My day job is trial attorney, but I am also passionate about creating art and music. Here are two of my most recent digital art creations. I call the top image "Rose Wind." I call the bottom image "Persona." If you'd like to view more of my digital art, visit my website: Digicrylics.com.
In this episode, Bill Maher presents “The Cojones Awards. You can imagine what the trophies look like. Maher: “We present these solid brass balls to the individuals and organizations who others have tried to silence, but who answered ‘That's not a rule. Fuck you.’”
Here is an excerpt from the article by Coyne and Krylov:
Yet a wholesale and unhealthy incursion of ideology into science is occurring again—this time in the West. We see it in progressives’ claim that scientific truths are malleable and subjective, similar to Lysenko’s insistence that genetics was Western “pseudoscience” with no place in progressive Soviet agriculture. We see it when scientific truths—say, the binary nature of sex—are either denied or distorted because they’re politically repugnant.
We see it as well in activists’ calls to “decolonize” scientific fields, to reduce the influence of what’s called “Western science” and adopt indigenous “ways of knowing.” No doubt different cultures have different ways of interpreting natural processes—sometimes invoking myth and legend—and this variation should be valued as an important aspect of sociology and anthropology. But these “ways of knowing” aren’t coequal to modern science, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
In some ways this new species of Lysenkoism is more pernicious than the old, because it affects all science—chemistry, physics, life sciences, medicine and math—not merely biology and agriculture. The government isn’t the only entity pushing it, either. “Progressive” scientists promote it, too, along with professional societies, funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health and Energy Department, scientific journals and university administrators. When applying for openings as a university scientist today, job candidates may well be evaluated more by their record of supporting “social justice” than by their scientific achievements.
But scientific research can’t and shouldn’t be conducted via a process that gives a low priority to science itself. This is why we wrote our paper, which was co-authored by 27 others, making for a group as diverse as you can imagine. We had men and women of various ages, ethnicities, countries of origin, political affiliations and career stages, including faculty from community colleges and top research universities, as well as two Nobel laureates. We provided an in-depth analysis of the clash between liberal epistemology and postmodernist philosophies. We documented the continuing efforts to elevate social justice over scientific rigor, and warned of the consequences of taking an ideological approach to research. Finally, we suggested an alternative humanistic approach to alleviating social inequalities and injustices.
But this was too much, even “downright hurtful,” as one editor wrote to us. Another informed us that “the concept of merit . . . has been widely and legitimately attacked as hollow.” Legitimately?
In the end, we’re grateful that our paper will be published. But how sad it is that the simple and fundamental principle undergirding all of science—that the best ideas and technologies should be the ones we adopt—is seen these days as “controversial.”
Remember back in 2003, when Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC for being opposed to the Iraq War? Expressing opposition to war is seen by higher powers as an act of violence.
1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Notice the total absence of ad hominem attacks. That's good, because I listen to many sorts of people, all of them flawed human beings like me. Every day I sort through this batch of conflicting information to try to make sense of things. Some of the people I highly trust sometimes fall off the rails. Some of the people I mostly don't trust sometimes say things that make sense. I work very hard to avoid the Manichean trap of dividing people into "good" people and "bad" people.
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