By Phil Plait August 12, Over the course of three more years, we did it five more times. Despite the return of hundreds of kilos of rocks, thousands of pictures, and independent verification and authentication from dozens of countries some of which were and still are our enemiessome people stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that the Apollo Moon landings were real. The basic idea is that when the astronauts left the Moon, they left behind several artifacts, including the base of the lunar module called the descent stage and the rovers for Apollo 15, 16, and
This is the most controversial post I have ever written in ten years of blogging.
I wrote it because I was very angry at a specific incident. Not meant as a criticism of feminism, so much as of a certain way of operationalizing feminism. A few days ago, in response to a discussion of sexual harassment at MIT, Aaronson reluctantly opened up about his experience as a young man: I was terrified that one of my female classmates would somehow find out that I sexually desired her, and that the instant she did, I would be scorned, laughed at, called a creep and a weirdo, maybe even expelled from school or sent to prison.
You can call that my personal psychological problem if you want, but it was strongly reinforced by everything I picked up from my environment: I left each of those workshops with enough fresh paranoia and self-hatred to last me through another year.
Of course, I was smart enough to realize that maybe this was silly, maybe I was overanalyzing things. So I scoured the feminist literature for any statement to the effect that my fears were as silly as I hoped they were.
As Bertrand Russell wrote of his own adolescence: In a different social context—for example, that of my great-grandparents in the shtetl—I would have gotten married at an early age and been completely fine. That I managed to climb out of the pit with my feminist beliefs mostly intact, you might call a triumph of abstract reason over experience.
Guy opens up for the first time about how he was so terrified of accidentally hurting women that he became suicidal and tried to get himself castrated. The feminist blogosphere, as always, responded completely proportionally. Amanda Marcotte, want to give us a representative sample?
The eternal struggle of the sexist: Objective reality suggests that women are people, but the heart wants to believe they are a robot army put here for sexual service and housework.
This would usually be the point where I state for the record that I believe very strongly that all women are human beings. Anyway, Marcotte was bad enough, given that she runs one of the most-read feminist blogs on the Internet.
But there was one small ray of hope. On further reflection, Other Friend has a point. But I did feel like it treated him like a human being, which is rare and wonderful. Having been a lonely, anxious, horny young person who hated herself and was bullied I can categorically say that it is an awful place to be.
It takes a long time to heal.
I can only offer Ms. Penny and the entire staff of the New Statesman the recognition appropriate for their achievement: But by bringing nerd-dom into the picture, Penny has made that basic picture exponentially more complicated. Luckily, this is a post about Scott Aaronson, so things that become exponentially more complicated fit the theme perfectly.
It is a real shame that Aaronson picked up Andrea Dworkin rather than any of the many feminist theorists and writers who manage to combine raw rage with refusal to resort to sexual shame as an instructive tool. Weaponised shame — male, female or other — has no place in any feminism I subscribe to.
I live in a world where feminists throwing weaponized shame at nerds is an obvious and inescapable part of daily life.
There continue to be a constant stream of feminist cartoons going around Tumblr featuring blubberous neckbearded fedora-wearing monsters threatening the virtue of innocent ladies. Oops, I accidentally included three neo-Nazi caricatures of Jews in there. You did notice, right?
There is a growing trend in Internet feminism that works exactly by conflating the ideas of nerd, misogynist, virgin, person who disagrees with feminist tactics or politics, and unlovable freak.
Ideals are always pretty awesome. Penny goes on to deny that this is a gendered issue at all: Like Aaronson, I was terrified of making my desires known- to anyone. Or how about a triple whammy:Supporters of the Iraqi "Resistance": The Volokh post asking for names of respectable people who support the Iraqi resistance (that is, support the totalitarian terrorists trying to destroy Iraqi democracy) has, so far, yielded an apt .
Aug 12, · Thankfully, the atronauts placed a few mirrors on the moon. We can’t see those either, but we know where they are. Take a big laser, aim it 10 meter to the left of one of those mirrors –> No.
There was a pretty massive shift in the s and s when northern Democrats starting supporting the civil rights movement (among other things). Misc thoughts, memories, proto-essays, musings, etc. And on that dread day, the Ineffable One will summon the artificers and makers of graven images, and He will command them to give life to their creations, and failing, they and their creations will be dedicated to the flames.
The Psychology of Security. I just posted a long essay (pdf available here) on my website, exploring how psychology can help explain the difference between the feeling of security and the reality of security..
We make security trade-offs, large and small, every day. We make them when we decide to lock our doors in the morning, when we . EasyBib — your online writing hub All the tools to submit your paper with confidence.