The outrage of the moment in Sommers-land is the journalistic failings of a Rolling Stone article reporting on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. Rebecca Traister at The New Republic discusses this meta-story (so note we’re at level 4 here).

Over the past few days, several publications have reported journalistic lapses in Rolling Stone‘s blockbuster story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. The reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, never contacted the men that her subject, a student she calls “Jackie,” alleges raped her. Erdely also did not acknowledge in the body of the piece that she did not contact them.

These are serious charges: Journalists are supposed to seek multiple perspectives on the stories they report to try to present the fullest and fairest assessment of events; this is especially true when one source is alleging that a criminal act took place. It’s ironic and telling, though, that Erdely’s doubters have blown up their suspicions well beyond the available evidence, calling her story a “hoax” and comparing it to the fabricated pieces published by Stephen Glass in The New Republic and other magazines.

Imagine my lack of surprise.

It’s a massive leap in logic to move from a reasonable journalistic critique of Erdely’s reporting and disclosure practices to writing, as former George journalist Richard Bradley does in his blog post, “I’m not convinced that this gang rape actually happened.” It is symptomatic of exactly the patterns of incredulity and easy dismissal of rape accusations that keep many assaulted women and men from ever bringing their stories to authorities or to the public.

The reporting can be badly flawed and the story still be true, after all.

Consider that the weaknesses of the criminal system prompted Jackie not to tell her rape story first to police, but rather to friends—many of whom, she claims, blamed her and urged her not to go to authorities—and then to the university’s private system, which she says treated her poorly. It’s not so hard to imagine that by the time she got to Erdely with her story, she might reasonably have been fearful of retaliation. It was Jackie’s discomfort with identifying her victims, and her fear of the consequences, Erdely told The Washington Post, that led her to tread too delicately in her investigations.

Well let’s face it – people who report being raped always face horrible consequences. Always.

Erdely, in her role as journalist, should have done things differently, should have tried to speak with the figures accused or made explicitly clear that she had not spoken to them. Those handling cases in which more official systems have broken down do everyone, including themselves, a terrible disservice in not behaving with obsessive care.

Remember when PZ published Alison Smith’s account? He made it explicitly clear that he was doing just that.

But do not forget, as we go about what is sure to be the unpleasant business of turning our suspicions on Erdely—and in turn, on Jackie—that the swift shift of focus is central to what’s so jacked about systemic inequalities (and our impulse to pretend they don’t exist) to begin with.

It’s no coincidence that this is what Sommers and her allies are focusing on.

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

The Catholic church in the US wants to operate as if it were a separate country from the US with full diplomatic immunity and perhaps national sovereignty as well. It wants to declare itself immune from the laws and thus permitted to do whatever it damn well wants to.

Mother Jones has the story.

A teacher at a Catholic grade school in Indiana got in vitro fertilization treatment.

[A]fter church officials were alerted that Herx was undergoing IVF—making her, in the words of one monsignor, “a grave, immoral sinner”—it took them less than two weeks to fire her.

There they are again. Raping children doesn’t make a priest “a grave, immoral sinner” but getting IVF makes a woman “a grave, immoral sinner.” That’s a healthy moral system.

Herx filed a discrimination lawsuit in 2012. In response, St. Vincent de Paul School and the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, her former employers, countered with an argument used by a growing number of religious groups to justify firings related to IVF treatment or pregnancies outside of marriage: freedom of religion gives them the right to hire (or fire) whomever they choose. But in this case, the diocese took one big step further: It’s arguing that religious liberty protects the school from having to go to court at all.

“I’ve never seen this before, and I couldn’t find any other cases like it,” says Brian Hauss, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Center for Liberty. The group is not directly involved in the lawsuit but has filed amicus briefs supporting Herx. “What the diocese is saying is, ‘We can fire anybody, and we have absolute immunity from even going to trial, as long as we think they’re violating our religion. And to have civil authorities even look into what we’re doing is a violation.’…It’s astonishing.”

They want it all – everything. Special status that sets them apart from the state and the (non-Catholic) people who make it up, and allows them to do whatever they want provided they claim it’s part of their religious whatever.

The diocese argued that a trial on this question would violate its freedom of religion and appealed the judge’s decision to a three-judge panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. “[If] the diocese is required to go through a trial,” attorneys for the diocese and school argued, it would “irrevocably” deny Fort Wayne-South Bend the benefits of religious protection. Herx’s attorneys are fighting the appeal.

They’re nothing if not greedy.

Yesterday the court

ruled that religious freedom exemptions do not give theFort Wayne-South Bend Diocese immunity from Emily Herx’s sex-discrimination lawsuit. Herx’s lawsuit can now go forward in US District Court.

But the church will keep trying. It will never stop. It thinks it’s on a cloud above the rest of us.

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

Originally a comment by Golgafrinchan Captain on Feminism has gone too far.

I don’t feel any shame for being male but I do feel shame for some of the things I’ve done as a result of certain aspects of “lad culture.” For example:

During the later years of high school, I worked construction in the summer. On a few occasions, I whistled at women walking down the street. None of my co-workers joined in but none of them said anything either. It only took a few occasions for me to realize that I wasn’t getting the reactions I had seen in movies and on TV.

The first couple of times, the women just ignored me but, the last time, I received a glare. I stopped doing it but, being male, I had the luxury of not having to think too deeply about it until I started really reflecting on gender issues many years later. I can’t change my past behaviour but I now always speak up when I see crap like that. Again, I have the luxury of being a pretty big person who isn’t likely to get assaulted for telling off a harasser/bully. *

I still see this behaviour in movies and on TV (especially in commercials). I wonder what’s going through the minds of the actress as they tee-hee about the attention (“gotta pay the bills, gotta pay the bills, …”). Same goes for the scenario where a man and woman are slow dancing, the man lowers his hands to her butt, and it’s the woman’s responsibility to move his hands back up, while bemusedly shaking her head. It’s mild sexual assault but it’s presented as being funny.

* Note: one of the best things I learned in Early Childhood Education is the impact of bystanders in bullying. The target has a limited ability to change the behaviour of a bully. Bystanders have a great deal of power to either reinforce or stop bullying, and it often just takes someone saying, “not cool.” That’s the real reason for labels like “White Knight”; bullies want to eliminate any support their targets have. I don’t care what gender, race, weight, etc. the target is, I fucking hate bullies. It’s a hard habit to break, but I also now try to say “target”, “recipient of {some_crap}”, or “person who was {some_crap}ed” instead of “victim.”

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

L’Anse aux Meadows is really pretty fascinating. (Thanks, Mr Erdoğan, for the spur to check it out again.)

The evidence at the site also suggests that more southerly voyages might have taken place, and that other settlements might be found. Archeologists believe L’Anse aux Meadows was a base camp which afforded a way-station to further explorations of North America.

Rather like the ISS and even the Mars Rover. Those Vikings from Greenland or Iceland were the demon engineers of the 11th century.

Excavations revealed a number of artifacts that are diagnostic of a Viking site. From 1961 until 1968, the Ingstad excavations uncovered Viking artifacts including a ringed pin, a soapstone spindle whorl, a bone pin, a whetstone, iron boat rivets, worked wood and other objects. There was evidence of iron-smelting and forging, and hearth charcoal is dated to A.D. 1000. The style and construction of the three longhouses and outbuildings are identical to 11th century Iceland and Greenland. The artifacts indicated weaving and iron-working, activities which were not practiced by Native Americans until after A.D. 1500. These finds confirm L’Anse aux Meadows as the earliest European settlement yet known in North America.

It may have functioned as a kind of garage or shipyard with a dry-dock.

Later excavations by Bengt Schoenbak and Birgitta Wallace for Parks Canada revealed more about the purpose of this settlement and the type of activities that took place here. Their work produced further evidence of wood-working and iron-smelting, suggesting that the main activity at the site was repairing damaged vessels or constructing new ones from wood obtained in the nearby forests. Butternuts and worked pieces of butternut wood-a tree that was not native to Newfoundland but was present one thousand years ago in northern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick-were also found. This discovery indicates that the people who lived at L’Anse aux Meadows had traveled further south into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and had brought back nuts and wood native to those southern areas and were sampling the region’s resources as described in the sagas. These finds suggest that the L’Anse aux Meadows site was a base-camp or gateway to the rich lands around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is likely the Vinland of the sagas.

Now, this is very cool:

The excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows provide a small bit of evidence for these contacts in the form of two artifacts obtained by the Norse from skraelings. One is a beautiful oval soapstone lamp found in the smelting hut. Unlike thick, roughly-made soapstone lamps made by the Norse, this lamp is thin and delicately carved and is an unmistakable product of a Dorset Eskimo carver. How this piece arrived at L’Anse aux Meadows is mysterious, because there were no Dorset people living in Newfoundland at this time. It seems likely that the Norse obtained this lamp by trade or by taking it from an abandoned Dorset site they visited in Labrador.

So the Norse were adventurous explorers but clumsy artists while the Dorset Eskimos made delicately-carved artifacts. And it’s something of a puzzle how the Vikings got a Dorset lamp. That’s reminiscent of Otzi the Iceman, who had with him some tools that present a puzzle as to where they came from and how he got them. I’m enthralled by that kind of thing – trade routes and exchanges far in the past that are unknown to us now.

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

Another Tuğçe Albayrak, this one in India.

Hyderabad, November 30:

A 19-year-old BCom second year student was beaten to death allegedly by his senior when the former objected to eve-teasing of a girl student at a private college here, police said.

The accused, Satish Kodkar, allegedly hit the victim Harshavardhan Rao twice on his neck and chest after which he fell on the classroom bench and hit his head on the edge of the bench, a senior police officer said.

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

I mean seriously, why do we call Cristoforo Colombo “Columbus”? It’s not as if “Colombo” is terribly hard for an English-speaker to say. It’s not even like “Iraq” which for some reason many Americans seem physically unable to pronounce the way everyone else does. It’s quite a simple name, with no trilled ‘r’s or guttural ‘g’s or ‘ch’s. There is the difference between Italian ‘l’ and American ‘l’ but I think we can get away with that. So why do we call him by the wrong name?

It’s not as if me call Michelangelo Mike Angelo. It’s not as if we call Fra Angelico Bro Angel. It’s not as if we call Mussolini Muscle Leany. So why “Columbus”?

Maybe all the existing Columbus-based names. The capital of Ohio. The university on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The movie company.

One of the passages David Sedaris read from his diary when I saw him a couple of weeks ago went roughly like this:

I think the Washington Redskins should keep their name, but change their logo to a bag of potatoes.

Maybe we should start afresh and call Columbus Bro Eyetalian Explorer Dude.

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

So Coke is now selling expensive milk. Wut? I have no idea, but it is. And guess how it advertises its new expensive milk.

Yuuuuuuuuuum, right?

Laura Bates sees more good old everyday sexism.

Is this milk for drinking, or are you just expected to pour it lavishly over your head as you sit at the breakfast table, pouting sexily at your dry cereal? Why don’t men seem to be invited to partake in this new gastronomic experience? And given the enormous levels of dairy wastage likely to ensue, can you really justify charging double the price for it compared to normal milk?

Joking aside, seeing these images of women’s bodies being used, once again, to advertise an unrelated consumer product (“Drink what she’s wearing”) is a tedious reminder that when it comes to the objectification of women in advertising, we seem to be slipping backward instead of moving forward. Yes, there’s a tenuous argument to be made that the link is valid if the milk is being promoted as healthy and good for your body, but that doesn’t explain the sexualisation of the women, nor the lack of any male counterparts.

This is just the latest in a never-ending stream of examples of women’s bodies used as advertising fodder with scant regard for relevance or originality. Examples are tweeted to the Everyday Sexism Twitter account with depressing regularity. Want to promote a new games console? Why not use a headless woman’s bodywith two pairs of breasts? Advertising a restaurant? What you need is a picture of a naked woman covered in spaghetti! Trying to spread the word about green electricity? Go for a picture of a sexy woman with a lightbulb in her mouth. Decorating a van to spread the word about your curtain and blind business? Don’t forget to pop a lingerie-clad model on there! And everyone knows nothing says “LED technology” like an enormous picture of a woman’s naked arse.

Everyday sexism is post-feminist sexism, I guess. We’ve had feminism, and it fixed all the things, so now we’re post it, and sexist advertising is fine again, because we know all about it, and we can always just say it’s “ironic.”

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

The Guardian article about Erdoğan’s Bartonesque way with history said that

Some researchers believe Vikings reached America before the end of the first millennium.

No, it’s not some and it’s not “believe” – there’s solid evidence that they did. It’s from
L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.

In the early 1960s, archaeologists Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad undertook a close survey of the coastlines of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ingstad, a Norse investigator, had spent the majority of his career studying Northern and Arctic civilizations, and was following up on research into the Viking explorations of the 10th and 11th centuries. In 1961, the survey paid off, and the Ingstads discovered an indisputably Viking settlement near Epave Bay and named the site “L’Anse aux Meadows,” or Jellyfish Cove, a reference to the stinging jellyfish found in the bay.

Eleventh century Norse artifacts recovered from l’Anse aux Meadows numbered in the hundreds, and included a soapstone spindle whorl and a bronze-ringed pin process, as well as other iron, bronze, stone, and bone items. Radiocarbon dates placed the occupation at the site between ~990-1030 AD.

It was a failed settlement, that lasted only 3 to 10 years.

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

So Erdoğan is the David Barton of Turkey, I guess. He says “Muslims” (which ones? Indonesian?) arrived in the Americas three centuries before Signor Colombo.

Speaking on Saturday at a gathering of Muslim leaders from Latin America, Erdogan said contact between Islam and Latin America dated back to the 12th century.

“It is alleged that the American continent was discovered by Columbus in 1492,” Erdogan said. “In fact, Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178.”

“In his memoirs, Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba,” Erdogan said, adding that he’d like to see a mosque built on the hilltop today.

A mosque, eh? No chance it was just Colombo assuming a building he saw was a mosque simply because it looked somewhat like mosques he had seen in Spain? After all he assumed the place he was in was the far East simply because it was the first thing he bumped into sailing west from the Iberian peninsula.

Scholars have disputed the claim in Columbus’s writings, saying there is no archaeological evidence of Muslims having lived in the Americas before Columbus, an Italian, made his expedition in 1492 on behalf of the Spanish crown.

Yes but who needs archaeological evidence when you’ve got Colombo’s assumptions and snap identifications?

Erdoğan has been getting some mockery, and he’s mocking back. This should go well.

In an aggressive rebuttal of the criticism heaped on his comments in some quarters, Erdogan suggested that the purported discovery of the Americas by Muslims should be taught in schools.

“A big responsibility falls on the shoulders of the national education ministry and YOK [higher education board] on this issue,” Erdogan said at a ceremony in Ankara. “If the history of science is written objectively, it will be seen that Islamic geography’s contribution to science is much more than what’s known.”

So I wonder how Erdoğan knows that, exactly. A snap judgement by Colombo seems like a weak reed.

His claim had been mocked by some prominent columnists in the Turkish media. Mehmet Yilmaz, of the Hurriyet newspaper, suggested that Erdogan’s next claim should be that a Muslim, rather than Isaac Newton, discovered gravity.

I think Erdoğan should team up with David Barton and the pair of them should re-write all the history.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India. Some researchers believe Vikings reached America before the end of the first millennium. A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

There is archaeological evidence for the presence of Vikings in North America in the 11th century. It’s not just a mention of a putative mosque by Colombo.

In an article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh referred to a diary entry from Columbus that mentioned a mosque in Cuba. But the passage is widely understood to be a metaphorical reference to the shape of the landscape.

Metaphors weren’t invented until 1642. By a Muslim, by the way.

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

Apparently a guy called Peter Lloyd has for some reason gone to the trouble of writing a book that Christina Hoff Sommers wrote several years ago. I wonder what the point of that is.

spiked doesn’t though, spiked is all agog. spiked just can’t get enough of people saying edgy things like “well really when you get right down to it it’s men who are second-class citizens these days.”

Lloyd, who somehow combines writing for both the Daily Mail and the ‘women in leadership’ section of the Guardian, was prompted to write Stand By Your Manhood in response to the ‘dismissive, patronising and skewed narrative about heterosexual men’, which he suggests is apparent in the mainstream media.

He argues that it has become normal to consider masculinity as entirely negative and problematic, and to present boys as ‘defective girls, damaged by default’ who need to be medicated, educated and socialised out of their masculinity. Whereas once manhood was celebrated in all its stiff-upper-lipped glory, it is now considered threatening. Lloyd welcomes the progress society has made in recent years, and he is happy that homosexuality is no longer so stigmatised. However, he warns that there is a danger that things have gone too far in the other direction, and that shame is now attached to masculinity, with heterosexual men, in particular, being made to feel guilty if they don’t frequently display a more feminine side to their personalities.

Faaaaaaaaaaascinating. Please tell me all about it, while I just curl up here and take a little nap.

Lloyd suggests today’s men’s movement is a response to strains of feminism that first appeared in the late 1970s – these strains were far more explicitly anti-men than pro-equality. He claims today’s feminists perpetuate the idea that women are oppressed and ‘refuse to let go of old arguments’ despite the changes that have taken place in the real world. Often, Lloyd argues, there are monetary incentives for feminist campaigning groups, such as the Fawcett Society, continuously to propagate an image of women as victims of a non-specific patriarchy.

Oh my goodness that is so interesting. Isn’t it?

Certainly it is not in the financial interests of groups like Hollaback and FCKH8 to question the facts promoted in their campaigns against sexism. Lloyd blames the media for unthinkingly picking up on such campaigns and escalating an anti-male sentiment. As a result, he says, feminism can seem like a ‘hate movement’ and men have not had a voice to challenge these newly dominant perceptions.

Huh. So Peter Lloyd thinks all men are sexist? He must think that, if he thinks campaigns against sexism equate to anti-male sentiment. But why would he think that? I don’t think that, and I’m not even an MRA.

Campaigning against racism isn’t anti-white, you know. Campaigning for LGBTQ rights isn’t anti-straight or anti-cis. Why would campaigning against sexism be anti-male? Why do people make these hateful false equivalencies? Saying “don’t keep pushing me down” does not equate to “it’s my turn to push you down now.”

Those promoting men’s rights through social media can appear to be the older brothers of lad culture: far less fun to be around but just as mindless in their instinctive reaction against a new social order that seems to have brought women, and feminism in particular, to the fore. Lloyd, however, is clearly intelligent and has thought these issues through. He’s unapologetic about lad culture, applauding ‘the utter enjoyment and raw expression of masculinity’ that it represents. If lad culture can be seen as a rebellion against feminism, it is, he argues, entirely unconscious and simply a manifestation of young men over[t]ly embracing their gender identity.

The way white people overtly embracing their white identity is only unconsciously a rebellion against anti-racism. Uh huh.

He hopes Stand By Your Manhood will provide a ‘reality check’ for today’s more militant feminists, and enable men to stop feeling like they have to apologise just for being themselves.

Does “just being themselves” mean catcalls on the street or groping on the bus or punching women who talk back?

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

Good god – can Brendan O’Neill really be that thick? Confusing Bill Cosby’s ontological status with his legal status?

Bill Cosby – what a creep. Drugging all those women, molesting them, raping some. Can you believe we worshipped this guy when he played the joke-making everyman Cliff Huxtable in the Eighties? Well, now we know better. He isn’t the loveable avuncular dude we all thought he was. Rather, as those memes slicing through the internet like knives in Caesar’s back reveal, he’s a ‘serial rapist’. As one especially popular internet tag has it: ‘America’s fave dad by day – serial rapist by night.’

That has been the tenor of the discussion about Cosby on the web over the past fortnight. And it has been as ugly as hell: vindictive, gossip-fuelled, backward and positively medieval in its rush to condemn a man before he has been found guilty of a crime. Whatever you think of Cosby – I remember even as a kid I thought The Cosby Show was pants – this media-led public criminalisation of someone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime should chill you. Because the fact is, Cosby is innocent of rape.

Just as you are. Just as I am. At least until such a time as someone does the very hard job of proving beyond reasonable doubt that he did rape someone. There’s a phrase for this, I think. How does it go? Ah, yes: ‘A man is presumed innocent until proven guilty.’

No, not a man, Brendan. A person, an accused, a defendant – not a man. It applies to women too.

But never mind that. Dear god is he kidding? The fact that X is presumed innocent in a court of law does not equate to “X is innocent.” The “phrase” he trots out itself doesn’t say that – it doesn’t say “is innocent,” it says “is presumed innocent.” There’s a difference.

The presumption of innocence matters in court, and it matters for what can legally be said, which is why news media use the word “alleged” so liberally. But it doesn’t change the facts. It’s possible for a guilty person to be acquitted in court and it’s possible for an innocent person to be convicted in court. Neither of those changes the facts either. X is innocent if X is innocent, not if a court finds X not guilty.

So, no. O’Neill is completely wrong to say “the fact is, Cosby is innocent of rape.” He doesn’t know that, just as I don’t know Cosby is guilty of rape. He and I both don’t know what the fact is.

Does Bill Cosby rape women? Has he ever? We don’t know, but justice – Enlightenment itself – demands that we say, ‘No. Prove otherwise if you can.’

No, it does not. O’Neill is confusing how the legal system is required to treat defendants with what everyone else is supposed to say and think about them. Justice doesn’t require us to pretend we know defendants are innocent any more than it requires us to pretend we know they’re guilty.

I have news for these twenty-first-century Salemites: Bill Cosby, we must presume, is innocent. And given that the passing of the statute of limitations means he’s very unlikely to be brought to court to face his accusers, he will remain innocent. I’m sorry if that gets in the way of your search for a demon to yell about, but that’s life: liberty and justice are more important than your weird psychological need for evil.

Ah yes, so if a guy succeeds in getting away with rape for years by the simple expedient of drugging his victims so that their testimony becomes worthless, then hahahahaha statute of limitations you lose and HE’S INNOCENT so hahaha suck it.

Horrible man.

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

I know nothing about this except what I read here, but it sounds like a wretched situation: David Colquhoun on bullying (of scientists by senior scientists) at Imperial College.

This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm:Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial.

Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired.

“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading up to his death, and that he had been placed on performance review.”

Having had cause to report before on bullying at Imperial’s Department of Medicine, I was curious to know more.

And he found out more. Read it.

At the end he posts a bunch of horrified tweets by other scientists and academics.

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

A video of two young women fighting off a man on a bus has gone viral.

A video showing two sisters in northern India hitting back at men who allegedly harassed them on a crowded bus has drawn huge attention in a country where hundreds of thousands of women silently endure sexual harassment daily.

The video, filmed by a passenger and aired on several television channels Monday, shows the two young women hitting, punching and beating their harassers with a belt, as other passengers silently look on. The women, identified only by their first names, Arati and Pooja, told reporters that they lashed out at the men after enduring lewd comments and pawing from them.

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

The Republican Congressional staffer who pissed on Malia and Sasha Obama the other day has resigned.

Elizabeth Lauten, communications director for congressman Stephen Fincher, gave up her post on Monday.

Ms Lauten earlier criticised Sasha and Malia Obama on Facebook following their appearance in short skirts at a Thanksgiving ceremony.

Yeah she “criticized” them all right.

Her deleted post reads: “Dear Sasha and Malia: I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play.

“Then again, your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter. So I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department.”

The post goes on to advise the girls to “rise to the occasion and act like being in the White House matters to you”.

“Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar,” she added.

That’s barely even coded. It’s all too easy to read what she’s really saying.

Good riddance.

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

Right Wing Watch discusses a scathing review by Gregg Frazer of a David Barton book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.

RWW says Barton likes to call everyone he approves of a “Founding Father” and includes this passage from Frazer’s review:

This leads to one last area of concern in America’s Godly Heritage which can best be expressed as a question: Who counts as a “Founding Father?”

This issue reappears frequently in Barton’s works. He seems to count anyone of whom he approves who was living at the time of the Revolution, the founding of the political system under the Constitution, or within fifty or sixty years of those times as a “Founding Father.” For example, he says that “the American Tract Society was started by the Founding Fathers.” First, not one of those listed as a Tract  Society founder signed the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. By what standard are they “Founding Fathers?” Furthermore, the Society was started in 1825 – 36 years after the Constitution was ratified. Madison was the last living framer an d he died in 1836. How many Founding Fathers were even alive in 1825? Similarly, in his discussion of Vidal v. Girard, he said it was decided in “the time of the Founders.” It was decided in 1844 –55 years after the Constitution went into effect and, a s was just mentioned, the last framer died in 1836! Barton refers to John Quincy Adams as a “Founding Father.” At the time of the Constitutional Convention, he was a 20 year-old just out of law school (he was 8 when the Declaration was signed) – by what standard is he a “Founding Father?” Barton also claims that the “Founding Fathers” established the New England Primer as a text, but the Founding Fathers did not establish any texts for schools – that was left to local communities to decide. Apparently, by Barton’s standards (whatever they are), local school boards were “Founding Fathers.” Finally, Barton says that the state constitutions indicate that the “Founding Fathers” wanted to be sure that Christians held public office. But the Founding Fathers, in Article VI of the Constitution, specifically disallowed any religious test for office. That would seem to be a strange and counterproductive prohibition to be put in place by those who want to ensure that Christians hold the various offices.

It’s almost funny, except that many people take Barton seriously. But it is quite funny to see such passion for the combination of founding and father. All the good things in one phrase and one kind of person! Daddies, and not just Daddies, but Daddies who Found things. And not just any things but THIS GREAT COUNTRY OF OURS.

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

Adam Rutherford doesn’t have much sympathy for James Watson’s complaints of undue neglect.

The great scientist James Watson is to auction his Nobel prize medal. He told the Financial Times this week that following accusations of racism in 2007, “no one really wants to admit I exist”, and as a result his income had plummeted and he has become an “unperson”.

If his income plummeted as a result of people avoiding him, that can mean only that he no longer gets big fees for speaking or lecturing. Well…yes, and?

If people no longer want to pay to hear him talk, then they don’t. If that’s because he revealed himself to be a racist, then well done people who no longer want to hear him talk. He’s not simply automatically entitled to big speaking fees.

This sounds awful: an 86-year-old hero ostracised for his views, shooed from public life by the people who walk in his scientific shadow.

But it’s not awful. Watson has said that he is “not a racist in a conventional way”. But he told the Sunday Times in 2007 that while people may like to think that all races are born with equal intelligence, those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. Call me old-fashioned, but that sounds like bog-standard, run-of-the-mill racism to me.

And this current whinge bemoans a new poverty born of his pariah status. Apart “from my academic income”, he says, Watson is condemned to a miserly wage that prevents him from buying a David Hockney painting.

In short, he’s no longer popular, because of his bog-standard racism. Well there you go.

With Nobels, we put people on pedestals and gift them platforms to say whatever they like. Here, they represent science, but contrary to stereotype, there isn’t a typical scientist. We’re just people.

Some Nobel laureates say stupid ignorant things. Most say little beyond their expertise, and some, such as the president of the Royal Society, Paul Nurse, are great leaders and campaigners for science and society.

And the same applies to non-laureate scientists. A famous scientist can be both a great campaigner for science and a racist or sexist or both. This is a thing that can happen.

“No one really wants to admit I exist” says Watson. That’s not it. It’s more that no one is interested in his racist, sexist views. Watson, alongside Crick, will always be the discoverer of the double helix, to my mind the scientific breakthrough of the 20th century. Here’s our challenge: celebrate science when it is great, and scientists when they deserve it. And when they turn out to be awful bigots, let’s be honest about that too. It turns out that just like DNA, people are messy, complex and sometimes full of hideous errors.

And we can always look at David Hockney paintings in books or museums.

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

Jesus takes a stab at speaking in tongues. He’s a natural.

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

Some terrible people in Pakistan accused the Bollywood star Veena Malik of “blasphemy” and hurting feelings and inflaming sentiments and the rest of the menu of bullshit. The other day a judge totes agreed and sentenced her to 26 years in prison.

What was the blasphemy? She acted in a scene loosely based on the marriage of Mo’s daughter.

The offending scene involved Malik re-enacting her own wedding to businessman Asad Bashir Khan while a religious song played in the background.

There was outrage following its original broadcast in a daytime programme on Geo TV in May, with blasphemy cases filed against the channel’s owner and the show’s anchorwoman, as well as Malik and her husband.

On 26 May, the senior vice president of the Gilgit-Baltistan chapter of Muslim religious organisation Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat lodged an official complaint alleging the show had defiled Ahl al-Bayt – the family of the prophet Muhammad – in playing “a contemptuous Qawwali”.

Nobody “defiled” anything. Go build a school or teach math in a school or make lunch in a school; do something useful instead of persecuting artists who don’t share your loathsome narrow view of the world.

Announcing the verdict on Tuesday, judge Raja Shahbaz ordered the police make arrests under Section 19 (10) of the Anti-Terrorism Act in case of disobedience, as well as sell the properties of the offendants.

“After evaluation of the entire evidence of the prosecution, I am of the considered opinion that the prosecution has proved its case against proclaimed offenders and absconders,” Shahbaz said.

The order reads: “The malicious acts of the proclaimed offenders ignited the sentiments of all the Muslims of the country and hurt the feelings, which cannot be taken lightly and there is need to strictly curb such tendency.”

No there isn’t. That is not the tendency that needs to be curbed in Pakistan. You’re looking in the wrong place altogether.

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

Football. Germany. Frankfurt v Dortmund. Frankfurt’s Hans Seferovic scored the winning goal. He dedicated the goal to Tuğçe Albayrak.

Seferovic lifted his jersey after the goal to reveal a written tribute to Tugce on his undershirt, with the hashtags “civil courage,” “angel,” “courage,” and “respect.”

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

Curious as always, I naturally looked around this Young America’s Foundation place to see what it’s like. I found a link titled UCSB Students Believe Global Warming is One of the Biggest Threats to the World. I could feel the scorn rising off the words. Silly silly UCSB students – what does it matter if sea levels rise and glaciers melt and rivers dry up and crops fail?

And yet, I was still surprised by Ashley Pratte’s style of argument.

According to Weather Channel founder John Coleman, man-made climate change is a myth.  Well, college students at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) would strongly disagree.

In a statement Coleman said, “The ocean is not rising significantly.  The polar ice is increasing, not melting away.  Polar bears are increasing in number.  Heat waves have diminished, not increased.”

However, the students at UCSB feel very differently.

Uh? A tv weather guy said something, and that’s supposed to be conclusive?

Snopes has a page on Coleman.

As Coleman’s critics have noted, he does not hold a degree in climatology or any related discipline, nor has he studied or conducted any research in that field; he merely parrots arguments advanced by others.

So just saying “In a statement Coleman said” isn’t quite good enough.

Critics of Coleman who do study and work in the field of climate science have produced detailed line-by-line rebuttals of his arguments against global warming.

Young America’s Foundation people please take a look.

Now back to Ashley Pratte:

There were a few students who made it clear they are doing all they can to reduce their individual carbon footprint.  One student claimed that he bikes 15 miles to school everyday, and another student said she’s vegan.

When asked what they would say to climate change deniers the answers were unanimous, “Educate yourselves.”

Well, maybe these students should take their own advice and realize that science isn’t on their side.  Over the years global warming has become a policy agenda spurred on by leftists and environmentalists, but the science just isn’t there.

This year marks, an 18-year “pause” in global warming-which leaves environmentalists scratching their heads to come up with excuses to combat climate-change deniers.

They can keep their computer models and we will keep our science-based in fact, not projections.

Yeah none of your god damn computer models for projecting what’s going to happen next, we prefer surprises!

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