Meerkats! Penguins! Giraffes! Giant tortoise! *ded* Please share links to anything that has recently surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you: think of this thread as a brain-bleach repository.
Science
Biology Fail and #legitimaterape apologism: Todd Akin
Todd Akin, US congressman and senatorial nominee claimed in an interview that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.
Torture was central to both the witch scares and the Inquisition
… under such duress, people confessed at length and in great detail to the fantastic and impossible, often also indicting others, in a spreading, spiraling cascade of fantasies. Remember also that terror regimes the world over use it delightedly to terrify and suppress dissidents within their populations. […] And they can do this only in an environment in which there are people naive enough to believe the absurd perjuries concocted under such conditions.
Don’t be one of those people.
New Mars rover Curiosity landing today
Today the Mars Science Laboratory mission finds out whether they made all the calculations correctly as the delivery vehicle targets Gale Crater for Curiosity’s landing. Landing should be at 15:31 AEST.
What a transperson in science academia might tell you about sexism
You have to read this over at The Wall Street Journal: Ben Barres had just finished giving a seminar at the prestigious Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 10 years ago, describing to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard… Read More ›
Acronyms of the Day
RWA & SDO – two personality traits that prop up the kyriarchy
Gamers Against Bigotry
Game design consultant Ernest W. Adams at Butterflies and Wheels: It’s time for us to force the permanent nine-year-olds to grow up or get out of our games and forums.
Well done rationalia forum, you’re my final Skeptic straw
A page on this blog is now titled “Critical Thinking” instead of its previous title “Skepticism”, because that name has become tarnished by the long-lasting and widespread ‘Skepchicks should STFU’ campaign being waged by so-called “skeptics” and “rationalists” who reject the utility of applying critical thinking to social structures, at least if that critical thinking is being done by feminists.
Verify, check and challenge. Or perish.
Mr Denmore gives examples of how the writers who are supposedly paid for their knowledgeable insight are shown over and over again to have feet of clay and invisible robes whenever someone cares to look at their published works with a mildly jaundiced eye:
I missed this back in 1995: quick facts about that McDonalds Coffee lawsuit
It would be nice to think that there weren’t still ignorant twerps repeating the idea that the lawsuit was unfounded/frivolous/a grave miscarriage against a poor defenceless megacorporation/harrumph/wharrgarbl, but sadly there still are.
Hoyden About Town 