Harris’s devious rhetoric dissected

Uh-oh. Brace yourself for waves of outrage and rationalizations from Sam Harris and his fan boys. Eli Massey and Nathan Robinson tackle Sam Harris, and oy, it is not gentle. One quick sample:

Each time Harris said something about Islam that created outrage, he had a defense prepared. When he wondered why anybody would want any more “fucking Muslims,” he was merely playing “Devil’s advocate.” When he said that airport security should profile “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it,” he was simply demanding acknowledgment that a 22-year old Syrian man was objectively more likely to engage in terrorism than a 90-year-old Iowan grandmother. (Harris also said that he wasn’t advocating that only Muslims should be profiled, and that people with his own demographic characteristics should also be given extra scrutiny.) And when he suggested that if an avowedly suicidal Islamist government achieved long-range nuclear weapons capability, “the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own,” he was simply referring to a hypothetical situation and not in any way suggesting nuking the cities of actually-existing Muslims.[6]

It’s not necessary to use “Islamophobia” or the r-word in order to conclude that Harris was doing something both disturbing and irrational here. As James Croft of Patheos noted, Harris would follow a common pattern when talking about Islam: (1) Say something that sounds deeply extreme and bigoted. (2) Carefully build in a qualification that makes it possible to deny that the statement is literally bigoted. (3) When audiences react with predictable horror, point to the qualification in order to insist the audience must be stupid and irrational. How can you be upset with him for merely playing Devil’s Advocate? How can you be upset with him for advocating profiling, when he also said that he himself should be profiled? How can you object, unless your “tolerance” is downright pathological, to the idea that it would be legitimate to destroy a country that was bent on destroying yours?

Yeah, that’s the man. He is incapable of speaking plainly because he knows his ideas are patently ugly, so he’s got to wrap them up in layers of plausible denial. I’ve just given up on him, because wading through glop to get to the heart of his arguments, which he’ll always deny, just isn’t worth it anymore.

If only he could show the slightest glimmering of change and growth in response to criticisms…but no, instead he has a cuddle-party with his fellow right-leaning dickheads to reassure each other they’re right and everyone else is a big meanie.

I am not a juror today

Welp, that was an exercise that was both instructive and a total waste of time.

I showed up at the courthouse at the appointed time, with about 40 other people. The jury assistant had us surrender everything — phones, tablets, books, papers, etc. –although one little old lady smuggled her phone in, which we discovered when it started ringing loudly in the middle of the proceedings. We were given little pamphlets about our duties and ushered in to watch a video about jury duties, although actually we spent a lot of time sitting waiting for it to be started (the clerk didn’t seem to know how to run a DVD player), and once it was done we spent an awfully long time staring at a blank TV screen waiting for them to move on to the next step, which was to be shuffled off to the actual court room, with the judge, the defendant and his attorney, and the prosecuting attorney were all waiting for us.

About 20 of us got seated for the jury. It was apparently random, and I was not picked. Then the questioning began, the voir dire. It was stuff like, “Do you know [reads long list of potential witnesses]?” It turns out most of the names were cops, and it begins to sound like an army was dispatched to arrest the lone defendant. This being a small town, several people knew all the named people, so they had to be grilled on how they knew them and whether their acquaintance with them would interfere with their ability to judge them. Then there was the question about knowing or being related to any of the other jurors, and hands went up all over the place. Same grilling. Interestingly, there was also a question about whether religious convictions would interfere, and there were three women who clearly belonged to the Brethren church (long skirts, long hair tied up in a bun — we call them “bun ladies” around here), who announced that they could not stand in judgement over a man, and they were dismissed.

As people were dismissed, new people were called up out of the pool and the questions were repeated. I saw the pool shrinking, but I was never called before they finally settled on the 12 jurors, fortunately.

I say “fortunately” because, while I was willing to serve, as information about the case dribbled out, it became clear to me that I couldn’t do it. It was a drug case, with a guy who’d been arrested for growing marijuana, and as I listened to the questions being asked, I realized how I’d have to answer. I could not in good conscience convict someone for an act thats criminality was arbitrary and unjust, and I wouldn’t be able to set aside my principles to abide purely by the letter of the law. If I had been called up, I would have been dismissed within moments for that.

Also, I wouldn’t even have had a chance to answer the prosecuting attorney’s question, “What three things come to mind when you think of law enforcement?” I would probably have started with “petty thugs who shouldn’t be trusted with a gun” before the bailiff would have hauled me out behind the chemical shed. He also asked jurors what they thought of the War on Drugs, and my answer might have gotten profane and earned me a contempt of court fine.

Well, they asked! They said we had to answer honestly, too.

So I got to go home early. I’m still on the hook to be called up to serve until sometime in January, though — I just hope it isn’t another marijuana case.

The madness unparalleled, genuinely epic

James O’Brien explains the chaos in the UK. He’s incredulous at how incapable Parliament is at confronting a bad idea like Brexit. I’m similarly boggled at how the US is incapable of confronting the obvious problem that the president and leaders of congress are venal incompetents are sending us careening down a greased chute to our doom.

But at least it fills me with a feeling of deep connection with people across the Atlantic. We’re both neck deep in shitholes.

Jury duty tomorrow

Maybe. Being on sabbatical means I had no excuse to skip it, but what do you think the odds are that the lawyers send me away for being a godless sciencey nerd? I’ll prepare for a long day, but I kind of expect I’m not the kind of person they’ll want to serve — you know, all weird and stuff, not representative of the community.

But I wouldn’t mind experiencing it all!

Spider update (no photos)

We’re in a mundane phase of this project — I’ve got swarms of baby spiders, a handful of wild-caught adults, and I’m waiting for them to reach sexual maturity, so I can start breeding lab lines.

I’ve got a naming convention — the wild-caught adults (Generation 1) all get simple names like Cathy, Barney, Gwyneth, etc. I’ve had a few of them die off already, although I think it was actually murder. It seems that crickets above a certain size are actually able to turn the tables and eat the spider, or at least kill it, and they will definitely consume an egg sac if they stumble on it. I’m learning lessons as I go along — only small crickets. I’m considering trying mealworms as a safer alternative.

For the second generation, each clutch gets named by the first letter of their mother’s name, and the month their egg sac was made. As they reach sexual maturity, they’ll get a letter after the month to distinguish them as individuals. Third generation will get the initials of both parents, but we’re not up to that point yet. I am planning to keep track of the pedigrees of these spiders as I go, in case something unique and interesting crops up.

I do have a sad story. I’ve been particularly watching on individual, GIIXa, Gwyneth’s daughter by an unknown father, laid in August. I’d been calling her Igor, because she had a few deformities — her left foreleg was much longer than her right (it looked like a duplication of one limb segment), and her two hindlegs had limited mobility, so she crawled around dragging her hindlegs, and with her left foreleg raised high up in the air. She made it to near-adulthood, so clearly she was able to capture and eat flies, but today I found that she had died at last. I’d actually be interested in teratological defects, and that I’ve already seen one isn’t too surprising, given how prolific the spiders are.

I’m also pretty sure some of the second generation are reaching sexual maturity, which is about right, since some of them are almost two months old. I’ve got one, AIIXa (a son of Amanda), which already has the massive dark pedipalps that allowed me to recognize him as male — he’ll be losing his virginity soon. I don’t want to give him to one of the first generation females, since they’re so much bigger they might just eat him, but am waiting to be confident that one of the second generation females is ready.

I’m a little bit nervous about getting this next generation to maturity, because I’ve noticed that this species has become scarce as the weather is changing. We noticed that the best spots for finding them this past summer were our garage and sun room, places with lots of fresh air (and diverse prey, I presume) that were still sheltered by the proximity of a human habitat. We couldn’t find any indoors, but only in these attached spaces. Now we’re only finding Pholcidae out in the garage, as if there has been a seasonal shift in the spider populations. It’ll be interesting to see what spider species survive a Minnesota January. Maybe Steatoda/Parasteatoda are moving indoors? Maybe they die off and leave behind egg sacs to weather the winter and emerge in the spring? I’ve got my eye on a couple of egg sacs attached to my garage door, and I may bring them into the warm to see if they hatch out.

Anyway, that’s all I’m doing right now, the tedious business of spider breeding. I’ve ordered some of the reagents I’ll need to start poking around spider embryos, but those won’t arrive until next month, and I’m not doing experiments on babies until I have a stable colony anyway.

I would vote for a “radical socialist kick boxing lesbian” in a flash

Have you noticed how Republican insults are becoming a genuine mark of pride? Sharice Davids is running for Congress, and is getting some heat from local Republicans in Kansas.

Davids is a unique candidate for the 3rd Congressional District seat up for grabs this November. If elected, the Ho Chunk Nation member would be the first Native American woman elected to Congress in U.S. history and would also be the first gay Kansan to represent the state in Washington. She’s also a former MMA fighter and currently works as a lawyer, having obtained her law degree from Cornell. This election cycle, she may be at the top of a historic group of emboldened Native candidates, who happen to overwhelmingly be women.

She sounds awesome. Her existence prompted Michael Kalny, a two-bit racist precinct committeeman, to write to the head of the county Democratic Women chapter with this little rant.

Little Ms. Pritchett- you and your comrades stealth attack on Yoder is going to blow up in your leftist face. The REAL REPUBLICANS will remember what the scum DEMONRATS tried to do to Kavanaugh in November. Your radical socialist kick boxing lesbian will be sent back packing to the reservation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To quote Terry Pratchett, “And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.” I’m not sure what he’d make of someone who used fifty exclamation marks.

Never forget. This is what Republicans are all about: racism, homophobia, misogyny, and oppression. That little pissant might get what he wants, now that the Supreme Court supports voter suppression laws that discriminate particularly severely against Indians, unless we all turn out the vote and kick these assholes back into the dead past.