Preliminary reports have listed a suspect for the supposed “mastermind” of the attacks on Paris. Were it a recent Syrian immigrant, the analysis could fit on a single Tweet. As a friend of a friend humorously summarized it on Facebook: “Marine Le Pen should buy an hour of air time on French TV, smoke a…
Teenage Girls Are Dumb, But Don’t Be Too Mean To Them
http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/why-do-we-hate-things-teen-girls-love “This week, Stephenie Meyer released Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, a gender-swapped version of Twilight… Naturally, the Internet had plenty to say on the topic, but while Twilight fans — many of them teenage girls — expressed excitement over a new book in their favorite franchise, numerous others mocked them for it.” I’m not…
Commentary on: Why Aren’t More Intellectuals Believers?
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/why-aren%E2%80%99t-more-intellectuals-believers “my new atheist friend, Tyler” Now that is an ambiguous description. “Tyler used to believe in God.” BUT THEN HE TOOK AN ARROW TO THE KNEE “so when we began discussing his recent de-conversion, I paid attention.” Because most of the time, Tyler is boring. “We considered the aforementioned story from 2 Kings.” No…
The Great Wall of Scott Walker
Came across this article. Did a Google search. Came across 5 others just like it real quick (see comments). What’s the impression you walk away with? “Scott Walker wants to build a wall on the Canadian border, and if he’s elected, he plans on doing it, the madman!” That’s what they’re going for. If you…
Guys Dig Chicks Who Are Non-Conformist
…says psychologist dressed in all black standing with a clipboard outside a punk rock concert. Or, young people don’t really care about “conformity”, based on mostly dubious survey data. “A Critical Test of the Assumption That Men Prefer Conformist Women and Women Prefer Nonconformist Men” This paper involves discussion of statistics which can be confusing…
SciAm Goes Full Buzzfeed
Part 1: Fisking View post on imgur.com http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/men-are-attracted-to-nonconformist-women/ This article is stupid for like 10 different reasons. “Men are often advised to stand out from the crowd to attract women—there can be only one alpha male.” Somebody watched Highlander recently. There can be only one alpha-male? Sure. Okay. “Women, on the other hand, are told…
Reality TV Star Makes “Graphic Anti-Atheist” Comments, Misunderstood by Media, Atheists
This is going to be less about religion than I’m probably leading you to believe. A Christian (you know the one I’m talking about, don’t make this trend any more than it is, please) who is only being given media attention because he had a TV show (i.e. media attention) is being given more media…
Pro-Death and Anti-Choice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aNxzF7MAk The abortion debate is back in the news, as I’m sure it will be intermittently in perpetuity, given the nature of the subject. Nonetheless, I have to hear about it constantly, and like most issues, the conscientious opinions are buried in a morass of terrible arguments delivered at a loud volume. There are,…
Commentary on: 15 Facts About Sea Level Rise That Should Scare the S^*# Out of You
More in my series of “Shit like this is why I am sympathetic to climate change skeptics” and “maybe the 1st Amendment should not apply to journalists”. Bullshit clickbait is bullshit clickbait, not a productive discussion on science and science policy. Holy shit, how is anyone at CNN okay with this title? This is just…
Millennials to Blame for Incompetent Universities, Apparently
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/nation-wimps/201510/where-did-colleges-go-wrong The author of a book title A Nation of Wimps and the author of an Atlantic article entitled The Coddling of the American Mind had a conversation bitching about young people in academia and put it in Psychology Today. That probably suffices as a tl;dr of the article, actually. I wonder how long I…