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.” Eisen said “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”

Here’s the tweet that got him fired.

And the “offensive” tweet from The Onion.

And here’s a sampling of the responses.

I agree with Hector Rivera; they’re proving his point. Eisen was not approving of beheading babies, there was absolutely nothing heartless and callous said by Eisen. He was not expressing moral ambiguity, but moral clarity, by expecting that we’d have the same respect for all human life. I guess his big mistake was expecting that people would have some sympathy for all the civilians currently targeted for death by the Israeli military.

Hamas and Israel mark each day of war with new numbers measuring the accumulation of death and destruction. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,000 Gaza residents have been killed so far, including 436 in the past 24 hours, primarily in the enclave’s south, where Israel has told more than 1 million Gazans to seek shelter from air raids in the north. The ministry’s figures, which could not be independently confirmed, are not broken down between civilians and militants.

Palestinian babies don’t count, I presume. I made a quick search of a few sites where the anti-“cancel culture” fanatics hang out, Bari Weiss, Heterodox “University”, Jerry Coyne, FIRE, etc. — ouch, that was painful, I normally avoid that crowd, with good reason — and surprise, surprise: they’re not raising a hullabaloo about the Eisen dismissal. They’re all about hating the right people, so I shouldn’t be surprised at all — hating Palestinians is a fine thing to do now, since, don’t you know, they’re all Hamas.

Look, see all the Hamas terrorists fleeing the righteous wrath of the holy IDF?

If you don’t agree they should all be shot or bombed, you should be ashamed and be fired.

Oh, god, not that

Some of the philosophy students at my university have asked me to participate in a debate, on my campus, with a fellow named Perry Hendricks. I am like putty in my students’ hands, so I tentatively agreed, with the caveat that I’d like to see what proposition would be debated. The students have come back with their “specific” question. It is…

Does God exist?

I was in the middle of a meeting when that email flew across my view, so it was extremely difficult not to groan aloud and facepalm myself. Just too bleh.

My answer is no, of course, and I assume his will be yes. Are we done already?

The meat of any discussion has to be how that question will be answered, and I don’t see any hint of what approach will be taken, or what the epistemology of any answer will be — it’s just way too broad. I know how I’d approach the question, but I suspect we could easily end up talking past each other.

So now what? Do I say the topic is either ridiculously broad or too subjective and say forget it or go back and revise it, or do I just bull my way through the pathetic question, leaving no survivors?

I’m asking you, the readers, what you think I should do. You know what I think of debates, the only thing that persuades me to do this one is that it’s the students and it’s local.

Dread Monday

Every year, my institution has a special set of meetings: the tenured faculty gather together and review our aspiring younger faculty. It’s our one evening of absolute power, in which we have three possible outcomes: 1) OK, we’ll let them linger on another year, 2) we promote them to a tenured position, so they can join us in this exercise next year, or 3) you’re fired, you’ve got one year to clear out your office. I hate it. We take it seriously, which means we have to read all these big tenure & promotion files the week before, and sometimes these meetings go on for hours. And there are two evenings of these meetings!

The first meeting is tonight, the second is tomorrow. At least it’ll be over soon…and I’m sure the faculty we’ll be reviewing will be even more relieved.

On top of that, I’m grading exams. They’re mostly done, except for the grand essay question that I told them would require a couple of pages of discussion, to be graded for grammar and quality. That I will get done today, or die.

I still teach classes and have spiders to take care of! To make it even more fun, I’m getting my COVID vaccination tomorrow. Whee.

Under capitalism, the worst thing you can do to someone is destroy their money

Imagine a million dollars dropping into your lap, all yours free and clear. It’s a nice fantasy. It would soothe a lot of my anxieties for the future, although honestly I don’t see it happening very often. It’s the kind of delusion that drives lottery ticket sales, though.

Now imagine the reverse: suddenly, you’re handed a million dollar debt. That’s a real nightmare, but it’s also a much more common occurrence. One serious health scare, for instance, and your savings are wiped out and you’ve got hospitals dunning you for huge amounts of cash for the rest of your life.

Sorry for the too-real horror moment, everyone, but now imagine a different scenario: the worst people in the world get hit with massive debt — not you, you’re safe, just a few people who deserve the most awful misery. That’s different, there’s a bit of schadenfreude mixed in with a little sympathy for the rat, and a general satisfaction that justice came through for once…but also a weird feeling that they’re going to find a way to worm out of it.

Behold, Alex Jones.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have already ruled that Jones intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the mass shooting, and they have ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion in damages.

Lopez ruled that more than $1.1 billion of those verdicts, awarded for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, cannot be wiped away in bankruptcy. But he ruled that other parts of the verdicts, including $324 million in attorneys’ fees that were awarded as punitive damages in the Connecticut case, could possibly be discharged.

Negative $1.1 billion. That’s a sum that might weigh on one’s mind. Alex Jones deserves it.

Also, Kim Davis. Remember her?

A former Kentucky official facing a $100,000 judgment for refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple could have to pay an additional $260,000 to attorneys who represented the men.

Attorneys who represented a couple in successfully suing Davis for damages have requested a total of $260,084 to cover their fees and expenses.

If a judge approves the request, Davis would owe more than $360,000 as a result of the court case.

It’s only a third of a million dollars, so it’s a bit less extreme than Jones’ case, but it’s still got to burn that her sanctimony has probably erased any savings she might have.

Keep ’em coming. I like to see conspiracy theorists and judgmental Christian bigots getting their comeuppance.

The Halloween Incident of 1993

This is a poor choice of a Halloween costume

Every year around this time, my university beats itself up over something that happened 30 years ago. It’s a well-deserved thrashing, and I hope they keep it up for many years to come. Here’s what happened (taken from the University Register, 10/13/2023).

Members of the wrestling team, dressed in white robes, burned a cross in a field outside of town, as a mock Ku Klux Klan meeting. Members claimed it was a “harmless Halloween prank among friends,” but the community did not see it that way. There was outrage at all ends for the insensitive, reckless, and above all, racist act.

Also relevant:

Several members of the wrestling team drove two black teammates to an off-campus location, where other wrestlers pretended to be white supremacists by putting pillowcases over their heads. One of the black wrestlers ran away and called 911 for help.

I think it’s good to remember this stain on our reputation. I also have to highlight the incredible not-pology of the assistant wrestling coach, Frank Pelegri, who assisted in this travesty.

I have failed to be sensitive to the feelings of those persons outside of the prank who perceive a Halloween prank amongst friends as an act of racism.

That deserves to be enshrined in the ranks of world-class bad apologies. It was an act of racism, through and through.

Pelegri resigned after the incident, so at least there’s that.

The neuroendocrinologists strike back

I keep seeing these naive pop culture simplifications of sex and gender — it’s all about gametes, or Y chromosomes, or hormone titers. It’s all about finding the one magic criterion that defines the unambiguous binary that certain people want. It’s the opposite of good science. You should be looking at the evidence to see that sex is messy and complicated and defies reduction to the state of a single variable.

It’s a relief, then, to look at the actual scientific literature and see that scientists working in the field all pretty much agree — it’s not a simple binary. So here’s an article by real, genuine, qualified neuroendocrinologists declaring that they’re fed up with the notion of a simple binary. It’s titled Deconstructing sex: Strategies for undoing binary thinking in neuroendocrinology and behavior by Massa, Aghi, and Hill. It’s also behind a paywall, goddamn it, but at least I have access. Here’s the introduction, which is pretty strong.

Neuroendocrinologists have long known that “sex” is a specious category. Much of our research relies on identifying mechanisms that produce differences in brain morphologies and behaviors, including how factors like hormones, chromosomes, and life experiences differences across “the sexes.” This work makes evident that “sex” is not a biologically coherent concept (Karkazis, 2019; Roughgarden, 2013) but is instead a constructed category reliant on several biological criteria that do not always align (Ainsworth, 2015). However, research across the biomedical sciences regularly treats “sex” as a single, internally consistent variable. And even while recognizing that “sex” is multifaceted and dynamic, even neuroendocrinologists often collapse the multiplicity (Karkazis, 2019) by selecting a single trait to sort research subjects and specimens into sex categories – a practice that obscures relevant physiologies and precludes the possibility of more specific (and more accurate) analyses.

While its shortcomings are well-established, “sex” remains deeply entrenched in our field. Scientists seeking to adopt more nuanced frameworks must contend with the limitations of existing resources, methods, and practices, much of which rely on binary (or otherwise simplistic) sex categorization. To encourage support for this paradigm shift, we first delineate how reliance on gross “sex” categories damages scientific knowledge and leads to harm of marginalized communities. We then examine how current policies may exacerbate these problems before providing reflective questions to help scientists critically examine the use of “sex” across the scientific enterprise. These questions, supported by a litany of neuroendocrine research, encourage researchers to conceptualize and study sexed physiologies as multiple, interacting, and variable. Furthermore, as an extension of discussions held during the SBN 2022 Symposium on Hormones and Trans Health, our guidance challenges researchers to break free of gendered preconceptions and conduct research which centers the impact, direct or indirect, on marginalized groups. We believe this critical reflection and scientific reorientation is vital to improve our science, widen the applicability of our findings, and deter the (mis)use of our research against marginalized groups.

This is what I’ve been saying all along, so obviously I agree with it. The authors go on to point out that sex is a multi-dimension category, not a simple variable.

“Sex” is a constructed category, not a biological variable – and our science should reflect that. Deconstructing “sex” and moving away from reductive approaches requires immediate local changes to experimental design and methodology as well as a deeper understanding of social influences on and of the scientific enterprise (purple and green, respectively, in Fig. 1). What follows are guiding questions we offer to facilitate this much-needed shift. We hope that thinking through these questions will impact how science is conducted – whether that means using specific relevant physiologies to determine sex category; moving to a multivariate, interacting, and continuous conceptualization of sexed variables; or moving past sex categories all together – and lead to a more comprehensive, accurate, and responsible scientific enterprise.

I have to say, though, that I’m not a fan of those kinds of meaningless diagrams. I’ll let it slide out of appreciation for the context.