Month: May 2009

Sometimes one WTF? is not nearly enough

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This is a very depressing example of a journalist being entirely taken in by an anti-vaccination crank, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, spruiking his snake-oil at the U.S. Autism & Asperger Association’s regional conference on Saturday in Cherry Hill, Jersey.

Uncovering women paedophiles

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The past experience has been, too often, that their reports of abuse have been not just disbelieved but scorned, and female paedophiles have been left with unfettered access to future victims. The article is a sober and balanced piece, and the selected comments from survivors of abuse from women perpetrators are heartbreaking.

A large part of this societal disbelief regarding sexual abuse by women is of course gendered stereotypes about the passive nature of female sexuality and the supposedly innate caring capacity of women that is meant to make women incapable of such behaviour.

“Mens sana in corpora sano”

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I’m reading “Enforcing Normalcy”, by Lennard J Davis. The second chapter, “Constructing Normalcy”, talks about the development of the concept of “normal” in European/American culture, mostly from the seventeenth century onwards. On page 37-38, he talks about early twentieth century… Read More ›

Sunday Quote: Carl Sagan

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An oldie but a goodie:

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan