kengr

First thought (a quote whose origin I don't recall)

"You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts."

This lead to some interesting ideas for questions in a science class (high school or junior high)

1. scientists performed an extensive series of experiments that confirmed [something "everybody knows"]. Was this a good use of resources? Why or why not?

2. Scientists performed an extensive series of experiment whose results contradict [widely held belief]. Should they have released the results? Should they have bowed to public opinion?

3. it is a fact that "The Bible says creation took six days." . True or False.

4. it is a fact that "Creation took six days". True or false.

(add various questions that deal with correlation not equaling casaution)

(add various questions about the difference between what an experiment measured and what those measurements "mean")

This would definitely put the cat in among the canaries. Especially if you threw in fact/not fact questions about what various "holy books" say and whether what they say is a fact.

Quote from a Washington Post article:

“In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.”

The critical bit? "in consideration with community standards and wishes"

That's not science, that's admiring the emperor's new clothes.

Community standards are all too often *wrong*, and "wishes". Get real.

The whole *point* of agencies like the CDC is to find out *and publicize* instance hen "community standards" are wrong. As well as point out times when wishful thinking is doing harm.

Banning the terms on the list suggested a not good political (and anti-science) agenda. The "suggested rewording" *proves* that it's even worse.

Pity they can't issue a statement saying that "inn accordance with community standards and wishes we recommend that the Entire Trump administration be removed as a danger to the health of the United states and its citizens".

Pakistan has issued its first passport with an X gender marker. Washington, DC has followed Oregon in allowing an X gender marker on IDs and reportedly, both California and New York state are in the process of allowing it.

I'm fairly sure I'd heard of at least one other country allowing an X marker on passports.

DC should be interesting, as if there's any sort of legal challenges it goes straight from the local court system to the US Supreme Cort (that's how a couple of 2nd Amendment issues that the FEDS had been studiously avoiding for three quarters of a century wound up before the Supreme Court).

And with California and New York, that's a big chunk of population and *votes* that will be behind this.

There's also a case in Colorado involving an intersex person who is trying to get a US passport that doesn't have an M or F on it.

The State Department's replies to letters from doctors certifying that the plaintiff is intersexed are ludicruous. They are saying:

“The Department is unaware of generally accepted medical standards for diagnosing and evaluating a transition to any sex other than male or female,” reads a US State Department refusal letter dated 1 May 2017. “Thus, the Department does not accept a medical certification that specifies transition to a sex other than male or female as evidence for the issuance of a passport.”

Yep, they think the person is *transitioning" to a non-binary gender. Sorry guys, this person was *born* non-binary.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/06/27/federal-court-allows-intersex-person-to-reopen-lawsuit-over-gender-neutral-passport/

44 years ago...
Dec 14, 1972. At 2:54 pm PST, the last humans departed from the lunar surface.

And the only folks who look likely to try again soon are the Chinese.

What exactly needs to happen in this country for the systematic targeting of minorities to stop? How far does it need to go?

These are not rhetorical questions…

We need to get rid of the idea that "different" is *wrong*. To paraphrase a certain wrinkled Jedi:

different is wrong
wrong is evil
evil must be destroyed

Another phrase I encountered somewhere bears consideration as well: "they have mistaken your fortune for your fault"

That is, they think that something that happened to you by chance (or some other mechanism you have no control over) is your "fault" (ie the result of something you deliberately did or chose).

That btw, is why bigots keep claiming homosexuality, being TG etc are *choices*.

They couldn't do that with race, which is why there were folks claiming that blacks were the "children of Cain" and other nonsense.

Oh yeah, this also fits the way bigots will point at how the people they are bigoted against are poor, sick, have bad relationships, die young, etc. Claiming that as justification. When in many cases those things are *due* to the very prejudice they are preaching!

Different is just different. Any wrongness depends on how the difference affects others.

A friend has posted yet another rant about guns. Given the Orlando shooting, I can't blame him too much.

But he, as usual, is letting his prejudices and assumptions suggest measures that aren't workable in the real world.

Just for the heck of it, let's consider the "perfect" defensive weapon. The ubiquitous "stunner" from many a science fiction novel.

Basic characteristics seem to be: you point it at the target, fire, and they pass out. Some have off center hits "putting to sleep" the affected portion of the body.

Side effects are none, or maybe a bad headache when you wake up. It's not dangerous to use on kids or elderly/infirm people.

Sounds great, right? You can shoot first and ask questions later. "Stun 'em all. We'll sort them out at the station." etc.

Except....

Picture a rapist or mugger with one. How about a burgler.

Now picture someone stunning the driver of a car? A semi. Or the pilot of a plane?

Or Stun someone you hate and cut their throat. Etc.

So much for "safe" and "non-lethal".

In short, it is not *possible* to have a weapon that can't be misused. Ditto for any *tool*.

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About that Mississippi "religious protection" bill. This section is going to give some lawyers *lots* of fun.

that “male” and “female” refer to someone’s “immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.

Ah yes, ignorance of biology strikes again.

Sex is *subjectively* determined by doctors at time of birth. There are "standards" for making the determination, but they aren't always followed.

And even when they are followed they are pretty damned arbitrary. Stuff like length of penis/clitoris.

Genetic testing is rarely done on newborns. When it is, it's because genetic problems are suspected *or* because doctors are having trouble figuring out what sex the baby is.

So a lot of intersex babies *don't* get IDed at birth. Anybody with AIS/CAIS for example. Or guevedoces.

There aren't just two sexes even if the public (and most doctors) would like to believe there are.

And gender is even *more* complicated.

Some day we are going to have to get laws put in place recognizing the *spectrums* of sex & gender. Because that's what it's going to take to end this sort of nonsense.

Over on alex_antonin's tumblr, he reposted something from someone else.

https://t.co/qOQN93V2Sg

It's about a image being posted by Autism Canada.



It may look fine at first glance.

But when you stop and think about it, it's an example of an all too common with campaigns "for" people with various disabilities.

It's not actually about the people with the disability. It's about the *non*-disabled.

In this case, it's holding them up as an "inspiration". It's about *us* felling good" for "helping" *them*.

Other examples are all the comments about how "brave" people with disabilities are, or how hard their lives are.

They disabled aren't being treated as real people with real problems, but as props for getting an effect.

Thus the phrase "inspiration porn".

In this particular case, it's doubly bad in that by using the phrase "how good we can be" it encourages the people without the disability to "be good" to the people with it.

Why is that bad? Because it encourages people to use their own judgment as to what is "good" for the disabled person.

This almost never goes well. Most blind people have horror stories about people offering unasked-for "help". I know a couple who have been *injured* when some idiot grabbed them to try to steer them away from a hazard they were well aware of (in one case, the attempt to "help" him avoid falling into an excavation next to the sidewalk actually resulted in him falling into it).

With autistics, consider that many of the attempts to "help" them use methods that the ASPCA won't allow to be used in training *animals*. But because it's professional psychologists trying to make them "act norrmal" most non-autistics shrug it off as "they know what they are doing" or "they need to learn to 'act normal'".

Here's an example that may get thru to some people. I've got asthma. As such, I *could* do most of the stuff in PE. But things like running distances were very difficult What was easy of merely "a bit difficult" for non-asthmatics was very, very hard for me, if not impossible.

Using the "logic" used in treating "low functioning" autistics, the PE teachers should have used electric shocks, or withholding food, etc as means to get me to be a better runner.

An item on the local news the other night caught my attention. Seems we had 145 shootings in Portland this year.

And most weren't gang related or while committing a crime (other than the shooting itself being a crime). And almost all were by young men in their teens and twenties.

What was the reason? According to the expert they interviewed it's because these young men have no skills in conflict resolution. They get upset with someone, and if they have a weapon, that's their idea of a solution.

This fits *so* well with a lot of stuff. Because if you think about it, guys that don't have guns will resort to some other weapon. To their fists if that's all they have.
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alabama-supreme-court-justice-tom-parker-state-courts-must-defy-supreme-courts-gay-marriage-

After making the case that the Obergefell decision does not even apply to Alabama, Parker absurdly asserted that the Supreme Court had no grounds upon which to issue the decision in the first place because gays are not being denied equal treatment under the law since everyone is free to marry someone of the opposite sex.

Gee, one of the big arguments made in Loving v Virginia was that blacks weren't being discriminated against because everyone had the right to marry someone of the same race.

That's what's so amazing about these people.

If you check the records, you'll see pretty much the same arguments that were used against blacks have been used against gays. And not just about marriage.

Back when they were integrating the military you got the same arguments that were used against letting gays be in the military. I mean *word for word*. Just swap a few phrase from being about race to being about homosexuality.

Ditto for more general civil rights for blacks. I don't think anybody said being black was a sin (except maybe for the Mormons before that revelation that changed their doctrine about admitting blacks) But there were a lot of people who said it was God's will to keep the races separate.

In my not-so-humble opinion, this is symptomatic of a xenophobic mindset and/or a certain sort of narrow mindedness.

It'd never fly, but just imagine the time we'd save in the courts if we listed those sort of arguments in "fill in the blank" form and passed a law (probably need to be a constitutional amendment) saying that such argument were not legally admissible.

Or at the very least, that they required *strong* proof in their favor.

Of course, these sorts of people would complain that they were being discriminated against.

To which my reply is "it is not, nor should it be, illegal to discriminate against stupidity, ignorant prejudices and the like"