Call Pat Robertson! January 18, 2010
Really!
Call Pat Robertson’s ’700 Club’ @ 1 (800) 759-0700 to give your opinion of his comments about Haiti (or his comments about anything, for that matter). It costs them about $1 to pick up each 800 call. A million calls costs them a million dollars. Tell your friends!
Thanks, TJ! (This only works from within the US, sadly. Outside the US, you’re paying.)
Recognition for Women of Steel January 17, 2010
I’ve just been reading about the Women of Steel - women who worked in factories in the UK during Word War II:
it fell to the women of the city to keep the steel mills working and during the course of the conflict, thousands juggled family life with the demands of heavy industry … But when peacetime came they were unceremoniously dumped from their jobs – their vital role on the home front largely forgotten.
Last week they received recognition for their work from the Ministry of Defence.
To visitor # 1,000,000 January 16, 2010
Today is the day of the one millionth visitor to this blog. We don’t know who you are, but we are very grateful to you and the 999,999 visitors before you. Our audience in many, many ways makes all the difference.
Even if you do not comment, wordpress happily tells us about which posts you clicked on, and which you didn’t, whoever you are.
By the way, Jender started the blog, so we need to give her a huge thanks too!
(It turns that even a cat gif can be as uncooperative as the real thing. The gif is animated. But does it move? No. Click on it, though, and you’ll see what a sweet, clean cat she is.)
A Republican in Kennedy’s Seat?? January 15, 2010
A new poll shows that Ted Kennedy’s seat could go to a Republican on Tuesday. That’s right. Massachusetts could send a Republican to the Senate. Yeearrrghhhhh! If you’ve got friends in Massachusetts, make sure they know how important it is to vote for Demcrat Martha Coakley. (I imagine it’s all to easy to just assume the seat is safe.) And if you’re anywhere near Massachusetts, do consider helping out.
X-Phi, Gender and Intuitions January 14, 2010
Wesley sends us a link to a blog post which begins:
Since Plato, intuitions have played considerable evidentiary roles in shaping philosophical discourse. Yet, given the gender imbalance in professional academic philosophy today, intuitions imported from the armchair mostly belong to a bunch of men. But do the epistemic intuitions of male philosophy professors represent consensus? A growing body of empirical evidence suggests they don’t.
In a new paper [Gender and Epistemic Intuition], I present a series of experimental studies showing that men and women intuit about important epistemological thought experiments in surprisingly different ways…
Check it out and weigh in! And come back here to tell us about it.
A response to the argument from evil: Shame, shame on Pat Robertson! January 14, 2010
Looking at the horrible catastrophe in Haiti, one might find oneself attracted to the argument from evil.
That argument can be casually put like this: There is evil in the world that an all-good, all-powerful God would not permit; so there cannot be such a God.
The argument is vulnerable to a number of objections. One of them is that it is humans who bring evil to the creation. Thus some human cause great harm, pain and suffering to others. God permits this because it is better, the counterargument goes, to have a world with human free choice than one with no evil at all.
This defense of theism, however problematic it might be, does not seem to address the evil resulting from natural catastrophies, ones that are not the result of human choice.
Still, we shouldn’t be too surprised that someone might try to argue that some natural catastrophies are also due to human choice. So we might point out the ways in which natural catastrophies in various religious texts seems to constitute an evaluation of human actions.
It’s another step to take a present catastrophe and blame it on the people because of their ancestors’ actions. But Pat Robertson has descended to the occasion. To his shame:
Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.Officials fear more than 100,000 people have died as a result of Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti.
Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.”
The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ “
Meanwhile, apparently Rush Limbaugh is saying that Obama’s public response to Haiti shows he is trying to curry favor with people of color.
And some of us thought that we had actually reached the lowest points in political discourse earlier. Just shows that there are depts one cannot readily imagine.
Janus-faced: A beginning of the semester quiz: Addition January 13, 2010
Introductory addition: We’ve struggled on this blog a number of times with finding the right rhetoric to call attention to the fact that some conferences are in effect all male, thus contributing to further marginalizing women in the profession. It’s easy to praise the precedent-breaking conferences like the Auburn one, few though they are, but the others are harder. We do not want to report it in the way one reports the weather, say. It isn’t inevitable, it is the product of human decisions (if not the decision to privilege men as such), and so on. At the same time, many of the members of the blog do not want to issue strong judgments about members of the profession who may, after all, be well-meaning.
Further, we are convinced that having women speakers makes a potentially important contribution to raising the quality of the content of a conference. New ideas, as network theory insists, tend to come from the periphery, not the center. The inclusion of women philosophers is important for a number of reasons.
Now there’s a worry that my attempt to call attention to the two very different ways these conferences are organized obscures more than it reveals. Hopefully this introduction addition helps! This is serious stuff.)
——————————–
We all know that Janus, the Roman god, had two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward. Now, in one hundred words or less, describe why these two conferences might remind one of Janus. Before you start writing, you may want to review the material here.
Conference One: Auburn Philosophy Conference
Topic of the 2010 Conference:
Ontology of Ordinary ObjectsKeynote Speakers:
Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Amie Thomasson, University of Miami
Kathrin Koslicki, University of Colorado, BoulderParticipants
Karen Bennett, Cornell University
Crawford Elder, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Thomas Hofweber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Paul Hovda, Reed College
Kris McDaniel, Syracuse University
L.A. Paul, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Brian Epstein, Tufts University
Conference Number Two: 2nd Copenhagen Conference in Epistemology:
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
AUGUST 19-20, 2010CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Speakers include David Christensen (Brown), Jerry Gaus (Arizona),
Stephan Hartmann (Tilburg), Rainer Hegselmann (Bayreuth), Vincent
Hendricks (Copenhagen), Michael Lynch (UConn), Erik J. Olsson (Lund),
and Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh).
The second is from a cfp.
(Thanks to JT for the first and AFEMMSS-L for the second.)
“Thousands may be dead”: Donations to Help in Haiti January 13, 2010
It is a catastrophe. If you want to help by making a donation, think of trying:
Medecins Sans Frontiers / Doctors without Borders (This link gives you a list of links for online donations from various countries; note the US link at the bottom of the page.)
The Red Cross (Note that donations here go to a general relief fund; if you want to specify Haiti, you’ll need to mail it in.)
It is hard to tell whether funds in some cases will go into a general fund or will be dedicated to Haitian relief efforts.
From the US State Department:
To help, text “HAITI” to “90999″ and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill. Or visit Red Cross and Mercy Corps to contribute. Also call 1-888-407-4747
Imagine this … a new role for implicit attitudes January 12, 2010
Imagine this: You are about to give a paper at a fairly demanding conference. A lot of people in the audience are senior and highly respected researchers. You start out by telling everyone how very glad you are to be in the midst of such great thinkers, that you expect to learn so much at the conference, and that the very idea that they will think for a short time about your work is very exciting to you.
Here’s the surprise: It might work. The one time I have seen this in action, it very much did work. It was one of those conferences where the moderators call almost exclusively on men, but there was a very noticeable exception. That’s right, the person thrilled to be there.
That isn’t actually all that surprising to some recent researchers. Obviously manipulative flattery can work very well. And here’s the surprising thing: it works even when the audience consciously identifies it as such and resolves not to be influenced.
In addition to describing the new store’s offerings, the ad lauded readers for their impeccable sense of style and eye for high fashion. While participants overwhelmingly categorized the pamphlet as flattery with the ulterior motive of pushing blouses, the experimenters were more interested in how their attitudes would be influenced at the implicit level. Might participants develop a non-conscious positive association with the department store, even after rejecting the ad as meaningless puffery? And if so, would this implicit reaction be a better predictor of decisions and behavior down the road? Will even the people who are wise to advertising tricks end up at the register, credit card in hand?
It turns out that implicit attitudes towards the store were more positive than explicit attitudes. They were also better predictors of reported likelihood of making future purchases, as well as likelihood of joining the store’s club. So it seems that while participants quickly dismissed these ads at the explicit level, the flattery was exerting an important effect outside their awareness.</blockquote>
I’m afraid it’s evolution and the brain at work. We act, and often have to act, before conscious deliberation can do much. Our brain gets us aligned with what’s going on in the environment in ways that are pre-conscious and not necessary sensitive to conscious rational thought, which is certainly liable to mess things things up anyway. (As Hume saw centuries ago.) Unfortunately, the pre- or un-conscious systems may not be all that good at separating the real from the fake.
In the current case, our susceptibility to the fake messages varies with how much we need to be cheered up about ourselves, the researchers claim. If you’re feeling good about yourself, the flattery will have less effect. But here again this is all quite independent of what you’re consciously thinking about it all.
There’s a clear lesson here for students and junior faculty. If you’re worried about how you’ll be judged, you know what to do! Who cares if it is obvious.
Mind you, the effect you have might depend on how well your target approximates a normal human being. You need to be extra careful in academia.
Early 19th century midwifery illustrated January 12, 2010
I ran into this wonderful post on 19th century midwifery pictures (via BibliOdyssey on twitter).
Two things that particularly struck me. One is (related to the pic on the right), I quote:
The idea was that the male physician could put his fingers wherever he wanted, but common decency in post-Empire France (or mid 19th-century America, for that matter) prevented him from actually looking.
Now that is curious. I have been musing on a post on sexual harassment in the middle east and one thing that struck me from the report of that conference is that
In Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 percent of women in a published study reported harassment, specifically pinching.
So that is an interesting similarity I thought: maybe seeing the woman is considered haram (not allowed), but touching can be excused, somehow?
I wonder how that works. Apparently that worked (for professionals at least) in 19th century France.
The other thing I noted was the lovely, more than “plus sized model” woman in the comparison of men and women (on the left).
In an age where women are photoshopped to ridiculous proportions, it was quite refreshing to see a woman with common fat distribution.
I do realise that skinny women are biased against. However, the number of women with quite normal proportions that are biased against for being “fat”, like the woman in this ancient picture would be considered outrageously fat, reached some sort of sad apex.
That is, I hope it is an apex: it can only get better, right?
Anyway, have a look at that site, it’s delightful.
In recognition of Mary Daly January 11, 2010
I was working on my syllabus for an upcoming course on Feminism & Philosophy, when Sarah Hoagland’s email to the FEAST list linking to an online tribute to Mary Daly arrived. (It’s quite nice, a bit long at eight minutes but how quickly must we brush past a life, after all?)
Over the years I have let Mary Daly slip from my syllabus, but I do indeed tend to reintroduce authors to syllabi when they, well, when they die. Is that odd? I had similarly come to neglect Arne Naess in my environmental philosophy course, but his recent death seemed to make recognition of his foundational work in Deep Ecology pressing. It seems important to do; perhaps it reflects some foolish fear of one’s death leading to being forgotten. For whatever reason, this old hag is going to assign a little Mary Daly, duly noting to the class her recent passing.
May you find Pure Lust in the new year.
‘Ill-conceived, crass and stupid’ January 10, 2010
Says Mumsnet co-founder about the following ad campaign:
Sounds about right. The ad from the Beta agency, supposed to promote the effectiveness of poster ads, has now been pulled. More here.
The Sunday Cat could have a super job in Japan January 9, 2010
Just like Tama:
One could get a bit worried about this cat’s actual status (animal? stuffed toy? money source?), but it is also possible that she enjoys a lot of the attention. My cats would have bitten everyone in sight by now:
Once Upon a Time January 9, 2010
You must have heard this story:
A young man goes out on his not necessarily very well defined quest. As the story unfolds it turns out that he has to kill an evil older guy and in return he’s going to get the kingdom and its princess.
There are all sorts of variations, of course. In the biggest bad luck version, he gets the queen, who turns out to be mother. In some versions, he’s really just out to destroy a potential iconic weapon. But how about the version in which the guy is white, the princess and the people of the kingdom are native people of color who need him, and his grasp of technology, to save their land. And he turns out to be the most magical of all. Anyone up for post-colonial theory?
The very latest version of the story must be that in Avatar. Its visual beauty, along with its employment of a classic myth of self-realization, could amount to a sustained display of Jungian theory archetyptes. But should we still be telling the white hero version of the story? Perhaps we should look at the life ever after to examine the very idea of someone saving us or us saving others.
David Brooks thinks the movie is pretty distasteful:
Still, would it be totally annoying to point out that the whole White Messiah fable, especially as Cameron [the director/writer/producer] applies it, is kind of offensive?
It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.
It might be that Cameron was even trying through some of it to do the sort of reverse valorization that some feminists have been attracted to; that is, where one keeps the dichotomies but says that those qualities on the subordinate side are really superior. If so, arguably that is not sustained all the way through, despite a couple of damning references to the Iraq war.
I did actually feel it pulled on all sorts of themes in myths that can profoundly engage us. But should it have told that version? Can we understand it in a way that makes it less than pretty racist? What do you think?
It turns out that the web is full of discussion of the racism of the movie. There are some interesting pieces, including this argument that it bashes white people, which might be a good piece for a critical reasoning moment with students.
Malcom Gladwell, Oprah Winfrey and Implicit Biases January 8, 2010
Extremely serious, very informative if you are new to the area, but also great fun!
The topic here is race, but you can see how it could apply to associations with gender. The bad news, of course, is that what we feel implicitly is a matter of the images in our culture. We’re going to have to change the culture, including creating occasions when we and others have the positive experiences needed.
H/T to The Situationist, where you can find more links to their posts on bias AND a link to the IAT itself.
Thanks, BMW January 8, 2010
For those who cannot read the text: “You know you’re not the first. But do you really care?” As they say in Ms. Magazine, no freaking comment:
Thanks to BeBe for the tip. I guess.
Justice and happiness not at odds in the home, phew January 8, 2010
Married couples who share home responsibilities and share breadwinning responsibilities are happier, Canadian researchers found. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario said couples who “share roles,” where each partner’s unpaid work is within 40 percent to 60 percent of the total unpaid work, report higher average measures of happiness and life satisfaction than those in other family models. The researchers suggest the shared roles model is advantageous to society in terms of gender equity and its ability to maximize labor force participation by all adults. It also leaves women less vulnerable in the case of separation, divorce or death of a spouse. The researchers recommend that the government pursue policies which encourage this division of work in the home. One report on this research is here. The full report, Models of Earning and Caring: Trends, Determinants and Implications, is here.
A dye to restore the youthful pink colour back to your labia January 7, 2010
I am not making this up. Look what I found (via Dangerous Minds)!
It’s called My new pink button and it’s described as
a simple to use Genital Cosmetic Colorant that restores the “Pink” back to a Women’s Genitals
I have no idea why they put “Pink” between quotation marks, although there is a choice of four different colours (Marilyn, Betty, Ginger and Audrey) that are not all exactly pink…
Not sure if this tops the vagina mints, but it’s a close runner up, surely?
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