To add to your bookmarks, here’s Cordelia Fine in New Scientist running through some more of the scientific evidence that gendered toys are a product of socialisation rather than genetics.
Science
Does body language really speak to us?
The common-sense notion that liars betray themselves through body language appears to be little more than a cultural fiction
Cosmos Wars
Dana Hunter thoughtfully put together a links roundup (so I didn’t have to) on the many many creationists who are very cross with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson right now because he’s talking science on TV.
Menopause – is it all down to the blokes?
There was an interesting article in the Guardian a couple of days ago about the biological reasons for menopause. I have not read the studies that this story is based on, so commenters with more knowledge of this stuff please… Read More ›
Give a Voice to Harassment Victims: A legal fund for sexual harassment victim Karen Stollznow
Those of you who are regular followers/lurkers of the atheoskeptosphere probably know about this fundraiser for Karen Stollznow’s legal costs by now, but I’m signal-boosting it for the record …
Debate vs Inquiry and “Reasonable Debate” as a silencing tactic
Debate is not inquiry. Argument is not skepticism. Fetishizing debate makes us less knowledgeable as a culture and even as a movement, not more.
<okay, sure, we’ve been having these debates for decades now. But let’s dredge it up again. Let’s treat the basic bodily autonomy of people with uteruses** as a subject that’s up for discussion, a subject that reasonable people can disagree about. And let’s be calm and reasonable about it.
Charity Signal Boost: Special Effect
Special Effect is a UK-based charity full of very clever people who develop work-arounds that allow people with a wide range of disabilities to play computer games.
25 years of the WWW
The Web was 25 years old this past Tuesday. What memories stir within you?
Perhaps now the usual suspects will stop being undeservedly smug about the Sokal hoax
In 2005, a group of MIT graduate students decided to goof off in a very MIT graduate student way: They created a program called SCIgen that randomly generated fake scientific papers. Thanks to SCIgen, for the last several years, computer-written gobbledygook has been routinely published in scientific journals and conference proceedings.
“Post-secular”?
Secular is one of those words that theocratic propagandists have shifted the Overton Window on, to make it seem like secular is the opposite of pluralist when in fact it is only a secular stance that makes pluralism possible. Post-secular? Hm.
Hoyden About Town 