PZ Myers sabotaged an investigation

It’s vastly amusing to see how the alleged sexual harasser/adulterer/rapist PZ Myers responds when he is treated the way he frequently treats others. And it is also worth noting that he has ignored five of the six examples cited that show him, by his own standards, to be a sexist. Not only has his story about being falsely accused of rape, among other things, changed multiple times, but it amounts to a public confession that, in the words of one commenter, he “deliberately sabotaged any chance of any investigation being conducted in line with official university policy.”

PZ Myers has responded to part of my recent post about what would happen if he judged others’ sexism as he judges himself. He responded in a comment on his blog, complete with his now familiar personal abuse (he calls me a fuckhead, an asshole and a demented fuckwit) and misrepresentations of what I have written (he mistakenly says that my report of his own words on his own blog were “straight from the slymepit”, and he mistakenly says that I claimed what he did was sexist).

In his response, PZ ignored five of the six examples that I gave of behaviour by him that other people might consider sexist if they used PZ’s own standards — telling a conference host to do her belly dance and to get off his stage as he has work to do, linking to pornography involving women and octopuses, writing about a dream in which he turned his students into mermaids, publicly joking about rape, and endorsing a pornographic book that includes rape fantasies.

Instead he has focused only on my report of his own story about a student threatening to make a false rape allegation against him. He has written several times about this since 2010, and I am assuming that everything that he has written about it is true. He has now made two new assertions about the incident.

Firstly, PZ now says that he went to the chair “to invite an open investigation”, not to prevent one. Previously he had written that he “had to work fast” because “it could get dragged out into an investigation that would easily destroy my career,” and also that the woman had not gone to the authorities because he had brought in witnesses “to make her effort futile.”

Secondly, PZ now describes the investigation and says that he followed proper procedure. Previously he had written that this involved only the student, and not PZ himself, being questioned for only ten minutes about the severity of her accusation. I compare this below with the University of Minnesota’s official procedures for dealing with incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

The inconsistencies in the various accounts are telling, although not necessarily damning of anything but shameless hypocrisy. As I have repeatedly observed, PZ Myers is simply not very intelligent. You may recall how he did not know that not all human beings are equally Homo sapiens sapiens despite his PhD in biology, now he can’t even recognize when his own words are being directly quoted back to him. No wonder his readership has been consistently falling; he has nothing intelligent to say, he can’t take the heat of criticism, he has a confirmed inability to engage in discourse at the dialectical level, and he lined up behind the SJWs of Atheism+ against most of his fellow atheists.

It is, of course, not at all surprising to see PZ misrepresenting what someone else has written, although I no longer think it is safe to assume that he is doing so intentionally. These days, it is more logical to conclude that he’s simply not smart enough to correctly understand and summarize what someone else has written.

One former Pharyngulan has an interesting theory:

I remember how he’s described his father and grandfather and how
behaves very much the same. Different core values. But the behavior
is extremely similar to the behavior of those two role-models he has
castigated in the past. In any case, I washed my hands of him and his blog years ago. I’m
not interested in being part of a toxic ‘in-group’ that has abandoned
skepticism, rationality, manners and the ability to think for oneself.

One would think an evolutionary biologist, of all people, would recognize the limits of one’s willpower to surmount the limits of one’s genetics and upbringing. And finally, just to observer the Fowl Atheist’s shameless hypocrisy, consider the following statements:

“asshole Nugent is happily embracing slymepit lies and distortions to claim that what I did was sexist? Disgusting. He’s become a demented fuckwit.”
– PZ Myers

“Actually, I hate the word ‘moron’ used as an insult, thank you very much…. I don’t like the word “moron” and wish we would all use something else
non-ableist to express our disbelief at a person’s sheer wrongness.”
– PZ Myers

So, “demented fuckwit” is non-ableist?

VPFL Week 11

67 Mounds View Meerkats (6-5-0)
59 King (5-6-0)

71 Clerical Errs (2-9-0)
49 Greenfield Grizzlies (8-3-0)

64 Bane Cornshuckers (7-4-0)
60 Favre Dollar Footlongs (5-6-0)

54 RR Redbeards (7-4-0)
52 Boot Hill Bogs (2-8-1)

80 Texas Chili Eaters (6-4-1)
45 Gilbert Gamma Rays (6-5-0)

I’ve got 36 more points than any other team and I’m in 5th place. This is all too typical of my fantasy football seasons. Not a bad performance by the Vikes, respectable enough to avoid too much mocking from the Packers fans, anyhow.

In which Mr. Wright addresses a Gossip

And proceeds to flay him, slowly, in his inimitable style, before rolling him gently in finely ground sea salt.

A yahoo who does not give his name but calls himself Vunderguy is asking a Houyhnhnm named John C Wright what is my emotional reaction to a man who calls himself Vox Day but whose real name is Theodore Beale.

    “Speaking of flights and fancy, what’s your take on your publisher, Vox Day?”
Despite the bouncing gaiety of the question, I answered it soberly, saying this: I think he has too high an opinion of me and my work, frankly. This is based on private communications with him, where he grants me more praise than I think just. While it is right and proper, as a matter of professional courtesy, for an editor to flatter a writer he publishes, I am afraid in this case he overestimates my talent, albeit I am grateful for the flattery, because I am quite vain.

Vunderguy answers with this indirect comment:

    “While that insight is a bit humanizing of him, I meant in regards to his more… ‘fringe’ views.“

I was not aware that Mr. Beale needed ‘humanizing’ whatever that word means. As a Houyhnhnm, the process sounds painful and dangerous and much to be avoided.

Growing mildly impatient, in my unemotional way, I remarked: “Fringe views? Is this a guessing game where you act like a coy schoolgirl and do not say what you mean, while I act like a man and speak in complete sentences?” And I mentioned some of Mr Beale’s unusual views, for example on drug legalization and other libertarian issues, which are not mainstream.

After that, Mr. Guy (as I shall hereafter call the anonymous accuser) finally agreed to speak plainly and ask his question, or, rather, his accusation disguised as a question.

I say ‘his’ because in English, when the sex of the antecedent is unknown or undetermined, this is the proper pronoun. The delicate indirectness with which Mr. Guy asks his questions, however, is more typically seen in women, or was, back in the day when women practiced feminine delicacy.

Since it is an accusation and not a question, in a properly lawyerly fashion, let me answer point by point:

Mr. Wright also asked the Gossip why he was so strangely incurious about his other editors, including Messrs. George R.R. Martin, Gordon van Gelder, David Brin, Gardner Dozois, and Glenn Yeffeth. My question to those who would attack Castalia’s authors on the basis of their editor is this: Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden is, unlike me, a self-admitted racist. Do you similarly inquire all of his authors their “take” on his hurtful and offensive statement: “I’m a racist. Or some kind of bad guy, at any rate. I’ll live. Worse things happen to the victims of actual racism.”

Like having their land stolen and being put on reservations, just to name one, for no particular reason at all.


I find it rather amusing that people think they know my “fringe views”. I mean, the stuff they think is fringe is merely what I’m willing to openly state and defend in public. That is hardly the outer limit of my thinking.

The paradox of international aid

A longtime NGO enthusiast belatedly discovers that international development programs are an invasive species that change the targeted societies in unexpected, and often negative ways, and reliably fail to achieve the results intended.

This is the paradox: When you improve something, you change it in ways you couldn’t have expected. You can find examples of this in every corner of development practice. A project in Kenya that gave kids free uniforms, textbooks, and classroom materials increased enrollment by 50 percent, swamping the teachers and reducing the quality of education for everyone. Communities in India cut off their own water supply so they could be classified as “slums” and be eligible for slum-upgrading funding. I’ve worked in places where as soon as a company sets up a health clinic or an education program, the local government disappears—why should they spend money on primary schools when a rich company is ready to take on the responsibility?

My favorite example of unintended consequences comes, weirdly enough, from the United States. In a speech to a criminology conference, Nancy G. Guerra, the director of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Delaware, described a project where she held workshops with inner-city Latina teenagers, trying to prevent them from joining gangs. The program worked in that none of the girls committed any violence within six months of the workshops. But by the end of that time, they were all, each and every one, pregnant.

“That behavior was serving a need for them,” she says in her speech. “It made them feel powerful, it made them feel important, it gave them a sense of identity. … When that ended, [they] needed another kind of meaning in their lives.”

The fancy academic term for this is “complex adaptive systems.” We all understand that every ecosystem, each forest floor or coral reef, is the result of millions of interactions between its constituent parts, a balance of all the aggregated adaptations of plants and animals to their climate and each other. Adding a non-native species, or removing one that has always been there, changes these relationships in ways that are too intertwined and complicated to predict.

But it should be kept in mind that this dynamic works both ways. Mass migrants are also an invasive species, and they change the “ecosystem” they are invading every bit as much, and as “unexpectedly”, as the development programs do.

I need to see if I am still a member

Before I resign from IGDA:

In a sign of how frenzied, panicky and intolerant the games industry establishment has become over the legitimate concerns of ordinary gamers, the International Game Developers’ Association branded some 10,425 Twitter accounts, including those of journalists, as harassment “offenders” in a humiliatingly ill-conceived attempt to provide a “blocking tool” to its members.

The blocking tool, which has been widely mocked online for its lack of sophistication and “blanket ban” approach, was assembled by Randi Harper, a persistent online agitator. The tool prevents users from seeing not only the tweets of users Harper has decided are implicated in harassment, but also many accounts who simply follow those users, by blocking a list of thousands of users with the use of an automated “bot.”

So indiscriminately has the block list been compiled that the IGDA’s own staff appear on it. Roberto Rosario, chair of the IGDA in Puerto Rico, is named on the list. In an acutely embarrassing moment for the Association, Rosario, who is not a GamerGate supporter, publicly threatened to resign unless his name was removed or the bot was disavowed.

It turns out that I, too, am on the block list. I was asked to join IGDA by its then-president at a big European games conference some years ago, which I subsequently did. I’m pretty sure that he’s not the president now, because he didn’t strike me as a complete idiot. I know I’m a member of  a European GDA, but it’s a different organization than IGDA, so I don’t know what my current membership status is with them. Expired, I assume, but I’ll have to check on Monday.

SF/F before the coup

Daniel wrote an interesting post about the pre-pinkshirt state of science fiction at Castalia:

By 1995 or so, it had become fairly evident that the science fiction market had begun to experience a significant shift, one that I have been struggling to put my finger on for quite some time now.

The genre, of course, has always been one for whom change at a certain level should be something of a constant. The Romance genre (not the chivalric or ancient. I mean the “girl picks one of two boys” sort.) has remained the same since 1921’s The Black Moth, but Science Fiction (not the current “girl picks one of two boys” sort, but the traditional “having something to do with phenomena”) necessarily must adapt to any new knowledge….

In October of 1991, SF editor and reviewer, and senior editor at Omni, Robert J. Kilheffer did the world a favor by attempting a fairly comprehensive “State of the Genre” report in Publisher’s Weekly, titled Science Fiction: Expanding, Experimenting.

It’s interesting to see some of the comments from familiar names that we now know to have been responsible, in part, for the ongoing decline into necrobestiality and wereseal romance. I didn’t consciously notice the change until the award of the 2002 Nebula to Catharine Asaro’s ridiculous The Quantum Rose made me notice it, but looking back at the old Nebula winners, there is a definite point in 1988, when a nobody with a nothing novel that no one remembers beat Greg Bear, Gene Wolfe, David Brin, Avram Davidson, and George Alec Effinger, followed by Lois McMaster Bujold beating Gibson, Card, and Wolfe in 1989 (a less ludicrous result, but unjustifiable nevertheless), shows that the rot had set in.

Just for amusement’s sake, here is the description of the 1988 Nebula Award winner for Best Novel.

Elizabeth Butler is an archaeologist, and the author of several popular books that challenge her colleagues’ ideas about Mayan civilization. Elizabeth has a strange gift, connected to a suicide attempt as a young woman, which allows her to see the spirits of ancient people while she walks at dusk and dawn. The story opens with Elizabeth in the middle of an eight-week field study at Dzibilchaltún. Her team hopes to find dramatic artifacts that will spark interest and increased funding for future field studies at the site.

In the middle of the field study, Elizabeth’s estranged adult daughter Diane arrives unannounced. After the death of her father, Elizabeth’s ex-husband, Diane suddenly abandoned her life in the United States, and flew to Mexico to see her mother. It’s revealed that Diane has seen Elizabeth for only a few brief visits since Elizabeth left her as a young child to be raised by her father. Neither is sure what Diane wants from Elizabeth.

As the two struggle to connect, Elizabeth has a new experience: one of her spirit visions, a Mayan priestess named Zuhuy-kak, can see and speak with Elizabeth. Zuhuy-kak provides unprecedented knowledge about the Mayans’ departure from Dzibilchaltún, and leads Elizabeth to the major archaeological find her team needs, but demands a sacrifice to the goddess Ix Chebel Yax. As the dig progresses, haunted by bad luck and tragedy, Zuhuy-kak makes it clear that Elizabeth must sacrifice her daughter.

Of course, were this novel written today, Elizabeth would sacrifice her daughter without thinking twice about it and the plot would instead revolve around which of her two lesbian lovers Elizabeth would choose to marry in a civil ceremony in Mexico City, Zuhuy-kak or Ix Chebel Yax. It is perhaps worth observing that this “fantasy masterwork”, published in 1986,  presently has 28 reviews averaging 4.0, is out of print, and is ranked 1,640,443 on Amazon.

Interestingly enough, one reviewer observed back in 2005: “This Novel is NOT Science Fiction and is a mundane novel as well. This novel should NOT have won the award for what was called the best science fiction novel. 1987, the year of this novel, is thus the start of the Feminist takeover of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), now called the Science fiction and FANTASY Writers of America.”

Kissinger on the EU and Islam

I’ve been reading Henry Kissinger’s new book, World Order, and it is a very informative book about grand strategic world history as seen through the eyes of one of the global elite’s better-known servitors. It’s interesting how regardless of whether one looks at the world through the 4GW lens or through the NWO lens, the same diagnosis appears: the modern Westphalian state is endangered:

German unification altered the equilibrium of Europe because no constitutional arrangement could change the reality that Germany alone was again the strongest European state. The single currency produced a degree of unity that had not been seen in Europe since the Holy Roman Empire. Would the EU achieve the global role its charter proclaimed, or would it, like Charles V’s empire, prove incapable of holding itself together?

The new structure represented in some sense a renunciation of Westphalia. Yet the EU can also be interpreted as Europe’s return to the Westphalian international state system that it created, spread across the globe, defended, and exemplified through much of the modern age—this time as a regional, not a national, power, as a new unit in a now global version of the Westphalian system. The outcome has combined aspects of both the national and the regional approaches without, as yet, securing the full benefits of either.

He also, in passing, explains something that I mentioned yesterday, which is how the West planted the seeds for the third great wave of Islamic expansion that we now know as ISIS and the global jihad.

In the spring of 1947, Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian watchmaker, schoolteacher, and widely read self-taught religious activist, addressed a critique of Egyptian institutions to Egypt’s King Farouk titled “Toward the Light.” It offered an Islamic alternative to the secular national state. In studiedly polite yet sweeping language, al-Banna outlined the principles and aspirations of the Egyptian Society of Muslim Brothers (known colloquially as the Muslim Brotherhood), the organization he had founded in 1928 to combat what he saw as the degrading effects of foreign influence and secular ways of life….

The West, al-Banna asserted, “which was brilliant by virtue of its scientific perfection for a long time … is now bankrupt and in decline. Its foundations are crumbling, and its institutions and guiding principles are falling apart.” The Western powers had lost control of their own world order: “Their congresses are failures, their treaties are broken, and their covenants torn to pieces.” The League of Nations, intended to keep the peace, was “a phantasm.” Though he did not use the terms, al-Banna was arguing that the Westphalian world order had lost both its legitimacy and its power. And he was explicitly announcing that the opportunity to create a new world order based on Islam had arrived. “The Islamic way has been tried before,” he argued, and “history has testified as to its soundness.” If a society were to dedicate itself to a “complete and all-encompassing” course of restoring the original principles of Islam and building the social order the Quran prescribes, the “Islamic nation in its entirety”—that is, all Muslims globally—“will support us”; “Arab unity” and eventually “Islamic unity” would result.

How would a restored Islamic world order relate to the modern international system, built around states? A true Muslim’s loyalty, al-Banna argued, was to multiple, overlapping spheres, at the apex of which stood a unified Islamic system whose purview would eventually embrace the entire world. His homeland was first a “particular country”; “then it extends to the other Islamic countries, for all of them are a fatherland and an abode for the Muslim”; then it proceeds to an “Islamic Empire” on the model of that erected by the pious ancestors, for “the Muslim will be asked before God” what he had done “to restore it.” The final circle was global: “Then the fatherland of the Muslim expands to encompass the entire world. 

Through its attempts to impose a Westphalian order on the dar al-Islam and its development of the concept of world revolution, the secular West inadvertently created a rival it cannot possibly defeat on its own. The secular West’s advantages – science and technology – are readily utilized by the jihad, while its weaknesses of demoralization, apathy, multiculturalism, and demographic decline are both readily exploited and easily avoided.

To paraphrase the immortal words of LTC Tom Kratman, if you’re going to wage a religious war, you damn well better bring a religion. And as one reader noted: “In 100 years, either Norway will be an Islamic republic or there will be statues of Anders Breivik in every Norwegian town.”

Ferguson

I tend to doubt things are going to get too out of control given the heavy police and federal presence, but this is a post for folks to post news and thoughts over night assuming it is announced that Officer Wilson will not be charged for the lethal shooting of Michael Brown.

4GW in Middle America

This looks rather like a prelude of one of the signs I predicted would be among the harbingers of the civil war that will bring about the end of the USA:

Police families in Ferguson fear for their safety and many have gone into hiding or left town after receiving assault and death threats.

Spouses and children of cops in Ferguson, Missouri, have received assault and death threats after the shooting of Michael Brown. Tensions continue to rise in Ferguson as a grand jury nears its decision on whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s shooting

‘It’s very frightening,’ said the police wife, who asked to not be identified. ‘Most people who have a family member who’s a police officer are very proud of what they do.This is real and people actually do know how to find us and they do want to harm us.’

I doubt it is anything more than threats at this point, though. If people were planning to act, they wouldn’t be warning police families ahead of time. We will know that 4GW has come to America in earnest when police and federal agents are leaving their jobs for fear of harm coming to their families.

Which, you may recall, is one reason I theorized that the notorious FEMA camps are not actually intended for enemies of the state, but rather, for the families of its servants.

The moral imperative of international law

I wonder if the Supreme Court will cite this new Gambian law when it finally gets around to considering the legality of the gay parody of marriage:

The president of Gambia has signed a bill into law that calls for life imprisonment for some homosexual acts, the latest African country to codify harsh penalties for the gay community…. Lawmakers approved the legislation in August, prompting an outcry from organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The law contains language identical to an anti-gay bill signed into law in Uganda earlier this year but later overturned by a court on procedural grounds.

It criminalizes “aggravated homosexuality,” which targets “serial offenders” and people living with HIV or AIDS. Suspects can also be charged with aggravated homosexuality for engaging in homosexual acts with someone who is under 18, disabled or who has been drugged. The term also applies when the suspect is the parent or guardian of the other person or is “in authority over” him or her.

People found guilty of aggravated homosexuality can be sentenced to life in prison.

All these new laws sweeping the international scene are obviously a sign of inevitable progress. It is pointless to resist it, after all, are we not reliably informed that Africans are magic and our moral superiors? It would be racist to refrain from the fierce moral imperative of following their example.