All Thoughts Being Equal

My scientist friend Jay recently shared a Business Insider article on Facebook. In that, ah, interesting headline style of the late twentyteens, it proclaims: "The US just sent 10 new scientists to Congress, including an ocean expert, a nurse, and a biochemist. Here's the full list." Great, isn't it? And the good news continues into the article body: A record number of women are in the ranks [of the 116th Congress, just convened in 2019] — 127, according to Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. They include the first Muslim women, the first Somali-American, and the first Native American women. There are more scientists too. Diversity in our representative legislature can be good; our motto is E pluribus unum , after all, and the legislature should be representative of the plurality. Last November, 10 new science-credentialed candidates were elected: one senator and nine members of the House. But now "scientists" have become "sc...

Exercising freedom of conscience: A virtuous act for any American or Christian Dear sir, The First Amendment to the Constitution seems clear to me: civil protest and peaceful assembly are basic American liberties. They are also Christian liberties, which also seems obvious to me given the history of the Christian religion; but as I am not a Christian, perhaps I am wrong about that. Though I may not be a Christian, I still respect the many Christians over America's history who have stood their ground against the government---facing public ridicule, arrest, even physical injury or death---because of their beliefs. Specific examples that come to my mind are abolitionists, suffrage and civil rights proponents, and conscientious objectors. Moreover, I firmly believe that Americans or Christians have the right to assemble and protest against abortion or extending marriage beyond certain traditional interpretations, even if I just as firmly believe that the govern...

I attended my first community meeting today. Or rather, a "homeowners heckle a City representative" meeting, but I suppose that's par for the course. But what was the stated root of all this anger? Homelessness. And drugs. And drug-addicted homeless people coming for your children and valuables. You see, the City is proposing to lease a privately-owned lot for 1-2 years as a site for up to 50 "tiny houses," which will then be used as "low-barrier" housing for up to 70 homeless people who maybe can't get into a traditional shelter; one such "barrier" is drug use. In other words the City is shoving down the throats of the homeowners dozens of drug-maddened freaks not two blocks from a school (no, five schools!) where they can abduct, chop up and eat, fuck to death, experiment on, sew together into a second-grade-centipede, feed to their chained beasts, sacrifice to the Old Gods... our children! -- I may seem hyperbolic and s...

I've been almost entirely silent about Presidential politics during the 2016 primary season. I've also never been more grateful for leaving Facebook at in June of last year. The ridiculous rhetoric from people I respect just boggled my mind. And I learned I actually know someone who (at least at the time, and apparently not as a joke) wanted to vote for Donald fucking Trump. Now that we're moving into the general election, though, the choices have coalesced. And I have to speak up. I don't particularly feel like re-litigating the would-have-could-have-should-have counterfactuals of the primaries. I was sick of the Bernie v. Hillary nonsense (in my view the vast majority was utter nonsense) around the end of March. And any counterfactuals about the course of the Republican party (movement conservatism in general) need to start... oh, probably around the Goldwater candidacy before they become serious. So let's take as given that the 2016 Presidential nominees are H...

Now that we've seen why Western Washington University decided (and was justified, in my view) to cancel classes for Tuesday, 24 November 2015, in response to racist and threatening comments on the anonymous social media shithole application Yik Yak, let's look at the reaction from the students and the community. Was their response justified? I don't think so. This post is a partial follow-up to: On the rigged-world fallacy and pullback error , Rhetorical imperialism I. Let's get this out of the way first: of the two "camps," so to speak, of students who disagreed with President Bruce Shepard's decision to suspend classes, the ones who thought classes shouldn't have been suspended have a very weak position. Now, there wasn't a lot of publicity of the various posts made, so I can understand why—at the time—some people might have thought the class cancellation was the wrong call. I hope that since those posts have come to light, those peop...

This post is a follow up to the AS Elections series: Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 . This post series of posts is going to be a rather odd one. The first few sections I wrote under the intended title of "AS Elections 2015: Representation Without Representation," addressing the initial mascot stupidity and the messaging of the WWU Associated Students. Then some shit went down, and things became, well, problematic . I can't in good conscience keep the rest of my thoughts under the same title, so I'm adding this intro by way of disclaimer. Yes , I have another post about the racist pricks who decided it would be "top kek" to "joke" on anonymous social media about lynching people. I also have some criticism of the WWU AS, though, and more importantly I don't want one criticism obscuring the other. Since the AS did some questionable things first (and I'll make a hub post with a timeline, maybe) this critique comes first. Here we go: I. ...