I should start a category here, called Twitter Over-reaching or Trying to Say Too Much in a Tweet or Twitter Is Not the Place for Grand Generalizations, or something. Because I keep seeing people doing that, and it can be funny or pathetic or destructive or all those.

The latest one that I’ve noticed is by Peter Boghossian. It’s not part of a larger conversation, the previous and following tweets aren’t related, so it really is meant to stand alone and say something true.

Attempts to engineer social justice will be unfair if they target equality of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity.

He’s a philosopher and I’m not, but that just looks silly to me. Attempts will be unfair? They’ll be unfair if they target equality of outcome? Just like that? Really? Attempts to aim for equality of outcome will be unfair, just like that, with no qualification?

I could see saying that insistence on mandating equality of outcome will be unfair. I could see it and probably even agree with it. But that’s not what he said. He said something much more limited, and thus much more realistic and un-strawmannish, and thus much more reasonable and fair to the opposition – but then he drew an unreasonable sweeping conclusion anyway.

Attempts to aim for equality of outcome can mean for instance trying hard to do away with obstacles, including non-obvious ones that take digging and research to find. Will that be unfair? If so, why?

It’s the familiar libertarian bullshit, of course, but in trying to put that in a reasonable way and doing it on Twitter, I think he ended up with obvious nonsense.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

God damn John Scalzi is good.

Yesterday: To The Dudebro Who Thinks He’s Insulting Me by Calling Me a Feminist

Just read it. I don’t want to spoil it with appetizers or remarks; just read it.

But I’ll give you a visual appetizer.

I’ve always wondered what that pleasant sweep of green at the top of his blog was, and vaguely assumed it was a nearby park. It’s his fucking front lawn. That plays a part, and gets its own meme, so read. Read read read.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

As you may have already seen, Avicenna was falsely accused of raping someone at TAM 2013. He’s never been to TAM; he hasn’t been in the US for several years. He is not much pleased.

Turns out Mr. [Richard] Sanderson is a possible suspect in the fake accusation that I raped/molested someone at TAM 2013. Why? Because when I admitted publically about the accusation, I also pointed out that I had an alibi. Oh if you wish to know why I admitted to it, I felt the need to be honest because I figured that if I didn’t admit to it, someone would drop it on me as a “surprise” and I would rather do it myself. Bear in mind, work colleagues read this blog and me admitting to the accusation was handled better than if someone else did. Bear in mind at the moment I am teaching and training midwives in safe delivery methods and doing deliveries. AKA working in women’s healthcare. This resulted in me having to deal with greater scrutiny of my work and some time for administrative leave but in the end the truth is an absolute defence.

It meant that colleagues would HAVE to mention this incident. I cleared my name with work but it’s just a painful thing to do. I genuinely thought of bowing out of blogging as I felt my career was more important. It didn’t matter that my alibi was insanely solid.

See that? These angry zeroes interfered with his work – in women’s healthcare, in India – for the sake of whatever the hell their angry zero hatred is about. (Women? Feminism? Atheism+? Freethought Blogs? High fructose corn syrup? Who knows.)

They call  themselves the Slymepit out of pride. Free Speech? This wasn’t free speech this was a silencing. This was an attempt to shut me up. I don’t know why. I am not a fan of the methods of the Atheism Plus lot. Maybe I just made them look bad. Can’t call FTB slacktivists with that Avicenna bloke around right? So let’s silence  him. I know! Doctors rely on their integrity. A doctor without one is fucked! Let’s threaten that!

Oh Mr. Sanderson tried to make it seem like it was to prove a point about fake rape allegations from PZ Myers and “Jane Doe”. That it’s easy. Well? No it’s not. Because the difference between a real accusation and a fake one is that a real one is very hard and painful to do. While the Accusers here literally hammered this entire letter out in a few minutes and didn’t even bother selecting properly.

And to prove a point? You would risk my career to win an Internet fight with PZ Myers? What the fuck is wrong with you people? How the fuck can anyone be a part of the Slymepit with absolute fuckwits like this in the rank is beyond me. How can you claim to be the good guys when you behave like this? You have lost any high ground you thought you had by the actions of this absolute waste of space.

And what does that say to non-white atheists? Don’t write about stuff that’s happening locally? Like rapes and violence against women or else the Slymepit will silence you? Don’t write about your non-white problems if they involve women treated badly?

Yes. That is what that says to non-white atheists, just as it’s what it says to non-male atheists.

So that’s how that went.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Annals of Irrational Fear, GMO Division. The New York Times reports:

ONE bright morning this month, 400 protesters smashed down the high fences surrounding a field in the Bicol region of the Philippines and uprooted the genetically modified rice plants growing inside.

Had the plants survived long enough to flower, they would have betrayed a distinctly yellow tint in the otherwise white part of the grain. That is because the rice is endowed with a gene from corn and another from a bacterium, making it the only variety in existence to produce beta carotene, the source of vitamin A. Its developers call it “Golden Rice.”

FrankenFoods. Playing god. It ain’t natural. Yuck.

Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group called the International Rice Research Institute with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A to people both in the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from rice, and eventually in many other places in a world where rice is eaten every day by half the population. Lack of the vital nutrient causes blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year. It affects millions of people in Asia and Africa and so weakens the immune system that some two million die each year of diseases they would otherwise survive.

So maybe, just maybe, destroying the field trial crop isn’t really such a brilliant idea.

The destruction of the field trial, and the reasons given for it, touched a nerve among scientists around the world, spurring them to counter assertions of the technology’s health and environmental risks. On a petition supporting Golden Rice circulated among scientists and signed by several thousand, many vented a simmering frustration with activist organizations like Greenpeace, which they see as playing on misplaced fears of genetic engineering in both the developing and the developed worlds. Some took to other channels to convey to American foodies and Filipino farmers alike the broad scientific consensus that G.M.O.’s are not intrinsically more risky than other crops and can be reliably tested.

And another thing: there are “risks,” known risks, in a diet that’s deficient in vitamin A. To repeat:

Lack of the vital nutrient causes blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year. It affects millions of people in Asia and Africa and so weakens the immune system that some two million die each year of diseases they would otherwise survive.

That’s a little more significant than “yuck” reactions to GMO foods.

At stake, they say, is not just the future of biofortified rice but also a rational means to evaluate a technology whose potential to improve nutrition in developing countries, and developed ones, may otherwise go unrealized.

“There’s so much misinformation floating around about G.M.O.’s that is taken as fact by people,” said Michael D. Purugganan, a professor of genomics and biology and the dean for science at New York University, who sought to calm health-risk concerns in a primer on GMA News Online, a media outlet in the Philippines: “The genes they inserted to make the vitamin are not some weird manufactured material,” he wrote, “but are also found in squash, carrots and melons.”

But god put the genes in the squash, carrots, and melons, but god didn’t put the genes in rice. Therefore the genes being put in the rice makes the whole thing gross and creepy and blasphemious!

Mr. Purugganan, who studies plant evolution, does not work on genetically engineered crops, and until recently had not participated in the public debates over the risks and benefits of G.M.O.’s. But having been raised in a middle-class family in Manila, he felt compelled to weigh in on Golden Rice. “A lot of the criticism of G.M.O.’s in the Western world suffers from a lack of understanding of how really dire the situation is in developing countries,” he said.

Privilege. That’s a classic example of privilege at work. It’s the same with vaccines – we have the privilege of having grown up in a world with vaccines, so unless we know something about history or otherwise investigate the subject a little, we are clueless about what it’s like to live in a world where an infectious disease can pounce on you and kill you at any moment. That is privilege. It’s privilege and it leads to horrendous irrational phobic ideas that, if followed, would lead to the reversal of much medical and technological progress. Yes progress. Being sniffy about the idea of progress is another example of privilege.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

MSF reports neurotoxic symptoms in hospital patients in Syria, according to the BBC.

Medecins Sans Frontieres says hospitals it supports in Syria treated about 3,600 patients with “neurotoxic symptoms”, of whom 355 have died.

The medical charity said the patients had arrived in three hospitals in the Damascus area on 21 August – when opposition activists say chemical attacks were launched against rebels.

But MSF says it cannot “scientifically confirm” the use of chemical weapons.

Scientific uncertainty.

“MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack,” said MSF Director of Operations Bart Janssens.

But it added that the symptoms, as well as the “massive influx of patients in a short period of time” strongly suggest mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.

Another chapter in the history of human brutality.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So having mentioned the Sourland mountains (and laughed at their diminutive size) I looked them up, half thinking it might be just a family name for that tiny rise on the western horizon – but no, it’s a real thing. Sourland Mountain.

Sourland Mountain is a 17 miles (27 km) long ridge in central New Jersey, extending from the Delaware River at Lambertville to the western end of Hillsborough Township near the community of Neshanic, through Montgomery Township and into Hopewell Township in Mercer County.^[1] It comprises the largest contiguous forest in Central Jersey, nearly 90 square miles (233 km²) in area. The highest point is only 568 feet (173 m) above sea level, but the way it rises steeply from the surrounding farmland has earned it the title of ‘mountain’. The ridge itself sits within a larger area of rough terrain called The Sourlands.

568 feet! Hahahahahaha – the hill I live at the top of is 500-something feet, and nobody calls it a mountain, even though it does rise steeply enough that the east and west sides of it are mostly green belt.

But it’s New Jersey. Where the mountains are short and the license plates don’t (yet) say ATHEIST.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s always a guy with three or four or six wives. Why not the other way around for a change? Well, in Kenya, three people have chosen that option.

Two Kenyan men have signed an agreement to “marry” the same woman.

The woman had been having affairs with both men for more than four years and apparently refused to choose between them.

The agreement sets out a rota for Sylvester Mwendwa and Elijah Kimani to stay in her house and states they will both help raise any children she bears.

It sounds very sensible.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I think I’ve figured out the rules now, with help from Tim Skellett aka “Gurdur” who explained it to Avicenna on Twitter. They go like this:

When someone talks shit about “FTB” that doesn’t actually mean Freethought blogs, it means “core” bloggers. Tim Skellett to Avicenna:

BTW, once again you name a peripheral FTB blogger (yourself), not a core one. Again, *cough* revealing.

Who exactly are the core ones? Skellett gives the list a few tweets later, still talking to Avi.

@saramayhew seems to refer to the core FTB bloggers, which would be PZ, Brayton, szvan, Benson, McCreight, Greta. See next.

So them’s the rules, apparently. “FTB” is just shorthand for those six people; the other 30-whatever-it-is-now don’t count.

Says who? Taslima Nasrin doesn’t count? Maryam doesn’t count, Nirmukta doesn’t count, Avi doesn’t count, Chris Rodda doesn’t, Ally Fogg, Zinnia, Yemi, Matt, Russell, Cuttlefish, Brianne, Miri – all those people and more, don’t count? They’re all “peripheral”?

What bullshit.

Update 3:30 p.m.

No lie too foul to post in writing on the internet.

Tim Skellett @Gurdur

Disgusting how FTB-ingroup use ppl like Maryam, @Million_Gods & foreign events to bolster their own egos.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Times of India picked up a tweet on blasphemy by Taslima.

She makes us proud.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Taslima – in Pakistan, a cleric cut his wife into pieces because she refused to wear a niqab and she sent their children to school.

Ahmad Aziz, father of the deceased Farzana Bibi, 36, said that she married Muhammad Sharif, 42, a resident of Bakkhal Bhir in Mumtazabad Colony.

They had three children.

Aziz said that Sharif led prayers at the neighbourhood mosque and also gave Quran lessons at their home. He said Sharif was short-tempered and would often beat up Farzana Bibi. He had been telling her to cover her face when she left the house.

Aziz said Farzana Bibi wore an abaya (gown), but did not want to cover her face.

Probably because she wanted to be able to breathe and see and talk freely and just generally feel like a human being as opposed to a sack.

Police said in his note, Sharif had confessed to killing Farzana Bibi.

He wrote that he had deemed his action the best way to “punish his wife for rebelling against Allah’s orders”. He wrote that he wanted all women to learn from their example.

He said he had not wanted his children to study at a school. Instead they should have gone to a religious seminary. He said Farzana Bibi had enrolled their children into an English medium school against his will. He said he had wanted to punish her for that, too.

He said he had been telling her to cover her face with a veil when she stepping outside, but she had not listened. He also wrote that he did not want to be responsible for her sins and thus killed her.

He thinks a woman’s refusal to wear a bag over her head is a “sin” while a man’s murder of a woman is not a “sin.”

What a mindset.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Because it came up in a Twitter conversation (with Vlad Chituc and Michael Payton) and because sometimes a good polemical response is called for, I thought we should revisit Hazlitt’s Letter to Gifford. (I say revisit because I did a post on it back in 2004.)

SIR, You have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and it will be the object of this letter to cure you of it. You say what you please of others : it is time you were told what you are. In doing this, give me leave to borrow the familiarity of your style : for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable.

You are a little person, but a considerable cat’s-paw; and so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons high in office constantly influences your opinions, and alone gives importance to them. You are the Government Critic, a character nicely differing from that of a Government spy; the invisible link that connects literature with the police. It is your business to keep a strict eye over all writers who differ in opinion with His Majesty’s Ministers, and to measure their talents and attainments by the standard of their servility and meanness. For this office you are well qualified. Besides being the Editor of the Quarterly Review, you are also paymaster of the band of Gentlemen Pensioners ; and when an author comes before you in the one capacity, with whom you are not acquainted in the other, you know how to deal with him. You have your cue beforehand. The distinction between truth and falsehood you make no account of : you mind only the distinction between Whig and Tory. Accustomed to the indulgence of your mercenary virulence and party-spite, you have lost all relish as well as capacity for the unperverted exercises of the understanding, and make up for the obvious want of ability by a barefaced
want of principle. The same set of threadbare commonplaces, the same second-hand assortment of abusive nick-names, the same assumption of little magisterial airs of superiority, are regularly repeated ; and the ready convenient lie comes in aid of the dearth of other resources, and passes off, with impunity, in the garb of religion and loyalty.

…

The end sanctifies the means; and you keep no faith with heretics in religion or government. You are under the protection of the Court j and your zeal for your king and country entitles you to say what you choose of every public writer who does not do all in his power to pamper the one into a tyrant, and to trample the other into a herd of slaves. You derive your weight with the great and powerful from the very circumstance that takes away all real weight from your authority, viz., that it is avowedly, and upon every occasion, exerted for no one purpose but to hold up to hatred and contempt whatever opposes
in the slightest degree and in the most flagrant instances of abuse their pride and passions. You dictate your opinions to a party, because not one of your opinions is formed upon an honest conviction of the truth or justice of the case, but by collusion with the prejudices, caprice, interest, or vanity of your employers.

That’s a sample of it. A fine pleasure for a Sunday afternoon; I wish you joy of it.

Source.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A friend on Twitter shared some flatulence de guerre:

Well all right then! We’ve got precedent.

Much more at io9.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s deadly, it comes from the sea, it smells of fish and diesel oil -

Out of nowhere, apropos de bottes, context-free, random, Dadaist.

Jokes about farting on submarines always welcome.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From Gnu Atheism on Facebook, again.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Trudeau did a series on sexual harassment in the military this past week. The one for August 22 is especially…cogent.

In fact, if you report rape, your career is almost certainly over.

People keep saying – keep shouting, roaring, bellowing – that if there is rape or harassment victims must report it and if they have failed to report it or reported it too late or reported it to the wrong person or institution (too late or wrong in the view of the shouter, of course) then they are doing a terrible, criminal thing. But the reality is that reporting rape or harassment can fuck up the victim’s life even more than it already was. It’s not the case that one can just stalk off to make a report and there you go, job done.

See August 23, too. That’s even more cogent.

Since only a tiny percentage are ever convicted, sexual predators feel free to attack with impunity.

Why are so few punished? Well, for one reason, victims have to report up the chain of command, so few of them report.

Why? 33% of victims don’t report because their superior is a friend of the rapist. 25% don’t report because he is the rapist!

Exactly, and not just in the military.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hey I’ve got a great idea for a sitcom. A guy rapes a girl of 14, see, and makes her pregnant, and she has the baby and her mother has to quit her job to take care of the baby. Good so far, right? Then – this is where it gets really funny – a judge decides to give jurisdiction to family court, so the girl is stuck with him for the next sixteen years! Hilarious or what?

The rape victim doesn’t think so.

“The plaintiff, a rape victim in a state criminal matter, became pregnant in 2009 at age 14 as a result of the crime and gave birth to her attacker’s child,” the lawsuit states.

“The defendant in the state criminal proceeding, age 20 at the time of the impregnation, was convicted of rape in 2011 and was sentenced to 16 years probation. Conditions of probation include an order that he initiate proceedings in family court and comply with that court’s orders until the child reaches adulthood. The plaintiff here seeks to enjoin enforcement of so much of the state court’s order as violates her federal rights by binding her to an unwanted 16-year legal relationship with her rapist.”

H.T., who recently graduated from high school, says the order forces her to participate in unwanted court proceedings for 16 years with the man who raped her, and to spend money on legal fees.

But…um…family values?

 In June 2012, H.T. found out that Melendez was seeking visitation rights with the child.

After a family court judge ordered Melendez to pay $110 a week in child support, he Melendez asked for visitation rights, and offered to withdraw his request in exchange for not having to pay child support, according to the lawsuit.

“Melendez had no prior contact with the child and had expressed no interest in the child, but no Massachusetts law forbids the enforcement of visitation rights by a biological father who causes a child’s birth through the crime of rape,” the complaint states.

The law is an ass.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Who else? Well there’s Anna Gunn, who plays the character Skyler White on Breaking Bad (which I’ve never seen, I should add in case I’m expected to be knowledgeable about the show). She gets hatred and threats, because…well because she plays this one tv character that people don’t like, because her character is a woman, married to a man, and even though the man does some bad things, well…

My character, to judge from the popularity of Web sites and Facebook pages devoted to hating her, has become a flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, nonsubmissive, ill-treated women. As the hatred of Skyler blurred into loathing for me as a person, I saw glimpses of an anger that, at first, simply bewildered me.

It is bewildering at first.

Because Walter is the show’s protagonist, there is a natural tendency to empathize with and root for him, despite his moral failings. (That viewers can identify with this antihero is also a testament to how deftly his character is written and acted.) As the one character who consistently opposes Walter and calls him on his lies, Skyler is, in a sense, his antagonist. So from the beginning, I was aware that she might not be the show’s most popular character.

But I was unprepared for the vitriolic response she inspired. Thousands of people have “liked” the Facebook page “I Hate Skyler White.” Tens of thousands have “liked” a similar Facebook page with a name that cannot be printed here.

Let me guess. “Skyler White is a cunt”?

As an actress, I realize that viewers are entitled to have whatever feelings they want about the characters they watch. But as a human being, I’m concerned that so many people react to Skyler with such venom. Could it be that they can’t stand a woman who won’t suffer silently or “stand by her man”? That they despise her because she won’t back down or give up? Or because she is, in fact, Walter’s equal?

Yes, yes, and yes.

At some point on the message boards, the character of Skyler seemed to drop out of the conversation, and people transferred their negative feelings directly to me. The already harsh online comments became outright personal attacks. One such post read: “Could somebody tell me where I can find Anna Gunn so I can kill her?” Besides being frightened (and taking steps to ensure my safety), I was also astonished: how had disliking a character spiraled into homicidal rage at the actress playing her?

But I finally realized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender.

I can’t say that I have enjoyed being the center of the storm of Skyler hate. But in the end, I’m glad that this discussion has happened, that it has taken place in public and that it has illuminated some of the dark and murky corners that we often ignore or pretend aren’t still there in our everyday lives.

Along with Mary Beard and Laurie Penny and Caroline Criado-Perez and Anita Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson and and and.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)