Podcast Available

The podcast for the Skeptically Speaking on which I was a guest, on the topic of Skepticism and Race, is available here. Desiree, Girl 6 and LaVerne were great, and I've gotten a bit of feedback that I didn't suck either. Check it out.

Also, during the show, a plug was made for a new speakers bureau (contact clearinghouse) for skeptical speakers, run by the Grassroots Skeptics. I highly recommend that if you are willing and able to speak publicly or deal with the media on even one topic of skeptical interest, you sign up. If you know people who apply critical thinking to an underrepresented topic or are members of an underrepresented group, please bug them until they sign up as well. More and different voices reach more and different ears. (If that description applies to you, I'll assume you've already gotten the point and are going to sign up now.)

Skepticism and Race

I will be on the radio this Friday evening to talk about skepticism and race, along with Girl 6 and LaVerne Knight-West.

On the next episode of Skeptically Speaking, a panel discussion on skepticism and race. Is the face of modern skepticism really as monochrome as it appears? How do we make our message appeal to a broader, more diverse audience? And how do racial demographics influence belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal?

Why me? Well, the easy answer is that I'm a fill-in for someone who couldn't be on the show. The slightly longer answer is that lack of diversity isn't just a problem for ethnic minorities. It has an effect on everyone's goals, and it requires effort from everyone to get it right. I'm very much looking forward to the show.

If you're interested in the topic, please submit a question on the show's site. I'll point to the podcast when it's available.

Sure Racism Is So Over

Yup, it's entirely not a factor in politics or social outcomes.


[/choking sarcasm] And let us not forget that those are the numbers who were willing to tell a pollster their socially unacceptable thoughts on the matter.

At the Corner of Race and Class

Every once in a while, a number of discussions in my personal blogosphere converge. In this case, it's the discussion of race and IQ that I restarted and continued, and which has attempted to take over Greg Laden's Blog for the last couple of weeks, the discussion of the racist connotations of "redneck" by bikemonkey being overwhelmed by the discussion of "redneck" as a classist term, Will Shetterly's ongoing critique of the antiracist community's failure to deal with classism as an underpinning of racism, and Eric Michael Johnson's deconstruction of social Darwinism. It's time to say a few words about the intersection of race and class.

I'm taking on the light, uncontentious topic over at Quiche Moraine.

Irish Blasphemy Law, Take Two

It's really hard to miss that the Irish have a new blasphemy law that took effect at the start of the year. However, it's relatively easy to miss that there was a reason, even a moderately good reason, aside from religious prejudice that the law was made. Thers, at Whiskey Fire, isn't going to let us do that.

I am rarely happy with calling laws like this "backwards" or "medieval," because it's rarely a helpful way of understanding exactly why stuff like this gets proposed, or what the stakes are in any specific dispute. And I insist: It is always the specific dispute that matters, not how it fits into preconceived ideological frameworks, even ones I'm sympathetic to.

Go read for an interesting lesson in Irish history and modern sausage making.

I've had this open in a tab for a bit, but I believe the credit for pointing me to it goes to Bora.

Decimals Are a Girl's Best Friend

It's a lovely headline, that. It's also some fun new research.

A new study that looked at math scores for boys and girls in 69 countries corroborates her experience.

"There are no differences in girls' abilities in math," says Nicole Else-Quest, who led the study that analyzed the tests of nearly a half million students aged 14 to 16. "When they have the same resources boys have, nothing holds them back."

Her research linked individual achievement in test scores to the local status of women. In countries where men and women are perceived as equal, girls perform better in math. In Iceland, girls outperform boys; in Korea, boys outperform girls. In Canada, the difference in girls' and boys' scores is too small to be meaningful, Else-Quest said Wednesday.

Of course this means that people will step up to say, "Well, guys just have a greater range of math ability and the top mathematicians are just going to be guys." I strongly recommend they read this first.

Under Their Tenure

I'm feeling like crap for a number of reasons, including complications of the surgery and a plain old cold, so I haven't been posting regularly, but this did catch my attention today. If you've followed the long slog through the IQ arguments on Quiche Moraine, Greg Laden's Blog and here, you've caught Bryan Pesta saying that intellectual dishonesty would get anyone canned from a tenured university position.

Um, maybe not.

It’s official. Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald has made the leap from academia to racist activism, signing on with the American Third Position (ATP), a white supremacist political party established in October “to represent the unique political interests of White Americans.” As excellently reported by the O.C. Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano, MacDonald is partnering with local racist skinheads “to create a new political party” that hopes to “oppose and deport non-whites.” MacDonald is listed as the group’s director.

Until October, when ATP was established, MacDonald was better known for his anti-Semitic “research” purportedly proving that Jews are driven by a genetically programmed group evolutionary strategy to undermine and harm Western civilization. (The idea is that they do so in order to weaken “host societies” that might otherwise oppress or act out against the Jews.) In his academic works, MacDonald has suggested taxing Jews or restricting their access to university as ways of protecting white society.

Trust and Critical Thinking in Science Reporting: A Case Study

If you've been paying attention, you've heard me say before that I'm not a science blogger. However, over the weekend, I authored a guest post that was not merely science blogging but also blogging on a peer-reviewed publication. I wasn't thinking about it at the time, but it was an opportunity to apply some of my thoughts regarding my upcoming session on Trust and Critical Thinking for ScienceOnline, which seeks ideas on how to report science in a way that teaches readers to interact with information skeptically.

Given that, I thought I'd capture what I set out to do in my post. Mind you, all these strategies involve modeling critical thinking. I have no data on how effective modeling may be, but it's the best idea I have right now and it's fairly easy to do as a writer.

Let me know how I did at Quiche Moraine.

Reaction Times and IQ Tests

In the ongoing discussion about disparities between racial classifications on IQ tests, Dr. Bryan Pesta requested that we consider his paper, "Black-White differences on IQ and grades: The mediating role of elementary cognitive tasks." Because as he rightly points out, not everyone will have the background to evaluate the paper, I thought it would be helpful to discuss the paper in the context of the cognitive science literature.

Okay, this time I can't say I'm not doing science blogging. In order to take advantage of some of the functions of Research Blogging without the setup time, this one is posted at Greg Laden's Blog.

Tired of Christmas Music?

This, most decidedly, is not that.



And more Savage Aural Hotbed. Now with added saws.

Gaga, Palmer, Madonna

Amanda Palmer and her ukulele make some interesting points about popular art.

Readings in IQ and Intelligence

Apropos of the continuing tendency for white supremacists to show up crowing about IQ, here is some reading that may help people understand the history of IQ testing and its relationship to the complex phenomena that lumped under the term “intelligence.”

Find the list at Quiche Moraine.

Paint Me on Velvet

What do you get a very good friend who has almost everything he wants and really only wants for things you have no power to give him? Well, if he's an author with a sense of humor and a bare wall over the mantle that's been begging for art for years, you might get him this.


That's right. You give him a velvet painting of the cover art from his first book--in the "delightfully ostentatious golden ornate frame."

And how do you procure such a thing? You hire an agent to have the painting done in Tijuana, where they take velvet painting far more seriously than you do, and you end up with something frighteningly awesome (seen here just finished, pre-framing and shipping).


But how do you keep said author from discovering that something is afoot during all the arrangements? Well, you don't do what James did and start cackling about evil plans two months before Christmas, or chatter with your co-conspirators with shoulders hunched and heads tilted together. Luckily for us, Kelly is very good at compartmentalization and refused to do much speculation before the unveiling, because if I'd run misdirection, he'd really have known something was up. As he said, "From the way you said, 'Evil,' I suspected I was the victim."

Then you unveil it at a Christmas party with as many of the conspirators present as possible. You play a mariachi version of "La Bamba" to tell the world that the cheese factor is entirely intentional. Someone notes, "It's the first unveiling I've been to that wasn't a tombstone." Your friend is speechless for an hour for the first time since his wedding, and you are entirely satisfied.

Oh, yes, and you don't forget to tell John Scalzi that it's all his fault.

Artichoke-Crab Spread

Or, the joys of a well-stocked pantry.

It's holiday party time again. I was planning to bring cupcakes with a cream-cheese-based frosting to a party today, but one of the hosts started talking about all the baking she was doing, including cupcakes. Never "compete" with your host's cooking. So I was stuck for something to bring. I'd just gone grocery shopping, so I didn't want to head back to the store. After looking around, here's what I came up with.

Artichoke-Crab Spread

1 8-oz package of cream cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can artichoke hearts, drained
1 can crab meat, drained and liquid given to cat
4 cloves garlic
1-1/2 t. dried thyme
1 t. lemon juice
salt & freshly ground pepper to taste

Throw the cream cheese and sour cream in a bowl. Use one just a little bit larger than you expect to need. This isn't easy to mix.

Chop the artichoke hearts, chokes more finely than leaves. Add artichokes and crab meat to the bowl.

Mince the garlic. Chop the thyme slightly to break up the leaves. Add.

Drizzle lemon juice over the contents of the bowl. Add a heavy pinch of salt to begin. Go lightly on the pepper. With the thyme in the mix, you won't need as much as you might think.

Mash the ingredients into the cream cheese to break it apart. Once you've achieved a uniform consistency to the mix, taste. Add more salt and pepper if needed, but be aware that the flavors will not have blended yet.

Rest in the refrigerator to rehydrate the thyme and pepper for at least one hour.

Spread on crusty bread and nom.

Atheist Holiday Traditions

Yes, the church took Saturnalia and turned it into Christmas, but it's fun to pretend, Charlie Brown.