There’s this meme that the slime pitters are trying to pass around that my petition to have Justin Vacula removed as the co-chair of the Pennsylvania state Secular Coalition chapter was part of a bullying campaign against him. I won’t try to tell anyone I’m particularly nice to Vacula, but really, I think a bullying campaign generally has to consist of more than answering when someone asks me what I think of something or standing up for upset people who don’t have a platform of their own. Of course, in this case, I’m going to do something that isn’t quite either of those. Continue reading “What Melody Hensley Has to Teach You About Professionalism”
Month: January 2013
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No, You May Not Have Shoes (Update)
There’s a weird little tendency that many of us have, when we have given money (directly, through charity, or as a tax) to someone, to think we have some right to dictate how that money is spent. It once belonged to us, so it still has some homeopathic memory of our will or something. Or maybe it’s just that belief we have that anyone who doesn’t have more money than they need is in that position because they’ve bundled life in general and their finances in particular.
It’s an appalling little habit of thought, but this sort of thing happens over and over. The latest target? Greta Christina, who needed a new pair of shoes that she could wear all day while working.
For months — years, actually — I’ve been on a quest for shoes that are both dressy and comfortable. I had high standards in both departments: I needed the shoes to be dressy enough to look good with dresses and skirts in a professional setting… and I needed them to be comfortable enough to walk in for miles, comfortable enough that I could be on my feet all day in them. And this being me, I was picky about how they looked. I wanted them to be comfortable — but I didn’t want them to look frumpy or boring. I wanted them to be stylish and expressive and interesting.
[…]
On a day-to-day basis, my usual answer to this conundrum has been boots. About which I have already waxed poetic. But boots have a certain sporty, rakish vibe, and in many situations they’re just not right. They’re not dressy enough for many professional settings; they’re often not dressy enough for evening. And they’re definitely not okay when it’s stinking hot.
She found a pair that is as unusual as she is, and that’s when the condemnation started. Continue reading “No, You May Not Have Shoes (Update)”
Going Further on Evolutionary Psychology
A couple of weeks ago, Brad Peters of the blog Modern Psychologist left a comment on my post on Rebecca’s Skepticon talk. He suggested many of us, me included, were going too lightly on evolutionary psychology. Today, he’s put up a post saying something very similar.
Many, for example, want to censor Watson based on her apparent lack of scientific credentials (she has a communications degree). My thought is this: if you do not like what she has to say, you ought to engage her in debate, based on your own reasons. You should not try to dismiss an argument because they do not work within that field, or you don’t like what they have to say. By this logic of ‘specialized credentials,’ we might follow a slippery slope where we decide that only experts in evolutionary psychology should be able to critique their own, which is absolute nonsense, since conceptual communities naturally gravitate toward insular thinking that only serves to reinforce its own biased set of assumptions. It is for this reason that we need not less, but MORE people challenging theories from the outside.
Edward Clint, an evolutionary psychologist, seems particularly offended by Watson’s critique, and in his multiple-page attack of Watson’s position, goes so far as to accuse her of ‘science denialism’. Of course this is a ridiculous assertion, and both Stephanie Zvan and Mark HoofNagle do a fair job of arguing his points, though they regrettably suggest that Watson might have been critiquing only a small segment of pop evolutionary psychology. It seems blasphemous to critique the whole field, lest you ironically find yourself charged with ‘denying science.’
I suspect that if Peters and I were to talk it out, he’d find that I don’t consider the problems Rebecca brought up in her talk to be a particularly “small segment” even by his reckoning. But that’s a quibble. Continue reading “Going Further on Evolutionary Psychology”
Reconstructing Criticism: Work
I am on a vacation I would like some time to enjoy and, well, this seems timely. A repost of a series.
This is the last post, at least for now, on the subject of constructive criticism. Feel free to suggest other subtopics that I haven’t covered. This post doesn’t contain any new information about making criticism effective, just some general thoughts about offering criticism.
Many of the the topics in this series are interrelated, and I’ve attempted to include those relationships as links. Beyond that, however, there is one thing that every part of creating constructive criticism has in common. It’s a lot of work. Continue reading “Reconstructing Criticism: Work”
Saturday Storytime: Your Last Apocalypse
Sandra McDonald is an award-winning author of young adult mysteries and a short story collection featuring LGBTQ protagonists. This particular story, as is often the case with short fiction I point to here, has nothing to do with any of the books she’s best known for.
If you were really committed to this escape, you’d already be on a train to Logan Airport. You wouldn’t be sitting here knowing that anyone in your study group who drifts to the third-floor windows might see you, come outside, and talk you out of this totally insane plan to throw away years of sacrifice and hard work.
Of course it’s insane. You’re in the middle of an intense personal crisis brought on by the realization you don’t want to be an exhausted, debt-ridden, low-paid junior lawyer for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if you don’t have your damn J.D., what do you have? You see no path forward to a life of happiness and fulfillment.
Don’t worry, your crisis won’t last long.
The first rule of the universe is that time is relative. My definition of “long” is the interval it takes for continents to smash into each other, for the Marianas Trench to chew through the Pacific plate, for the traveling hotspot underneath Yellowstone to build a new volcano and spew its contents across the North American landscape. (Casual Visitor just darted out to digest the story of the hotspot’s next eruption. It’s a good one.) Your definition of “long” is the line at the coffee shop, or the three days it took to process your last financial aid request, or the amount of time it’s been since you went home to New Hampshire (four months, according to your mother’s Nature Conservancy calendar, because that summer internship was a bitch and ground you down to exhaustion every week).
Certainly you and I don’t experience time the same way. Neither does Casual Visitor, but even it would agree that the interval between now and the moment your father dies on his sofa is a relatively small span indeed.
No one will eulogize your father. There will be no flowers, no sermon, no framed picture on an easel, no sleek silver pen beside a white guest register, no PowerPoint pictures accompanied by sentimental music, no sorrowful expressions over solemn handshakes, no quiet breakdowns by your devastated mother. Your dad might be strangely relieved by the lack of fuss. He’s a good man who knows the value of boredom. He sells insurance. His days are filled with checking and rechecking clauses, forms, policies and actuarial tables. He doesn’t like church or politics, but he loves his family and a series of Labradoodles named after the cartoon characters of his youth. The latest one is a four-year old named Scooby.
Scooby dies soon, too. He crawls under your parents’ bed with one of your father’s old socks and heaves a final, sad sigh for walks untaken.
Casual Visitor is aware of these biologic constructs called dogs, but has never met one. To do so would require renting a Sleeve and descending into the dangerous, chaotic World. It creates a simulation instead, plays with it for .02 seconds, and then deconstructs it again. It doesn’t see the appeal. Maybe it should build a cat, instead.
Reconstructing Criticism: Goals
I am on a vacation I would like some time to enjoy and, well, this seems timely. A repost of a series.
When formulating constructive criticism online, it’s important to pay attention to your purpose and shape your message accordingly. (Yes, it’s time to talk about “tone.”) Why? Because unlike much of the communication on the internet, which is more expressionistic in nature, constructive criticism is designed to reach and influence a specific audience. The goal is to change behavior, which precludes several other goals. Continue reading “Reconstructing Criticism: Goals”
Atheists Talk: Ivan Schwab on "Evolution's Witness"
This is a reschedule of a previously planned show.
Eyes are a marvel of evolution that first appeared in trilobites during the Cambrian explosion approximately 543 million years ago. There’s no doubt that eyes are complex; they have many parts that work together to give us the visual experience we humans and many of our animal cousins share today.
Because of its complexity, many creationists see the eye as a weak point in evolutionary theory. They make an argument of irreducible complexity: that if any single part of the eye was missing it wouldn’t function. Therefore, eyes must have been created in their current form – by a creator!
But as Dr. Ivan R. Schwab explains in his new book Evolution’s Witness: How Eyes Evolved, this argument doesn’t hold vitreous fluid. Much simpler eye designs not only existed in our evolutionary past, but in some animals alive today! We know how eyes evolved, and (spoilers!) no creator is needed. From the Amazon description of Evolution’s Witness:
From initial photoreception 3.75 billion years ago to early spatial recognition in the first cupped eyespot in Euglena to fully formed camera style eyes the size of beach balls in ichthyosaurs, animals have processed light to compete and survive in their respective niches. It is evolution’s greatest gift and its greatest triumph.
Tune in to Atheists Talk this Sunday, January 6th for our interview with ophthalmologist Ivan R. Schwab as he shares with us the story of the evolution of the eye.
Related Links:
- Evolution’s Witness: How Eyes Evolved – Amazon Book Page
- Ivan R. Schwab, M.D. – Professional faculty website
- Cure for a Headache – Announcement of Dr. Schwab’s 2006 Ig Nobel prize in orinthology
Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.
Reconstructing Criticism: Collegiality
I am on a vacation I would like some time to enjoy and, well, this seems timely. A repost of a series.
“Because I said so” may be four of the most satisfying words in the English language. Unfortunately, they are almost exactly the wrong thing to say, or even imply, when delivering constructive criticism.
It isn’t that a person in a position of authority can’t deliver constructive criticism. They can and do frequently, since human resources management is the largest group to have embraced its utility. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems that lie in combining the weight of authority with the criticism. Continue reading “Reconstructing Criticism: Collegiality”
All the Real (Geek) Girls
Sometimes you “walk” into another part of the internet, look around, and relax just a little.
My friends Lynne and Michael Thomas would probably give me squinty looks if I said that about Apex Magazine in person. Lynne is the editor-in-chief and Michael the managing editor, and both consider it at least partly their jobs to poke the internet with a stick. If the work they’re publishing doesn’t challenge people in some way, they haven’t done what they want to do.
That’s a big part of the reason I feature as many stories from Apex in Saturday Storytime as I do. It isn’t just that Apex has a great track record of publishing new authors and authors new to the magazine. It isn’t just that I like dark fantasy that doesn’t rely on body horror for its darkness. The stories often make me a little uncomfortable in ways I think I should pay attention to.
So saying I relaxed there is a little funny. Saying I relaxed on reading an essay about the “fake geek girl” stupidity is even funnier. Still, it’s all true. Continue reading “All the Real (Geek) Girls”
Reconstructing Criticism: Accuracy
I am on a vacation I would like some time to enjoy and, well, this seems timely. A repost of a series.
I frequently call accuracy its own virtue, and I even generally mean it. Sure, it’s possible to overreach semantic agreement or shared perspective and descend into pedantry or get all persnickety. However, short of that point, accuracy conveys inherent advantages.
This is particularly true when it comes to making criticism constructive. Continue reading “Reconstructing Criticism: Accuracy”