Quote of the Day

We should be skeptical of arguments that play up the physical danger women are in, as fear is another mechanism of oppression. It is often the perceived threat of physical assault, more than the actual likelihood of it, that keeps women at home. -- Jean Yang, Computer Science PhD student at MIT, on Quora.com

Quote of the Day

[T]he prison, the reformatory, and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it. -- National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Task Force Report on Corrections, 1973, quoted in Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Fan Organizations Must Take a Stand Against ExpoGate!

I will be introducing a motion at the upcoming meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (Friday, 8pm at International House, 37th and Chestnut Streets) to condemn the expulsion and banning of Alison Tieman and the Honey Badger Brigade from Calgary Comics Expo and pledge to boycott that event's "Super Sponsors." Here's some additional information on the case (about which I wrote previously), from an article on SuperNerdLand:

Competing Statements 

Here is the only official statement from Calgary Expo:

"The Calgary Expo is a positive and safe event for everyone. We have reason to believe that the Exhibitor in question does not fall in line with this mandate...so we have politely requested that they not participate in our show or future shows. We continue to build a positive and fun event for everyone.

"We have evidence that the group in question was actively disregarding our mandate. We support free speech -- and continue to promote equality across the board. Their removal from the show had zero to do with gender, and everything to do with our show policies, which apply to all exhibitors and attendees.

"We are very proud of our initiative for #ExpoEquality and we wish everyone a happy, safe and fun Expo."

For contrast we have the Honey Badgers Statement in full: 

"Early this morning, Fan Expo Canada banned Honey Badger Brigade (HBB) from the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo (CalEx). Security staff approached the HBB booth, ordered us to leave, and refused to state the reason why unless Alison Tieman agreed to speak to them away from the other members of the group, without recording. They informed Alison that they had received complaints on social media, including 25 allegations of harassment. No evidence was presented, no request was made for information from HBB, and no specific incident was cited until further questions were asked of security. Upon further questioning, security mentioned the Women in Comics panel discussion from the previous day, where Alison was given permission to speak. Alison spoke briefly in relation to a topic brought up by the panelists. Accusers, however, claimed that Alison derailed the conversation. Alison and myself were in attendance, and you can listen to Alison’s statement in the panel here on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkIiGRvtBg) You can hear Alison, myself and indeed the entire panel in the full discussion record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBfJuvopPg). As you will hear, there was no harassment. Expo staff and mob rule, in their crusade for ending harassment against women, harassed the Honey Badgers despite having no evidence of any policy violation.

"To those unfamiliar, HBB was founded by three women and has a highly diverse staff of volunteers, creators and lovers of free expression. Alison Tieman, a woman who spent 7 years writing graphic novels and fighting censorship, was censored by other women for speaking her mind, and advocating equal compassion for men, and true strength in character for women. We ask all involved to question what it means to provide an open forum, and to examine how CalEx treats it’s patrons and exhibitors. Do they provide a safe space from harassment, or a safe space for the people who want to define what harassment means? Please send press inquiries to xenospora@gmail.com for more information as the story develops. Also be sure to follow us on Twitter."

Nowhere in the Calgary statement does it cite a rule The Honey Badgers broke, or even mentions a specific case of wrongdoing they are accused of. This is a very weak and generalized statement and does not, in my mind, hold up as the basis for such harsh and quick action. Someone on Twitter summed it up best: “If that is going to stand as your official explanation, it is completely inadequate – and not even coherent.”

I hope people will take the time to look into the facts of this matter for themselves -- and certainly not rely on the account in The Mary Sue, which has financial ties to the Expo.

Quote of the Day

Pascal's Bookie is perhaps the best moniker ever. -- Keith Lowell Jensen

I Support Alison Tieman, and So Should You!

 

For anyone who hasn't heard, there was an outrageous incident of political censorship at the Calgary Comics Expo. For no other reason than a politically divergent opinion expressed by artist Alison Tieman, founder of women's creative collective the Honey Badger Brigade, the whole group was thrown out without warning (in violation of the con's own contractual policy) as they were about to set up for the second day. Worse, Tieman herself has been banned for life from this con and all others run by the same organization -- a big deal, as 100,000 attend these things. It's essentially a death sentence on her comics career.

To add insult to injury, after they were expelled and had announced plans for an informal gathering of fans in a nearby park, police were actually sicced on them on totally spurious charges of possible criminal activity. The police themselves concluded there was no cause for action. Here's raw footage of the encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqv78wABm00&feature=youtu.be. Honey Badger Rachel Edwards reports that the officer said the complaint had come from the CalEx organizers.

I think this incident is particularly telling, because by indulging in this extra bit of gratuitous harassment, CalEx tipped their hand. If they were willing to make a false report to police just to badger the Badgers a little more, why should we believe they didn't manufacture the reports of "harassment of women at the convention" that served as the pretext for expelling them?

To be sure I was getting both sides of the story, I used DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn't track you (and therefore won't tailor results to biases indicated by your history) for the terms "Alison Tieman" + "Calgary." I found the great majority of results were pro-HBB, and the few that weren't were based on demonstrably false information and often on an ad hominem level, repeatedly stooping to what I can only call slut-shaming.

Here's Tieman's own heart-rending account of her brutal experience: Banned for not Damselling

The full recording of the panel at which she made the offending remarks on which the spurious charge of "harassment" was based (warning: poor sound quality): http://www.avoiceformen.com/allnews/full-audio-of-alleged-harassing-of-women-at-calgary-comic-expo/

An overview of the whole affair: http://www.examiner.com/article/calgary-expo-censors-the-honey-badger-brigade-s-anti-censorship-message

Video messages are being compiled from Tieman's friends and supporters. Here's the compilation as it currently stands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI0h-2pCC3I. (In support of collator SkepTorr's comment on the media misrepresentation of GamerGate, I recommend this compilation of messages from GamerGaters whose existence contradicts the media stereotype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzwGIHUCtjU.)

Supporters of free expression are urged to send messages of protest to the organizers at info@calgaryexpo.cominfo@calgaryexpo.com.

"Super sponsors" can be contacted at sponsors@calgaryexpo.comsponsors@calgaryexpo.com (you can also find a complete listing of them at the con website).

The artists don't want other exhibitors to be hurt by any kind of boycott against the con, but encourage pressure on the sponsors.

I've done all of the above. I've also contacted the NPR program On the Media, which has covered issues in geek culture in the past, urging them to do a story on this. The web contact form is http://www.onthemedia.org/emailform/contact-otm/

You can check out Tieman's webcomic Xenospora on her website: http://www.xenospora.comhttp://www.xenospora.com. I plan to order a bound, printed copy of Volume I as soon as my tax refund comes in. Meanwhile, I've made copies of the comic's logo and started putting them up all over downtown Philadelphia.

My friend Rey will be competing in the Special Olympics Spring Games this Saturday, 18 April, at William Penn Charter School, 3000 West School House Lane. I'm not sure when the games start but athletes have to check in by 8:30am.

Quote for the Day

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. -- Anonymous (via Tessa Norris on Quora.com)

The Amazing Temporally Meandering Coffee Can

Last year I discovered the first concrete evidence of time travel, in the form of the letters "SPQR" etched in a Philly sidewalk. This could only have been the work of temporally dislocated ancient Romans: it stands for Senatus Populusque Romanis ("of the Roman Senate and people") and was etched on official structures of that state. Now I find additional evidence in the latest issue of the Philadelphia Public Record. A cover line reads, "Political Careers Rise And Fall On What's Pulled From This 1968 Coffee Can!" Meanwhile, under one subhead of the "Pols on the Street" column, we see this: "An empty Horn & Hardart coffee can, vintage from the mid-60ies, has made or broken candidate nominees from both major parties for over half a century" -- while the caption for picture story on the same page informs us, "Many political candidates had their futures decided by how they pulled ballot positions from this coffee can, used since back in the early 1960s by Registration Commission." (Boldface added for emphasis.) What technology or fluke of nature allows its world-line's past endpoint to have three different time coordinates? That remains a mystery.

As if it weren't bad enough trivializing domestic violence in her "Blank Space" video, Taylor Swift is now trying to trademark her lyrics. Forgive me for doubting her creative genius, but I think I'd heard the words "speak now" before. http://www.npr.org/2015/02/22/388187291/taylor-swift-savvytrademark-titan

Quote of the Day

Oh my god, I am the patriarchy. -- Brene Brown, recounting to Krista Tippett her insight that, by concerning herself only with women's vulnerability issues, she'd been perpetuating men's emotional repression.

James Hansen's Exit Strategy from Climate Change

His "fee and dividend" proposal is the most politically astute way of getting done what needs doing, while there's still time: http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/

There's probably no truth to the theory that the Salem witch trials were due to psychedelic effects of ergotism. But it can't be denied that when pasture is infected with ergot, the steaks can be high.

Quote of the Day

"It's not a God-shaped hole, it's a hole-shaped God." -- ciphergoth, http://lesswrong.com/lw/5v/church_vs_taskforce/454

I wrote about a week ago (http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2014/12/yesterday-i-checked-out-party-at-one-of.html) about giving myself an exposure to help train me not to be controlled by social anxiety. My thinking of this, and overcoming my own resistance, were doubtless facilitated by the fact I was reading Scott Stossel's book My Age of Anxiety.


An aspect of anxiety I learned about while reading it is that anxious persons tend to have a higher level of "interoceptive awareness," meaning sensitivity to their internal physical state. Combined with their predisposition to worry, this results in an increased likelihood of noticing things that they construe as signs of anxiety, causing them to worry about behaviors that may result from that anxiety, spawning further anxiety in a vicious cycle.


This must have been on my mind last Friday evening shortly after work, while I was in a Rite Aid to get a couple things before going home. I detected what I thought was a moment of faintness that might be attributed to having eaten lightly that day. I thought of buying a piece of candy to "tide me over" until I got home, but then cross-examined this impulse. I realized I didn't really know if what I'd felt was faintness, or just sleepiness. Further, even it was a very slight faintness, there was no reason to think there's be any catastrophic consequences if it recurred during my ride home.


In other words, I was applying one of the routine questions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety disorders, "What's the worst that could happen?" which serves to counter anxious people's tendency to catastrophize. As a result I chose not to buy any candy, saving me money and hazard to my physiology while teaching myself not to be controlled so easily by minor sensations. And I didn't, in fact, feel faint again on the ride home.

Quote of the Day

Equality is no more than an empty shadow so long as monopolies give the rich the power of life and death over their fellow human beings. -- French revolutionary Jacques Roux, quoted in Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789-1799 (London: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 86-87

Review: The Canonical Gospels

Early last year, I got into a longish conversation with an evangelist. This is unusual, as I generally would regard this as a waste of time. What made him different from most was that he was able to talk about things other than Christianity, and showed some actual curiosity.

I was periodically walking back and forth in the food court to stretch, and every time I passed him he noticed my "Secular Values Voter" button. So eventually he stopped me to ask what this meant, and that led into a discussion about Christianity and various more or less related topics. Nonetheless, he did eventually zero in, before taking his leave, of how he really thought I should read the Gospel, and was sure that if I did so I would be convinced. I'd always figured I'd get around to this sooner or later, in view of the books' historical and cultural significance, but never had. So I told him I would, and within a couple months did so. I took a bunch of notes with a view to writing a review here before sending it to the evangelist, but recently decided to write him off the top of my head before he forgot our encounter (or changed his email address). What I wrote him is below (fittingly in red, since he used the sender name "jesus christ" -- no kidding).

Dear Pete,

After getting caught up on already planned books, I followed your suggestion and read the four canonical Gospels (KJV). That was over a year ago, and I meant to write a thorough review for my blog, but haven't managed to get around to it yet. Rather than delay any further, I decided to just go ahead and write you about my experience.

To aid me in understanding the material, I concurrently read the corresponding chapters of Asimov's Guide to the New Testament. (Since he discusses the books in their traditional order, that's how I read them, even though I knew that Mark is generally regarded as the most "primitive" Gospel and was probably written first.) But even if I hadn't, I think I'm sharp enough that I would have made many of the same observations on my own.

My most striking impression when I was finished was that there was "no there there." It was really anticlimactic. My whole life I'd been hearing that Jesus had this incredible message that I had to read the Gospel to get, yet I could find hardly any message at all. Most of his preachings seem to have taken the form of parables, and most of these were sort of meta-allegories about the importance of the message, without actually telling you what the message is. About the only substantive message I could find was the Golden Rule, and even that -- as I also had already known -- was not original with Jesus. For instance, his older contemporary the Rabbi Hillel had said something quite similar, not to mention sages in other parts of the world.

Although I'd heard previously that there are inconsistencies between the Gospels, I had no first-hand experience with these until I read them at your prompting. The biggest ones are between John and the other, so-called Synoptic Gospels. One concerns where Jesus recruits his first disciples: John puts this by the River Jordan, whereas the earlier books place it in Galilee. Another is his relation to John the Baptist. The Synoptic Gospels have him and Jesus competing for followers, while John says he told his followers to leave him for Jesus.

Most importantly, Asimov illustrates how the discrepancies between the Gospels aren't random, but actually reflect pretty well the theological evolution of Christianity from a Jewish sect -- one whose leader initially denied being divine -- to a Gentile religion holding this same figure to have known he was God from the outset.

I thank you for motivating me to read these books after so many years of procrastination. While doing so hasn't changed my fundamental view of Christianity as a product of human imagination, it certainly has deepened my understanding of it.

Eric

P.S. What prompted me to finally write you was having looked at a web site making the case for Jesus' not having been a historical figure at all. It argues that Christianity was the product of a gradual syncretistic fusion of Judaism, Greek Cynicism and Platonism, and other traditions, which became institutionalized before deciding on a unifying theology, including the idea of an incarnate God. While this is an intriguing idea, I haven't studied sufficiently to have an informed opinion, so for the time being I'll remain agnostic on this question.

Motte, Bailey, and Rape

One of Thom Hartmann's recent "The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly" segments -- in which he seems to be less careful about his facts than elsewhere in his programs -- criticized some statements by Tammy Bruce in a superficial, nearly puerile way. I made the following comment on his website:

With all due respect, Thom, your comment isn't a serious critique of what Bruce said. Suggesting that the public image or status of victimhood is being romanticized isn't at all the same as saying that actually being victimized is "cool." For instance, there's widespread admiration for POWs, especially those like John McCain who were tortured. This is why some politicians have been caught making false claims along these lines. You could call this a romanticization, but it in no way implies that anyone thinks it's cool to be tortured.

I've attended a few Take Back the Night rallies, and I've noticed that typically, after someone gives their personal testimony about being sexually assaulted, they're applauded. Of course participants will say that it's not their victimization that's being applauded, but rather their courage in coming forward to talk about it. Nonetheless, it could be argued that this is a social environment in which people are given an incentive to self-identify as victims, even if the facts may not warrant it.

In fact, at the first TBTN I attended, one of the participants implied a man had drugged her to unconsciousness in order to take her, even though the very fact that he called her about it the next day, as well as what he said in that call, indicated he'd perceived her as conscious and willing, and had expected her to remember the encounter. When I wrote the campus paper about this discrepancy, the reply by a student anti-rape leader consisted of stock rhetoric while ignoring or distorting all the factual points I had made, such as by pretending that my pointing out the difference between blacking out and passing out was somehow equivalent to saying no one ever passes out from drinking. She was too preoccupied with reaffirming a party line to actually read my letter for comprehension. (You may be able to find these letters, along with my rejoinder, in the online archives of the Daily Pennsylvanian on or about 4/9/05.) Similarly, it seems the Rolling Stone reporter was too doctrinally sure about what had happened to the woman she interviewed, to remember the normal journalistic standards about fact-checking.

I must say I noticed a similar two-step in the remarks of your recent NOW guest. I'd heard previously about traumatic memories' being stored differently -- but never from feminist representatives in the context of an actual rape trial. In those circumstances, what you always hear, without any qualification, is "Believe women," "Women don't lie about rape," and cries of outrage any time a defendant is found "not guilty" in spite of the victim's (traumatically unreliable) testimony.

This could be considered an example of what's been called the "motte-and-bailey doctrine" (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/): the strategic equivocation of making a very dubious or totally indefensible argument to those who are sympathetically inclined; then, when criticized for it, saying, "All I mean is [something totally uncontroversial and obvious]"; then going back to the extreme and indefensible claim as soon as the critics go away.

Yesterday I checked out a party at one of the office buildings I visit regularly. I'd seen it announced there as an Open House a couple days before; nonetheless, noticing from the outside how classy it looked, I worried that I might not be admitted since I'm not a tenant. I'd thought of going there before visiting the credit union to make a deposit, but turned away out of feeling intimidated. While making the errand, I realized this was an instance of my principle, "If you're afraid of something for no good reason, that's a very good reason to do it," and that this was an opportunity to give myself an exposure to help me learn not to be controlled by social anxiety. I decided to put myself in something like the "little kid trance" that I discovered several years ago, looking at everything wide-eyed without anticipation, only curiosity. In this way I got myself to walk in. As a further exposure to the possibility of rejection, and preempt any sense that I was "sneaking in," I stopped to ask the security officer, "So, what's all this?" He said it was a Christmas party. He then asked if I work there, and I said "No, I deliver payrolls here." He nodded but said nothing else. So I walked a little further in and looked around. Lots of people were talking, eating, and drinking. Together they were making a lot of noise. I could have served myself food or a drink, but didn't see much point in that by itself. I might have felt differently if I'd seen someone I recognized. I'd have probably at least spent a moment greeting and making small talk with them. But since I didn't notice anyone I knew, hanging around just for some free food and drink didn't seem very interesting. And I had other things I meant to get done before going home. In the last analysis, I felt the most important thing was that I had given myself an exposure to something that was triggering my social anxiety, and showed myself that I could manage it. So after a moment I left.

"Why Does Power Corrupt?" by Eliezer Yudkowsky

This seems like an excellent summary of the question. I'd intuited the general idea but never thought it through so thoroughly. http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/

Quote of the Day

If you are hearing an argument for the first time, and you are only hearing one side of the argument, then indeed you should beware. In a way, no one can really trust the theory of natural selection until after they have listened to creationists for five minutes; and then they know it's solid. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky, What Evidence Filtered Evidence?"