ethics & philosophy

ideals, breaches, disappointments and inspirations

Bora disappoints (again)

Unfollowing Bora by Dana Hunter at Freethought Blogs summarises all that’s wrong about Bora Zivkovic’s blithe attempt to just come back to science blogging as if nothing ever happened.

There can be no healing at Nottoway Plantation

In yet another example of white feminist cluelessness, Singer Ani DiFranco will hold her annual songwriting retreat this year on Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. Righteous Retreat Song Camp is billed as a feminist songwriting retreat, and DiFranco’s choice to hold the event at this locale has drawn ire from Black women who note the offensiveness of the location.

BFTP: If more Hollywood producers read Bob the Angry Flower

This is a Lazy Summer repost of an old post, with some highlights from comments on the original post added, since they add to the snarkfest. Given that the Abbott government seems to be full of “rationalist” policies owing more than a small debt to Objectivist Libertarianism, it seemed like a good time to remind folks what unregulated government of prime movers for prime movers would actually look like.

Time to End the Valorisation of Ignorance

The federal government is quite open about its plans to interfere with the independence of academic research, and to shut down according to its whim any research they fancy that falls outside a narrow selection of medicine and technology projects. I hope the only reason that this hasn’t been howled down instantly is that we haven’t yet processed what this really means.