An inevitable child death in a detention center

Even if these ICE child detention centers were happy little paradises staffed by loving, caring child psychologists and nurses (they aren’t), it was statistically inevitable that at some point one of the children would die while separated from their parents. It seems to have happened.

The question is whether the institution takes responsibility for the death, and whether it made reasonable efforts to prevent the circumstances that led to it. The tweet mentions “possible negligent care” and an infection caught in the crowded conditions, in which case ICE is responsible for the death. ICE has also been aware that their policy actively damages children, and don’t seem to care.

Unfortunately, since law enforcement can literally gun down unarmed people in the back, I have no faith that anyone in our government will take responsibility. They’ll make excuses again.

Please, evolutionary psychology, just fade away

Rebecca Watson takes on the evolutionary psychologists again. I’m glad someone is.

I looked into the papers she’s talking about several days ago. I was unimpressed with and disgusted with them, and just said to myself, “Do I really want to wade into this shit again?” and let it pass, because I tell you, evolutionary psychology fans are the worst. Every criticism is dealt with by suggesting that the critic doesn’t really accept science, because the whole field is cloaked in a layer of pseudoscientific pretense that the true believers don’t question.

I first read “Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy: A Critical Analysis of Kevin MacDonald’s Theory” by Nathan Cofnas, published in Human Nature. As it says, it’s critical of the idea that Jews have some exceptional genetic trait that makes them more tribal and capable of ‘taking over’ the world, which is a positive sign…but at the same time it blithely accepts a whole lot of biological assumptions.

MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic.

The “default hypothesis” claims that two factors are sufficient to explain Jewish success in certain fields of endeavor: IQ (they’re smart) and geography (they live in urban areas). OK, but the reliance on IQ as a factor raises my hackles. The author even admits that this might not be due to genetic factors.

The default hypothesis is not tied to any particular explanation of the cause of above-average Jewish IQ. Some researchers favor a genetic explanation. In an influential paper, Cochran et al. (2005) argued that during the Middle Ages Ashkenazim were selected for the intellectual ability to succeed in white-collar occupations. However, it is theoretically possible that the Jewish–gentile IQ gap is due at least in part to some yet-to-be-identified cultural factor (Nisbett 2009). Whatever the cause, high Jewish IQ presumably plays a role in Jewish overrepresentation in cognitively demanding activities.

That’s a start, but I’d have to say that the “yet-to-be-identified cultural factor” has been identified. It’s a cultural value that promotes literacy and education as a social good. You may not have noticed, but a lot of cultural subgroups don’t — I know that the white protestant subculture I grew up in disparaged academic achievement and put a much higher priority on sports and money. Do we really need to bring this fuzzy, poorly defined thing called IQ into the discussion? Evolutionary psychologists certainly do, and simply take it for granted. This same paper also includes this garbage:

The mean Ashkenazi Jewish IQ appears to be around 110 (Lynn and Kanazawa 2008)—moderately lower than MacDonald’s estimate of 117. Jewish intellectual accomplishment is consistent with higher mean intelligence.

That’s your source? Really? Richard Lynn, white supremacist psychologist, and Satoshi Kanazawa, sloppy fraud.

That’s the problem with evolutionary psychology in a nutshell. It’s built on a foundation of bad evolutionary theory with a set of assumptions about genetic determinism that are never questioned; instead, they constantly churn over the same old discredited authors and same old unfounded theories, and treat the fact that they’ve been published in uncritical, lazy EP journals as sufficient to establish their truth. They can’t question their assumptions about the primacy of genetic causes in determining complex phenomena like culture because, if they do, the whole field collapses about them.

Cofnas’s article isn’t as terrible, though, as the original article by Kevin McDonald, the “neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic”, nor is it as ghastly as the putative rebuttal to Cofnas published in Evolutionary Psychological Science. That one uses Herrnstein & Murray, Philippe Rushton, and the ubiquitous Richard Lynn as sources, and again fails to question the genetic causes and instead unquestioningly endorses “group selection”.

Kevin MacDonald (1998) has argued that a series of twentieth century ideologies which have challenged European traditions should be understood as part of a Jewish evolutionary strategy to promote Jewish interests in the West, as evidenced by Jewish leadership of and disproportionate involvement in these movements. Cofnas Human Nature 29, 134–156 (Cofnas 2018a) has critiqued this model and countered that the evidence can be more parsimoniously explained by the high average intelligence and urban location of Jews in Western countries. This, he avers, should be the ‘default hypothesis.’ In this response, I argue that it is MacDonald’s model that is the more plausible hypothesis due to evidence that people tend to act in their ethnic group interest and that group selectedness among Jews is particularly strong, meaning that they are particularly likely to do so.

This is the kind of thing the alt-right loves: Jews are just so tribal, they want to claim, as they march around with torches chanting “Blood and Soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!”. They are justified in wanting to oppress them, because gosh, those Jews are just so oppressive.

EP journals are just sitting there indulging them, too — my objection isn’t to the Cofnas article itself, but the whole field that seems to think this is a subject that is worth discussing, to the point where they’re feeling the need to publish rebuttals to bad theories that are widely endorsed in their own journals. I think it’s a good idea for science journals to be open in criticizing creationism, for instance, because those bad ideas are currently widespread in popular culture (as are racist ideas). It would be a disgrace if science journals were also publishing creationist trash, but that’s exactly analogous to what EP journals do: publish an onanistic mix of terrible, awful, ridiculous articles with a few articles that try to rebut them. It’s a roiling mess that keeps the publishers in business but does nothing to advance our knowledge.

If you’re in evolutionary psychology, get out while you still can. Distance yourself. Refuse to publish in the usual EP journals, because you’re just going to get tarred with the deplorable taint of the whole field. Maybe you’re a competent scientist with great logical skills, but you can’t build on a foundation of invalid rubbish.

It’s too late for the editorial board of Evolutionary Psychological Science. I hadn’t looked until Rebecca mentioned it, but all the usual suspects are there: Kurzban, Buss, Pinker, and Sam Harris (his affiliation is listed as “Independent Scholar”). They ought to be as embarrassed as the board of a molecular biology journal that started printing articles by creationists.

Leslie Rutledge is an example of how every Republican has to be slimy

Rutledge seems to be one of those people representing the future of the Republican party.

Leslie Rutledge, the attorney general of Arkansas, is a rising star in the Republican Party, especially under President Donald Trump. She gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, which she dedicated to bashing Hillary Clinton with conspiracy theories about the alleged evil deeds of the Clinton Foundation. Rutledge is currently head of the Republican Attorneys General Association and has been Arkansas attorney general for three years. (She is up for re-election this fall.)

Rutledge, who worked for former Gov. Mike Huckabee both in state government and on his presidential campaign, appears to be tight with the Huckabee family, who are immensely powerful in Arkansas.

First sign of trouble: she’s buddies with the Huckabees? Why are those cornpone sleazy yokels “powerful” in Arkansas in the first place?

But, you should be asking, “What about her emails?” She has a very ugly history.

Most of the emails are smarmy sex jokes or contain foul language, which was clearly embarrassing for a Republican with a wholesome image. But one stands out, in particular, for the racist content.

Rutledge apparently copy and pasted another email from “a friend of mine” who “works d’town with battered women” that purportedly tells a story about clients coming to her office. Rutledge’s friend wrote it in a heavily stereotypical dialect that appears meant to mock the clients. Here is an excerpt:

De problem be wit his baby momma. Actually it turn out he not be de daddy (I saw the paternity test results) but he done been payin’ chile suppote fo 5 year cuz Jesus done sent dat baby and it doan make no diffence who be de daddy iffn Jesus want him to be de daddy and take o’ dat baby what nobody want ‘cept him and his own mama.

The email goes on for five paragraphs in that vein, as the author writes that “baby’s momma done turn into a ho and a stripper and she be raisin’ fusses” and mocks a client’s mother by writing, “we be getting de Gospel Punctuation from his mama: ‘Hallelujah! Amen! Oh yes Jesus! Um hm!'”

That’s the kind of thing that would be the kiss of death for a Democrat — we’d be waving their career bye-bye. It’s no problem at all for a “Christian, pro-life, gun-carrying conservative woman,” though.

Something did get her booted out of one Arkansas office, at least. We don’t know exactly what she did, but it must have been terrible if it offended an Arkansas Republican.

These two emails were sent in August and October of 2007. Rutledge left Arkansas DHS in December of that year. After that, a note was added to her file accusing her of “gross misconduct” and instructing that she not be rehired. It is unclear whether the alleged misconduct was related to these emails or to other matters. Emails from Salon to Arkansas DHS asking for further clarification received no response.

She’s definitely one to watch. At this rate, she’ll be running for president in 2020.

Maureen Brian has died

Maureen Brian was a regular commenter here, and was noted for her fiercely progressive politics and inestimable politeness and coherence. She was hit hard by cancer and has now died.

I knew her personally — she invited me to Hebden Bridge, where she lived, and arranged a place for me to stay. She was wonderfully hospitable and a fascinating person just to talk to. She was someone with a great sense of her time and place, and she filled it gracefully, and with passion.

And now I’m sad that another warm light has blinked out.

A case of free market capitalism actually working!

Perhaps you’ve seen this video. A man follows a black person to his home, hurls racist insults at him, all while driving a van with his company’s name and phone number blazoned on the side. Just the stupidity hurts, but it’s the racism that makes it far, far worse.

Afterwards, the driver, Jeff Whitman (I think he dropped the “e” that belongs after the “t” in his name) was totally unapologetic. Calling someone the N-word?

“I don’t know if it makes it right or wrong all I can say is I grew up with it and not a big deal for me,” said the man in the van.

I guess that makes it all right. He was brought up as a racist, so no problem if he says racist things.

Unfortunately for him, his business is getting wrecked by a flood of negative reviews on social media, and the Better Business Bureau is suspending his accreditation. Whoops. Words have consequences. Now he’s ruined…but he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong.

“I’m out of business, I’m completely out, I’m done, I’ll never work in Columbus again,” Whitman said. “This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life.”

“I just don’t understand the intensity of the hate,” said the man who drove two miles out of his way to verbally abuse a complete stranger based on the color of his skin.

I just sort of feel like saying…your feelings don’t matter, snowflake. Nobody owes you a living. The free market has spoken. Suck it up, bucko.

Except that feelings do matter, and what wrecked your business was that you thought your bigotry against people was justified, and that what you really need to learn is some empathy for other human beings. It’s ignorance that killed Uriahs Heating, Cooling, and Refrigeration.

Dinesh D’Souza is at it again

His new movie is called “Death of a Nation“. It looks insane, with his usual ahistorical befuddling of the modern Democratic party with the racists of 60 years ago (sorry, guy, that wing of the party stampeded over to the Republicans when Democrats started advocating for civil rights), and a strange twisty story about Abraham Lincoln vs. the Nazis, at least if you go by the trailer.

Sorry again, guy. The Nazis favor Donald Trump, who is nothing like Abraham Lincoln. Even if the movie tries to pretend they’re identical.

Oops, there goes my lunch.

How to freak out your racist friends

Just show them this video.

If you don’t have any racist friends, just read the comments (don’t read the comments, ever).

When I’ve visited London (or New York, or any cosmopolitan city), I’ve always enjoyed the diversity — it’s a good thing. I’m also happy when everyone can feel like their wonderfully complicated place is home. There are plenty of white people in London who also feel it is their home — why should they also have this sense of exclusivity? We can all be home. If someone else feels at home in your city, that doesn’t mean you can’t also feel at home.

If you think “home” has to be a place where the only residents have the same complexion that you do, that means you’re a racist. It’s a pretty easy test.

I think this is a metaphor for capitalism

But it’s still a fascinating story. Did you know that old McDonald’s Monopoly game was totally corrupt and broken? An insider was stealing the million dollar instant winner tokens, and passing them along to associates who’d cash them in and kickback thousands of dollars to the thief. “Jerome Jacobson and his network of mobsters, psychics, strip club owners, and drug traffickers won almost every prize for 12 years”. Whoa. My family played the game, casually and intermittently — this was happening during the years my kids insisted on going to McDonald’s. And now I learn there was never any chance I was going to get lucky and become a millionaire.

You might argue that this is just the actions of one rogue crook, but there were other ways the game was rigged by the officials running it.

During that 1995 prize draw, something happened that would change the game. According to Jacobson, when the computerized prize draw selected a factory location in Canada, Simon Marketing executives re-ran the program until it chose an area in the USA. Jacobson claimed he was ordered to ensure that no high-level prizes ever reached the Great White North.

Sorry, Canada.

Jacobson and many of his associates were eventually caught, arrested, and got some short prison sentences and massive fines. But the woes of McDonald’s promotion didn’t end there.

And when lady luck regained control of the McDonald’s competitions, she handed winning tickets to a man wearing a full Pizza Hut uniform; a Taco Bell owner; and a former homeless man who was later charged with beating up his fiancée–a PR nightmare.

You know, this is what everyone should have expected when you build a promotional contest around a terrible game that celebrates the worst of greed and selfishness — you’re going to find it hijacked by looters within, and if it were really a fair contest, you’d find that sometimes people outside your ideological group would win. And what is the game of Monopoly but a transparent metaphor for the evils of capitalism?

Ooh, a moral philosophy test!

A 15 year old Honduran girl escapes from a detention center, and hides on your property. You discover her; she’s distraught and terrified, and does not want to go back to that horrible place. What do you do?

A) Continue to shelter her.

B) Contact an immigration aid society, or an immigration lawyer, and try to get her some help.

C) Rat her out to the police.

I think I’d try some combination of A & B; do what I can then, but try to find a better informed and capable source to provide better help. But that’s not what Frank Gonzalez did! He first called Nora Sandigo, a member of a non-profit that helps immigrants, but then he apparently had a better idea.

Before Sandigo could get there, police vans began circling the shop’s parking lot. Gonzalez said nobody from the shop called the police, but he eventually flagged down an officer and pointed to where the girl had hidden.

So his answer was C. I think he just failed the course.

Shall we learn some more about Frank?

“She said, ‘Please don’t punish me, don’t touch me, don’t hold my hand,’” he said. “They put handcuffs on her, but not like a criminal, like a human being.”

How do you handcuff someone like a human being, but not like a criminal? Frank doesn’t seem very bright here. He’s making non-excuses.

But wait, it gets worse.

Gonzalez, who came to the United States from Cuba in 1971 with his family, said he supports the Trump administration’s tough stance on border security but disagrees with separating families.

“People who want to come here, and work for the American Dream, they should get papers and follow the rules,” Gonzalez said. “But it breaks my heart to see mothers and fathers divided from their children. Families should be together all the time.”

Still, he says he supports Trump’s general immigration policy, adding, “Let’s make America great again.”

So he was an illegal immigrant himself, but was gifted with sanctuary just because of American anti-Cuba policies. And he’s unable to see the similarities in his past situation to a Honduran family fleeing their country for a better life. He’s the personification of Republican “I got mine, screw you” attitudes.

And then he has the gall to give us a goddamn MAGA to justify his actions.

Fuck you, Frank, you moral leper. You just failed Humanity 101.

We haven’t heard from Comma in a while, have we?

You remember Comma, the demented Sovereign Citizen who used to write to me frequently, with his peculiar style of phrasing every statement as a question. He’s back. This time he cc’ed his email to a bunch of people, but it’s addressed to…Richard Carrier’s lawyer. I think he wants to form an alliance.

I encourage this consolidation of their forces.

Are you aware that the University of Minnesota is currently illegally withholding Freethoughtblogs CEO & University of Minnesota, Morris Associate Professor PZ Myers’ criminal investigative data for his vandalism of a UMM newspaper from me? The Mirandized audio statement in DSS format and the corresponding transcript along with Myers’ writing sample and the vandalized student newspapers must be extremely damning for Myers’ and the University of Minnesota for them to illegally withholding them, right? How would you like the look at the evidence for the criminal complaint that I filed with the University Police for the the U of M’s data compliance officials willful refusal to provide me with Myers data? See attached. Oh, I’ve also included the Auroa Center data request that the U of M is also illegally withholding from me, haven’t I?

Terry Dean, Nemmers (320) 283-5713

If you’re wondering what he’s talking about, the campus right-wing newspaper accused me, without evidence, of having stolen a bunch of their papers. They had the campus police take a statement from me in which I denied everything. That was it. Ever since, Comma has been absolutely convinced that there is deep dark evidence of some wicked conspiracy in that recording, which the university is now trying to cover up, even though they told him they would make a copy of the tape and give it to him for the fee of $43.50. I guess that’s all it takes to stymie a True Patriot’s defense of the Principles of the United States of America, is a $43.50 fee.

You know, Carrier’s lawyer could go ahead and use Carrier’s money to purchase that recording. I don’t mind. Anyone can get it.

He also included a bunch of pdfs in his email, including the UMM Incident Report about the university’s official response to Comma’s accusation that I was harassing him, and the various correspondence he had to obtain his proof of my perfidy. He’s a very silly, man.