That’s not a dog-whistle

That’s a fucking dog-tornado-alert-siren.

image

It also comes out of /pol/, and is called “hILLhISTORY”, a reference to “hh” — “Heil Hitler”. And Donald Trump tweeted this bit of poison himself. Isn’t it reassuring to know that the Trump campaign is getting their slogans and ads crafted for free by the most evil collection of assholes on the Internet?

Earlier in this ugly election cycle, I read many articles arguing that, while they were not defending him, Trump was not literally a fascist. Don’t do that anymore. While you might have some clause you can pull out of your textbook definition to say that he doesn’t meet all of the specifications, he meets all the essential qualifications. He’s practicing the demagoguery of hate.

We’ve also allowed the demographic of ignorance to grow out of control to give him a power base.

Now Corey Lewandowski is claiming it was a simple “sherriff’s star”. These people are dishonest and disingenuous through and through.

By the way, fuck CNN for hiring that Trumpian bozo as a correspondent. This is also how the corruption of fascist demagoguery spreads–the assholes always fail upwards.

Yes, you are a fish

I get this question all the time, and I just got asked it again: “Did you really say that humans are fish in that Ray Comfort video?” Yes, I did, and I guess I have to explain it again.

There are multiple meanings of “fish”. We can use it to refer to specific species or an extant category of animals: salmon are fish, halibut are fish, herring are fish. No one objects to that, and they all understand that if I said “humans are still salmon”, that would be wrong.

But another way the term is used is as a descriptor for a clade. A taxonomic clade is a “grouping that includes a common ancestor and all the descendants (living and extinct) of that ancestor”.

clade

So, for instance, humans belong to the mammalian clade, which includes mice and cats and cows. If we have transhuman, part-cyborg descendants, they will still be mammals, because, note, by definition a clade must include all the descendants of an ancestor. We’re trapped! There’s no way our progeny can exit the clade!

We’re also members of multiple clades. For example, the tetrapod clade is the group that descended from a 4-limbed ancestor, an early amphibian, so it includes frogs and salamanders, and also reptiles, mammals, and birds, and the fact that we’re weird bipeds that have specialized our two pairs of limbs in odd ways, or that birds have turned a forelimb into a wing, doesn’t get us out of the club labeled “four footed”.

The thing about the clades of mammals and tetrapods, though, is that we have convenient generic labels for the groups: we can say “humans are mammals”, and we don’t get hordes of clueless people gawping and saying, “Did he just call me a mouse? That’s absurd!” But we belong to another clade, all the organisms descended from an ancient fish, and “fish” is the common label there. People generally have such a dim comprehension of the diversity of the fishes, though, that they hear a biologist pointing out that we belong, and will always belong, to the fish clade, and they think, “Did he just call me a sturgeon? That’s absurd!”

One way to get around the problem is to get technical. I could say we’re all gnathostomes, and nobody would freak out because most of them wouldn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. So I could hide in technical obfuscation. But the point is that you are descended from an ancestor that was a torpedo-shaped aquatic vertebrate with gills, a fish. You can never escape your ancestry. Embrace Your Inner Fish.

innerfish

By the way, another way “fish” is defined taxonomically is as a craniate that is not a tetrapod, and if you use that definition, we are not fish. But that requires explicitly creating a paraphyletic group (that’s what you call it when you take a clade and willfully exclude a smaller clade), and that’s just annoying.

My one true talent at #cvg2016 is being annoying

I was on this panel at the con yesterday, and while we were all civil and polite, I think my fellow panelists, and a few members of the audience, were left feeling a bit peevish. It was the “What Does God Need With a Starship?” panel, and here’s the description.

From the Christ-like figure of Superman to the metaphysical adventures of the Enterprise, fantasy and science fiction have long explored religious and philosophical questions. What is it about SFF that touches our spirituality?

It was fun. I was the odd person out of the group, I think, because I disagree with everything.

The first question came from the moderator, and it played right into my hands, because it was the first thing I would have asked: what the heck is this “spirituality” thing? We got a couple of answers from the other panelists: one was that spirituality is a container for their “love of all people”, which is a wonderful thing to feel, but I had to point out that that’s humanism. God and the supernatural are redundant there. Another answer was that it was a feeling of “connectedness to all things” — well, great. Except that this universe is the domain of science, not religion.

I also pointed out that religion has a tendency to steal credit: there is a lot of good science fiction that explores philosophy and ethics, and that religious people like to turn around and claim that that is “religion”: nope. It’s philosophy and ethics. That you assume all discussion of morality is grounded in god-belief doesn’t make it so.

The other panelists had their revenge, though, and there was a long bit where they were cooing over those wonderful Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, an author I thoroughly detest, and because I’m obnoxious but not that obnoxious I had to chew on my tongue for a while. I did at least state that the open allusions to Christian mythology were not a feature, they were a bug, and they interfered with my ability to trust anything in the books. Crappy fictional plot holes are not rescued by coupling them to crappy religious plot holes.

One discussion that was unresolved but was interesting was the role of science fiction in demythologizing religion — how it could act as a gateway for people with a religious upbringing to explore new ideas and possibly adopt a less restrictive faith. I then learned that there is a whole genre of Christian science fiction which is supposed to go the other way: it draws in secular people and plants the seeds of faith. I’d never even heard of the latter category — I guess CS Lewis did some of that, but he’s the only one I know of — so I don’t think it was very successful, in my case.

I am not done being annoying, though. My next panel today is “Our Place in Space” at 2:00.

What are the dreams and practicalities of colonizing space? How might humanity reach beyond our planet? We’ll discuss the science of human spaceflight in reality and fiction.

My position is that we humans will not be colonizing space, ever. We might build robots that will, though.

Atheism seems to be amazingly doomed

As long as we put up with clueless clowns like the “Amazing Atheist” we are, that is. Martin Hughes, a black atheist, watched one of the “Amazing Atheist”‘s ranty little videos in which he made a whole series of ignorant, racist comments and tore it apart. Just a small sample:

When asked, “What are you going to do about systematic racism?”

He says:

[Racism against black people] is not my problem in the first place. What are [the people in the video I’m responding to] going to do to end discrimination against atheists? Right, you ain’t gonna do shit, because it’s not your problem and you don’t give a shit.

Yeah. That’s what I’m seeing. Atheism is a white America thing, and white atheists are increasingly, proudly, not caring about black people.

Like…why am I going to fight for atheists rights when they are made up of so many bigots, over and above the black church that’s fighting for my rights day in, day out? Why would I care about a predominantly white atheist club who cordons off race issues, when that impacts my day-to-day life far, far more than what I do or don’t believe about some nonexistent God?

I don’t believe in God. But frankly, when I hear sentiments like this, I want to turn in my atheist card and go back to church.

But let’s not single out the “Amazing Atheist” here — if he were alone, if he were just the ‘lone wolf’ that seems to be the standard label attached to any white guy with hideous opinions, we could just ignore him. But he and many other youtube atheists have large followings. As Hughes points out…

More atheists have watched The Amazing Atheist in the past few days than atheists who have attended all major atheist organization events in the past year combined.

We are in over our heads in racism here.

526,000 views. Over 35,000 likes, only 4,000 dislikes. He makes over a thousand dollars a month on Patreon with his bigotry.

Yeah, that’s a larger atheist problem.

P.S. The “Amazing Atheist” made a reply. I skimmed through it. It seems to consist mainly of “Nuh-uh, I am not a racist, I have black friends.”

“e-beggars”

I just have to say that I totally despise the “e-begging” nonsense: not the requests for donations, but all the assholes who come squirming out of the woodwork to sneer at people who have financial difficulties, who make pleas for donations to support the work you are reading, who think it is somehow a mark of inferiority that someone does not have a prestigious job to support the leisure activity of writing, and are offended that they’re asked to maybe, voluntarily, donate a small sum to an author who’s having a hard time making ends meet.

Ultimately, the complaints are rooted in classism and bigotry. I’m in the odd position of being financially rock-solid — not rich by any means, but economically stable, with good health insurance to protect me from catastrophe, which, come to think of it, does mean I’m wealthy — yet here I am promoting people who are the less widely heard voices in freethought, and they generally have less robust incomes than I do. There is a big gay and transgender pay gap, and an even wider pay gap for racial minorities, and yet, when someone with less dares to hold out a hand and ask for some help, the hecklers all come to mock me, which is just plain weird. It’s as if they not only scorn the underprivileged, but they despise them so much they don’t want to even talk to the person, but instead come to spit in the face of the old white man, because he’s the one with authority.

The first time this happened, years ago, I was so discombobulated that I actually asked the asshole what he was complaining about; I said that I whole-heartedly supported people who asked for voluntary donations, and that those of us who could, should be chipping in to promote talent. Apparently, that was the problem: that I was enabling “freeloaders”, so I was responsible for the epidemic of begging that was annoying him.

Apparently, too, writing is something people should do for free, because hey, anyone can do it. It’s strange how so few authors get paid what they’re worth, then.

Well, fuck that.

Also, have you noticed all the outrage directed at Anita Sarkeesian because she’s held wildly successful fundraisers? These are donations by people who appreciate the fact that she promotes an important and interesting perspective, and they freely give to support her work, and this stirs up intense resentment among certain other kinds of people…who say nothing about the “e-begging” of Thunderf00t or Sargon of Akkad, which, apparently is something fundamentally different and isn’t even called “e-begging”.

And, as a mentioned, I get to be the recipient of all these bullying complaints about people who ask for a few dollars to support their writing. All that means, of course, is that I get to witness first hand how these whiners react to people of color, or gay or transgender people, reminding them of their privilege. I also get to be dumbfounded at my privilege, which is to be treated as the master who is supposed to keep all the little people in line.

The latest case: Tony is trying to make ends meet. So I get to hear all these weirdly inappropriate insults because, obviously, I have something to do with allowing these “e-beggars” to pollute their internet (I also get supportive suggestions, so it’s not as if the internet is entirely a cesspit). It’s weird because Tony is on a different network, I’ve never met him, and he doesn’t even like me very much, but because I’m the Emperor of all things SJW within atheism, I’m responsible. They have such a blithely authoritarian perspective. Note also: these are people who are so ravingly anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-SJW that the only reason they can be reading Tony’s blog is to metaphorically spit on it, and they’re complaining about a donation request that won’t take a penny out of their pocket.

So I’m going to come out and say it: if you want to see a greater diversity of ideas on the internet, if you want to promote greater equality, and if you’ve got the financial ability to do so, you should seek out people other than us noisy old white cis-het men, and put your money where your mouth is. If you like Tony’s writing, give him a little help. If you want to hear more from other than the usual suspects with the big bullhorns, look around, explore, and read what they write…and if they have a “donations” button, click on it. It’s good for everyone.

And now when the jerks come complaining to me that I’m enabling freeloaders, I’ll be able to say that yes, I try to enable writers, but you’re mistaken. My job is to shut down assholes, goodbye.

Crooked Donald

Why isn’t this man in jail for fraud? In addition to his phony Trump University, there was also a Trump Institute, that used plagiarized materials to peddle real estate advice.

Ms. Parker said she did venture to one of the Trump Institute seminars — and was appalled: The speakers came off like used-car salesmen, she said, and their advice was nothing but banalities. “It was like I was in sleaze America,” she said. “It was all smoke and mirrors.”

He clearly has the votes of sleaze America locked up.

No, not my alma mater!

It’s yet another academic scandal, this time at the university where I was an undergrad, the University of Washington. A top virus researcher, Michael Katze, has been committing all kinds of inappropriate behavior.

In the summer of 2014, as Ebola ravaged West Africa and unleashed panic across the U.S., Michael Katze was a voice of reason. As head of one of the biggest virus labs in the country, he frequently appeared on TV news spots — sharply dressed, with his signature black glasses and deep tan — preaching calm in the face of fear.

But away from the cameras, the University of Washington lab in Seattle that Katze had led for nearly 30 years was descending into chaos. Over the next year, one of his most important collaborators severed its $1.2 million partnership. Employees left in droves. And a lab administrator filed charges accusing him of sexually harassing her and a colleague. In August 2015, the university banned Katze from entering his own lab.

This past January, a university investigation concluded that Katze, 66, had violated the school’s sexual harassment policies with both employees. A second investigation, by the university’s School of Medicine, determined that in the process, he had misused university resources for personal gain, including by asking an employee to do chores for him and solicit a prostitute. It recommended a comprehensive internal audit to determine how far this misuse of public funds went.

This was a guy who was rolling in grant money — he was sitting on top of $30 million in awards — and he acted like some petty pimp, doling out grant money explicitly for sexual favors. And no one noticed?

One of the employees was an administrator whom Katze had hired, at an unusually high salary, on the implicit condition that she submit to his sexual demands. He personally rewarded this woman, known as Mary Roe in some court documents, with “thousands or even tens of thousands” of dollars a year in cash and gifts, the investigation found.

The university found that Katze also sexually harassed another administrative employee, known as Jane Doe in court documents. According to the investigations, Katze asked her to clean his apartment, purchase marijuana and Percocet for him, email escorts and place personal ads for him, and “schedule his manicures, pedicures, haircuts, and hair lightening appointments.” Meanwhile, he joked about having sex with her, made sexual comments about her appearance, sent her sexually suggestive emails, and, on two occasions, tried while drunk to kiss or touch her

He’s still getting paid, but he’s lost his lab, his employees, and his grant money. I guess that’s good. But I still can’t imagine the lack of oversight that would allow such a sleaze to run rampant. There’s clearly a problem with Katze, but there’s also a problem in UW grants administration.