Anderson Cooper had a piece at CNN about the Schatzes and about Daniel Michael Pearl’s horrible child-rearing advice:

The Pearls

You hear a cop talking to Zahria about her injuries – they beat her on the bottoms of her feet, like any torturer. She says – well, you’ll have to listen. Good luck with not falling apart.… Read the rest

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Dan Satterfield at AGU (whom I hadn’t read before: thanks Greg Laden) connects the epistemology of the Tea Party (or rather of Tea Partiers) with the Dunning-Kruger effect and authoritarian thinking.

Ed Maibach and Anthony Leiserowitz at GMU, and the Yale Center for Climate Change Communication have released a fascinating study of the opinions of different political party members on climate change. This is all the more fascinating because it defines the Tea Party as a separate group and asks some interesting questions about climate science. Take a look at the highlights from the survey below and see if you notice what stood out glaringly to me.

Yup; it jumped right out.

Tea Party members are much more

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Skepticlawyer has a great post with great comments on manners and geekdom and victim status as all-purpose excuse for off-the-charts rudeness.

There are various manifestations of these atrocious manners, but they seem (to me, at least) to boil down to an inability, on the part of certain men, to take ‘no’ for an answer. I think this is tied to participation in various ‘geek’ subcultures (both on-line and off-line, so while it may be convenient to blame the internet, blaming the internet is unfair). Participation in these varied subcultures is seen to give people something of a pass for rudeness. The justification proffered is that participation in the subculture resulted in bullying when the man in question was young,

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There’s a little chat I did with Jonathon Narvey of The Propagandist last week. If you listen to it I recommend skipping at least the first three minutes, because before that I keep sounding as if I’m translating from the Jupiterian.… Read the rest

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Via Classical Cipher in a comment, via Rebecca Watson at Facebook, via who knows what – marriage the old-fashioned way.

Let’s discuss this.

Marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church – so what is that then? What is the relationship between Christ and the Church? Does Christ have long interesting conversations with the Church, or does he just grunt now and then? Does Christ spend all his time with the Church or does he go out to work and leave the Church at home? Does Christ go to parties with the Church?

What exactly is that relationship, and how does the loon who wrote this stupid letter know what it is? How does anyone? … Read the rest

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There are new entries in the dialogue with William Hamby. I don’t know if subscribers get notified every time I update…in a way I hope not, since I don’t want people getting notified every time I fix a typo or berserker line-breaks, so in case you don’t, here is notification.… Read the rest

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Out of the closet at last.

… Read the rest

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PZ wants help finding the right adjective for the title of his book…but I don’t think it can be done. I think The _______ Atheist is a boring title no matter what ________ turns out to be. I think this because I tried to think of something interesting and then I read other people’s attempts and there’s just no spark, no matter what. This tells me that the formula is a dud – at least, it’s a dud if they (the publishers) want a buyer-thrilling title, which of course they do.

The Something Atheist. I just don’t think there’s a word that can make that sound exciting.

Unless they go absurdist or something. The Ruritanian Atheist. The Pioneer … Read the rest

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