Tag: science

Fukushima: the truth leaks out

The story of the still-ongoing disaster in Japan that has been regularly reported on Zerohedge and other alt-right sites is finally beginning to leak out into the mainstream media:

A nuclear expert has told
the BBC that he believes the current water leaks at Fukushima are much
worse than the authorities have stated. Mycle Schneider is an independent consultant who has previously advised the French and German governments.He says water is leaking out all over the site and there are no accurate figures for radiation levels.

Meanwhile the chairman of Japan’s nuclear authority said that he feared there would be further leaks. The ongoing problems at the Fukushima plant increased in
recent days when the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) admitted that
around 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked from a storage
tank on the site….

“It is much worse than we have been led to believe, much worse,” said
Mr Schneider, who is lead author for the World Nuclear Industry status
reports.

At news conference, the head of Japan’s nuclear regulation
authority Shunichi Tanaka appeared to give credence to Mr Schneider’s
concerns, saying that he feared there would be further leaks. “We should assume that what has happened once could happen
again, and prepare for more. We are in a situation where there is no
time to waste,” he told reporters.

This is of no surprise to anyone with any experience of Japan.  The Japanese NEVER tell the truth about anything if the truth is expected to create conflict or drama. Everyone in the game industry who has ever worked with Nintendo, Sega, or Konami knows that they won’t even give you a straightforward “no” when a yes/no decision is scheduled.  You’re just supposed to figure it out on the basis of not receiving a “yes” and ignore all of the perfectly legitimate-sounding explanations.

Don’t be surprised when another “unexpected” emergency is announced once Tepco can’t keep a lid on the situation anymore.  This is potentially an extraordinarily ugly situation and it absolutely dwarfs Chernobyl.

Science is fiction

It is a little ironic that just as science fiction authors have managed to excise most of the science from science fiction, scientists are transforming professional peer-reviewed published science into science fiction:

A recently published ASAP article in the journal Organometallics is sure to raise some eyebrows in the chemical community. While the paper itself is a straightforward study of palladium and platinum bis-sulfoxide complexes, page 12 of the corresponding Supporting Information file contains what appears to be an editorial note that was inadvertently left in the published document:

    “Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis…”

This statement goes beyond a simple embarrassing failure to properly edit the manuscript, as it appears the first author is being instructed to fabricate data. Elemental analyses would be very easy to fabricate, and long-time readers of this blog will recall how fake elemental analyses were pivotal to Bengu Sezen’s campaign of fraud in the work she published from 2002 to 2005 out of Dalibor Sames’ lab at Columbia.

One commenter notes: “It should also be noted that this made it through at least three reviewers and an editor.”  Of course, it’s easy to justify the invented compound. Clinical equipoise.  In fact, that’s now my go-to excuse for everything.  If Spacebunny asks me why I didn’t take the trash out on Trash Day, I just shrug and say, “hey, baby, clinical equipoise.” 

Vaccines is safe because SCIENCE!

In addition to demonstrating that vaccines are not intrinsically safe, this posterior-covering action by the CDC should suffice to conclusively prove that the organization cannot be trusted with regards to its statements concerning vaccine safety:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has once again been caught removing pertinent but indicting information about vaccines from its website. This time it involves the infamous polio vaccine, up to 98 million doses of which have been exposed as containing a cancer-causing virus that is now believed to be responsible for causing millions of cancers in America, according to the CDC.

The information was posted on an official CDC fact sheet entitled Cancer, Simian Virus 40 (SV40), and Polio Vaccine, which has since been removed from the CDC’s website. Fortunately, RealFarmacy.com was able to archive the damning page before the CDC ultimately removed it, presumably because SV40 has been receiving considerable attention lately due to its connection to causing cancer.

This also explodes Orac’s attempt to utilize “clinical equipoise” in order to justify not performing scientific studies.  Due to that “equipose”, putting 98up to 30 million Americans at an increased risk of cancer may turn out to be little more that the tip of the iceberg.  I know that biologists and epidemiologists are not trained in logic or basic risk/reward calculations, but I would think that even those whose academic backgrounds are in the softer sciences could handle the math involved in balancing the potential risk to a few hundred, or a few thousand, children provided placebos versus the risks involved in administering a completely untested schedule combining dozens of vaccines to hundreds of millions of very young children.

Why the rabbits can’t think straight

An English professor and evolutionary psychologist attempts to explain the inability of certain rabbits to successfully engage in honest dialectic and why they are limited to rhetorical discourse:

Surveying the modern intellectual scene, the world of public discourse
among the educational elites, I conclude that dishonesty does not only
reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of thinking – but it actually reduces applied intelligence – probably by re-wiring the brain.

What I am suggesting is that, although the fundamental efficiency of
neural processing is an hereditary characteristic which is robust to
environmental differences and changes (short of something like
destructive brain pathology – encephalitis, neurotoxin, head injury,
dementia etc) – habitual dishonesty (such as is mainstream among the
modern intellectual elite) will generate brain changes, and a
long-lasting (although probably, eventually, reversible) pathology in
applied intelligence – such that what ought to be simple and obvious
inferential reasoning becomes impossible.

I mean impossible.

Habitual dishonesty (most notable political correctness) is a form of
learning; and learning strengthens some brain pathways and brain
connections; while allowing other pathways and connections to wither and
(perhaps eventually) perish.

Therefore, even on those rare occasions when a typical modern
intellectual tries to be honest and to think straight – they cannot do
it, because their reasoning processes have been sabotaged by their own
repeated habits of dishonesty – their attempts at honest thoughts will
be inhibited, and instead channelled down the usual lying pathways…

Thus, in modern intellectual life, honesty is punished and dishonesty is rewarded; honest brain pathways decay, dishonest brain pathways enlarge.

After years and years of conditioning in dishonesty, the typical modern
intellectual (whether journalist, scientist, lawyer, teacher, doctor or
whatever) becomes physically unable to think straight.

I’m far from the only one to observe that the trolls and anklebiters that seek to infest the blog are reliably dishonest.  But I had always thought it was a Machiavellian tactic and assumed that they knew they were lying.  After all, how many times can you have your positions methodically destroyed and still turn around and espouse it if one is not pathologically dishonest or simply playing a game?

However, in reading comments by the same individuals made when safely ensconced in their warrens, I observed that they not only espoused the same positions there, but genuinely appeared to believe that they had acquitted themselves well despite making absolutely undeniable blunders.  That’s when I began to realize that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way their minds worked.  It’s not so much that they will readily tell lies and espouse nonsense, but that they will continue doing so even when the falsity of their positions has been exposed and is observable for all to see.

This isn’t true of all rabbits. Rabbits like PZ Myers and McRapey know when they are shown to be wrong.  The avoidance patterns of their behavior and their swift reactions to when they are caught out betray this. They fear being seen to be wrong, which why they resolutely avoid public debate with anyone capable of calling them out and exposing them on their nonsense, but that very fear shows their awareness of it.  They may be dishonest at times, and will readily assume false postures, (e.g. “I’m done pretending to be nice”), but their dishonesty is not pathological and usually serves some sort of identifiable purpose.  This is very different from the behavior we often see from anklebiters here, where no amount of knowledge suffices to correct them and no rational purpose underlying their behavior can be discerned.

I don’t know if Charlton’s theory is correct. But it is certainly an area where a considerable amount of scientific research would be justified, and let’s face it, some of these brains could only be improved by dissection.  On the other hand, as Markku pointed out, there may be a spiritual element involved, as CS Lewis described in The Great Divorce.

“But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop-perhaps for them it was thousands of miles-and come up to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far into it over the torturing grass, only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy. The voyage seemed to them a small price to pay if once, only once, within sight of that eternal dawn, they could tell the prigs, the toffs, the sanctimonious humbugs, the snobs, the “haves,” what they thought of them.”

Vaccines, science, and equipose

Phonician previously embarrassed himself by demonstrating that he couldn’t tell the difference between Massachusetts and California.  Now he follows that up by showing that he can’t tell the difference between science and someone providing excuses to not make use of science.

Tell us again how much better you understand the science, Dipshit…

I will first point out that epidemiology is not science.  It is little more than professional statistical review and pattern recognition, and most epidemiologists are not even trained as scientists but have “a master’s in public health or a related field.”  They’re government bureaucrats. “More than half of epidemiologists work for government agencies at the local, state and federal levels.”

If epidemiology is science, then so is Tetris and technical analysis of the stock market.  Very little epidemiology involves the scientific method of developing hypotheses, performing experimental tests, and observing the results; the fact that the goal of epidemiology is to reduce infectious diseases doesn’t make it any more intrinsically scientific than sacrificing a white bull to Apollo to allay his wrath.

Orac explicitly points out that he is excusing the refusal of vaccine researchers to use the scientific method of blind clinical experiments to determine the safety of vaccines used in combination on very small humans due to “research ethics”.  That is not correcting me on the science, that is confirming my most central point!  There is no science being utilized at all, the “good scientific reason(s)” to which Orac appeals refers to the general consensus of the scientists based on unscientific grounds and not to genuine scientific evidence produced by the scientific method.

“Vox needs a lesson in clinical trial ethics. Again. Sadly, it will probably fall on the proverbial deaf ears, but I’ll give it a try again, starting with two words: Clinical equipoise.

Stated briefly, for purposes of clinical trials, clinical equipoise demands that there be a state of genuine scientific uncertainty in the medical community over which of the drugs or treatments being tested is more efficacious and safer or whether a drug being tested with placebo is better or worse than doing nothing. Without that genuine scientific uncertainty over which option being tested in a clinical trial is better (or at least less harmful), the trial cannot be ethical because investigators would be knowingly assigning one group of subjects to a treatment known to be inferior, or at least strongly suspected to be….  

Vox, for all his self-proclaimed Mensa awesomeness, seems totally unable
to understand that for some questions that is the best we can do
because scientific rigor sometimes conflicts with human subjects
research ethics.”

Of course, this is the same medical community that once possessed genuine “scientific” certainty that opening up patients’ veins and bleeding them was better than doing nothing. The long history of incorrect scientific consensuses that were eventually overturned by an individual who performed an actual scientific experiment suggests that one day, clinical equipose notwithstanding, it will be clearly seen that the mass administration of hundreds of millions of vaccines without any scientific evidence to support their safety was a far more egregious ethical violation than permitting a few hundred children to go unvaccinated for a few years.  And it strikes me that was a pattern recognized, so do you realize what we’re doing here?  That’s right, this is straight up epidemiology!

On a tangentially related subject, Scoobius Doobious demonstrates a certain failure of logic while bringing up the conventional justification for the mass administration of vaccines:

I’m no controversialist on the vaccine question (don’t know enough
to comment with a strong opinion), but I will remind you that there are
two very prominent bits of historical data worth pondering:

a) within
living human memory, polio was a terrible, monstrous scourge; and in
the wake of vaccine development, it is all but forgotten — polio didn’t
just burn itself out the way the Black Plague did, it was consciously
eradicated via vaccination.

b) ditto smallpox, IIRC.

Worth pondering.

I’m not sure why Scoobius appears to think it is necessary to remind anyone involved in this discussion of those two prominent bits of historical data.  But very well, let us ponder.

  1. Correlation is not causation and the correlation is not precise. The 95 percent decline in smallpox, diphtheria, pertussis, scarlet fever, and
    measles deaths from 1850 to 1945 all preceded the mass vaccination programs.
  2. Polio and smallpox killed or severely harmed considerably more people than whooping cough, measles, and chicken pox have.  The reward aspect of the risk/reward ratio for the vaccines is very different.
  3. Different vaccines result in different adverse reactions. They pose different risks.  The risk aspect of the risk/reward ratio for the vaccines is very different.

Post-pondering, it should be clear that justifying the administration of any and all vaccines because polio and smallpox is logically indefensible.  Even if we assume that the near-eradication of both diseases was the result of the mass vaccination programs, the risk/reward ratios of the various vaccine schedules need to be compared.  Unfortunately, that is the very information that clinical equipoise denies us.

I am not anti-vaccination.  I got a tetanus booster a few years ago myself.  My children were vaccinated against certain diseases, but not according to the government schedule, let alone the US schedule that many European doctors believe to be, (and here I quote a highly respected European epidemiologist), “insane”.  But I do take a very conservative approach to vaccines because I have personally witnessed an adverse reaction, and because, unlike Phoenician, I am aware that there is absolutely no scientific evidence for the safety of the current US vaccine schedule. Because clinical equipose.

Modern science is fraud

Logic always dictated that the focus on credentialism in science was eventually going to lead to a considerable amount of fraud, specifically fraudulent credentials.  And, unsurprisingly, the rot goes right to the very top of academic science:

“The 233-year old American Academy of Arts and Sciences has announced that its longtime President and Chief Executive, Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, has agreed to resign effective at the end of this month following an investigation of charges of resume embellishment and other misconduct. Berlowitz falsely claimed to have received a doctorate from New York University, and has also been criticized for her behavior towards scholars and subordinates, and for her compensation package ($598,000 for 2012) relative to the size of the non-profit organization she led.”

Meanwhile, many scientists are still publicly wringing their hands over the potential damage to science that could be caused by local school districts placing information stickers on textbooks.  Never mind the fact that increasing numbers of people around the world have no respect for either science or scientists primarily due to the fact that science is now openly politicized and so many scientists have been exposed as frauds of one sort or another.

The Left has long believed it could bolster its appeal and popular authority by coopting science.  It has done so since Karl Marx claimed that his socialism was “scientific”.  And it worked, for a time, particularly in the 20th century when the three great frauds of science, Freud, Keynes, and Marx, were respected as giants of their quasi-scientific disciplines.

But time exposes all frauds.  The fact that scientists so readily, and so enthusiastically, sold out the scientific method in favor of the politicized consensus, means that the general public quite rightly casts a dubious eye on the legitimacy of “science” as it now exists.  Daniel Dennett was absolutely wrong.  We cannot trust biologists, or psychologists, or economists, or climatologists, or social scientists, just because physicists get extremely accurate results.

Throwing out the bait

John C. Wright explains why Sam Harris’s latest crusade is misplaced; empiricism is useless with regards answering non-empirical questions, thereby rendering the derivation of “ought” from “is’ impossible:

Here is my proof.

  1. Do you agree that the international scientific community has
    reduced all empirical entities to certain basic constants, namely mass,
    length, duration, temperature, current, candlepower, moles of substance,
    such that any empirical subject (such as the acceleration due to
    gravity of a cannonball or color defined as light-frequency) can be
    expressed in terms of these measurable quantities or some calculated
    derivation of these quantities?  (I do note that for subatomic
    particles, some additional fundamentals are needed, but these are also
    quantities, and not qualities, and therefore do not effect the
    argument.)
  2. A quality is a judgment concerning an imponderable entity, such as
    true or untrue, valid or invalid, comely or ugly. A quantity is a
    multitude of magnitudes, or in other words, a quantity can be measured
    against a standard or counted with numbers or both. Do you agree that no
    quality can be reduced to quantity by any means whatsoever?For example,
    do you agree that counting the number of vowels used to express a given
    sentence written in ink in Esperanto will not necessarily tell you
    whether the sentence is true or false, fairminded or slanderous,
    self-evident or self-contradictory, lovely poetry or ungainly prose?
    That also measuring with utmost care the jots over the small I’s and
    small J’s even to the extend of counting every ink molecule will not
    give you sufficient information to make these judgment?
  3. If all empirical statements can be reduced to measured fundamental
    quantities, and no statements about imponderables such as good and bad,
    valid and invalid, fair or foul can be reduced to measurable fundamental
    qualities, then they have no overlap whatsoever in topic or probative
    value, Ergo no imponderable can be proved or disproved by purely
    empirical statement, no matter how numerous or complex.

To head off an obvious objection, the quantities facts about the
molecules and atoms in a man’s brain have some sort of unknown relation
to his ability to make qualitative judgments. Drunkenness or drugs or a
blow to the head can, for example, impede the operations of memory and
judgment and other cognitive powers, or drive him mad, or kill a man
altogether. There is, however, not a single iota of evidence showing a
relation between the imponderable cognitive content and any quantitative
facts about brain molecules.

WRF3, you are now formally invited to do your thing.  But if you don’t mind an observation, this “Rolf Andreassen” at Mr. Wright’s site is presenting arguments that sound remarkably similar to those you have made here in the past.

This should be interesting.  “How much does a thought weigh?” has always struck me as being a question akin to “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” or “why does purple?”  But perhaps we shall be convinced otherwise.

Mailvox: time-preferences and civilization

JC is is wondering at the intrinsically anti-scientific bent of the SFWA:

I’m a white, Christian, American male of slightly above average
intelligence – but far from a super intelligence.  I’ve been ejoying
your writings since the WND days.  Since you left them, and I was forced
to discover and follow your Vox Popoli blog – my mind has been quite
blown away by the content.  I eagerly digest (or attempt to follow) the
economic posts, and love the cultural posts.  The science fiction
generally doesn’t interest me, but this latest uproar re: SWFA makes me
sick.  I just wanted to drop a note of thanks and support.  Between you
and Ann Barnhardt, I truly feel blessed to be able to see the examples
you set in steadfastly standing for Truth.
Thank you.
Now for a question.  I may have missed it, but your “h8ers” seem to
imply you’ve conferred a superior/inferior distinction to the various
human sub-species.  I don’t recall seeing anything of the sort, I
thought you just noted that they are provably different.   I
would personally assume that different groups should have nothing
approaching “equality” for quite a number of characteristics, in general
from a statistical perspective.  An overall ranking of
“superior/inferior” doesn’t seem like it would make any sense at all
unless we are discussing specific characteristics.  For instance, a
Jimmy the Greek foul in discussing fast twitch muscle fiber and athletic
performance, or perhaps predisposition to certain hereditary medical
conditions.  Or demonstrated contributions to advanced science.  
There’s nothing in my mind that would necessarily judge one of
God’s children as better/worse from an overall intrinsic value sense
simply by noting a particular subspecies (or intermingling thereof, such
as with my mixed heritage children), but it’s absurd to say we can’t
talk about relative comparisons of discrete characteristics.  I’ve
wandered a bit here, but I assure you I’m no rabbit or troll.  I guess
my question was about the conclusions drawn from the variations in
subspecies:  you never made any claims that the homo sapiens sapiens are
just dirty pieces of shit with no worth, as your critics seem to be
claiming, right?  I don’t know how you put up with these clowns without
having their insanity rub off on you just a little bit.

I have repeatedly stated that it is absolutely meaningless to claim general superiority or inferiority for any of the various human subspecies, (or, if you prefer, genetically distinct population groups), because it completely depends upon the specific metric involved.  Is a Great Dane superior to a Siberian Husky?  Is a bluebird superior to an eagle?  It all depends upon what the basis for comparison is.

Now, the reason that the SFWA pinkshirts are upset is because if one chooses the metric of “civilized”, by which I mean “the ability to participate in, maintain, and build a complex, technologically advanced civilization”, one can both observe and explain which subspecies are more and less capable of it than others, and therefore it is possible to claim that Group X is superior to Group Y on that particular basis.  As it happens, that particular ability is largely predicated on time-preferences, as longer time-preferences are required in order to a) practice self-discipline, and, b) build wealth, which are two of the primary prerequisites for maintaining and building civilizations.

One can even go so far as to say that the civilizational process, which I observe appears to take around 1,000 years on average, is largely the result of artificially selecting for individuals with longer time-preferences.  If a society regularly gets rid of its short-preferenced, hot-tempered predators and its non-savers, it will eventually find that it has built up considerable wealth as well as a population capable of cooperating and living together in relative peace.  And with cooperation and wealth, a society has the wherewithal to begin advancing technologically so long as it has entrepreneurs and elects to foster them rather than crush them in the interest of established parties.

Having shorter time preferences doesn’t make anyone “dirty pieces of shit with no worth”, any more than being physically shorter does, it simply makes them human beings with the same intrinsic human value as everyone else who happen to be less able to participate in, maintain, or build an advanced civilization.  The pure savage lives entirely in the moment and does not control his impulses. The entirely civilized individual is self-disciplined and is always capable of putting off for tomorrow, or next year, options that are available today.  This may explain why Christianity tends to be a civilizing force, as it reinforces longer time preferences by extending them beyond one’s lifetime, and why atheism, despite the higher-than-average intelligence of atheists, tends to be a barbarising force. Intelligence, while not entirely irrelevant, is somewhat of a red herring in this discussion.

The idea that there are meaningfully different time-preferences between genetically distinct population groups is a testable scientific hypothesis, although aside from some very small-scale studies on children, “the Stanford marshmallow experiment”, I am not aware of any studies that have been done in this regard.  In order for it to be useful, I would recommend a study with randomly selected adults, (corrected for income and debt), who would be offered a choice between receiving $200 in cash immediately and a check for a randomly selected amount between $250 and $1,000 in a randomly determined period of time ranging from three months to one year.  A second study would then test the ranges of the time preferences of the various population groups based on the information from the first study, and a third would test children to see if the range of their time preferences were consistent with the adult ranges.

Perhaps the hypothesis that pure homo sapiens sapiens have shorter time preferences than the various homo sapiens-homo neanderthalensis blends would hold up, or perhaps not.  But that is the primary purpose of science, to formulate and test hypotheses.  It is, I think, more than a little ironic that so many self-professed “science fiction” writers are not only horrified by a scientific perspective, but are openly and avowedly anti-science whenever science threatens to upend their cherished ideological beliefs.

Anyhow, it is because the entire concept of a racial supremacist is intrinsically nonsensical that I occasionally describe myself as an “Esquimaux supremacist”.  Having grown up in Minnesota, and having lived through more than a few bitterly cold Minnesota winters, I have a particular appreciation for the obvious and undeniable superiority of that noble people of the north.

PZ Myers, professional “biologist”

Now, before you read this, keep in mind that PZ Myers is actually employed to teach college students biology:

Keep in mind that Jemisin is black. Here’s Theodore Beale coming right out and saying that while she’s human, she’s not fully equal to a white man, himself (and please, his invocation of “genetic science” is reeking bullshit).

The amusing thing is that Myers not only didn’t understand what it meant when I pointed out that NK Jemisin and I are not equally homo sapiens sapiens, he also doesn’t have a clue about current genetic science.  In fact, most of the people who have taken offense at the statement that “genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens” have done nothing more than demonstrate they have not kept up with relatively recent developments in genetics by interpreting my words in a manner that is not only ignorant, but precisely backward.

You see, Africans are pure homo sapiens sapiens.  Non-Africans are not. NK Jemisin, being of African extraction, is almost surely more purely homo sapiens sapiens than I am.  Or, for that matter, than PZ Myers is. 

“Previous research has revealed that Neanderthal DNA can be found in the
genomes of everyone who isn’t of African extraction. But, as Pääbo said,
“The Denisovans had contributed DNA only to people in Papua New Guinea,
Fiji, Australia, and other places in Melanesia.” In other words, modern
humans entering Asia interbred with Denisovans. But the Denisovan DNA
didn’t wind up circulating to other areas of the world the way
Neanderthal DNA did.”

So, everyone who isn’t African possesses DNA from other homo species, including Homo neanderthalensis and what is either Homo denisova or Homo sapiens denisova.  This is why I often mock those who believe in both evolution by natural selection and human equality, because humanity is not only NOT all the same under our skin, we are not, according to current genetic science, even all entirely the same subspecies.  If we apply their idiot logic, then I was actually claiming that I am not fully equal to Jemisin rather than the other way around.

That’s not the only thing that the excitable and characteristically buffoonish Myers gets wrong.  I’m not annoyed at being called a racist, I’m not demanding any apologies for it, and I’m certainly not threatening any lawsuits over it.  For crying out loud, John Scalzi has been calling me a Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit for months and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest since I am none of those things.  I demanded an apology because NK Jemisin broke SFWA confidentiality rules by misreading part of my presidential campaign platform, then claimed that I am a “self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole.”  However, I have never described myself as any of those four things.

I assume Myers would similarly object if Ms. Jemisin claimed PZ Myers is a self-described Catholic pedophile who teaches puppetry to kindergarteners.

Myers is also wrong about my having modified my original post in any way.  The incompetent philosopher is confusing a later post for the original one because he didn’t scroll down the page.  It’s still there in its entirety.  Everything it contains is factually true, utterly defensible, and I will note that not a single person who is throwing hissy fits about it has dared to take up my offer to debate them on any of its contents.  The abysmal scientific ignorance of a collegiate biology teacher concerning the subject may offer an indication of why those who are even less cognizant of the relevant genetic science and its implications are nervous about doing so.

It appears Myers also failed to read Jemisin’s speech.  She is the one who asserted that the “racist stand-your-ground laws” were passed against people like her.  I merely pointed out WHY those laws were passed; because people were being violently attacked by the aforementioned people and needed a legal right to self defense.

Myers doesn’t even attempt to address any of the factual statements I made or try to challenge their accuracy, he merely points-and-shrieks.  No wonder he has twice run away from debates with me; he’s not capable of rational dialectic.  As for not being embarrassed, why would I ever be embarrassed by being aware of history, capable of logic, and reasonably up-to-date on genetic science?  If the hysterical left is really going to abandon history, logic, and science in favor of its precious equality myths, it’s simply not going to be possible for anyone with a functioning brain to take it seriously much longer.

Forget the SFWA kerfluffle.  The real scandal is that a science illiterate like PZ Myers is employed to teach science to college students.

SF vs science

Shattersnipe would appear to favor a rhetorical approach to the seemingly indisputable observation that not all human population groups are equally civilized:

And there is white-hot anger, so fierce you become the eye within the
maelstrom of your own rage, calm as your pulse exceeds the beats of a
marathon runner, calm as your fingers grasp and clench, calm as you grip
your aggressor’s throat and squeeze.

This last I feel for Theodore Beale.

Recently, I blogged about sexism in the SFWA Bulletin.
I wrote that piece as a self-declared comic rant, the tone inspired by
anger at men who ultimately meant well, however offensive and outdated
their efforts at showing it. I received a lot of support for having done
so; but of course, there was a flipside. My anger, said some, was
unseemly and unprofessional. My arguments were poorly reasoned. I was
preaching to the choir. I was the gendered pejorative of choice. But the
thing is, I can shrug that off. I deal out enough criticism that I
expect to receive my share in return, and whatever form that pushback
takes, it very rarely shocks me. By the standards of women on the
internet, in fact, I’m pretty lucky. I’ve received a minimum of rape
threats, I rarely get called a cunt, and if some of my detractors are
uncivil, then I can usually dish it out in return. I was bullied,
harassed, attacked and assaulted enough at school for being forthright,
female and unfeminine that written threats just don’t chill me the way
they used to. (They still chill me, of course. And I didn’t suffer
nearly as much as others. Nonetheless, the comparison stands – and no,
this isn’t an invitation to try harder.)
The point being, I have privilege, and that
privilege protects me. I’m a middle-class, well-educated, straight white
ciswoman with a functional, middle-class white family, and however much
the misogyny gets to me at times, I can draw on that privilege – on
that firmly entrenched sense of self-worth and the emotional, social and
financial safety net which supports it – and fight back. I belong to
the second most privileged group of people on the planet, and whatever
abuse I still suffer regardless of that, I have the cultural status to
counter it and be heard. As an individual, therefore, I’m hard to
oppress. I have privilege. I have resilience. I have opinions.
And I have anger….
I feel poisoned even typing that. Sickened.
Trembling. I cannot even imagine how Jemisin feels. Nor am I attempting
to speak for her. She is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant
women – one of the most brilliant people and writers, period – active in
SFF today, and my voice in this matter is not a replacement for hers.
I am speaking because it would be a crime against conscience not to.
I am speaking because a world where men like
Theodore Beale are left to speak unchallenged by the weariness of their
opponents is not a world I want to live in. I am speaking because my privilege affords me a chance to be heard.
And I am speaking because of the bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence I feel for members of my
own race, both now and throughout history, who speak of savages and
lesser beings, of civilisation and the right to kill those outside or
perceived to be incapable of it; who speak, as Beale does, as though
people of colour are a genetically different, inferior species of human
when compared to his Aryan ancestors.
This is my Reconciliation.
The passion of it all just gives you shivers, doesn’t it?  It’s hard to decide what is the most amusing part of this hysterical “dabacle”.  It’s a little subtle, perhaps, but I think, in the end, my favorite part is where she declares the “bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence” she feels for the idea that “people of colour” are “genetically different”.
What is so funny about this is that it all goes back to 2005, and a WND column when I pointed out that women don’t write much hard science fiction because they have little aptitude or inclination for science.  And now, eight years later, we see a spelling-challenged female SFWA writer who is frothing-at-the-mouth furious at the idea that Africans are a genetically distinct population group, a group that therefore must necessarily be either inferior or superior to other population groups.
In other words, she is a science fiction writer who is deeply and violently offended by science.  This should suffice to explain why science fiction has qualitatively declined over the years.

But we shouldn’t be too harsh on her.  After all, she does an excellent job of proving my original point in my response to Ms Jemisin, which is that there can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.  This isn’t a challenge to my views, but rather, an exemplary underlining of them.