Sunday, July 10, 2011

I Do Not Support Women's Equality . . .

[Edit: Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong) has responded, sort of.  And, as indicated in what follows below, the ability of people to disagree with her has been forestalled by, yet again, another silencing campaign. I love irony.]
[Edit 2:  Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong) has decided to discuss it anyway - well, sort of. She's still locked the topic on her blog, but it's spilled over on Pharyngula now; I've been quote-mined! That didn't take long at all. Side by side pictures at bottom - I used to love playing that game in Highlights. Now you can too! Find what's missing and circle it!]

 . . . exclusively.  Nor do I support black equality or gay equality or women's rights or black rights or gay rights. I support human rights which, of necessity, covers everyone's petty ass. Mine included.  As a gay male, of course I want the option available for gay men to marry. Perhaps, I'll even be able to trick one of them into marrying me - after all, why should straight people be the only ones to suffer? But I'm not a gay rights activist. I'm a human rights activist. Raise the floor for all people, and it seems to me that some matters just take care of themselves.

But I'm not so provincial. Nor am I so narrowly focused that my individual concerns outweigh those of everyone else; that's a bit of a dick move. Or cunt move if you prefer.  Speaking of which, this brings me to Blaghag's Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong).   She's a woman. She's an outspoken
woman. She's also a graduate student near me. And this is discomforting for me to know. You see, she escaped the square states and came to Seattle to study in a more sophisticated, metropolitan-blend of "we don't give a fuck that you're a special little tortured artist" or whatever pet label someone might want to have kind of environment.  Follow the laws, don't hurt people and we don't care here.

Read the article on her blog to which I earlier linked so that we might together enjoy the brain-rot, and lack of integrity Jen has on this particular issue.  I am not in a position to say if this generalizes. I take on faith that she's a competent student and honest in her reporting and research.  If not, we'll find out about it soon enough I suppose.  But, if this were the first time I'd come across her, I'd be worried.  If I were one of her thesis advisers/professors and I read her blog, I would have spent the last week (and perhaps the next months depending on her throughput) examining every bit of data she's touched, reported on, thought about, walked near, overseen or, for that matter, had her aura in the vicinity of.  Why?  She'll lie, publicly, when it's convenient. Now, you might call it a mistake, and you'd have been right. Except that when she got called on it, well, the decision wasn't to admit and correct error. It was to ignore the correction, and banish the one pointing it out.

Now, I'm blocked on blaghag because of two primary things: 1.) I called her bullshit out on twitter, and 2.) what I've written about Rebecca Twatson. One thing I don't do, unlike either of those two pillars of free thought (for some) is comment moderate.  I have a spam filter to keep the porn sites from advertising, and stuff like that. But you can come here and call me a faggot all day long and your stupidity will remain for as long as I keep open this blog. Why?  Free expression is not something I fuck with.  You're free to sit here and espouse the most repugnant views you'd like, it stays. I unequivocally support everyone's right to present their views as to how the world should work, without caveat. To do otherwise sets the following as a precept: there exists someone who can decide in advance which thoughts are sufficiently meritorious to be permitted to be said, and which ideas are sufficiently bad that no one else is allowed to hear them.  To whom do you bestow the honor of deciding, in advance, for you which ideas you're allowed to have, or know about?  Blaghag has spoken - for her readers, she has that privilege. Oh sure, you can disagree. Sometimes.


Enter Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong) into the Richard Dawkins affair. From the blog post to which I earlier linked, you'll find this statement of fact:
Words matter. You don't get that because you've never been called a cunt, a faggot, a nigger, a kike. You don't have people constantly explaining that you're subhuman, or have the intellect of an animal. You don't have people saying you shouldn't have rights. You don't have people constantly sexually harassing you. You don't live in fear of rape, knowing that one wrong misinterpretation of a couple words could lead down that road.
No harm, no foul so far really.  It's an assertion of facts and is therefore amenable to a little something called research. Indeed, even before she wrote in her Help! Richard Dawkins Is Privileged and Oppressing Wimmen! emotional reply. She chose to do no due diligence.  This isn't science; it's a blog, so the standards of evidence are somewhat more relaxed. But there is some burden on a blog author to at least be in the vicinity of honest. She feels no such obligation so long as she's angry enough. That's her privilege as a pissed off woman - she can make abject assertions of patent falsehood and some other angry and oppressed wimminz will uncritically accept it.

I called her out on this bullshit on Twitter, first for pressing me, as a faggot, into service of a point. I was, along with the niggers and kikes, caught up merely as convenient examples of an oppressed group of people. Without our consent. And in the service of a lie.  This is, to put it mildly, rude.  It's also a breach of ethics. But let's take this in turn.

You good people decide if she's being honest, or playing blindly in service of a cause.  Also, it would be lovely if you charming people would direct her to this post and press her to defend these outright false claims.  I tried it, and well, I've been excised. However, I'm not important really - I'm only a human with thoughts different than hers on at least one issue. So, maybe it's not that big an affront to her claims of respect for free exchange of ideas and open, honest inquiry. After all, we already know she'll lie if necessary.

1.) Words matter:
I agree; that's why I find her arrangement of them to say things she should know are false to be such an offense against the values she professes to hold. What a cunt.
2.) Richard Dawkins has never been called a cunt
These are all worth the read for the lulz. These aren't just his being called a cunt; this is the public press about him. This explains why you see Dawkins complaining a lot about it - because he's a whiner unlike some other people.
3.) Dawkins isn't called a faggot.
The last link there isn't exactly his being called a faggot; it's just showing him fucking one up the ass.  So, I might have to concede that this isn't technically calling him a faggot.  Of course, I can't wait to see how they dismiss all of these as unimportant. Not that they would dismiss things that have actually happened to him as not relevant.
4.) Dawkins isn't called a nigger.
I conceded this one out of the gate. Even though it's technically not true that he hasn't been called a nigger, it is 4-chan.  But still. Her claim is false, demonstrably so.
5.) Dawkins isn't called a kike.
Well, I'll concede this one for the sake of time, and researching this claim is difficult now because of all of the entries that came as a result for the relevant keywords.  But no matter on that, being wrong about 75% of the (first four) things you cite as examples isn't exactly an honest broker's deal.  Plus, I don't concede that Dawkins isn't called a kike; I am only conceding that I'm not contesting this for logistical reasons. Her correctness does not materially improve as we go along.

She continues to entreat Richard Dawkins with the comfort of knowing he's not called stupid, that he's not treated as though he has the intellect of an animal.  What? She's a graduate student in biology and thinks no one treats Richard Dawkins as the animal that he is?  Oh, maybe she's Lamarckian and Dawkins has reached that state of perfection. Not an animal? Way to ignore the conversations, Jen. Richard even admits, no doubt out of disgrace, that he's an animal.  He teaches the world that we're animals. But, apparently, he's 100% ineffective. Yes, I'm being persnickety here. Remember, these are the things she's setting up as arguments to exclude Richard Dawkins' from having even a putatively correct estimation here.  It is just impossible for him to be right because of - all of this shit she makes up.

We continue to read her rebuke of Dawkins noting he doesn't suffer sexual harassment (being harassed about his being male makes him too stupid to understand or "get it" is apparently dismissible. I'll note this with respect to this particular woman), and doesn't know what it's to live in fear of being raped.

I'll take these in reverse order. No, Dawkins doesn't live in fear of being raped. That's kind of the point he's made to Rebecca Twatson. Indeed, for this to be relevant at all, we have to assume Jen means Twatson was in that elevator in fear of being raped. Dawkins is saying that there isn't a reason to be afeared ya'll.  The supposed EG asked someone to coffee at a place  Twatson didn't like. That's not a cause to cry and bitch about, well, anything. Tell the guy to go fuck himself and get on with your life.

But no, Richard Dawkins isn't in fear of being raped.  Or murdered. Or mugged. Or dying in a car carsh Or being sent to hell. These are all possible.  Some of them represent things that can actually happen even. But that doesn't rise to the level of being a good cause for fear.

And why it this last bit relevant? Dawkins himself is a survivor of sexual abuse. He wrote about it four years ago.

In light of all of this "reality" with its "facts", has Jen apologized to Dawkins? No. She's just saying he shouldn't be boycotted . . . yet.  And, you know, that she's willing to grant he's not a misogynist; he's just stupid.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Here's the edit:
So, an individual by the usename Rystefn has, um, had a conversation with Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong) on her blog. In it, he linked her to this. She has responded on her blog, before being cornered into having to either lie or admit error. So, she chose the reasonable course of locking the thread to prevent the refutation of her chicanery.

Please go read what she's written. Read what I've written. Compare what she says against what I say and see if I've done, as she alleges, nothing more than to attack a strawman. Err, person.  Don't want strawwomen feeling neglected or anything.

Let's take a look at the salient features:
I'm crazy; therefore you should disbelieve what I write.
I abused and stalked her on Twitter; despite there being a 1:1 tweet ratio (from memory. I suppose we could count them up, but, alas, Jen isn't interested in facts or truth; she has a religious cause to fulfill!)  I started first, she finished last (blocking has a way of doing that - getting the last word in is apparently important to her).
I fail to appreciate context of what she wrote, and that can change how things are read.

In short, she hasn't argued that I'm wrong. She's only implying that no one should believe what I've written because of reasons not relating to whether what I've said is correct or incorrect.  If you feel strongly enough, after all, the data change!

For the sake of drawing out the important inability she has to concede error, I'll just post the picture of the initial exchange she had with Rystefn:

Note. He asked her if she cared to defend her statements against the refutation I've written in this post.
Note also: her defense is centered entirely on accusations unrelated to the truth or falsity of any claim I've herein made. They are exclusively about me. And not even honest at that! I have made precisely 1 video to her, which she was aware was going to happen anyway. Well, she should have been at least; I did notify her in advance that I was going to make that one video.  I don't have another video "to" her, let alone do I submit videos to people - how would that work? I just try to smuggle in on the comment's section? E-mail a video? Skype it to her? Anyone else have the ability to "spam" people with videos on a site you don't control? If so, how does that work?

Also note she says that I am saying she falsifies her data. I said that If I were adviser or one of her professors, I would go over her work with a fine toothed comb because she is demonstrating she will not let a mere inconvenience of facts get in the way, at least not in one situation.  In particular, I said:
I take on faith that she's a competent student and honest in her reporting and research.
And
But, if this were the first time I'd come across her, I'd be worried.
Followed by
If I were one of her thesis advisers/professors and I read her blog, I would have spent the last week (and perhaps the next months depending on her throughput) examining every bit of data she's touched, reported on, thought about, walked near, overseen or, for that matter, had her aura in the vicinity of.  Why?  She'll lie, publicly, when it's convenient.
Ending with
Now, you might call it a mistake, and you'd have been right. Except that when she got called on it, well, the decision wasn't to admit and correct error. It was to ignore the correction, and banish the one pointing it out.
Now, please show me in there where I suggest that she is creaming her data. It can't be the one sentence left out
But, if this were the first time I'd come across her, I'd be worried.
That seems to be a fairly obvious statement related to my saying if my faith that she is an honest researcher is misplaced, we'll find out about it in short order.

Indeed, as was the case with her lying in her post to Dawkins, she was given ample opportunity to correct what then were just mistakes. After being told of the mistakes is where it became a lie; she ignored that they are false, banned the person who pointed it out, and now labels pointing it out the result of mental instability on my part.

Yet she doesn't take any step to show that her claims are true. She just says I'm wrong, don't get it, am crazy, and that somehow there's a context that changes what she said into something else other than what she said. For instance, it wouldn't matter because Richard knows he's not a nigger.  How does that all relate to her claiming he can't understand because it's never happened to him?

How does her post hoc rationalization that because Richard doesn't publicly cry about the unfairnesses of life change what she said?

It's nn the same way that finding out Richard Dawkins was sexually assaulted doesn't matter either. His actual sexual assault and response to it by not being a lifelong victim to it still means he doesn't get it. He doesn't get it because of the list of things she said. Prove that list factually wrong, and it changes nothing.

Her response has no feature distinguishable from the religious:  bring up as many countervailing facts as you'd like, and their beliefs remain unchanged. Why? Their beliefs were never about facts in the first place; it's purely emotional.

Apparently, though, I'm just butthurt.  It's not that you're a lying douche and ideologue, Jennifer McCreight (rhymes with wrong). No. It's never that, is it? It's always people who don't agree with you who are wrong and have ulterior motives.

You are not a promising example of the next generation of scientists; you have no respect for the truth. I hope you improve in your integrity before we wind up with another Kurt Wise in our midst. Cunt.

33 comments:

Southern Geologist said...

I came over here from ERV when you linked your post. Thanks for this, but good luck getting through. As I noted over there, we're moving toward a more polarized community where you must be a group insider for people to listen to you. (Not to say this hasn't happened prior to this with feminist blogs, I gave up on beating my head against that wall several years ago.)

Justicar said...

Thank you, SouthernGeologist. It is indeed frustrating.

I was stupid enough to say on pharyngula that I didn't see where Richard Dawkins was wrong, but I'm willing to be convinced.

Quite stupid of me indeed.

Of course this kind of thing happens elsewhere. I am by no means limiting the scope of what happens to this ordeal. But like it or not, this is the shit the community's discussing. So, to discuss it, I have to deal with what's topical.

It's going to take a large group of people to continually keep pointing out shit before they'll have to listen. Why is it so hard to concede an unequivocal factual mistake?

Here's how it goes for me: I said ___, and ___ was wrong. Further, ___ wrong because of x, y, and z, and here's how I could have avoided being wrong on that, but instead, I chose to do this other thing that led me astray.

And as a graduate student in a fucking science, this should be first nature to her. Someone shows you something that directly contradicts you've said, you verify their "something" and if it holds up, you revise the thing you've said. And then all of us other science people pat you on the head and say what a brave person you are.

Oh wait, no we don't. Because the only time this comes up is when someone REFUSES to concede error when they're demonstrably wrong. To correct yourself is so goddamned banal and commonplace that to point out you admitted to being wrong is to admit that breathe.

AAAAAAGHGH This makes me not a happy panda.

Anonymous said...

"I was stupid enough to say on pharyngula that I didn't see where Richard Dawkins was wrong, but I'm willing to be convinced."

Wow! You're brave. In that hotbed of disenchanted cardigans and raving sock suspenders, that's taking your life in your hands.

John Greg

Spence said...

The google-fu is strong in this one. Nice research work, Justicar.

But you are forgetting that Richard Dawkins is a penis-wielding potential RAAAAAAAAPIST and is therefore de facto wrong every time he disagrees with the radical feminists.

I can't believe he is wasting his time issuing press releases about the international anti-stoning day when he could be doing something far more worthwhile, such as grovelling for an apology at Rebecca Watson's feet. What is the world coming to! /sarc

Justicar said...

Here's how you know the level of person you're dealing with.

On her "profile", she has listed as up with her "education" such as it is the fact that there's some asteroid named after her.

She's known for being known. What's Richard "Dear Dick" Dawkins known for? Oh, nothing. Haven't seen him cite to anything that's been named in his honor on his cv.

Oh, there's one thing he has that she doesn't: a cv! With entries! For doing something! USEFUL!

Too bad he's a rapist. Otherwise, his work might have been useful and correct. And his campaign to save the lives of people tortured to death might have done something. Alas, none of it happened because, you know, couldn't stop raping people. What a dick.

Spence said...

Our very own dear perverted feminist atheist Jen McCreight (her own characterisation, not mine) has responded to your criticisms. Apparently you don't get the "context". Since she is unlikely to post here, I'll quote for you:

Context: The use of slurs to demonize a group of people. Dawkins does not belong to those groups, and thus has never experiences those words in those context - the context in which they are very hurtful. He can easily shrug them off because 1. he doesn't hear them every freaking day and 2. he can go "Well, I know I'm not a ____, so that slur is illogical. Oh silly fellow calling me this thing." I'm talking about institutionalized problems that he has to deal with since birth, not something that might of sprung up in the last couple of years because of fame. Upbringing is what matters when shaping how people view things.

So. Apparently when Richard Dawkins was called a cunt, he knew he wasn't a cunt, so that was fine. I can only assume that she means that when someone calls Jen a cunt, she knows that she really is a complete cunt, so that is somehow much worse. I think that is what she was getting at, I can't say I really follow her point to be honest. But there you have it.

She also seems to think you are off your rocker. To cut her some slack, she might have a point there. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Also: "What a dick", ROFLMAO

Anonymous said...

Hey look, I got the thread closed because she can't handle seeing her stupid shit pointed out... Of course, she had get in a last word first so she can pretend to herself she won. Fucking juvenile shit.

Anonymous said...

Well, we, I should say.

Justicar said...

That's awesome.

Note: I'm wrong because I'm a loon, I'm crazy, and stalkerish. I was "spamming" her with tweets and videos. You'll note there's a 1:1 correspondence between my tweet 'spam' and her tweet 'non-spam' in response. Until, you know, I asked about the faggot comment and the southpark thing. Then she said something like well, i'm just going to ignore you.

Spammed with videos? I made a video to her. One. You can go watch all of my videos. There is one. It's titled "dear blaghag". I'm a fucking douche!

You are too.

Justicar said...

I wonder if this would do any good on reddit. Somehow or another, my post on Rebecca Twatson made its way there. =^_^=

Scented Nectar said...

My stats are showing that search engines found my blog a few times with the keywords "Rebecca Twatson". Must be because I linked to your article and video that had that in the titles. Funny though that it's being searched for. It must be catching on as a nickname. :)

Justicar said...

Lawl. Let's hope it does!

I had an article get some attention on reddit, which caused a change in traffic flow. Oddly enough, you must rate higher than my original articles than they rate since the only search term I see displayed is "integralmath.blogspot.com" which is an odd way to search for a website I should think.

Phyraxus said...

Yeah, Jen's censorship proves that you can't prove her wrong, she will close the thread or ban you beforehand. Nice how you got her back pedaling.

"That's not what I said!!"

"You are taking my words out of context!!"

Phyraxus said...

I left a comment on her thread where she asked her followers for money.

"Censorship is not good, Jen. I hope I don't have to explain why. If people are wrong, you need to let them hang themselves with their own words. Of course, this is your blog and you can do what you want with it. However, censorship does nothing but show how petty you are. Considering you just received donations from your followers, it is best not to alienate them by censoring them. Yes, I am referring to the Richard Dawkins is not a misogynist thread you closed."

Justicar said...

Well, you two aren't going to win any friends letting it be known that you're on "my side" of something. And by "my side", I mean, you know, the side that's supported by facts and publicly available evidence, which she refuses to consider.

With respect to the money thing I'm not like a lot of people on youtube and elsewhere on the internet. It doesn't bother me in the slightest (I make a living on the internet, with an actual service, but still). I have my little donate button up there on the sidebar somewhere. If someone happens to enjoy what I say, or think I have something worthwhile and feels like hitting it, so be it.

If someone enjoys what I do or thinks what I have to say is worthwhile and doesn't feel like hitting it, so be it.

Oddly enough, I'm about leaving options available to people and letting them make decisions on them all by themselves. Almost like, you know, they're sentient and autonomous people who get to decide what they do with their time, body, money, friends, sex lives and all that jazz.

But I'm a loon.

I hope no one here with a respectable career posts under their real name. I'd absolutely hate to see anyone else suffer because of my, um, uncouth satire on this event.

I did lose my adsense account over it. I thought it amusing that I was "a threat" to the marketability of google and their advertisers. My crap blog and channel almost no one reads or watches is a "threat". I guess I can punch above my weight.

Tera_byte said...

Does anyone have a few minutes to read my posts over at PZ's blog? I've been on the arse end of a lot of anger there and I'm really uncertain as to why. Maybe somebody here could clarify for me without the abuse and confusion.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/jen_flaunts_the_look.php#c4395941

- Miles670

Justicar said...

Miles, venturing a guess, you wrote words there. And those words didn't fall in-line with the popular posters there.

Welcome to Pharyngula.

Anonymous said...

Yeah... You should have seen the Hell I caught for pointing out that the elevated death rates from owning a gun are almost entirely intentional. A gun in the home is really only a threat if you decide to kill yourself... and the suicide rate doesn't go up much, it just takes fewer tries. But it ain't the party line, so screaming and bitching follows in overwhelming volume.

Justicar said...

Oh, that's funny just on first glance. I haven't actually looked at the statistics on that, but I wonder what the trend does actually look like.

I would go check, but as Jennifer pointed out, I don't understand science, research or peer-review. Curiously though, I do understand what it means when facts contradict my story.

I'm loving the novelty of a student explaining to me the concept of peer-review. I'm fairly confident one of its features isn't refusing to print counter-claims, and contrary evidence. But hey, I'm just a loon!

She goes on to argue somewhere earlier I think that it's her blog and she can ban anyone she wants, and therefore, it doesn't bear on her views about free thinking. I can't parse that either.

Jen, no one is saying you can't physically do it. No one is saying that it's not your blog. I am saying that you're doing it to suppress the case being made against what you've said by someone who disagrees with you on the facts of the matter.

And yes, this does imply something about your ethics on free thought.

She writes:
"The most amusing part is the commentors he's sending over crying that I'm somehow against freedom of expression. Uhhhh, it's my blog. I can moderate however I want. And that involves removing thread derailing libelous lunatics."

See. She can silence anyone she wants because it's her blog. Some subset of those whom she's perfectly entitled to silence includes thread derailing libelous lunatics.

Apparently, she missed that day in law school where "truth" was discussed as being a categorical (absolute that is) defense to libel. It's not possible to defame the character of a person by noting the things they've actually done, dipshit.

Anonymous said...

Well, she's one of those people who thinks that she's an expert on everything because she's passably competent at a few things. At least I freely admit that when I shout "I'm good at everything!" (which is often), I mean "I'm passably good at a wide variety of things, and sometimes have enough talent to not make a fool of myself on the first try!" I'm an expert at very few things, and they in no way grant me expertise at unrelated things.

Sadly, it turns out that's a rare and special breed of self-awareness.

Justicar said...

I say, "I don't know" an awful lot. Even in my field of expertise. Why don't I know? Because the answer is never obvious. If answers to these matters were obvious (amenable to intuition), mathematics would never have been invented.

I am not a fan of the "it is obvious that" LaPlace kind of writing. The obvious things don't need to an annotation noting they're obvious.

"It is obvious that you are reading words on this page." You never see that. Why? Because it's actually obvious.

I also hate abstruse proofs that omit steps with the, "it can be shown that . . ." Great. You're writing the proof, show it. If I knew how to do it, you wouldn't be writing this proof and publishing it for the world. I'd have already done it, asshole!

It's so fucking pretentious. I also don't like the "for" usage in logic. Just use since, or because.

Beyond my motto of "I don't know" when I'm asked about things out of my field, I say something like, um, not my problem. Or, go ask a physicist. Or, I'm not a string theorist, or, I don't work on finite simple groups.

And I don't remember shit about things I'm not working on regularly. Why? Limited space and concern. If I need to study something, I'll carry the information with me. If not, it's in a book somewhere and I can always look it up.

But my answer is almost universally "I don't know" and then "let's see if we can't figure it out". It's a good teaching device - makes the students feel like everyone has trouble so they're like everyone else. But it's not a platitude - to figure it out, I have to do the math. Every time.

How come lectures go more smoothly? Well, simple. I get to choose what to talk about every day. That means I have advance time to write out what I want to do and brush up on whatever the topic is. It's a little thing I like to call a schedule. But if you ambush me on the street and ask me a question, I won't know the answer right away usually.

Meh.

Anonymous said...

I'm quick with an "I don't know" if I don' care. If I do care, I'm even quicker with a "Let's find out!"

Anonymous said...

I'm reminded of the old saw about, "If men could get pregnant..."

If men could get pregnant, humanists like Henry Morgentaler would continue to fight for their bodily integrity while radical feminists would declare it to be an extension of inherent male violence.

John D said...

Oh - I am so happy. I too have been banned from Blaghag. I must be a woman hater. How come my wife and daughters never told me this?

Justicar said...

John D: fear probably. Would you piss of a man-hating grizzly bear? He already hates you - no need to force him to eat you too. Welcome to the club.

Anonymous said...

Hey... Now I feel left out. Why didn't I get banned?

Justicar said...

You're just not good enough. Buck up. Stick with me and I'll learn ya good.

Anonymous said...

...or, I'm too damned pretty and she can't bring herself to cut me out of her life like that. She may not be interested in what I have to say, but she definitely wants to corner me in an elevator and ask me up to coffee. :P

Justicar said...

Boy, you sure got a purdy mouth. Let me see you squeal like a pig.
Make sure to read my radical spiderism article. If you like it, spread that shit around. =^_^=

Whatistobe said...

Not surprising that Jen McCreight is also the second person listed on Elevator Girl's boycott declaration as an endorser (after PZ Myers). The entire boycott decision was based on "launch a war" rather than discuss and consciousness-raise, so the signatories would be that rabble who would most readily abandon rational discourse and critical thinking for irrational reaction. I'm wondering if PZ Myers with his assoc. professor biology degree at the prestigious University of Minnesota is thinking that with Dawkins out of the way, maybe he can finally come out from under the Horseman's shadow and make a name for himself. And with the biology genius McCreight by his side, what a chance to shine!... sort of.

I noticed that McCreight states right off in her profile that she's always right. So you should've known that going into the "discussion." ;-) Not that she's always right, mind you, but that she's not up for discussion, just for a context to assert that she's always right... Why have a blog if one must admit a mistake on it?

Great job finding those quotes too! I was just thinking the entire paragraph was irrelevant: who cares if Dawkins was never called those names? Elevator Guy didn't call Elevator Girl that either, so how is it even relevant to Dawkins' point about there having been no wrongdoing? It's just a braying use of ad hominem. But with her assertions also completely wrong, she's doubly irrelevant.

The Justicar said...

Non-trivial point: a professorship isn't a degree. It's a position which has as a requirement the antecedent ownership of a doctorate.

Whatistobe said...

Oh- was I understating Myers' accomplishments? It's certainly more education than I've had. I mean, I don't want to tear the guy down. I just... want to tear the guy down... His little "Dawkins would have a peevish sneer" comment on a Pharyngula article devoted just to a Dawkins bash... just begs for a write-off of some sort...

The Justicar said...

It's not a matter 'understating'. It's a category error. PhD, Dr, etc . . . are degrees, not positions. Lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor are positions, not degrees.