Posts by B Jones
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Dyan, did you link to that NRC fact sheet to shore up your point about cellphone towers? Because that's about ionising radiation, not the non-ionising sort that cellphone towers emit. There's a big difference.
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it is hard to argue the science and easier to argue other things
I think it's also a symptom of people being educated in either the arts or science, with little crossover in between. Most BA grads would have read or at least encountered the arguments of Chomsky, Foucault and so on, and encountered science through the politics of science. A smaller proportion would have post sixth form statistics, or have read scientific papers and be able to make informed judgements independently. And fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
I think there's a real risk that the only process humans have developed for checking their assumptions and testing their theories becomes just another one of several equally valid "truths". That's an tempting proposition for those whose voices haven't been properly represented by science in the past, but the ultimate result of everybody's truths being equal is that the loudest shouters, not the closest representation of reality, get primacy in policymaking. See the science curriculum in Texas.
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I think I agree with you, Giovanni. I just get a sense in just about every debate about science conducted by non-scientists (of which I am one) that the question of who paid for the research becomes way more important than is it good research and what does it show. Mainly, I think, because most of us aren't really qualified to engage with the latter. But the former is a kind of ad hominem, the sort that makes me tear my hair out when it's applied to scientists by conservative advocates about evolution or global warming or whatnot. Surely the whole concept of a search for truth hasn't been entirely defeated by Foucault and all that?
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Einstein et al went to the US government and said "hey, the Nazis might be building a nuclear bomb, we should research this too." Einstein later regretted this after discovering that the Nazis weren't making as much progress as he'd thought.
Oppenheimer had his security clearance revoked during the McCarthy era, after jokingly saying (while being secretly taped) that he was a member of every Communist front on the West Coast.
So it's one thing to have built a nuclear bomb, it's a whole other thing to be a pawn of the government. If you can't work for the government, and you can't work for commercial interests, without being accused of being a pawn of either, then who can scientists work for without having to fend off presumptions of bias? Other professions have working codes of ethics. Do we stop journalists reporting on some subjects because some papers have editorial biases?
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Joe, you might want to revise your categorisation of Mengele as "brilliant":
The few concentration camp tests that pursued worthwhile ends, like testing the safety of novel antibiotics, were being duplicated elsewhere under humane conditions and with more reliable results.
Mengele is a rubbish example of pure research untrammelled by ethics:
It is clear that, despite the stated purpose for which he was sent to Auschwitz, Mengele's experimentation had absolutely nothing to do with true scientific research, and was instead the result of one man's ambitious and zealous adherence to the Nazi vision of Aryan supremacy.
It's either ignorant or mendacious to introduce this guy into a debate over cow welfare. Claiming that his patients, which included twins he sewed together to attempt to create conjoined twins, could be said to have received better care than in the hospital system, well, that kind of disqualifies you from rational debate.
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Certain in-home childcare provider networks heavily promote the Brainwave Trust's conclusions. Pure coincidence I'm sure.
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You know what almost passes the Bechdel rule of thumb? Jane Austen. Except for rule 3, half the time, especially towards the end, and the beginning, and... damn. Well, arguably, given the times, they are talking about their employment options, which is also very important.
But, the more-than-two-women-and-they-talk-to-each-other bit might explain the popularity of the movie versions.
There's no opposite to the Bechdel test, as far as I know, but if there were, Austen would fail that. I think I read somewhere she never has two male characters talking in a scene where there isn't a lady present, because she didn't have any experience on how they behave in such circumstances. Movie versions often sidestep that.
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For some reason I am reminded of that Lollapalooza scene in The Simpsons, where one audience member asks another 'are you being ironic?' and he replies 'I don't even KNOW anymore.'
I was kind of thinking of the star-bellied Sneetches after everyone's been through the machine a few times each way.
I'm puzzled by the concept of being a bad [any ideology]. Ideologies are like colour charts - they come in different colours and intensities, but you don't talk about bad and good blues and oranges*. You might think it's silly to call your latest shade of off-white Dazzle or Blaze, but it's not going to fool anyone who looks at the actual colour.
*Although I understand "Faded Red" was an insult in cultural revolution China.
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Crap. Sorry Emma, I was thinking about a completely different group of people to you. The kind of smart, well-spoken women I went to university with who liked their equal rights and all but didn't want to be counted among the reputedly hairy-legged. Fail on my part that I didn't make that clearer. There are multiple reasons to reject the label, and I was talking about one in particular.
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Do we ask that liberals all agree on a few key points? Conservatives? Marxists (hahahaha)? At risk of suggesting that meaning is meaningless, don't we let a few countries call themselves People's Democratic Republics (or Holy Roman Empires, for that matter) without sending in the semantic police? We might make a few snide comments in their direction, but.
I don't know where to draw the line, what with half of actual feminists taking pains to tell everyone that they're not a feminist but they believe in equality, and half of non-feminists telling people they are feminist because they believe women's traditional roles should be embraced. It's as much a branding problem than a philosophical or political one.
Perhaps the essence of it is this - if you want to be seen as a powerful woman, adopt the language that gave women that power. If you want to be seen as non-threatening (and therefore appealing and attractive), reject it.