Caster Semenya Should Compete As a Human Being

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/31/728400819/i-am-a-woman-track-star-caster-semenya-continues-her-fight-to-compete-as-a-femal

There's never been any good reason to segregate sports.

The rationale is given that without segregation, women would have no chance of winning. If true, so what? Many men have no chance of winning either, but they still participate because sports can be healthy and fun. If the only reason someone gets into sports is the hope of winning a medal, they're in it for the wrong reason.

Hence the saying: you should be competing with yourself, not with others

The Truth About Margaret Sanger and Eugenics

https://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2015/oct/05/ben-carson/did-margaret-sanger-believe-african-americans-shou/

This is an example of how an ideologically expedient conflation can backfire. If progressives hadn't stigmatized the concept of eugenics by falsely equating it to Nazi racism, this smear against Sanger would have no legs.

Quote of the Year

Here comes the penalty which a land pays when it stifles free speech and free discussion and turns itself over entirely to propaganda. It does not make any difference if at the time the things advocated are absolutely right, the nation nevertheless becomes morally emasculated and mentally hog-tied, and cannot evolve that healthy difference of opinion which leads to the discovery of truth under changing conditions.

  -- W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1935, first edition), page 144

Quote of the Month

"You have no conception at what extravagant rates everything is paid for in this place " -- US Representative Frederick Muhlenberg (PA), first Speaker of the House, writing home from New York City (cited in Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution)

Three ways to spot dodgy nutrition advice -- Futurity

https://www.futurity.org/nutrition-advice-red-flags-2070432-2/

A coworker desperate to help a loved one with cancer once showed me an article about a supposed cure. It concluded with a long list of citations designed to impress the naïve -- especially the Dunning-Kruegerishly naïve like my coworker. Problem was, the citations were nothing but journal titles. As anyone who's had actual experience with scientific or medical journals knows, each of these typically comes out several times a year and each issue comprises dozens of papers filling hundreds of pages. So a "citation" consisting of nothing but a journal title is absolutely worthless. There's no practical way to pore through thousands of pages for each title in search of something supporting the claims in the article. The sole purpose of such a phony list is to make a quack look legitimate to those who don't know any better.

Yippee!

The place I'm currently working through 5/22 invited has invited me to join them on another project starting 6/3!

No to Capitalist Censorship!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/02/facebook-bans-extremist-leaders-including-louis-farrakhan-alex-jones-milo-yiannopoulos-being-dangerous

It's unacceptable that powerful, unaccountable corporations are using their property "rights" to decide which ideas we can discuss. They should be nationalized and brought under workers' control so that the First Amendment governs their platforms.