Science

The arrogance of the self-opinion of feminists.

ArgusEyes — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:39:44 GMT

Oh Joy! Pharyngula, my daily source of leftist inanity, seems to have made the conscious decision to become about one third feminist as well; and the actual good reasons for reading that blog dwindle and dwindle some more.

Anyway, there’s been a bit of a furore recently about the epidemic of sexist evil in the sceptical/atheist movement recently. You see. One woman was chatted up in an elevator, and recently one was propositioned by a couple.

The pure horror of it. It stifles me.

It makes me think of one of the most irritating attitudes held by feminists, their enormous self-regard. Namely, that their own attitudes and responses to life are what should constitute standard attitudes and reactions to life on behalf of “women”.

Take the “elevatorgate” examples, Watson’s condescending school-marm like reaction was to coo “guys, don’t do that” to all use uneducated Neanderthals who don’t tow her line. Excuse me, but unless there was actual harm involved, then the adult reaction is to say “no” and move on. You weren’t impressed but maybe that particular tactic has worked for that guy in the past. I’m not a pickup artist but I have a friend who’ll make the corniest shit work. You’ll hate him, trust me.

Likewise for the swinger couple who propositioned a sceptical woman at a recent conference, inciting another blogosphere was about the horrible sexism in these conferences. Adults say “no thanks”, they don’t stomp their little feet and spread their wounds to the whole world. That is what narcissists do.

To me, more and more, the same thought occurs on these matters. Whatever happened in the past and whatever feminist had done that I might agree with; feminism and other victimist movements are now largely fuelled by the horrible characters of the people who make them up, and they appeal to the like-minded to keep themselves going.

We don’t need to know where nothing came from

ArgusEyes — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 06:12:44 GMT

I was impressed with Lawrence Krauss’s lecture “A universe from nothing” given at the AAI (Atheist Alliance International), 2009. Like most honest people with a belief system, I am happy when evidence is presented which bolsters what I believe. For a while I too used Krauss’s line “because nothing is inherently unstable” as a retort to the question of “why something from nothing”.

Now Krauss has a book out. Jerry Coyne writes it up:

Further, Krauss defines “nothing” as a “quantum vacuum,” without giving us reasons why that would obviously have been the initial default state of the universe. Is that a sensible definition of “nothing”? If not, whence the quantum vacuum? And so on to more turtles. . .
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/david-albert-pans-lawrence-krausss-new-book/

It also made it to a conservative talk show where the host expressed mockery at the above fact. Paraphrased as “so where did the laws of quantum physics come from eh? eh? eh”.

Conversations with the religious always go the same way, an infinite regression of “where did that come from” culminating in “god didit”. Do atheists really think that filling another one of those blanks will stop the religious from doing this? No, it won’t.

Here’s my advice. Discover the answers because they’re fascinating to know, but don’t discover them because you think it’ll convince the religious out of their delusions. The fundamental flaw of the “where-progression” (I just coined that one for the record) is that it has been wrong for most of human history.

Saying “god” in response to a “why” question was wrong for Ra, the scarab beetle, thor, demons as the cause of disease, the plague, lightning, the planes of the ecliptic, etc.. Then why is it given any shrift when it gets dragged out as a response to the latest point of human ignorance? I used to have problems with the argument of something from nothing or the fine-tuned nature of the universe until I realised that they are the classical religious “reasoning” that has been proved wrong time and time again. Let alone the fact that to use an unexplained thing (god) as an explanation or proof for another unexplained thing is a logical fallacy, akin to saying “we know because we don’t know”, is nuts. It’s like me saying that I don’t know why the moon moves across the sky so it was the work of a cosmic space monkey called Manookalakiki.

Judgments at the speed of light

ArgusEyes — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 04:27:21 GMT

A week ago the world went wild over CERN's tentative claim that it could make neutrinos travel faster than light. Suddenly, intergalactic tourism and day trips to the real Jurassic Park were back on the menu, despite everything Einstein said. Now, however, a team of scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands reckons it's come up with a more plausible (and disappointing) explanation of what happened: the GPS satellites used to measure the departure and arrival times of the racing neutrinos were themselves subject to Einsteinian effects, because they were in motion relative to the experiment. This relative motion wasn't properly taken into account, but it would have decreased the neutrinos' apparent journey time. The Dutch scientists calculated the error and came up with the 64 nanoseconds. Sound familiar? That's because it's almost exactly the margin by which CERN's neutrinos were supposed to have beaten light. So, it's Monday morning, Alpha Centauri and medieval jousting tournaments remain as out of reach as ever, and we just thought we'd let you know.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/17/remember-those-faster-than-light-neutrinos-great-now-forget-e/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/15/followup-ftl-neutrinos-explained-not-so-fast-folks/

That’s quite a good summary of the faster than light Neutrino kerfuffle as of the current time. When this breakthrough was making the rounds on the blogs, my reaction was a big “meh”. I was almost sure that it was all overblown, and now, that appears to have been the right attitude to take. Why?

Well, it’s part of a mentality and a belief system called skepticism. Instead of believing what I want to believe (or disbelieve). I will try to believe what has been proven, or has the most evidence behind it. My reaction to any claim is to ask “what evidence do you have to support that position?”. However, it’s more than that; it also comprises a set of mental tools that are used to evaluate claims and evidence. The reason I was instantly sceptical is that the theory of relativity that if true, it would overturn so much observed science that it would instantly qualify for increased scrutiny. Example:

If someone comes running to you and says “I just saw Johnny floating upwards!”. Would you reply “Holy shit – Newton was wrong! Call the press!”. No, because the principle of parsimony (if you hear hooves – think horses, not zebras) helps you see that such a claim stands opposite all the continual evidence from everyday that gravity is working in the same old way. The burden of the claim necessitates extreme skepticism to the thinking person. It is so great, that alternate explanations such as sky-hooks are more plausible without further inspection.

A sceptical view is painfully evident when you encounter someone with no skepticism whatsoever. Some people are credulous. They have no tools to differentiate between the veracity of claim A to claim B. I think we all will have met people like this in our day-to-day lives. A recent example of this, at least as it pertains to the faster than light neutrino news story, is Charles Krauthammer. Some of you will know that I respect him very much, but a recent piece called “Gone in 60 nanoseconds”.

The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I’m not talking about the collapse of the euro, of international finance, of the Western economies, of the democratic future, of the unipolar moment, of the American dream, of French banks, of Greece as a going concern, of Europe as an idea, of Pax Americana — the sinews of a postwar world that feels today to be unraveling.

I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it made only the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN, the European high-energy physics consortium, have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.

...

The implications of such a discovery are so mind-boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong — some faulty measurement, some overlooked contaminant — to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.

And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, if that did happen on this Orient Express hurtling between Switzerland and Italy, then everything we know about the universe is wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gone-in-60-nanoseconds/2011/10/06/gIQAf1RERL_story.html

Here, Krauhammer accuses scientists of giving into emotion and not wanting to admit it is true. This is nonsense! Science, has continually overthrown what we have previously cherished as being “right” – it’s what science does. From quantum physics to the germ theory of disease, science is introducing new ways of viewing the world into the human mind. However, it does this through evidence.

Brian Cox, a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, urged caution. "If you've got something travelling faster than light, then it's the most profound discovery of the last 100 years or more in physics. It's a very, very big deal," he said on BBC 6 Music on Friday. "It requires a complete rewriting of our understanding of the universe."

Professor Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey said it was most likely that something was skewing the results. "If the neutrinos have broken the speed of light, it would overturn a keystone theory from the last century of physics. That's possible, but it's far more likely that there is an error in the data. So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/23/physicists-speed-light-violated

There is an important point here, and that is that the scientists and skeptics had the proper attitude, in that it produced the correct interpretation and prediction of reality. An incident occurred, and the tools that are in our heads directed us to the truth whilst others wallowed in emotional acceptance of something they wanted to believe (like Krauthammer does here) the reasons they do this are unsure and may differ from person to person, it is interesting to see that Krauthammer accuses others of denying based on emotion when he is the one accepting on emotion. Projection Charles?

Why? It probably ahs some relation to the right’s dismissal of science and approbation of ‘elites’. I hope this is not the case as that is not something I’d normally attribute to Krauthammer. On the other hand – it may be everyday excitement that there are possibilities out there that boggle the mind.

Skeptical thinking and science are tools that slowly guide us to the light, bit-by-bit. I’m still open to the facts but the case seems closed on this one.

Nature vs. Nurture and Un-skeptical Skeptics

ArgusEyes — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:07:25 GMT

Ever wanted to hear a so called “skeptic” turn into a yammering true believer, completely abandoning their rationality to defend some dogmatic belief that they may happen to hold to a faith based degree?

Enter Rebecca Watson again.

In the latest episode of the “Skeptics Guide to the Universe”, at the 39 minute mark, Rebecca runs readily into prosthelytization. She lays down an outright bold-faced assertion that we assert boys to be aggressive and that we “socialise boys to play” don’t you know.

Then, all the other guys on the show jump on her for these remarks. Lacking a victimist belief system, they are more prone to see reality as it is. She, however, cannot see how she holds to a dogmatic belief and probably thought she was on safe ground. She was wrong. She also has no children and the other guys on the show do (so I believe).

They took her to task and she gets more histrionic and foolish as the argument goes on. Faced with the evidence, she retreats to try and say that she was simply saying that not “all” men or women are like this. This is a classic sign. When someone takes an extreme position, which is exactly what she did at the beginning when she said that boys are socialised to aggressiveness, then when pounded on this position by sound arguments, they retreat to simply state that they weren’t talking about all men, ever. Well duh, most of the time we don’t mean “all”. Generalisations are one of the most important tools in having a wise view of the world, a generalisation such as “men are more aggressive than women” is true and fair, if you’re sabotaging yourself (using PC and cognitive dissonance) against holding such a view, indeed, being aggressively reactant to it, then you’re not going to understand the realities of the world; such as war, gangs, the workplace, etc.

Boys are socialised to aggressiveness? Hasn’t she ever heard of testosterone.

Later in the discussion Steve Novella makes a joke on how we can test of boys are the same as girls. He says:

“so we should be able to take male babies and cut off their penises and then see how they turn out when they get older”

Enter David Reimer. David was a boy whose penis was badly damaged in a botched circumcision. His parents were convinced by Dr. John Money to cut off the penis, construct a vagina, and raise David as a girl. The experiment failed, horribly.

Scientifically, I think the extreme nurturist position is dead. Watson brazenly waltzes into situations like this because she thinks that she has a tool (skepticism) that enables her to find truth. One of the most arrogant people I know is also one of the rare ones who calls himself a “skeptic”. When you think you’re unimpeachable, then you’re not likely to find your own flaws. Skepticism allows one to grope in the dark to the truth more successfully than you’ll be able to do alone, but it doesn’t produce truth.

Now, the standard assumption on behalf of people who hate me is that I must, in arguing about this, support an extremist nature view. No. In fact, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve moved more and more to believing in the importance of nurture. When you look at how societies can differ, how attitudes like Bushido and Kamikaze can exist in Japanese culture but not in others, it is clear to see that culture is huge in like. However, nature sets up behaviours that we can see in all cultures. Behaviours such as aggressiveness, the maternal spirit, bell shaped curves of intelligence and achievement.

A piece of anti-evolution inanity pt1

ArgusEyes — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:04:31 GMT

One-two punch. Really quick and precise.

First up in the retard corner. Bryan Fischer:

http://www.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147511115

As J.B.S. Haldane famously observed, "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

If computational processes are determined wholly by the motion of electrons in circuits, then I have no reason to suppose that it could ever solve a sum and hence I have no reason for supposing the computer to be composed of electrons in circuits.

First Law of Thermodynamics. This law (note: not a theory but a scientific law) teaches us that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, an honest scientist will tell you that there is nothing in the observable universe that can explain either the origin of energy or matter. By logical extension, then, matter and energy had to come into being by some force outside the universe.

What this means, then, is that science simply has no explanation for the most basic question that could possibly be asked: why is there something rather than nothing?

Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates have an answer to this question; evolutionists do not.

Theism in a nutshell. “You don’t know, therefore God”. If course, that’s not an answer. That was the same answer to “where did disease come from”, “where did lightning come from”, “how does the sun move across the sky”. It was wrong then. How much do we want to bet on it being wrong this time? To state that “we don’t know” means “we know” is a logical impossibility.

Also, the premises are unsound. Take what we thought we “knew” about science a hundred years ago. People were actually reticent to go into the field of physics since they thought that we knew everything we needed to know, only technology was getting in the way of us progressing. That was before quantum physics came to the fore. Oh! How ignorant we are at all stages of our humanity!

Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law (note: not a theory but a law) teaches us that in every chemical or heat reaction, there is a loss of energy that never again is available for another heat reaction. This is why things break down if left to themselves, and why scientists tell us that the universe is headed toward a heat death.

This law teaches us, then, that the universe is headed toward increasing randomness and decay.

But what does the theory of evolution teach us? The exact opposite, that the universe is headed toward increasing complexity and order. You put up a scientific theory against my scientific law, I'm going to settle for the law every time, thank you very much.

My, aren’t we smarmy! A commenter made a really good comment here.

“Obviously in individual systems order can increase - have you ever made a bed? Congratulations, you added order to a system but did not violate the laws of physics.”

If babies can grow up, become adults, give birth to other babies, which will do the same. Then your point is full of it.

Fossils. Realize that the fossil record is the only tangible, physical evidence for the theory of evolution that exists. The fossil record is it. There is absolutely nothing else Darwinians have they can show you.

As Yale University's Carl Dunbar says, "Fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms."

But if Darwin's theory is correct, that increasingly complex life forms developed in tiny little incremental and transitional steps, then the fossil record should by littered with an enormous number of transitional fossils.

Darwin himself said, "The number of intermediate and transitional links must have been inconceivably great."

But, sadly for Darwinians, after 150 years of digging in dirt all around the world, there are still no transitional fossils at all, not one!

I’m going to stop him there since that last line is complete bull.

Oh, but they’re not transitional because you don’t think they are. Hey, there has never been a sane Christian since I define all Christians as definitionally insane. Ha! I win!

Also, forget fossils. Really. We don’t need em’! The evidence from genetics is more than enough to back evolution as being true…

Genes. The only mechanism — don't miss this — the only mechanism evolutionists have to explain the development of increasingly complex life forms is genetic mutation. Mutations alter DNA, and these alterations can be passed on to descendants.

Oh for fucks sake.

The problem: naturally occurring genetic mutations are invariably harmful if not fatal to the organism. Rather than improve an organism's capacity to survive, they invariably weaken it. That's why the phrase we most often use to refer to genetic mutations is "birth defects."

If scientists are some day able to engineer beneficial genetic mutations in the lab, that will simply prove our point: we told you it takes intelligence and design.

Now tell me, what happens to an organism whose ability to survive is diminished? It’s hardly likely to foster a successful line of children is it? If good mutations are filtered (necessarily) then I don’t care if only 1% of mutations are good. Over time, they are more likely to be ‘picked’ by natural selection.

Forget about “engineering” beneficial mutations in the lab. They’ve just left bacteria to its own devices and watched it:

The E. coli long-term evolution experiment is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially nearly identical populations of asexual Escherichia coli bacteria since 24 February 1988.[1] The populations reached the milestone of 50,000 generations in February 2010.

Since the experiment's inception, Lenski and his colleagues have reported a wide array of genetic changes; some evolutionary adaptations have occurred in all 12 populations, while others have only appeared in one or a few populations. One particularly striking adaption was the evolution of a strain of E. coli that was able to grow on citric acid in the growth media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

Evolution in this sense is a fact of nature. It happens. Get over it.

RE: A short quiz on Intelligent Design for both advocates and opponents of ID

ArgusEyes — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:30:43 GMT

I’ll bite: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-short-quiz-on-intelligent-design-for-both-advocates-and-opponents-of-id/

1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process.)

Update: When I say “certain features”, I mean, “certain generic features of the universe-as-a-whole (e.g. constants of Nature) and of living things in general (e.g. the specified complexity of DNA”. When I say “an undirected process” I mean a process lacking long-range foresight.

2. What do you regard as the best argument for Intelligent Design?

First off. Get over yourself atheists. I’ve read a lot of people saying things like “non – haha”. ID is a stance. It has a set of arguments. Many people find those arguments persuasive. By necessity, some of those arguments will be more logically sound than the others. Pick the best one. Jesus..

I’d say the fine tuning argument is the best argument that ID proponents have on their side. I made a video once where I said that complexity made it hard to believe in evolution. I guess, that being more foolish made be think that a while ago but I don’t think that anymore.

3. What do you regard as the best argument against Intelligent Design?

The argument from history & human nature. When we don’t understand things, we ascribe it to magic. The problem is, that we’re always wrong. We were wrong about Ra. We were wrong about the scarab beetle. We are wrong about lightning coming from God, disease as divine punishment. When we don’t know something we don’t know it. To say that to not know where something came from is to know where it came from. That is a logical contradiction.

4. I’d like you to think about the arguments for Intelligent Design. Obviously they’re not perfect. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?

ID proponents must do more than simply trying to bamboozle everyone with complexity. Evolution necessarily explains complexity otherwise it’d be useless so that is simply not enough. Also, enough with the design analogies. Yes, a computer is designed but we could not be.

5. Now I’d like you to think about the arguments against Intelligent Design. Obviously they could be improved. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?

By putting more emphasis on the problems I highlighted above. However, those are flaws I find in ID. Other people obviously think differently.

6. (a) If you’re an ID advocate or supporter, what do you think is the least bad of the various alternatives that have been proposed to Intelligent Design, as explanations for the specified complexity found in living things and in the laws of the cosmos? (e.g. The multiverse [restricted or unrestricted?]; Platonism; the laws of the cosmos hold necessarily, and they necessarily favor life; pure chance; time is an illusion, so CSI doesn’t increase over time.)

(b) If you’re an ID opponent or skeptic, can you name some explanations for life and the cosmos that you would regard as even more irrational than Intelligent Design? (e.g. Everything popped into existence out of absolutely nothing; the future created the past; every logically possible world exists out there somewhere; I am the only being in the cosmos and the external world is an illusion requiring no explanation; only minds are real, so the physical universe is an illusion requiring no explanation.)

Something like solipsism maybe; or variants of it. I don’t really concern myself with such things. I’m only interested in reality.

Methinks he is like a weasel

ArgusEyes — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:36:14 GMT

The ability of creationists to fall over themselves to demonstrate pugnaciousness at an elegant analogy for evolution is never better demonstrated than in the case of Dawkin’s weasel example. You can watch this YouTube video from his excellent blind watchmaker documentary to get an idea of what the weasel program is (at about six minutes in).

Now, if you were a creationist who is intent upon being awkward, then you could make these criticisms perhaps:

Yet I believe that Dawkins and his defenders misunderstand the weasel program. The weasel model argues strongly for the inference to teleology/design, not for undirected evolution.

My reasons:

1) Dawkins inadvertently and inescapably uses a model of design. The computer itself, the program, the endpoint are all designed by minds. Even the random letter generator is a meticulously designed program. But the essence of Darwin's theory is that there is no goal-directedness, no design, in evolution. So why would Dawkins use a model that is entirely designed? The reason is obvious: he has no choice. Design permeates nature.

2) The teleology in Darkins' weasel program is particularly in the target. The teleology permeates the system, but the crucial teleology is the adaptation- the match between the 'random' process and the environment.

http://egnorance.blogspot.com/2011/07/thoughts-on-dawkins-weasel-program.html

Yes, this is from Egnor’s new blog, and he goes for that low-hanging fruit. The fact that a computer is, bum bum buuuuum… Designed! Surely not!

Yes a computer is a creation of man it is also a calculating machine and can thus be used to simulate things. Let’s look at a simple example. Take a natural process such as the formation of crystals, or the falling of an object due to gravity. If you’re the type of theist who thinks that got is directly doing all of these things then go away – because I can’t convince you of anything. However, if you think that there are natural laws in the universe then the fact that we can write simulations of these processes on a computer does not tell us anything about the processes other than we can simulate them. A computer is designed. This does not mean that we are “using a model of design” when we write a program on it. That is foolishness. A designed nature of a computer does not influence the programs running on it, which can be self-contained universes if we wish to make them so.

I am a software developer, and I have written my own weasel program. It’s a nice exercise but if I wanted to, I could create a proper evolutionary algorithm which would not be targeted towards anything. It would probably have a fitness measurement, but we could leave it to run in perpetuity to create all sorts of creatures in the memory of the machine. Egnor is being purposefully pompous in his questioning tone above. Does he not get the simple demonstrative nature of the weasel program? Open you ears and learn something for once Egnor.

I agree with this sentiment

ArgusEyes — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:32:09 GMT

There’s a lot of good stuff here, I agree that Marie Curie is overused and that if you want to be great, you aim for that dream and devote yourself to it. We all know that the contributions of certain female historical figures can be extremely overrated but, for the sake of argument, I’ll accept the case histories in the comic. There are undoubtedly many female achievements in the past that were hidden behind male names, grabbed from the spotlight and denied from the potential of achievement by social and biological factors. I say we have what I’ve always believed we should have. A meritocracy, based upon an equal playing fields. No one is denied for any factor other than skill and let the best rise to the top.

Larry Summers Version 2.0

ArgusEyes — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:02:03 GMT

Alright. This is a story which has really gotten my goat, for reasons that a so numerous; the least of which are the single-minded subservience by the politically correct faithful, the sheer lack of actual sexism and the fascism and thought policing of the PC thugs who have taken over many aspects of academia and western culture.

So like Larry Summers, Dr. Lazar Greenfield is an experienced and skilled professional who is being drummed out of a position due to some comments which have offended the PC knee-jerk brigade of feminist fanciers. (Sorry, have I used enough pejoratives? It’s probably over the top but this disgusts me and I really, really hate these people.). From respectful insolence (abbreviate for the point, go to the main article and read the whole thing).

I actually don't think so. Basically, it's a story of a surgeon making a fool of himself

…

An utterly brilliant man, Dr. Greenfield has authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 55 book chapters, and 8 books.

…

This year, he reached one of the ultimate professional pinnacles in surgery, being elected to be the incoming president of the American College of Surgeons, the largest and most influential surgical organization. Given that Dr. Greenfield is 78, it appeared that he was finishing his career on a high note.

…

Then, as editor, he decided to write a truly bizarre Valentine's Day-themed editorial for Surgery News. So offensive was the editorial considered among women that the entire issue of GSN was pulled from the web and Dr. Greenfield was forced to resign as editor. What caused such a ruckus? Dr. Greenfield apparently thinks that semen is a mood-enhancing antidepressant.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/04/cluelessness_and_sexism_in_the_american.php#more

Now, I remember this study as I saw it on PhysOrg.com when it came up, I can’t find that link despite my data-archiving tendencies (typical!) so here’s the study from the source. I so want to get this in case it “disappears” from the internet. The premise is that semen, when absorbed through the walls of the vagina, can have anti-depressant and mood-uplifting effects due the hormones contained in that semen. I’ve seen other similar proposed biological effects of semen in the literature, though I do not have the expertise to judge such claims. I rely on people who know more than I to do that.

Now, what I stated above is perfectly reasonable scientific hypothesis. It’s either true or not (or proven and unproven if you want to methodologically pedantic), either way, this is a question for science. Orac has some thoughts.

In other words, in order to make a joke (apparently), Dr. Greenfield picked what is at best a dubious study upon which to base it. Worse, he didn't simply say that sex makes women happier (which probably wouldn't have caused much of a stir; after all there's little doubt it makes men happier, too) or taken a Barry White-like position that it's time to get it on. Rather, he said that it is the semen makes women happy, that getting it on isn't enough by itself. In other words, the implication of Dr. Greenfield's wildly inappropriate little joke, published in the official news magazine of the ACS, is that a woman needs a man to inject his seed into her in order to be truly happy. Therein, I suspect, lies the subtext that elevated the outrage over Dr. Greenfield's remarks to the level they've reached. If he had simply tried to argue, even based on biology, that a little nookie on Valentine's Day can make a man and woman grow closer based on biology, no one would have complained--or likely even argued. Of course, he would have had to leave out out that final study as his justification and in particular left out the bit of its having nothing to do with "promiscuity"--what is this, the 1950s?--but if he had done those things he might have crafted a mildly amusing paean to physical love on Valentine's Day. I'm sure that was probably his intent, but instead he ended up implying that unmarried college age women should have unprotected sex on Valentine's Day because it would make them happier.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/04/cluelessness_and_sexism_in_the_american.php#more

Here’s that “wildly inappropriate little joke”:

“So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/sexism-charges-divide-surgeons-group/

Shock and horror!

I think you can see now, where the outrage is coming from. This has ticked a list of leftist political pressure points.

It can be perceived as being anti-condom use. This could be used by groups like conservatives or religious fundamentalists to argue against condom use.
It deals with promiscuity as indicated by Orac’s “what is this, the 1950s” outburst. The question of whether promiscuity is better for women doesn’t matter. It’s politically incorrect to say it. Political correctness is an insipid thought-controlling fascistic ideology.
I expect the reasoning behind this is that anything that can be viewed as placing standards on the behavior of women is some kind of plot to keep the “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” or some such rubbish like that. The feminists and feminist sympathizers hate this. Remember a while ago, I made a video about Dennis Prager’s column on women who’s constant refusal to have sex for not “being in the mood” garnered hysteria from many on the web. To suggest that women’s mood in refusing sex may have negative effects on their relationship and thus be something they don’t want to do that often is certainly true, may be good advice, and it is an accusation that women can’t do whatever they want and suffer no repercussions from it. Such a thing is the true effect of liberty. Feminists want tyranny.
It’s catnip to confirm what they already believe. Never underestimate this temptation in the human animal. We walk around in a cloud of delusions and we seek confirmatory evidence to sustain that cloud of delusions. The waffling hairpieces are moaning about the “state of women” in surgery over this. What this has to do with his comments is beyond me, probably something about a “hostile” workplace or some such thing. I don’t deny that hostile workplaces can exist, in part. I do, however, expect women/whoever to rise above it. That previous statement has set the leftists who read it into a tizzy because it suggests that women become stronger individually rather than moan and be victims.

This isn’t a debate over truth. It’s hysteria.

PC-fuelled too. I keep asking this, but where’s the sexism.

“I was aghast,” said Dr. Colleen Brophy, a professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, and a member of the organization for over 20 years. Dr. Brophy, who served as chairwoman of its surgical research committee, publicly resigned from the College on Thursday. “I’ve gone back and reviewed the science, and it’s erroneous,” she said. “But I’m resigning from the college not so much because of the editorial but because of the leadership’s response to it.”

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/sexism-charges-divide-surgeons-group/

Sounds a bit like Nancy Hopkins from the Larry Summers affair doesn’t it?

Nancy Hopkins, a biology student at the school, stumbled outside claiming, if she stayed, “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”

http://takimag.com/article/ann_coulter_and_ottawa_u_goodbye_college_hello_madrasah

I recommend you all read this piece from the nytimes blog entitled “Sexism Charges Divide Surgeons’ Group”. Again, what sexism?! It waffles on about the numbers of female surgeons etc, the “old guard” versus the new surgeons coming up through the ranks who embrace “transparency” (through thought policing – please). It’s quite a piece of avoidance and confuscation.

“I’ve gone back and reviewed the science, and it’s erroneous,” she said. “But I’m resigning from the college not so much because of the editorial but because of the leadership’s response to it.”

What response? Where?

“I’m not sure some of the old guard see this as the watershed moment it is,” she continued. Referring to the college’s role as a standard bearer for surgeons and an advocacy organization for patient care and patient safety, she added: “It’s not so much about Dr. Greenfield anymore. It’s about the spine of our organization and the principles by which the organization governs itself.”

What does that mean? Explain!

“There are all these men and women out there who are afraid to say something,” said Dr. Barbara Lee Bass, chairwoman of surgery at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, who recently served on the college’s governing board. “It reveals that there is still this intimidation and fearfulness, and that’s what troubles me most.”

What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About?

These people don’t think, they feel. The world is on its head.

I take part in an unscrupulous line-up

ArgusEyes — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:45:35 GMT

What blog? Yes, sorry. However, I have a number of posts to make today so let’s get started.

A woman on YouTube contacted me asking to use a portion of my “Look not to feminism but to science” video. It is for a documentary promo that she is trying to make:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lydiamariehicksfilms/rediscovering-the-scientist-documentary

Now, I seem to be put in a bad light here. I don't mind and I still consent to be used but the video is interesting in the mentality it puts forward. If you click on the link and go the website for the video, you'll see this oft-repeated Charles Darwin quote at the beginning of the text.

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.” –Charles Darwin from, “The Descent of Man” 1871

Not good. I did make a reply back to her and we'll see where this goes.

I hope you don't mind if I make a few comments? The lady about four minutes in, the one who got sick and changed her major; she seems to have a pretty strong entitlement and victim complex. She made numerous statements about how other people should have motivated her and how the course didn't cater to her as a black and a woman. Is this a healthy mentality? The world is never going to be handed to us on a platter and people who expect this, will fail at life and constantly blame others. Will your documentary be a perpetuitous line of people with this mentality? Are you going to critique this mentality and inspect academically achieved black people like John McWorter and Neil deGrasse Tyson to see if they subscribed to this mentality? I suspect that they probably don’t.

Also, the quote from Darwin at the beginning seems to be one in a line-up of white males (of which I appear to be one) who are to be detested. In this instance your agenda aligns with that of creationists and evolution deniers to paint Darwin in a bad light. However, that quote was not the full story. Darwin was racist by our modern standards. However, in the light of the time in which he lived, he was quite progressive on the issue of race. This quote was not support by Darwin for the extermination of races but it is instead a justification for his theory as to why large gaps may appear in the fossil record. It is a fact that some of the earlier hominid species were probably eliminated by the more advanced hominids. May I ask what your purpose is in posting this quote right at the beginning?

More on ada lovelace

ArgusEyes — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:11:25 GMT

So I get mail.

My friend,

You have done some research choosing to use this particular book for reference. My question is what other research have you done into this subject to further back your arguement. You appear to pride yourself on having studied computing, yet those of us who have made it thus far have done so through critical thinking which involves a complete study into the matter using scholarly documents. Here is one for you to review: http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/contents.html By the way you could use some additional courses in html. Your pull-down for comments is less than satisfactory!

My reply:

Greetings Miscellaneous.

I have not done extensive research in this subject, I’ve done some sizeable research though. I am not writing academic papers or a book and if there is some evidence out there that proves me wrong, then I hope I am not close-minded enough to deny it and that I should modify my views accordingly. However, I feel I have done enough to make a judgement on this topic, Doron Swade is not a mere pleb, he is an expert on this topic.

Doron Swade MBE is a museum curator and author, specialising in the history of computing. He is especially known for his work on the computer pioneer Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doron_Swade

From reading his book, I find this to be an accurate description. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but he gave an excellent talk at google talks:

Fast-foward to 36 minutes and 30 second in to hear a brief word on Ada Lovelace, I adopt Dr. Swade’s position on these matters. The facts are not behind Ada Lovelace being either a mathematical genius or the first programmer.

Also, please observe my series of blog posts on this matter:

[1] http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2010/07/08/ada-lovelace-was-not-the-first-computer-programmer.aspx

[2] http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2010/07/17/does-truth-matter.aspx

Where in [1], I state the sources for Babbage being the original author of the program in the Menebrea paper. This seems to destroy the link you send me although you didn’t specify which part you wanted me to read.

I don’t know what you’re talking about with html. Strangely enough, I don’t program the YouTube website. Ending on such a petty point lessens your argument and makes you look like you are acting out of emotion rather than reason. Address the issues.

Sincerely, Mark

Raising boys as girls

ArgusEyes — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 12:24:30 GMT

Wow. No posts in a long time. Sorry. Here’s an interesting post by Jerry Coyne, author of “Why Evolution Is True” on the question of whether gender/sex behaviours are biologic in nature or socially constructed. As an aside, I have a book that’s next on my to-read list, entitled “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl” by John Colapinto, this book details the case of David Reimer, a boy who lost his penis due to a botched circumcision at birth and was raised as a girl. The outcome was the same as in these cases that Coyne mentions, and I didn’t know that there were so many other case studies on this, these outcomes being that the boys raised as girls were raised in traditional stereotypical ways (given dolls, ovens, dresses, etc), and they rebelled and started showing traditionally male behaviours.

Reiner and Gearhart’s idea was this: if gender is “constructed” by socialization at birth, newborns who are raised as members of the opposite sex from birth should show behaviors characteristic of their “socialized” sex rather than their biological sex. Cloacal exstrophy gave them a chance to do this, because males born with the syndrome sometimes have their penises and testes removed, a vulva constructed instead, and are raised as girls. If the “socialization” hypothesis is correct, these males should show female-typical behaviors when older; if the biological hypothesis is correct, they should lean towards male behaviors.

The authors had a sample of fourteen newborn males with cloacal exstrophy whose parents agreed to participate in the study. The babies were surgically constructed to have female genitalia, and parents agreed to raise the boys as girls, never telling the children of their biological gender. (Two other males with the syndrome were raised as males even though they had the surgery.) Several of the parents were raising “normal” girls at the same time.

At ages ranging from 5 to 16, the female-raised males were given psychological tests that explored their interests in toys, dolls, and clothes, the time spent playing various games, athleticism, aggressive behavior, career and sexual interests, sex of friends, etc. They were also asked to declare their gender. The parents were also given questionnaires on their child’s behavior and relationships with other children.

The upshot: all 16 subjects, including those with female genitals raised as males, “revealed moderate-to-marked male-typical behaviors” compared to the scores of children raised according to their biological sex at birth. (The paper reports the scores for each child on a number of scales.) As for the parents, here’s what the authors report:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/evolutionary-psychology-gender-construction/

Please read the whole thing, it's fascinating. This should make an excellent topic for a video someday.

Evidence of other bubble universes

ArgusEyes — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 02:01:32 GMT

I’ve always been skeptical of the bubble universe hypothesis. Via PhysOrg.com, is a story about scientists who have purported to have visualised data that shows the existence of bubble universes. Essentially, irregular patterns in the background radiation are being hypothesised as other universes ‘bumping’ into ours and creating these patterns. It sounds a little loose to me, perhaps some other natural process is causing these patterns but is certainly an interesting idea.

In the most recent study on pre-Big Bang science posted at arXiv.org, a team of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the US, Stephen M. Feeney, et al, have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers think that these marks could be “bruises” that our universe has incurred from being bumped four times by other universes. If they turn out to be correct, it would be the first evidence that universes other than ours do exist.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html

The authors of the scientific paper express a good level of skepticism as well. A good sign.

Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to confirm this claim, which could come in short time from the Planck satellite, which has a resolution three times better than that of WMAP (where the current data comes from), as well as an order of magnitude greater sensitivity. Nevertheless, they hope that the search for bubble collisions could provide some insight into the history of our universe, whether or not the collisions turn out to be real.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html

All very fascinating. Here’s to further discovery in this particular area.

Michael Egnor has questions for atheists

ArgusEyes — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:13:24 GMT

So Michael Egnor writes a piece over at Evolution News and Views entitled “What Do New Atheists Actually Believe?”. He has some questions to ask atheists and he wants us to answer. By the way, the website does not have commenting and I can find no email address for Michael Egnor after a few minutes of googling so one has to wonder just how much he wants our answers but I’ll give you my answers Michael.

1) Why is there anything?

Because “nothing” is inherently unstable. The universe doesn’t seem to like “nothing”. Even the most featureless spot of empty space is a bubbling cosmic cauldron of particles coming into existence and leaving existence. However, if I answered “gravity” to a question of “why do things fall”, then I would probably get a retort of “why is there gravity”. I am going to head this inevitable line of questioning off at the pass Dr. Egnor. I do not have the explanation for why nothing is unstable we are supremely ignorant of the workings of the universe. I recognise this ignorance for what it is and acknowledge it, you cling to the ignorance and use it to justify your magical explanation. The religious always like to pretend that they have the answer to the why. They don’t.

2) What caused the Universe?

Quantum fluctuations are the best current provisional explanation for the origin of matter, leading to the expansion of the universe. I have no doubt that we will laugh at this theory in a hundred years time but it is the only current example of matter coming from nothing. There are no other examples of matter coming from nothing.

3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?

No idea. See the answer to question one sans the scientific explanation at the beginning.

4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?

Pass. I do not have the time to study Aristotle at the moment.

5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?

I don’t know where this is going. The question seems to be “why does each person have their own experience of the world”? Because our minds differ. No two minds are exactly the same and are also affected by our environment, this leads to differing interpretations of the world. Is this not obvious?

6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?

Philosophical onanism. As a programmer and scientist I feel a special kind of loathing towards meaningless garbage like this. What the hell is he talking about? Am I the stupid one? Since I cannot answer the question, let me rant about philosophers and academics. Basically, philosophers should get honest jobs such as hamburger cook. I’ve always noticed trends in similar between theists and philosophers the urge to capitalise on not knowing, to spread doubt and confusion so that we cannot assuredly define terms and come to conclusions about things. The aim is the same; to satiate the desire in the human being philosophising to see wonder and mysticism in life. Name for me the essential difference between this definition of Metaphysical solipsism and religion:

Metaphysical solipsism is the "strongest" variety of solipsism. Based on a philosophy of idealism, the metaphysical solipsist maintains that he is the whole of reality and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self having no independent existence. Few, if any, have taken this position beyond hypothetical discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Bollocks.

About academics. There is an irritating trend in many academics to use language which is as obtuse as possible, perhaps in the way that a programmer might obfuscate code in order to increase job security. Academics like I have descried like the sociologist drummer I knew at university, would inevitably be concatenating prepared phrases like “post-modern”, “hetero-normatively”, etc. I heard a great academic blurb on the Dennis Prager show from David Horowitz’s book “one party classroom”. I can’t find it on the web so I will instead point you all to George Orwell’s best essay “politics and the English language”

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Orwell states that good writing is like a window. Transparent.

7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)

Moral law is an artefact of nature. We observer many aspects of our moral behaviour in our animal cousins such as the great apes. They have many of the same social conventions as we do and they have moral behaviour. The verdict is in; that we evolved from apelike ancestors so we inherit the moral systems too. Religions come in and create rules that encapsulate the morality we already had as well as introducing some but wherever you look you will see morality dependent upon the context in which you are viewing it. Take the variety of customs of human society from cannibalism to sepuku. These are things that we would abhor in the context of western societies and yet they exist in other societies. Man and woman is a mixture of nature and nurture.

The religious like to state that the word of God is absolute. But that is a claim that is 180 degrees from reality. If the word of God is absolute then why do we have so many different denominations of Christianity? Why the differing degrees of liberality in a religious worshipper? When you look at the world you see differing moral systems all over the place. When you squint, and lower the resolution at which you look at the world, then you see broad similarities, but morality is a complex equation.

8) Why is there evil?

Evil, like religion, is an outcome of human psychology which in turn is an outcome of our physical brain structure from our physical development. The discussion of why humans are the way they are is so large that I don’t know if I can summarise it here. Hatred of the other, the lack of human understanding, the imposition of our views on others, the restriction of liberty. Let alone that what is evil differs from one person to the next. I think a major cause of human evil is the victim complex, when people think of themselves as victims then they can do tremendously evil things because they have convinced that they are entitled to do so. Take a situation in which evil has occurred and you can find psychological explanations for it. No magic is required.

15 sexy scientists? Prepare to wring hands

ArgusEyes — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:11:38 GMT

One of the most things about male feminists is what and-wringing, cringing pussies they can be sometimes.

Here is a list, with photos, of 15 sexy scientists. It has a little excuse for some obvious bias in the choices:

…

The worst possible way to handle this is to search the internet for photos of women scientists and make superficial decisions about who the male eye would find sexy. There's a process of judgment that went on behind the scenes, where many women scientists had to have been rejected because they were insufficiently 'hot', and then many of the women dragged into the spotlight had their "scientist" qualifications completely ignored for their literally biological qualifications. It's a reiteration of the same inappropriate judgmental attitude that pretty much every woman scientist suffers through.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/07/i_have_been_objectified.php

Good grief. He’s complaining that not enough shrift is given to scientific qualifications for a list called “15 sexy scientists”. Read that title slowly again Myers.

Then there’s the usual yammering about “turning these women into objects” on the comment thread of the post he is referring to (and a lot of good rebuttals too). I can’t help but think that a lot of what these people don’t like about lists like this, is what amounts to a basic railing about the basic fact that looks are more important to women then they are to men. That’s like, get over it and stop being so offended by reality.

NASA to outreach to the Muslim world: Atheist/Skeptic blogs silent

ArgusEyes — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:12:09 GMT

This isn’t exactly new, a lot of you might already know about this story: Obama's New Approach to Joint Space Exploration (original story). Below is a quote from an MSNBC article.

Bolden raised eyebrows in the space community and outrage among conservative pundits by telling Al-Jazeera television recently President Barack Obama had instructed him to work for better outreach with the Muslim world.

He said Obama told him one of his top priorities was to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38212800/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Charles Krauthammer is scathing on this:

I didn’t touch the original story. However, what is noteworthy is that the skeptic/atheist blogs I most regularly visit haven’t mentioned this to my knowing. Take the two main ones on my start-up menu, pharyngula and badastronomy:

muslim nasa site:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

muslim nasa site:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

muslim nasa site:http://skepchick.org/blog/

muslim nasa site:http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/

If any of you know about something I’m missing then do let me know but it appears very much that political allegiances are getting in the way of objectivity.

Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made For Us

ArgusEyes — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:13:48 GMT

An amazing piece of writing.

How do feminist oppress men? Plus other questions

ArgusEyes — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:52:25 GMT

From my previous answering questions post comes yet more questions from “bob”. So here they are:

“How do feminist oppress men, or how do they take away men's rights?”

Two ways:

One way is by pushing ideas into the zeitgeist that are anti-male, a good example of this is the Norwegian board of women law (where 40% of the boards of companies must be female) and any quota based law. These laws are not necessarily passed by feminists but are the result of feminist/leftist memes that hold that equal outcomes are necessarily the product of systemic sexism against women and therefore laws must be passed to pass power from the privileged (men) to the underprivileged (women). That unequal outcomes point absolutely to sexism is a though based upon the meme that men and women are the same. After all, if they’re not the same then that difference might explain the differences in outcomes in certain professions – an idea that feminist do not entertain.

The second way is direct action my feminists be it male only university courses (May Daly) or by self-professed feminists who are usually in the government. A good example of this is Harriett Harman who would actually pack the board of a bank with women. Which is direct sexism.

“What rights don''t[sic] men have?”

I make videos for a reason. If I may quote a section from my “Men are more oppressed than women” video.

First unlike the example above this pension tale is genuine oppression. Men in the UK have to work until 65 to qualify for a full pension, women have to work until 60 and generally make less and have more paternity leave. Laws that impose different standards on us based on our sex. Sounds like oppression to me.

How about the fact that discrimination against men is governmentally mandated. Forget about the companies and the universities. The most solid example of this is the new leader of the conservative party in the UK proposed quotas to get the shortlist of political candidates to be half women [2]. Where you see quotas read discrimination.

How about the right to reproductive control. When a woman becomes pregnant then she can abort, give up for adoption and in America shortly after the birth she can abandon the baby and resolve herself of parentage of that baby, this is called safe haven abandonment. When a man gets a woman pregnant then he is screwed, his entire life now becomes a script that the woman will write. If he wants the baby and she doesn’t tough for him, if he doesn’t want the baby and she does then tough for him also.

How about the right to equal protection? Our fascist police state will oppressively arrest a man for a woman’s violence because only men can abuse. A message that is spread by our system and our politicians.

How about the denial of parentage for men? When a split happens the man is treated as sub-human, completely controlled by the government who tell him when he can see his children and when he can’t like he is some sort of criminal.

How about divorce? Where a woman is entitled to her husbands assets and men are made to pay out large sums of money to their wives from businesses that they made succeed. A recent case involved a large payout and continual payouts every year for the rest of the woman’s life!

A man is more likely to be convicted and convicted for longer periods of time than a woman for a similar crime, like murder. We need only look at the attitudes surrounding the Clara Harris case and we see the sympathy that is poured on a woman murderer.

Health spending, for every £1 spend on men’s health care, £8 is spent on women’s health care [3]. Government and charity spending for breast cancer is 37 millions, it’s 10 million for prostate cancer, both diseases kill as many. So the government is spending more to protect a certain segment of the population, how about that?

http://www.true-equality.net/archive/2008/05/10/men-are-more-oppressed-than-women.aspx

“What power do the feminist have to do so if their only power is their voice?”

Ideas are powerful things. The mass murderers of history got into power, in part, by appealing to the masses with ideas. Theories on repressed memory syndrome were used to implant memories of abuse into the minds of patients, by psychologists, and led to convictions of completely innocent day-care workers (many of whom were women) and fathers.

Feminists are an advocacy group who have the current position, of representing women and being equated with what is good for women. I don’t believe this is so but nonetheless, they can influence policy, craft laws and last but not least they can indoctrinate young women and men with their ideas through the apparatus of university.

Never. Ever. Underestimate the power of ideas.

“What's wrong with protesting,[sic] isn't being active part of activism?”

I believe they are protesting on behalf of bad values. That is what I object to in feminism. Are you talking about physical protests? I expect it. Any protest that gets to obnoxious and loud will irritate me, even if I support the cause (tea parties for example).

“Also, are you anti any other movements?”

I am anti any movement that stands against liberty or/and on the side of political correctness.

I am against antiquated and corrupted victimist movements such as feminist and “blackism” or minority racist movements such as the modern black movements or any that is based upon race.

I am against pure racist movements such as the black panthers, K.K.K or white supremacists in general.

I am against the general milieu of anti-freedom movements such as socialism, Nazism, communism, Maoism, Islamism, etc.

I am against radical animal rights movements which are based on the idea of equating humans and animals (like P.E.T.A.), not the ones which want decent treatment for animals.

I am against movements based upon magic, which want the consequences of that magic to be influenced upon others. Such as creationism pseudoscience and religious movements.

I am against anti-science movements such as creationism and anti-vaccination and feminism (yes, many victimist movements have strong anti-science components).

I think I covered most of the bases. In short, I am against most movements as well as the idea of movements. Because at heart, movements are made up of people who represent a certain mindset, the mindset that the world revolves around their particular issue and they tend to view it in the extreme. Movements inevitably tend towards degradation such as feminist fighting for genuine equal rights for women to become the twisted movement it is today. They get invested in perpetuating the movement, and do so, normally by shifting the goalposts of what they oppose and manufacturing new controversies to fight.

Hows about an Intelligent Design moron to pass the time?

ArgusEyes — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:54:18 GMT

From my video “Kirk Cameron disproves Pascal's wager”. Which, coincidentally, has 46,000 views – holy cow!

DNA: a digital, redundant, error-correcting, self-replicating CODE: exactly what SETI looks for as proof of intelligence. Codes are information. Information CAN'T evolve; it only comes from intelligence. The irreducable complexity of flagellar motors: capable of 100,000 rpms & can stop at a quarter turn. 40 parts, only 10 of which can be explained by evolution. They must be in a particular order. Lose a part & it doesn't work, thus it can't evolve. It's DESIGNED.

“DNA: a digital, redundant, error-correcting, self-replicating CODE: exactly what SETI looks for as proof of intelligence.”

Nope. S.E.T.I. looks for radio signals that are unlikely to have occurred by natural sources. Discrimination is the key. They don’t go “oh there’s a pattern – aliens!” these people are scientists.

“Codes are information. Information CAN'T evolve; it only comes from intelligence.”

You pulled that from your arse. You have genes. Those genes are “information”. Those genes copy themselves with modifications. Those modifications can result in novel traits. Congratulations, your “information” has evolved.

“The irreducible complexity of flagellar motors: capable of 100,000 rpms & can stop at a quarter turn. 40 parts, only 10 of which can be explained by evolution. They must be in a particular order. Lose a part & it doesn't work, thus it can't evolve. It's DESIGNED.”

Lose a section from the base of a tower and it will collapse.
Thus the tower couldn’t have been built bit-by-bit, HAIL JESUS!

Climategate: Much ado about nothing

ArgusEyes — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:37:12 GMT

In case there is anyone out there who cares what i think about this. I have been massively underwhelmed at the criticisms of the email. Others have said it well.

I think that the science now tells us more than enough to warrant action. Certainly there remain uncertainties, but not on the issue as a whole.

With regards the private e-mails posted on the internet, I think the story is a simple one and it could apply to any one of us. Think of all the e-mails you have written over the past 10 years. Now imagine that someone criminally breaks into your e-mail account and downloads all of them, handpicks a few and posts them on the internet to cast you in a particular light. We could all be shown to be saints or sinners or anything in between.

Now look at what has happened with these scientists going about their work in much the same way anyone of us might attend to our job. Enough said.

Potholer54. Great as always.

I am still skeptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). I accept the scientific basis but question the doomsayers' claims. I still think AGW is catnip to various “isms” and the reverse to other “isms”.

I think that the proposed solutions, which is to control and intrude into our lives, are horrible and anti-liberal.

Is homosexuality natural?

ArgusEyes — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:42:09 GMT

Sometimes I make a post on a forum or discussion thread that I think is worthwhile enough to post here. Apologies if this seems cheap but a particularly interesting one arose recently. The issue of “is homosexuality natural” on my MRAS YouTube group as it happens. Why not join and join in on the discussion?

Here is the opening post:

actually..I didnt agree with it a bit. The ACT itself is unnatural. Homosexuality cannot sustain itself.It needs hetrosexuals to survive. If it was natural it would be able to sustain itself like other natural things. When he speaks of oppisites he is wrong. There is no such thing as dark.....only the absense of light.

…

creepyguy...life really aint that complicated. So would you say beastiality...polygamy....paedophilia.... are not unnatural=bad things?

My post:

When discussing this issue it is important that we rigidly decide our terms of discourse.

“Natural” purely means “formed by nature”. Homosexuality exists in a lot of other animal species apart from our own. In this sense homosexuality is indeed natural, so is paedophilia and bestiality.

But you muddied the waters by making a moral equivalence. Essentially natural=good and unnatural=bad. There is no basis for this. An animal species that is an evolutionary dead end and which is doomed for extinction is still formed by nature. Natural isn’t necessarily good. So we as a culture can create a moral code as to what we will accept and what we won’t, be it natural or unnatural. Medicine is also unnatural because they were not formed by nature, their ingredients were but medicine is a creation of man, not of nature.

Also, we don’t say that because man is natural and formed medicine therefore medicine is natural as well. We don’t apply an inheritance chain to this otherwise everything would turn out to be natural and the term would lose all its meaning.

Here are some sources:

Bestiality in nature: Mating toads leap the species barrier.

Homosexuality in nature: 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality

Cherchez-le-Femme

ArgusEyes — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:10:02 GMT

Cherchez-le-femme means “Find-the-female” in French. It is a term that I got and modified from Charles Krauthammer where he mentioned “Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif” (find-the-Jew) in reference to the Time’s Joe Klein who decried the odious attempts of "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.". I’m not touching that one now so don’t even try, but ever the thief, I will attempt to crowbar this term into the popular discourse, by which I mean i will use it a lot, so remember who came up with it first, alright?

Before your brain drops out with my inconsequential wittering (hey, I’ve been away a long time), let me introduce this piece from the BBC, Poor women ‘bear climate burden’:

Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned.

The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.

They do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said.

Regular readers will notice similarities to the “Greener Gender: The Greener Gender: Are men worse for the environment?” essay that I wrote some time ago, in which I criticised author Gerd Johnssom-Latham for bandwagon jumping and using climate change to server her ideological agenda. The exact same thing is happening here. Notice the middle paragraph in the quote above. “The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.“. Call me a fool if you want, but that sounds like a roundabout way to solve the problem. If an deleterious phenomenon is going to disproportionally affect a certain group of people then one would think that the first order of the day is to mitigate the effect, not to propose a social solution targeted at the group of people, people like this are meddlers and they irk me.

This is where the term “Cherchez-le-Femme” comes in. This is the phenomenon we saw in the “Greener gender” report and in this report from the UN. People with an agenda are extraordinarily adept at linking a lot of things that happen in the world to their particular agenda. Certain people are obsessed with Jews, and everything that happens comes back to the Jews somehow, it really is quote boring talking to such people. This is why I am skeptical about climate change. I will accept that it is happening to a certain degree because as I know from defending evolution and science on so many occasions, that it takes a little bit of chutzpah to go against the scientific community. However, as an astute observer said on the Dennis Prager show one time, climate change has become catnip to a bunch of failed “isms”. It is a ripe fruit dangling in the faces of various political groups, to be picked and used to advance their purposes. The imaginary female that will be damaged by the next big thing must be sought by the feminist and identified as a victim to be solved by the medicine they offer. Hence the reason they say “more equality” is needed rather than “stop global warming” or even “raise the standard of living”.

I must also point out for people who don’t know my views. There is a problem in the third world, you’d have to be blind to not see it. Women in many countries around the world have less rights, some people say “therefore feminism” whereas I say “therefore equality”. Contemporary feminism as a solution the the plight of women in the third world is a bad idea. You can look to this and other blogs to advance that particular case. One last observance on this issue, the executive director of UNFPA is Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. If you go to her bio then you will see her dedication to standard feminist causes. I have highlighted the instances of the word “women” in the image below to show this. Now, I don’t normally dig into people’s past but it goes to the central message. Ms. Obaid is clearly a feminists who is looking to climate change as the catnip to sell her cause. It’s sneaky and veiled and will turn people off of her cause in the end.

Men lose their minds over pretty women

ArgusEyes — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:01:34 GMT

I think most men in the audience can think of a situation in his life where he degenerated into a pile of mushy brain goo in the presence of a stunner, It’s happened to me.

So here is a study: “Study: Men Losing Their Minds Over Women”. Didn’t really need to be done but it’s always useful to have some kind of scientific backing when dealing with people who have problems with reality.

The study measured brain function in 40 male heterosexual student volunteers, who were asked to perform a standard memory test in which they were shown a stream of letters and had to quickly say if each was the same as the previous letter. They then spent several minutes talking to either a man or an attractive woman and then repeated the test.

The researchers found that even a few minutes with the attractive woman was enough to make the students slower and less accurate on the test. The more attracted they were, the worse their results.

They also studied the effects on women students of being in the company of handsome men, and found the test scores were unaffected.

…

The idea for the study came from one of the scientists, who was so impressed by a beautiful woman he met that when she asked where he lived, he had forgotten his own address! He had temporarily lost his mind.

Natural Selection: A Machine for Making Almost Impossible Things

ArgusEyes — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:08:21 GMT

Taken from a lecture by professor Steve Jones called "Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right".
http://royalsociety.org/event.asp?id=4140

Making a Monkey out of Darwin: A Rebuttal (part 2)

ArgusEyes — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:24:17 GMT

"Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France.

Yes, he was such a Darwinist that he didn’t really mention it anywhere.

Historian Jacques Barzun believes Darwinism brought on World War I: "Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens -- all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate."

If you followed that, then explain it to me in non crazy talk.

Yet a theory can produce evil -- and still be true.

Like nuclear physics – when do we get to blame Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Lise Meitner? Or, maybe, humans have always fought each other? Nah, that’s crazy talk.

And here Windchy does his best demolition work.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a "completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection."

"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript.

The idea that Darwin stole his theory from Wallace is a historically illiterate falsity. There is no truth in it. Darwin sat on his theory for a very long time and ran the risk of being snubbed to the post by Wallace so they presented their ideas around the same time. You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Darwin's examples of natural selection -- such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive -- have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

Giraffes eat bushes and grass as well as leaves from trees. Has this guy ever seen a nature documentary? His ridiculous strawman about there being a cut-off for the length that a giraffes neck needs to be is ridiculous, are all trees the same height? No. Ergo, a shorter neck gets less food and a longer one gets more, ergo advantage, ergo natural selection can choose it.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man was a sensation until exposed by a 1950s investigator as the skull of a Medieval Englishman attached to the jaw of an Asian ape whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Therefore evolution is false.

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

Complete inversion of the truth.

And Darwinists still have not explained the origin of life, nor have they been able to produce life from non-life.

Sounds like a child doesn’t it? Scientists haven’t answered everything yet, whilst your made up myths have explained exactly zero. Also evolution is not abiogenesis and I stifle the biggest yawn in the world.

The most delicious chapter is Windchy's exposure of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Hollywood's Bible-mocking movie "Inherit the Wind," starring Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow.

The trial was a hoked-up scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tenn. Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury. And William Jennings Bryan held his own against the atheist Darrow in the transcript of the trial.

In 1981, Gould had this advice for beleaguered Darwinists:

"Perhaps we should all lie low and rally round the flag of strict Darwinism ... a kind of old-time religion on our part."

Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.

Some bullshit about a film only loosely based on reality, a quote mine and the faith card and we’re finally done. Phew.

When you see a “…” in a creationist quote, you can pretty much rely on the fact that you’re being lied to. Here is the fully quote from Stephen Gould:

But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment — a kind of old-time religion on our part.

But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a unified front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

So he says the opposite to how it is being construed by Buchanan. I know how these things can work though, because I have messed up quotes before. He has passed on a quote that another has sent him without looking it over, it can happen to any of us.

The last line is standard, the creationists aim to being us down to their level by conflating evolutionary theory with faith. It speaks to the fact that they know their position is less tenable so they’re trying to drag us down to their level. Nice try but sloppy B.S. like this continues to render creationism the laughing stock of anyone but the most faithful who will gobble this up.

Also see “Pat Buchanan makes a monkey of himself about evolution” and “Old fossil "disproves" Darwin!”.

Making a Monkey out of Darwin: A Rebuttal

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:21:52 GMT

Well, this one's going to be fun.

Patrick Buchanan has written a piece for RealClearPolitics.com called “Making a Monkey Out of Darwin”. It’s a knee-slapping rip-roaring fun ride down lame off-the-shelf creationist claims alley. In short, the claims are:

“Darwinism” inspired Karl Marx
“Darwinism” inspired Hitler
“Darwinism” inspired eugenics
“Darwinism” caused world war 1!? (That’s a new one to me)
The neck of the Giraffe
Nebraska Man
Piltdown Man
The fossil record is rubbish
Stephen J. Gould fossil quote
Darwinism doesn’t explain how life started
“Darwinism” is a religion

Well, isn't that original? Let’s get dug in.

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

Right, science as a procedure has created innovation that has completely changed the way we live. However, the people who do the work are humans and humans are flawed, a particular scientist will cling to his or her theory despite reasonable evidence that it is wrong because of his or her personal pride and cognitive dissonance. But, in the long term the theories are gradually refined or thrown out. The scientific method is backing a theory with evidence and submitting it to peer review, it is the best method that humans have derived for finding the truth. It’s a messy process but life is not as simple as wishing making and magical thinking. I don’t believe that a sustainable farce for an extended period of time is likely in the scientific community.

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

I am a very light global warming skeptic, I say “light” because as I mentioned above, I don’t think that a prolonged farce is possible in science so I make criticisms very very reservedly. However, I believe that in the global warming issue, there are two groups to the left and right who have emotional reasons for embracing or denying the theory based upon their own belief systems and how much it can advance or recede their agenda. It is a sure golden goose to those who believe in greater governmental control and environmentalists (many times the same people) and people who are the opposite – who believe in smaller government and who oppose the other side consider it to be a thorn in their side.

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

I should address the endless reference to “Darwinism”. Some evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dawkins use this word often, others don’t like it. I am one of the latter. What does it mean? To put “ism” on the end of something is to make it a belief system of the first word, this no always accurate (I.E. “feminism” is not a belief system of the “feminine” – they often despise traditional femininity) but Darwinism would be a belief system of Darwin, which man or woman who accepts the theory of evolution would accept it as a reasonable term that they base their views on Darwin's? You might as well call me a “Newtonist” or a “Einsteinist”. We accept the body of work of these great people but we do not center our belief systems around them. A good example of a legitimate use of the term would be “Christian” or “Christianity”, the form is different but the idea is to base one’s life on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Darwinism is not an appropriate term in our modern times.

As for the substance of the above quote, I have a certain kind of distaste for such mud-slinging. To assume the superiority of one’s own race or group is a “Darwinist” inspired meme is it? I disagree, I would content that this is a fundamental facet of human nature. Does something like evolution or “Darwinism” lend a patina of scientific credibility to such ideas? Probably. Buchanan states in his article that a theory can be true and yet inspire evil ideas, true, then what is the point of his article? Because he seems to flit between stating that "Darwinism" is false to stating that it has caused evil (even if it may be true), I think he is trying to fling enough mud to make some of it stick.

I have decided to wrap this up as a "part 1" for now.

The Dogma of Feminism

ArgusEyes — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:20:07 GMT

Hi BoundlessEyes, thanks for the video response. For those who don’t know, I contacted BoundlessEyes in the first place to see if she wanted to make a response to my video “what is feminism”. I did so because she seemed to engage in discourse to a greater degree than many other YouTube feminists, which is not difficult seeing as no other group seems as reticent to explain and defend their views.

There is a talk show host I admire called Dennis Prager who has a saying that goes “I prefer clarity to agreement” and that is what I thought we could do here. Clarify where we differ as opposed to just battling it out to win. To do that effectively we I want to address the most important points where we differ. These topics will be on patriarchy, on gender differences and on Harriett Harman.

On patriarchy: I do feel that your video lacked clarity as it seemed like you were less interested in explaining your position and more interested merely reciting dogma.

[see video]

Answering questions in this way will get your fellow feminists nodding in agreement but I fear it has less effect on the rest of us who haven’t swallowed that blue pill. Far be it for me to get in the way of your intellectual masturbation but could you please define your terms more clearly. Patriarchy would be rule by males, at least according to the dictionary that I know you like to use. How can a democracy be a patriarchy? We have had a female prime minister and we have women in government. Iran and the Catholic Church are patriarchal systems. Western democracies are not.

Far from being a solid concept the term seems to encapsulate whatever feminists want it to, and yes I have read a number of opinions on the subject and in doing so I have encountered raises the bar for decedent writing quite a bit. Take one particular view

Feminist writer Marilyn French, in her seminal work Beyond Power, defines patriarchy as a system that values power over life, control over pleasure, and dominance over happiness.[1]

This is not a rational argument. It is an emotional and religious one. And, to be quite honest, it reeks of conspiracy theory.

On gender differences: I believe that we should all examine the things we believe to honestly assess whether they are true or not.

Take for example the common claim that women use more words per day then men do. The numbers you will hear cited differ in each case but they always cite that women use more words than men do.

As a man I am not insulted by this claim, it is either true or it is not.

If we take these studies and add on top our understanding from other research [3] that different areas of the male and female brain are used in sounding out words along with our plain and common sense observations of our sisters and mothers and female friends talking more on the phone and in the office.

Given thus fact it is not a huge leap to posit that the actions and careers that men and women take could be influenced by our differences. I see an obvious nurturing advantage in women, evolutionarily programmed to aid in the protection of young no doubt. Would this have any effect on more women wanting to be nurses for example? It might not but as us scientific sceptics like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Could we have the evidence that this is societally constructed and by whom and to what ends?

What evidence you have presented would get you a failing grade in any science class for lack of proper isolation of variables. Yes a girl who was raised by dogs, as some sort of proof that humans are a tabula rasa to be scribbled upon by a conspiracy of white males intent upon god knows what. Are you familiar with the phrase “non sequitur”.

You can’t shame me with such dishonest tactics. I have always held that humans are the product of a mixture of nature and nurture as I specifically said in the original video. It surprises me not that being raised by dogs will be a profound effect on a developing child’s behaviour. The difference between the sexes is a fact and if humans can be manipulated so easily then the question of David Reimer still stands? Let’s see the intellectual honesty with which you approach this issue.

That. Was particularly loathsome. Let me read to you how David Reimer described his experience.

"It was like brainwashing. I'd give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it's torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind - with the psychological warfare in your head." [4]

David Reimer is now dead, he committed suicide.

I think your supercilious little dismissal about being teased on the playground is a sham. And you need to be honest with yourself about how easily you grasped onto any little scrap of information that you could use as a plausible deniability mechanism to not have to deal with the obvious black eye that the David Reimer case gives to feminism. If you ever want to know why people like myself get angry at feminists then just think about what you just did.

On Harriett Harman:

Remember at the beginning when I mentioned clarity instead of agreement? Well this is the perfect example of a clarifying moment. I don’t need you to explain how the things that Harriett Harman believes leads to her actions. I know how she thinks and why she is doing what she is doing. People who commit bigoted actions frequently do so on twisted belief systems and believe themselves to be in the right. If I may quote Mr. Prager again.

Victimhood. A lifelong study of good and evil has led to me conclude that the greatest single cause of evil is people perceiving of themselves or their group as victims. Nazism arose from Germans' sense of victimhood — as a result of the Versailles Treaty, of the "stab in the back" that led to Germany's loss in World War I and of a world Jewish conspiracy. Communism was predicated on workers regarding themselves as victims of the bourgeoisie. Much of Islamic evil today emanates from a belief that the Muslim world has been victimized by Christians and Jews. Many prisoners, including those imprisoned for horrible crimes, regard themselves as victims of society or of their upbringing. The list of those attributing their evil acts to their being victims is as long as the list of evildoers. [4]

And to that list we can add you and Harriett Harman.

A woman whose mind has become so twisted as to act like women are oppressed by some nebulous patriarchal force whilst occupying a position of immense power and using that power to actively give a governmentally mandated superior status to women.

You have no excuse, from now on, whenever you open that dictionary and say that feminism about equality know that you are participating in a massive lie. For what you actually come to support in reality is sexism and oppression by the very definition of those words that you’ll find in that same dictionary. For in Harriett Harman’s own words:

'It is about saying, "because you are a woman I'm going to put you in this promotion".' [6]

If you read that and like what it says then you can pat yourself on the back and join a very select club of totalitarians who use their grievances to push for tyranny over liberty. Who masquerade under the banners of changing for the better but who in turn bring more misery onto earth. Who push their small minded dogma onto all.

The “What is Feminism” video encapsulated all of what modern feminism means today and the Pièce de résistance is you, a young feminist coming along and proving everything that I’ve said:

Feminism is a movement with a gendered name that claims to stand for gender equality but really is an activist political movement and sexist belief system which, in its worse forms, denies reality, suppresses women’s choice, tramples liberty, hurts men, infantilises women and fosters animosity between the sexes.

Sources

[1] Patriarchy: Encyclopedia II - Patriarchy - Feminist view
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Patriarchy_-_Feminist_view/id/5367497

What is patriarchy?
http://www.essortment.com/all/whatispatriarc_rhsf.htm

[3] Men and Women Use Brain Differently, Study Discovers
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/16/us/men-and-women-use-brain-differently-study-discovers.html

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-419040/Women-talk-times-men-says-study.html

[4] The true story of John/Joan
by John Colapinto
Rolling Stone December 11, 1997
http://www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan/menu-id-1427/

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, Glenn Sacks
http://www.hisside.com/6_6_04.htm

Death by Theory? Wendy McElroy
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120914,00.html

Told to Act Like a Girl, Carey Roberts
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0519roberts.html

[5] Why Do People Do Evil?
http://www.creators.com/opinion/dennis-prager/why-do-people-do-evil.html

[6] I'll put women in charge of banks: Harriet Harman's plans to use equality laws to challenge macho City culture
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178140/Ill-women-charge-banks-Harriet-Harmans-plans-use-equality-laws-challenge-macho-City-culture.html

Brilliant!

ArgusEyes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:12:54 GMT

The Greener Gender: Are men worse for the environment?

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:50:00 GMT

In 2007 an author by the name of Gerd Johnssom-Latham penned a report to the Swedish environment advisory council entitled "A study on gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development". This video is a critique.

I originally made this a long time ago for a documentary. It didn't make the cut and I am releasing it now.

Here is Gerd's original study:
http://www.genderandenvironment.org/admin/admin_biblioteca/documentos/rapport_engelska.pdf

Scientific progress is rarely useless

ArgusEyes — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:37:48 GMT

I am mightily impressed with the Large Hadron Collider. To build such a complex mechanical machine that stretches for miles and to turn it on and have it work boggles my mind. Sometimes I despair at the human race and sometimes I am overjoyed. This is an instance of the latter.

I asked a workmate about it and he sniffed and said something to the effect of it being a “waste of money” that would be better spend on “humanitarian efforts”. Here’s the deal. If we balked at scientific progress that didn’t seem to have an on-the-face-of-it practical application then I don’t think we would have a world close to what we have today.

The word “science” comes from “knowledge” or “to know”. Progress that may seem useful may turnout to be very useful indeed. Computers operate on the principles of solid state physics. Would the pioneers of that field have predicted computers and the way that they have changed the world?

Nothing helps cure misery and elevates human problems than science and technology. This is why I hate creationism so much because they invariably spit on this beautiful methodology. The scientific method is the greatest human creation ever.

Speaking of which:

Listen to this podcast for good info on the LHC.

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/skepticsguide/podcastinfo.asp?pid=164

The "big picture" feature has some great pictures of this human achievement:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html