Congratulations, your ignorance has been fought! (Here he is mentioned on a BBC blog in 2008.)
The measure to establish Evergreen was signed by Republican governor Dan Evans, who later served as college president for several years and has at least one building named after him. Evans was not known for being particularly progressive, though he would never make it as a contemporary Republican.
Your link describes an incident in which PZ Myers declared his intention to protest the Catholic League president’s calls for the expulsion of a Florida university student merely for having removed a consecrated communion wafer from a Catholic mass. Myers announced that he planned to deliberately desecrate communion wafers as a symbolic gesture in favor of free speech and freedom of religion. (Apparently he received some death threats as a result, btw.)
Personally, I don’t like or approve of deliberately provocative public gestures of sacrilege against the beliefs of some religion just because you happen to disagree with it or consider it silly. But I can see how such gestures in response to religious bodies or individuals attempting to impose their sectarian restrictions on the secular commons at least qualify as a serious protest in the name of religious freedom.
I certainly do not see how this action on Myers’s part supports your characterization of him as “a SJW that epitomizes almost every negative stereotypes of the group”.
Not to say I had never heard of it, just not so much. Kinda like Berkeley, Antioch, Madison, Eugene V. Debs High School. Or here in Minnesota, the Woody Guthrie Theater.
No, what it indicates is your lack of reading comprehension. See my first description to spice weasel about the evolution of his points of advocacy.
The reason I posted that link was to show that PZ was in international news at least twice–once on being kicked out if Ben Stein’s movie and once over crackergate. He has been interviewed on BBC radio, interviewed by Richard Dawkins, and has been a very prominent member of the atheist movement for well over a decade and an often target of Bill Donahue, Ken Ham and others (one of which has been said to be the most often banned troll on the SDMB.) He has been a speaker at many atheist and skeptic converences, some of which are available on Youtube. I was illustration that if elucidator hasn’t heard of him, it wasn’t because PZ is an obscure unknown.
Oh, I see. That means you still haven’t produced any persuasive evidence that PZ Myers is in fact “a SJW that epitomizes almost every negative stereotypes of the group”. Your misreading of his post about the media/political exploitation of the suicide of Robin Williams certainly doesn’t cut it.
No, it is purely a personal opinion coming from reading the topics that he posts on and the way he speaks of them coming from reading his goddamned fucking posts for more than 10 goddamned fucking years, you argumentative, idiotic, pedantic fuck. I watched the transition from posting interesting essays on science and attacks on religion to “all SJW, all the time.”
And if I am “misreading” his intentions. Other than the hundreds of negative comments left on the blog post itself, you can read some of the other reactions from the time and afterwards here (hence, the “infamous” part.
I’ve been reading PZ Myers for several years, and while I don’t agree with absolutely everything he posts, I often do, and I like his blog.
If he’s the worst example of a SJW, or even an “average” one, then SJWs seem pretty damn good to me (and I would likely qualify), and I often agree with them.
I made that original comment to Spice Weasel as a brief aside, honestly assuming that she would already know who he was (PZ and FTB not being exactly obscure in the “social justice” world, with direct ties to several kerfuffles, including playing a big role in Elevatorgate) and also not be surprised by his siding with the Evergreen protesters, not meaning for it to become a whole subthread. But at one time, PZ was thought of as almost a fifth horseman, but thanks to his antics in recent years–well, read the comments on this post to see how he is seen outside of the FTB bubble now. (It looks like most of my posts to his Scienceblogs blog were around 2009, but I was reading for years before that.)
I generally disagree with that characterization. He’s not always right, IMO, but he often is. I find most of his posts, even the angry and passionate ones, thoughtful.
I still don’t get the elevatorgate thing. All Rebecca Watson did was suggest that hitting on women in elevators might make them feel uncomfortable. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
It has to be noted that Darren Garrison has used opinion from blogs in an attempt to discredit PZ Myers.
Darren also pointed at an opinion piece from Jerry Coynes. PZ myers has been critical of him in the past.
Which no one has claimed. Done.
So now we get down to the really offensive part. The one where the proponents of EP deny that there are any structural problems in their field, and instead all of their opponents are ideologically motivated. Let’s go imagine some intent!
[QUOTE=Jerry Coynes]
The real reason why people like Newitz and others (that includes P. Z., I think) dismiss evolutionary psychology in toto is because they find it ideologically unpalatable: they don’t like its supposed implications. They presume that evo-psych somehow validates misogyny or the marginalization of women and minorities. They will deny this to their dying breath, of course, and pretend that it’s purely a scientific issue, citing a few anecdotal studies that are indeed laughable. But I think we know where these people are coming from. Evolutionary biology itself has been used to justify racism or the sterilization of supposedly “defective” humans, but we don’t dismiss evolutionary biology because of that. Likewise, we shouldn’t dismiss evolutionary psychology just because some cranks draw “oughts” from “is”s.
When you read a statement like this:
“Developmental plasticity is all. The fundamental premises of evo psych are false”,
then you know you are dealing with ideology rather than science. The fundamental premise of evolutionary psychology is simply that some modern human behaviors reflect an ancient evolutionary history. It would be odd if that were completely false. And developmental plasticity is not all. If that were the case, then why do we still have wisdom teeth and bad backs?
[/QUOTE]
It doesn’t seem to matter how often we point out bad science or lousy protocols or unjustifiable interpretations — the criticisms will be dismissed with this “Oh, they’re just leftist ideologues!” baloney. Yet somehow the converse never seems to be brought up by the EP defenders: that somehow, these EP papers almost universally seem to find rationalizations for the status quo, that they take existing behaviors in our culture and slap on a just-so story to claim women’s roles or the place of minorities is biological or natural or genetic or determined by 100,000 years of selection. If I were to turn this argument around, and say that supporters of EP are all ideologically driven fellow travelers of Kanazawa and Murray and Herrnstein (which I am NOT doing here, by the way), we’d immediately recognize this as a beautiful example of poisoning the well.
But somehow, it’s acceptable for Coyne to claim on no evidence at all that our objections are tainted by ideology? To dismiss criticisms of the premises and procedures of evolutionary psychology as unfounded because we’re not right-wing nutcases?
[/QUOTE]
Well, on a personal note I have to report that I do remember that “Why evolution is True” showing up in past discussions, misused by scientific racists. YMMV but I really have little respect from researchers that willfully ignore how their controversial research is being used by “cultural” warriors of the right.
I forgot to add:
Seems to me that Darren Garrison is the one in a bubble, and it looks to be a similar one from the ones that recently popped up in this message board, in the pit no less, defending the “scientific” racism nonsense from people like Charles Murray and Sam Harris.
Interesting that Darren Garrison completely missed that discussion that had the defenders of Murray and Harris dismissing all the critics of Murray in the same way as Darren has attempted to do.
I lost any respect for those defenders of Murray and Harris when it became clear that they not only dismissed the criticism of PZ Myers in that recent thread, but that they did the same with even Nobel price winners that did agree with PZ Myers on why one should dismiss the Charles Murray solutions to racial/society problems. Specially regarding Murray’s “coincidentally” right wing conclusions/solutions that “should” be applied to the American society, solutions that still do not follow from his supposed research.
I’m not making a claim that he was wrong on that–just that he was a very visible part of the debate (and thus likely to be familiar to a wider audience.)
I’ve never heard of elevatorgate but it boggles my mind that anyone would think that it’s totally cool to hit on a woman in a situation where she has no capacity to leave if she’s uncomfortable. I mean, if she’s making googly eyes and come hither motions, sure. But barring that, Jesus, use some common sense.
Let me guess, she received rape and death threats?
The alt-right continues to out-douchebag the radical left at every turn.
Of course–this is the internet.
Man and woman alone in an elevator, neither have the capacity to leave if they’re uncomfortable. Man hitting on woman = mind boggling. Woman hitting on man = totes cool.
Double standard much?
Straw man much? She didn’t say whether she thought it was appropriate for a woman to hit on a man in an elevator.
Neither are cool.
Depends, I guess. My first thoughts at being vamped on in an elevator would be wondering if this person is, and always has been, female? I know, kinda old-fashioned… Or is it leading to a discussion of becoming an Amway distributor, or an acolyte of St. Ayn of Leningrad? Perhaps she has mistaken me for Keith Richards?
Not really. What are your odds of being raped, stalked, harassed, abused, or otherwise becoming a victim of violence by a random stranger who’s a guy vs. a gal?