TMI
- Vampire or Zombie
- Punch Buggy or Slug Bug
- What song do you want played at your funeral?: All There Is
- What song do you never want to hear again?: I've suppressed the memory
- If you could bring one dead person back to life, who would it be?: Me. When I die. I want more than one life. Too many video games?
balderdash has three and a half stars on Yelp.
5:35 PM
balderdash commented on Because We Live in a Post-Feminist World, I Guess.
balderdash commented on Because We Live in a Post-Feminist World, I Guess.
@17, the top comments NOW are supportive. This story broke a couple weeks ago on Skepchick and when it did, that was definitely not the case.
5:01 PM
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
@28, Your grasp of biology is even worse than your English composition, but the real crime is that you seem to think you actually know something. I'm sure you made a Punnett square once in high school, but - surprise! - human genetics is a little more complicated than Mendel's peas.
4:51 PM
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
In principle, I'm perfectly fine with integrating the Scouts. I think it's ethically the correct move. In practice, well... here's the thing. The "no sexuality" policy is there because it has to be. If you're in charge of people's kids when they're away from home, you need to be able to tell the parents that their kids aren't fooling around with each other, even in harmless, juvenile, self-discovery ways. Boy Scouts are definitely not watched 24/7, however, and fooling around does happen, even - in the name of curiosity - between mostly or entirely heterosexual boys.
Now, when it's all boys, or all girls for that matter, the fallout from that is minimal. Nobody's old enough to have any real risk of STIs and obviously nobody's going to get pregnant. The worst that's going to happen is some weird feelings.
Mix up boys and girls, though, and suddenly there's the possibility of real harm. Can you imagine the shitstorm the first time a 14-year-old came back from a Scouting summer camp pregnant? And the only possible way to mitigate that, in an integrated Scouting, is to teach the kids about safer sex practices, and I think we can all agree that that is pretty much a politically impossible idea. Even a liberal organization wouldn't try to float that one past parents.
So meantime, if you want to avoid sexual harassment and teen pregnancies, you keep the sexes segregated not just administratively, and not just by a matter of meters, but actually geographically. There's a reason they put my old summer camp on the opposite side of a large lake from the nearest Girl Scout camp. Telling kids "don't do that" and enforcing harsh penalties if they're caught does nothing to stop it; it just makes the culture surrounding anything sexual more secretive, low-information, and risky.
So in principle, Bailo, I'm with you. They should be integrated.
But not until and unless every girl involved is on birth control AND they're willing to put comprehensive sex ed in the merit badge curriculum.
More...
Now, when it's all boys, or all girls for that matter, the fallout from that is minimal. Nobody's old enough to have any real risk of STIs and obviously nobody's going to get pregnant. The worst that's going to happen is some weird feelings.
Mix up boys and girls, though, and suddenly there's the possibility of real harm. Can you imagine the shitstorm the first time a 14-year-old came back from a Scouting summer camp pregnant? And the only possible way to mitigate that, in an integrated Scouting, is to teach the kids about safer sex practices, and I think we can all agree that that is pretty much a politically impossible idea. Even a liberal organization wouldn't try to float that one past parents.
So meantime, if you want to avoid sexual harassment and teen pregnancies, you keep the sexes segregated not just administratively, and not just by a matter of meters, but actually geographically. There's a reason they put my old summer camp on the opposite side of a large lake from the nearest Girl Scout camp. Telling kids "don't do that" and enforcing harsh penalties if they're caught does nothing to stop it; it just makes the culture surrounding anything sexual more secretive, low-information, and risky.
So in principle, Bailo, I'm with you. They should be integrated.
But not until and unless every girl involved is on birth control AND they're willing to put comprehensive sex ed in the merit badge curriculum.
4:25 PM
balderdash commented on Knife Threat Leads to Anal Cocaine Surprise.
balderdash commented on Knife Threat Leads to Anal Cocaine Surprise.
That's some nice headline work, Ansel.
4:16 PM
balderdash commented on Because We Live in a Post-Feminist World, I Guess.
balderdash commented on Because We Live in a Post-Feminist World, I Guess.
Cue a thousand posts about how Reddit is the sewer of the internet, completely missing the point that a venue for the teeming unwashed masses, like Reddit or god forbid YouTube comments, is precisely the correct indicator for whether or not this shit still exists in the culture and how widespread and problematic it really is. You can't get an accurate reading on sexism, racist, whatever from self-selected subgroups, but large sites with broad appeal take the most random available sampling from the people out there and what emerges deserves attention.
In the case of Reddit, it's very good at illuminating all the various sicknesses we've got, collectively.
@9, "Women have control of men's sexuality," so that's why there's no more rape... right? GOOD LOGIC, ACE.
In the case of Reddit, it's very good at illuminating all the various sicknesses we've got, collectively.
@9, "Women have control of men's sexuality," so that's why there's no more rape... right? GOOD LOGIC, ACE.
4:08 PM
balderdash commented on Should I Buy One of These?.
balderdash commented on Should I Buy One of These?.
Cast-iron comals and griddles are nice. Probably nicer than baking stones, for the purpose. Seems like that there steel would likely work just as well.
4:06 PM
balderdash commented on Faith Is Truth?.
balderdash commented on Faith Is Truth?.
I really don't mean to be smug or condescending when I say that those always make me kind of sad. The story of science in the last two centuries is the story of more and more evidence piling up behind evolution, and religious myth being pushed further and further back into the shadows, and this sort of thing just seems like desperate, last-stand flag-waving from the last major culture in the first world that still really tries to cling to the material truth of their faith.
:(
:(
4:33 PM yesterday
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
Bailo logic: The Scouts state definitively that no kids in their charge are meant to be engaging in any sexual or sexualized behavior whatsoever, THEREFORE they are definitely a gay recruitment operation.
Because if there's one thing the gay agenda is all about, it's chastity.
(Also, "support their members," bahaha, sorry apparently I am 14)
Because if there's one thing the gay agenda is all about, it's chastity.
(Also, "support their members," bahaha, sorry apparently I am 14)
4:06 PM yesterday
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
balderdash commented on Boy Scouts Lift Ban on Gay Members.
It is actually a hell of a good start, because it contains the tacit admission that there even are gay kids! Underneath the mollifying language and the stupid bigoted compromises, and doubtless in a way that largely escapes the old men who composed it, it's a repudiation of the idea of "choosing" to be gay and the bigots who hold it. Hooray! That's one big happy step.
They'll come around on the atheists thing eventually, I think. May take some time. Meanwhile you can tell them you're Unitarian, which isn't perfect but it's a nice temporary workaround if the issue comes up. The UUA has their own beef with the Scouts, of course, but they're still allowed. And yes, yes, I know that rather delicately avoids the issue of being true to yourself and standing up for your beliefs, and I am in fact a firm atheist myself, so let's just have that argument another day, okay? I know it's a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as homophobia. When I was in the BSA I heard homophobic slurs every day* and I don't think anyone ever, not even once, asked me about my religion.
More...
They'll come around on the atheists thing eventually, I think. May take some time. Meanwhile you can tell them you're Unitarian, which isn't perfect but it's a nice temporary workaround if the issue comes up. The UUA has their own beef with the Scouts, of course, but they're still allowed. And yes, yes, I know that rather delicately avoids the issue of being true to yourself and standing up for your beliefs, and I am in fact a firm atheist myself, so let's just have that argument another day, okay? I know it's a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as homophobia. When I was in the BSA I heard homophobic slurs every day* and I don't think anyone ever, not even once, asked me about my religion.
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I've been reading and listening to Rebecca for several years in various venues, while doing my best to stay out of the blood feuds of the last couple years as the skeptical and atheist movements tear themselves apart, and I don't mean to be rude, but I don't know how else to say this: I think you're kind of full of it.
She's gotten pretty outspoken about sexual harassment and feminism in skepticism, and I guess if that's the "line" one must "toe" then maybe you have some kind of point, but it's a misguided point at best when it's made as a criticism against someone whose original sin here, let's not forget, was to make a blog post telling a story about an anonymous(!) guy who cornered her in a closed space late at night to proposition her, in which she said, quite mildly, "That was not a good plan and you should probably not do things like that."
And now, somehow, that's escalated into people like yourselves decrying her shrill radical feminism even though I'm freely prepared to wager you've not followed the "scandals" in question and never read anything she's written outside of a few tweets or out-of-context quips. Am I wrong? Please tell me I'm wrong. I'd love to be. I'd love to think you already know that some gentle pushback against harassment and inappropriate interpersonal conduct resulted in a multi-year torrent of rape- and death-threats, and still somehow think she's the driving force behind the ensuing conflict.