They do like their monumental statues in South Dakota

I’m not a fan of the big heads carved into a mountain farther west, but this one looks good.

That’s Dignity, a new monument that was unveiled in Chamberlain, South Dakota recently.

The Dignity sculpture is a stunning combination of art and history. Located on a bluff between exits 263 and 265 on Interstate 90 near Chamberlain, the stainless steel, 50-foot-tall statue was specifically designed by sculptor Dale Lamphere to honor the cultures of the Lakota and Dakota people. That’s why he used three Native American models ages 14, 29 and 55 to perfect the face of Dignity.

“Dignity represents the courage, perseverance and wisdom of the Lakota and Dakota culture in South Dakota,” Lamphere said. “My hope is that the sculpture might serve as a symbol of respect and promise for the future.”

Representing the rich Native American culture of South Dakota, the 50-foot Native woman gracefully wears a dress patterned after a two-hide Native dress of the 1850s. She holds outstretched a quilt featuring 128 stainless steel blue diamond shapes designed to flutter in the wind. During the day, her star quilt – a representation of respect, honor and admiration in Native American culture – glitters in the sun with color-changing pieces that move with the wind. At night, LED lights cause the diamond shapes to glow in the night sky, casting a peaceful presence easily visible from the Interstate.

False advertising

An organization called Mythicist Milwaukee is putting on a one day skeptic/atheist conference called Mythcon, a “mythinformation conference”. I think they’re living up to the name. They’ve posted this announcement:

Mythicist Milwaukee’s upcoming conference is a place to share ideas. Yet, white supremacy, racism and sexism are not among them.
We vehemently stand against bigotry of any kind. Instead, we are focused on promoting dialogue about culture, religion and freedom of thought at our upcomoming Mythinformation Conference.
Our speakers and attendees celebrate a wide diversity of opinion. However; those who engage in hate and violence under the guise of “free speech” or “protest” are not welcome.

Fine sentiments. One problem: three of their four speakers are Sargon of Akkad, Armoured Skeptic, and ShoeOnHead, people who have no reputation as skeptics, and are known only for their anti-feminist and anti-social-justice rants on YouTube. Nothing more. Any reputation they have is of the negative sort — they’re part of that cohort of gamergate/alt-right screechers that have monetized their presence on YouTube and Patreon and make money off strident bullshit against Anita Sarkeesian.

They’re free to do that. Mythicist Milwaukee is free to invite a cluster of neo-fascists to speak at a conference. However, what is appalling is that they’re advertising this as skepticism, and piously declaring that they oppose white supremacy, racism and sexism while hosting a trio of alt-right feminist-hating dorks to headline their event. I know if I attended a meeting that declared that they stand against bigotry of any kind, and first thing I saw was frikken’ Sargon of Akkad taking the stage, I’d walk out and leave because they’d lured me in under false pretenses.

It’s also chickenshit. You want to preach racism and misogyny, you get to do that; but why are you so cowardly that you hide your position with a dishonest disclaimer? Are you ashamed of your views? You should be.

If you want to know more about why these three are terrible choices for speakers, here’s a thorough rundown.

In the year of my birth…

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has a feature that allows you to look up by year the time words were first published. One curious thing I noticed is that there are huge numbers of words introduced in the 40s on, most of them technical and scientific words, but in more recent years the number of novel words is drying up. Why? I don’t know.

I did look up what words were introduced in the year I was born, and there were lots of them. But this series caught my attention.

I think it means that emotionally I am far more childish than my advanced years would imply.

Why I love Seattle, part eleventy-million

Alex Jones visited downtown Seattle to record himself ranting on street corners about immigrants and evil antifa, and posted the video. Sadly, he later took it down because, I suspect, the response of the locals wasn’t very encouraging.

…former Seattle City Council candidate Michael Maddux approached Jones. Jones, in turn, asked him to talk. Maddux responded, “I don’t talk to racist fucks.”

Only a candidate? He needs to make this the centerpiece of his next campaign.

But my favorite part was this:

While ranting, Jones was confronted by BlöödHag singer Jake Stratton, who called out that Jones was “trash.” When Jones confronted him, Stratton threw coffee on him and taunted Jones before telling him he was going back to work, “where they have more coffee.”

We have reached peak Seattle: racists fucks getting doused with coffee by the lead singer of a two-umlaut band. I’ve got to get back and visit sometime.

SO MUCH WINNING

Just today, there has been a mass resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities and the Department of Commerce’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors. The American Red Cross, the Cleveland Clinic, and the American Cancer Society will no longer hold fundraisers at Mar-A-Lago. The director of the Office of Public Liaison George Sifaki has been fired.

And of course Steve Bannon is out.

It was a good day.

Racists (and psychologists) don’t understand evolution

I hate this study already. Some psychologists attempted to develop a psychological profile of the alt-right by interviewing them and using a questionnaire. Fine. There’s nothing unexpected in their results.

A lot of the findings align with what we intuit about the alt-right: This group is supportive of social hierarchies that favor whites at the top. It’s distrustful of mainstream media and strongly opposed to Black Lives Matter. Respondents were highly supportive of statements like, “There are good reasons to have organizations that look out for the interests of white people.” And when they look at other groups — like black Americans, Muslims, feminists, and journalists — they’re willing to admit they see these people as “less evolved.”

It’s that last bit that bugs me. One of their questions primed them with a bad pseudoscientific image, and then asked them to rate various groups of people on how “evolved” they are.

That question makes no sense. It starts by leading people to think an invalid, linear model of progressive evolution is scientifically reasonable, and then asks them to indulge in rating human beings. It doesn’t surprise me that Nazis are willing to dehumanize, but is it fair to miseducate in the process of figuring that out?

Here’s the average of the answers they got.

If they’d asked me this question, I would have slammed every slider straight to 100%, and then aborted the whole survey and told the investigators that their methodology was poisonous. But that’s me.

They’re trying to measure dehumanization, and I can appreciate that this might be an effective way to do it, but really, do we need to spread more misinformation in the process? They got a strong distinction, but I’m also annoyed by the comparison group.

The comparison group, on the other hand, scored all these groups in the 80s or 90s on average. (In science terms, the alt-righters were nearly a full standard deviation more extreme in their responses than the comparison group.)

How can you be 80% evolved? How can you even argue that different groups of Homo sapiens are “evolved” to different degrees? None of this makes any sense.

Although the result that Trump’s favorite Nazis think he is less evolved than women in general has got to burn.

Also, they determined that racists are not more economically stressed than other people. They are just goddamned racists. No surprised there.

I think xkcd made a comic just for Mano!

Mano Singham is unenthused about the eclipse. Same here. It’s neat, would be an interesting phenomenon to observe, but I’m not going to travel out of my way to witness a few minutes of darkness. I also wouldn’t be seeing it as a scientist, but as a tourist, nothing more.

Fortunately, xkcd seems to share our views.

So if you’re going to make an effort to see the eclipse, have fun! Take pictures!

If you’re not going to see the eclipse, have fun! Enjoy a nice August day!