I simply must give props to Stephanie Zvan for her account of determining the hull thickness of a certain famous fictional space station based on data provided in the opening credits, with calculations scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a bar, using a formula obtained via cell phone from her ex’s new girlfriend consulting a textbook, and reaching a disquieting conclusion. Continue reading
The Guy Behind Confused Cats Against Feminism Is Sick of Mansplaining to Other Men, Simon Davis, David Futrelle, Vice, August 1, 2014
VICE: What is it about feminism that makes people misrepresent what it is when they argue against it?
David Futrelle: When it comes to discussing issues of consent, I think in that case a lot of the critics of feminism resort to caricatures especially because it’s something that really is fundamentally challenging them. Like the guy that feels he’s entitled to blatantly stare at women in public, or pressure a woman until she agrees to have sex, because that’s the way he’s always done it and that’s the only way he’s ever gonna get sex.They don’t always want to say that out loud and so they pretend that consent is this extremely complicated thing and that feminists want everyone to sign forms in triplicate before they can have sex. So I think particularly around the issue of consent, there’s an enormous amount of smoke that they put up. They don’t want to have an honest conversation and say, “You know what? I don’t think I can have sex with a woman unless I get her really drunk first”. They don’t want to say that. So they’re like “oh, you want us to fill out a form first, well that’s ridiculous.”
Richard Dawkins and Rape Rape, Libby Anne, Love, Joy, Feminism, July 31, 2014 Continue reading
If corporations really want to be treated as “people” under the law, they need to be prepared to accept that their actions have consequences that will result in criticism generally reserved for individuals—such as the idea that renouncing one’s U.S. citizenship in order to have a lower tax bill may be credibly described as “unpatriotic,” and is pretty much by definition “un-American.” I say “by definition” because renouncing one’s citizenship means not being “American” anymore, and I’m not sure how one gets more “un-American” than that.
Questions of patriotism were probably not the decisive factor behind Walgreens’ reversal on its plan to become a Swiss company instead of an American one. I suspect that the massive outcry against the plan made them realize that the extra billions in tax savings wasn’t worth the long-term damage to their brand. Concepts like “long-term” don’t seem to factor into the thoughts of many American capitalists, at least if the hyperbolic reaction of one Fox Business analyst is to be believed: Continue reading
In all of science fiction, has a scenario featuring self-assembling robots ever resulted in anything good for the human race?
Via Ed Brayton:
You might want to turn off your irony meters for this one. An oil refining company in Delaware has applied for public funding to protect its refinery from a rise in sea levels, brought on by the global warming that burning fossil fuels helps cause, that threaten its infrastructure.
May I ask why the company couldn’t just pull itself out of the rising sea levels by its own bootstraps?
I have no idea WTH this article about an alleged BitCoin scam is saying, but it sounds important:
Dell SecureWorks security researchers have described a series of attacks earlier this year in which someone cleverly got miners of bitcoins and other “cryptocurrencies” like dogecoin to contribute their efforts to his mining pools, sending the proceeds to him instead of them.
Bitcoin mining involves solving complex computational problems faster than rivals, in order to add blocks of bitcoin transactions to the “blockchain,” the shared bitcoin ledger. Not only does this keep the blockchain going, but it also generates new bitcoins as rewards for the miners. Obviously, getting there first requires a lot of raw computational power, so most miners pool their resources. Continue reading
PZ Myers on free speech:
You don’t have a right to an audience. This is a critical limitation of free speech right now, in a day when technology has made it trivially easy for abusers to circumvent the limitations of courtesy and protocol.
Words have power. Guns also have power; is unregulated access to guns the best path to a free society? We’re engaged in that experiment in the US right now, and I can tell you…no. Similarly, we have to recognize that words must be used responsibly.
Speech can do great harm. Words can enlighten and educate, but they can also oppress and mislead. As humanists, we must appreciate the importance of truth, and do what we can to stop the promulgation of lies.
There are no easy answers. A commitment to free speech is hard — and the easy answers are so attractive. On the one side we have the contingent arguing “You can’t say that!”, and on the other we have people saying, “I can say anything I damn well please, anywhere, anytime!”, and neither is right. We must be aware that the task is one of navigating between the two extremes.
That’s just his summary. The whole piece is worth a read.
If you haven’t seen this ridiculously adorable video of two huskies arguing over whether or not they are going to play (with subtitles!), miss out on the joys of life no longer:
(h/t Jason)
I don’t know if Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic” inspired the two hounds, or their presumably-human translator, but I’ll tip my hat to them as well.
No one will ever replace Ann Richards’ singular talent, but dang if Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes isn’t hearteningly reminiscent of her.
Vote in November, FFS.
A piece by Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress notes that the risk of dying from a colonoscopy is about forty times greater than the risk of dying from an abortion, and yet colonscopies are not subject to nearly as many regulatory restrictions—enacted, by the way, by Republicans who hold government regulations in utter disdain on any other issue—as abortion (h/t Lynn).
I suspect that most people who support the intensive regulatory regime currently governing abortion services in states like Texas, if asked about the disparity in regulatory treatment of abortion and colonoscopies despite a reverse disparity in risk factors, would respond with blank stares, because this was never about patient safety or risk.
I also suspect that if they did try to answer the question, they might say something about how colonoscopies, unlike abortion, have nothing to do with being a slutty slutterson. To which I say they aren’t using their imagination.
Yeah, I went there.
