- Above: A poster for “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” by scratchboard artist Nicolas Delort. More info about the poster (including alternate versions) here.
- A round-up of some well-reasoned, civil critiques of #GamerGate.
- And here’s another #GamerGate Link Roundup, this time from Brute Reason.
- We’re All Tired Of Gamergate
- At least 8 women in gaming have had to flee their homes due to threats.
- The Only Thing I Have To Say About Gamer Gate | Felicia Day
- Actress Felicia Day Opens Up About GamerGate Fears, Has Her Home Address Exposed Minutes Later
- Did you know that Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and others have been involved in a major wage theft scandal? The companies conspired to not compete for employees, so that wages would be artificially held down. The conspirators included George Lucas and Steve Jobs – people who clearly didn’t have enough money already. Assholes. Pando Daily has an archive of their stories on this subject.
- Occupational Licensing of Strippers Isn’t Just Unnecessary, It’s Dangerous – Hit & Run : Reason.com
- The People’s Climate Change – Windypundit Shorter Windypundit: When right-wingers claim climate change doesn’t exist, that’s the fault of left-wingers for using left-wing rhetoric or advocating left-wing policies. The idea that right-wingers are responsible for their own choices and views is, it seems, inconceivable.
- Voter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee dropped 2012 turnout by over 100,000 votes – The Washington Post
- EconoMonitor : Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog » Could We Afford a Universal Basic Income? (Part 2 of a Series)
- “Yes means yes” is about much more than rape – Vox
- In defense of John Grisham – The Washington Post
- What Happens When Hasidic Jews Go Secular — Science of Us
- Ursula K. Le Guin on Being a Man | Brain Pickings
- Immigrant Rights Groups: Obama Administration Runs ‘Deportation Mill’ in New Mexico
- Protests Greet Metropolitan Opera’s Premiere of ‘Klinghoffer’ – NYTimes.com Appallingly, the protests have succeeded in getting the producers to cancel a planned nationwide broadcast on movie screens.
- Serena and Venus Williams Battle More Body-Shaming
- The common law tradition says that shopkeepers have no right to discriminate : Lawyers, Guns & Money
- New Research Exposes Myths About Voter Fraud
- Kurt Busiek Addresses the Misconceptions of the Marvel/Kirby Legal Dispute
- South Carolina prosecutor argues that “Stand Your Ground” law doesn’t apply for victims of domestic violence.
- ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: More Men Are Raped in US Than Women? Spoiler: No.
- To say: “we fought the war on poverty and lost” is to reveal your contempt for facts.
- You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too). A good post about the claim that a city is trying to take away the first amendment rights of Christian Churches by issuing a subpoena.
- Obama’s war on leaks – and on free speech – is unbelievable
- Whites are more supportive of voter ID laws when shown photos of black people voting – The Washington Post
- Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong – The Washington Post
- MRAs please take note: A comprehensive study of shipwrecks has shown that “Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men.”
- Chart of the Week: Politicians Following, Not Leading on Same-Sex Marriage
- The evidence on travel bans for diseases like Ebola is clear: they don’t work
- Studies suggest the overwhelming motivation behind voter ID laws is hyper-partisanship, not racism.
winning the pumpkin carving game forever. seen in williamsburg this weekend. pic.twitter.com/vWxUBaKVGN
— Rachel H. Smith (@rachelholliday) October 20, 2014
desipis says:
As a social scientist/engineer type, I think the issue is that objective reality has a liberal bias. Go on Pubnet and read some abstracts on childhood poverty in America for example, read the raw data a while and try NOT to come to the conclusion that Bernie Sanders is on to something. The only way to maintain a Conservative bias is to ignore reality.
Want a reading list? I’m coming up on winter break, I can send you a list of primary and secondary sources to get you started.
Harlequin:
My point wasn’t that social science is flawed, but rather that it can only provides limited confidence in its conclusions in comparision to the physical sciences. As such it cannot be used with the same verasity in rebutting ideological views as the physical sciences can.
This was basically the point I was trying to make, which is why I disagree with what brian said in a comment above yours:
The complexity of the subject matter means in many cases its difficult, if not impossible, to meaningfully interpret evidence without some preconcieved structure of how things work. This can lead to ideological bias driving results, and then using those results to support that ideological bias turns into an exercise in begging the question.
Ampersand:
I probably am generalising quite a bit, and its possible that there are fields in the social sciences that don’t have bias problem. However, I’m not sure a #notallsocialsciences argument is sufficient to rebut the general concern about the issue.
Where are you getting 6%, and what does it refer to?
Part of the problem here, I think is also that many conservative positions are also positions that seriously call into question your ability to do your job well.
For example – you’re going to be hiring a Psychology professor – you know that that that professor has previously attempted (and failed) to publish a study claiming that homosexuality is a psychological disorder. You know that there are three gay psychology undergrads and two gay psychology grad students. What do you do?
Or a someone who’s published a “black people are genetically inferior” study, etc.
Now, like I said, I’m opposed to hiring/firing prejudice, and I think that there ought to be a law protecting the out-of-work activities of employees, but:
1) My impression is that conservatives generally disagree with me on this. If the attitude is, “there should be affirmative action for conservatives, but people should be able to fire the gays at will,” I feel very comfortable ignoring everything the speaker has to say after that.
2) I’d want to see the specific studies that are being ‘discriminated’ against. Right now we’ve got a lot of ‘maybe’ and ‘could be,’ so pony up, right? If there’s really this storm of anti-conservative prejudice that’s killing (KILLING!!) social science, then examples should be easy to come by. I suspect that many of them will be of the “gay people/black people/women sure do suck” type.
—Myca
I get the impression that some people in this thread are conflating ‘conservative’ with ‘foxnews pundit’.
You trust that the students are adults and capable of dealing with people who hold alternative and uncomfortable views, and hire the professor based on their qualifications, not based on whether someone will be offended by their academic writing.
That seems to be a pretty strawy strawman.
I’m not sure what conservative social science positions you’re thinking of, then. Perhaps you’d care to offer an example?
Well, their qualifications are failing to publish a paper defending prejudice. But sure, I’ll set that aside.
Part of the problem here is that conservatives have convinced themselves over the years that there is no meaningful difference between “advocating for lower marginal tax rates” and “advocating for gay people to be considered psychologically disordered.” There is a difference, and it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to ignore that difference.
Not really, since we’ve argued specifically about employment protections on this blog more than once in the past, and I don’t remember any conservatives lining up to defend employee rights.
I mean, hey, I’ll ask you – do you want employers to be prohibited from firing/refusing to hire gay people for being gay?
—Myca
While liberalism and Clintonian style Neo-liberalism can have occasional dips into anti-intellectualism the self-declared conservative movement is practically dripping with it. Their political figures are as proud of it as any loud redneck kicking the shit out of “some book reading faggot” in a high school in Mississippi tomorrow at lunch time.
So if there is a stereotype that somehow harms conservatives in academic circles, they bought and paid for that stereotype themselves as surely as any hood rat that decided to memorize every rap song on iTunes while selling heroin in West Baltimore instead of learning to read. And in both cases, I can’t feel bad for someone embracing negative stereotypes as role models.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:On_anti-intellectualism_in_the_United_States_of_America
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2453#comic
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/
http://www.fuminyang.com/michelle/Paranoid%20Style.pdf
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/01/george-lakoff-interview
http://www.mediaite.com/online/fsu-lecturer-fired-after-blaming-filthy-rodent-muslims-for-ruining-america/
Me again, remembered a PERFECT example an hour later.
Which issue? You move very freely back and forth between discussing alleged hiring discrimination and discussing biased research, and I’m not even sure which you’re arguing about here.
You are correct. Note, however, that I wasn’t rebutting “general concern,” but your specific, vastly overgeneralized claim. :-)
Why? Is there some empirical evidence you can point to which shows that it’s impossible, or even very unlikely, that self-selection can be a large effect? (And where does “6%” come from?)
I’m not saying that discrimination against hiring conservatives in academia does or doesn’t happen (although some evidence suggests it’s not a significant factor – see the article Richard posted). I’m questioning the statistical conclusion you make here. Has evidence actually shown that self-selection can’t have large effects on occupational segregation by political ideology, or is that merely a conclusion that feels ideologically reasonable to you?
https://twitter.com/rabbitawareness/status/546956567191379969?s=04
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10885376_804836756228777_7516596268268769654_n.jpg?oh=c23e00798719d3455751c85d5e036c9b&oe=5533DEBE&__gda__=1429356642_c622582f753acbc5eeccc067561a7583
As well as being a jerk I am also a rabbit advocate. If I ever said anything that amused you even slightly, you OWE me buddy and please share the above reminders someplace. Rabbits are awesome and get given to kids as if they are live toys which they absolutely are NOT.
We now return to Brian being a snarky jerk who sorta means well, already in progress.
I didn’t know that giving rabbits as Christmas presents was a thing.
I think anyone thinking about a pet rodent should think long and hard about whether they want a pet whose teeth never stop growing.
I have rodents trying to live in my house (gray squirrels), but I didn’t exactly invite them…
Also an Easter thing for some people, along with giving baby chicks. It’s pretty crazy.
I had a friend in grad school who had two pet rabbits (long-term pets – not a stupid holiday gift) – they were great. I’d never really been around them before. One was a tad bitey though….
Lagomorphs are interesting critters. They chew to grind down their teeth, gnawing wood like baseboards, paper like grad school notes and stray bills, ethernet cables, mouse cords…
mine runs up and bonks me with her nose when she wants attention, nips me if I am busy. Then nips when she tries to groom me back, my own fault for not being hairier I suppose. Not a good companion if you collect pencils, or comics or antique bits of string. But more affectionate than my ex wife and smarter than most of my daily dose of human contact. If you don’t mind your books getting chewed on the edges, I will be glad to help anyone here get ready for being a bunny parent.
I always remember links I should add to what I say after the timer goes off to make edits. Sorry for the double post.
Spoiled Rabbit Growls and Thumps When Petting Stops if anyone is curious about the affectionate aspect. Worth turning the sound up.
Wild rabbit wants in NOW!!! so you can see an American hare side by side with a domestic European rabbit. 22 chromosomes for hares, 24 for rabbits, so they can’t cross breed, and domestics can’t survive in the wild. That doesn’t stop people from dumping them outside when the novelty wears off though.
The Language of Lagomorphs if I’ve gotten anyone curious for more. I’m not ALL social science and Socratic dialogue.
We currently have 1 ten or eleven year old rabbit & one foster bunny that is the platonic ideal of bunny. I interact with them almost exactly zero but my wife adores them. Some of them chew, some don’t. Some are affectionate, some not so much. What I can say after nearly 15 years of rabbits is that they can die with absolutely no warning or can linger with warning for months. It’s the no warning that keeps me away. I can’t handle it. Most rabbits live for 5 years or less. It’s rough.
But the house rabbit folks (Rabbit Advocates out here) do a hell of a lot of good work.
If you can deal with a likely short lived pet, this could be a good choice for you.
Guinea pigs are similar (both in the chewing/affectionate way and in the sudden death way), though less curious/mobile than rabbits. When I was a kid, I used to set one of my guinea pigs on my bed to keep me company while I cleaned my room; she’d sit in place for basically twenty minutes or so and just watch me. But they’re also not as smart as rabbits (can’t really be house trained, for example).
I feel that no discussion of rabbits is complete without a link to a photo of a Flemish Giant rabbit next to a Shetland sheepdog.
Oh! The Flemish Giants are great. Unfortunately, they have even shorter lifespans. But they’re wonderful people.
Funny you’d say that — I recently heard that giants can be good.
Since Amp’s too busy to start the thread himself, I’ll open: How’d you like Into the Woods?
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/12/male-rape-epidemic/
So can we stop equating “feminists” with “people who don’t care about men who are raped”?
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!
Happy New Year to you!
And to everyone: I’ve moved the “Into The Woods” discussion to its own thread.
ETA: Er, and Happy New Year to everyone!