Science deniers don’t like the new Cosmos series, Chris Mooney reports in Mother Jones.

Well of course they don’t. That’s because it doesn’t go

God made this.

Then God made this.

Then God made this.

[Repeat until it's time for the commercials]

Mooney gives somewhat thicker detail, such as the reaction to the second episode’s account of natural selection.

Over at the pro-”intelligent design” Discovery Institute, they’re not happy. Senior fellow David Klinghoffer writes that the latest Cosmos episode “[extrapolated] shamelessly, promiscuously from artificial selection (dogs from wolves) to minor stuff like the color of a polar bear’s fur to the development of the human eye.” In a much more elaborate attempted takedown, meanwhile, the institute’s Casey Luskin

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One more for the files, via Iram Ramzan by way of Chris Moos on Facebook.

Why the fuck not?

Why the fuck would I want to cover my whole body while I’m still alive?

I wouldn’t, nor should I.

Brothers! Why is it only sisters you tell this bullshit to?… Read the rest

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Uh oh, did somebody somewhere disturb the conventional wisdom? Quick! Hurry! Get someone to repeat the consoling fictions, before there’s a tear in the space-time continuum and everything falls off.

To the rescue: Caroline Kitchens in Time, with all the clichés piled up next to her keyboard ready to go.

There is no rape culture, there is only rape culture hysteria.

There we go; everyone can go home now.

Recently, rape culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream. In January, the White House asserted that we need to combat campus rape by “[changing] a culture of passivity and tolerance in this country, which too often allows this type of violence to

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Dang…this is something I wouldn’t want to see if I were in the hospital, or visiting someone I liked who was in the hospital.

… Read the rest

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Isis reports on a colleague including sexist graphical abstracts with his papers.

The last one looks like this:

Haha. So funny. So science.

A woman who is a scientist – Professor and Graduate Program Director at Johns Hopkins type woman who is a scientist – tweeted a criticism and he replied with “I wonder if you have been trained in the Vatican.”

Oy.

Isis comments:

Why is this a problem? Because Professor Righetti is continuing to publish his hilarious graphical abstracts (see this month’s issue)  and I suspect it is but a matter of time before we get more titties. He is also on the editorial board of several journals (Electrophoresis, J. Chromatography, J. Capillary Electrophoresis, BioTechniques, Proteomics, Journal

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Update: Facebook finally took it down. Good. Now for all the rest of them.

Thanks to Udo for alerting us to this page.

_____________________

Just to be clear.

And trigger warning again, because this is a horrifying photo.

I reported this photo with the text to Facebook.

Facebook looked at it; I know this because the response wasn’t instantaneous, as it was when I reported the whole page. Facebook looked at it, and sent the usual reply:

Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the photo you reported for containing graphic violence

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Remember last fall Nick Cohen wrote about the appalling conditions for migrant workers in Qatar in the run-up to the World Cup? Like, How many more must die for Qatar’s World Cup?

Not all the fatalities are on construction sites. The combination of back-breaking work, nonexistent legal protections, intense heat and labour camps without air conditioning allows death to come in many guises. To give you a taste of its variety, the friends of Chirari Mahato went online to describe how he would work from 6am to 7pm. He would return to a hot, unventilated room he shared with 12 others. Because he died in his sleep, rather than on site, his employers would not accept that they had worked

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One reason (one that most people are probably already aware of, at least intuitively) for adults not to model lying to children.

A new experiment is the first to show a connection between adult dishonesty and children’s behavior, with kids who have been lied to more likely to cheat and then to lie to cover up the transgression.

Not a big surprise, is it. Children take their cues from adults. Where else are they going to take them? Goldfish? They learn what to do from people who are older than they are.

So there’s one of those lab experiments, which seems fine as far as it goes but not necessarily all that relevant to more natural kinds of relationships.

The

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NPR has a great story about an inspirational music teacher and what students get from her teaching. I’m not going to lie, I’m a sucker for stories like that.

Debra Kay Robinson Lindsay rehearses one more time with her Honors Chorus group before a concert for Music in Our Schools month, a national event to celebrate music and emphasize its importance in school curriculum.

(Students singing)

Parents beam and students eagerly share what they’ve learned from Mrs. Lindsay, an award-winning music educator, author and composer who has taught in Fairfax County public schools for 39 years.

Students: I’ve learned that the people who you see on television who are really good singers, you need to really work hard and you

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Why did nobody think of it before? Get a homicide detective to investigate the Jesus story. Of course! Then even the small minority of people who are atheists will throw in the towel.

A New Jersey church will put a spin on the Easter story by bringing in a professional detective to examine Christ’s death and resurrection.

Homicide investigator J. Warner Wallace will utilize his “cold case investigation skills” to examine the historical circumstances surrounding Christianity’s sacred weekend in a four-week series that starts on Sunday at Liquid Church’s four locations.

“Cold case investigation skills” can investigate stories from 2000 years ago to determine the truth of elements of the story? I did not know that! Right then; let’s … Read the rest

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Hey who knew, god has a Facebook page – or rather, God, since if there’s a Facebook page, the person behind it must be a person, i.e. God.

So God has a Facebook page.

It’s pretty funny.

Here’s another one.

Let me save you

From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t worship me.

It’s having some innocent fun with Fred Phelps, naturally.… Read the rest

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Just this onnnnnnnnnnnne more thing.

… Read the rest

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Last year New York state did a little regulating of the modeling industry. Good.

The New York State Legislature approved a measure Wednesday night that would recognize fashion models under the age of 18 as child performers for print and runway work, a step that has the potential, if signed into law, to alter not only hiring practices in the fashion industry, but also the overall look of models appearing at Fashion Week.

As it stands, the majority of models start their careers well under 18, with some young women appearing in runway shows when they are 13 or 14. Reacting to concerns about the health and well-being of such young models, the Council of Fashion Designers of America

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Originally a comment by Jen B Phillips on You oughta be in pictures, you oughta be a star.

Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”

Something very close to that scenario happened to me more than once. It’s vexing.

I thought the main point of Ophelia’s original post was that gendered limitations (through marketing) on toy choices fail to present girls with the full range of career possibilities that is more readily available to boys. I think this is dead on.

I have tried to get caught up on this in the other comment threads, but I’m probably still … Read the rest

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Look at it this way. Suppose you have a young daughter, or niece, or friend’s daughter whom you’re close to. Suppose you’re at a gathering with her and a bunch of people. Suppose she just won a math prize, or a scholarship, or a literary prize. Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”

Would you find that insulting? I certainly would. Why? Well first of all it’s a diversion from what she’s talking about and planning – but it’s more than that. Why?

But maybe you wouldn’t find it insulting. Maybe you would suggest it yourself. If so, why?… Read the rest

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ProPublica reports on a terrifying prosecution in Mississippi.

Rennie Gibbs’s daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant’s most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

But within days of Samiya’s delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya’s blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by “cocaine toxicity.”

In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen,

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