ideology
clock | June 15, 2008I briefly noted this study yesterday, but now W. D. Craft analyzes it in great detail:
I am pessimistic that the authors' more careful conclusions and recommendations will be noticed. Instead I fear we're in for more naive calls for "abstinence education" and coerced virginity pledges.
clock | June 14, 2008Obligatory Reading of the Day: The crazies and Obama:
If there is a President Obama come next Jan. 20, normal folks better brace for what the right-wing crazies have in mind. Because it's becoming clear that they are winding themselves up now for a fresh spate of violence if Obama wins.
You can find the signs in the things they're saying now, both on Internet forums and in the things they say when they think no one is listening.
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In any event, a pattern is already developing, ranging from the Klan fellows who promise that Obama will be shot to the white supremacists…
clock | May 31, 2008Have you been to Pandagon lately? Have you seen the brand new look, design and layout? Cool!
Which reminds me that I have read Amanda's book, It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, on my first 2-3 flights in Europe last month. I left it with my cousin - let's spread the new, fun kind of feminism to the Balkans!
I have been reading Amanda Marcotte online since before she joined the crew at Pandagon and I have to say that, as a white, middle-aged, middle-class man, I learned from her blogging a lot about things I used to take for…
clock | March 25, 2008Some people only know the language of power. They see conciliation and compromise as weakness. Show strength. If they are sissies hiding behind machismo, slam them hard. You have nothing to lose. Some will convert and come to your side. Some will go cower in the corner. None will hang around risking your anger for very long.
Sometimes, profanity is the only appropriate language:
"On a related note, fearing that we face a whole new level of bullshit about which we will, and should, be visibly angry, and preparing myself thusly, comments and emails composed specifically to tell me to stop…
clock | March 10, 2008Why are Republicans (and their voters) so insecure about their masculinity? What are they covering up with their aggression and machismo? Why everything they say and do in an election boils down to some mythical and barbaric notion of manliness:
War cheerleaders ask: 'Is Obama man enough to be president?'
Thus, everyone who opposes them is always tagged as a 'sissy', although it is them who are fearful cowards. If you criticize cowards you are shrill and effeminate and hysterical like a woman, is that how it works?
The religion of balance and centrism
How much you want to bet that these…
clock | March 8, 2008[rant]So, if you organize a study-group online instead of in meat-space, the old fogies who still remember dinosaurs go all berserk. A student is threatened by expulsion for organizing a Facebook group for studying chemistry. Moreover, as each student got different questions, nobody did the work for others, they only exchanged tips and strategies. See the responses:
The Star:
Yet students argue Facebook groups are simply the new study hall for the wired generation.
Yes, they are.
Greg:
How much of this is a matter of administrative fear of the internet?
100%.
Larry:
Today, that sense of "…
clock | February 17, 2008A guide to hiring women.
Obsolete technical skills (I have them all except #11!)
The social source of religion.
Charles Barkley for President!
clock | December 23, 2007Opposite of what Obama is trying to sell as a recipe, as Paul Rosenberg explains eloquently and logically, with data and graphs.
clock | December 9, 2007This weekend, with 70 degrees F in Chapel Hill, it would have bin a sin to remain indoors. So I didn't. But in the end, at twilight today, my daughter and I went to see Golden Compass, the movie whose first-weekend box-office earnings I wanted to boost.
I made sure not to read any reviews of the movie beforehand. I am, unlike most people who already wrote about it, one of those people who has never read the Pullman books on which the movie is based. Thus, like the majority of the target audience, I was a Pullman "virgin" and I wanted to watch it just like anyone else going out to see a…
clock | October 1, 2007If anyone shows this to my son, he'll lead a revolution. Like those wonderful, patriotic, thinking students at Boulder High School, who penned their own, most excellent version of the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes. And to the diversity, in which our nation stands, one nation, part of one planet, with liberty, freedom, choice and justice for all.
Kudos to them! Watch the movie:
clock | August 8, 2007Immature?
Senescent?
Or just cowardly?
Favourite put-down topic: Hair.
Do a search on "femiphobia"....
clock | June 3, 2007Two ancient posts of mine, Why Creationists Need To Be Creationists and Creationism Is Just One Symptom Of Conservative Pathology are getting heavy traffic right now from Stumbleupon and Reddit. I posted a comment there trying to get people to come and see the much more recent update: More than just Resistance to Science, from which I'd like to promote a recent comment by Tree:
Thank you for drawing attention to the importance of understanding Phatic Language. While I was raised in a very formal family and as a youngster had an intuitive grasp that the purpose of protocol and etiquette is…
clock | May 31, 2007In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days.
Enrique has the best one-sentence summary of the article:
The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science.
The article divides that "what children know prior to their exposure to science" into two categories: the intuitive grasp of the world (i.e., conclusions they come up with on their own) and the learned…
clock | May 26, 2007An interesting poll came out of Gallup yesterday:
Despite Kosovo Intervention, Serbians Favor EU Membership
On May 15, the Serbian parliament approved a new coalition government led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, both moderates who would like to see their country join the European Union within the next decade. "Serbia's aspiration to become a full member of the EU is a clearly declared commitment of every party in this coalition," Kostunica told the parliament prior to confirmation.
However, Serbia's refusal to compromise on any plan for the future of Kosovo…
clock | May 22, 2007Well, it's been a while.... since I hosted the CotL #3 about a year and a half ago. It's ripe time to do it again. Not that it was ever easy to choose ten best written and most creative posts out of dozens of great entries! I spent the last few days agonizing and wishing I could include 20 or 30 or 40...but rules are rules, so here it goes, the brand new Carnival of the Liberals:
The Ridger of The Greenbelt digs for deeper causes in Not slavery - abolition:
Upsetting tyrants is noble, isn't it?
Charles H. Green knows that Trust Matters and right now you should trust me that his post is well…
clock | May 17, 2007A must-read by Sara Robinson. You can use it to understand the persistence of Creationism. Or the lack of Internal Locus of Moral Authority in people belonging to Moral Majority.
clock | April 9, 2007It appears that scientists are not the only ones who do not grok framing. Jeffrey Feldman's book got blasted by some ninkompoop in NY Times yesterday. Jeff responds:
Indeed, when I read that passage I wondered if the reviewer had given up on reading my book just after glancing through the table of contents. It seems that, instead of writing about my book, Fairbanks popped in a DVD of "The Matrix," or maybe "A Clockwork Orange," and then churned out a piece of creative non-fiction reacting to those other works of sci-fi.
Update: More about the "fairbanksing" of Feldman here, here and here.