Apparently Richard Dawkins was worried that people might have forgotten what an asshat he is. So, helpful fellow that he is, he decided to give us all a demonstration of why he’s one of the atheist movement’s biggest liabilities, a “humanist” who has trouble remembering to act human.
Earlier today Dawkins decided, for some reason, that he needed to remind the people of the world of a fairly basic point of logic, and so he took to Twitter and thumbed out this little thought:
However petulantly phrased this is, the basic logic is sound: If I say that Hitler was worse than Stalin, I’m not endorsing either Hitler or Stalin. Unless I add “and Stalin was totally awesome and I endorse him” at the end.
The trouble is that Dawkins didn’t stop with this one tweet. He decided to illustrate his point with some examples. Some really terrible examples.
Yep, that’s right. He decided to do what comedians call a “callback” to some terrible comments he made last year about what he perversely described as “mild pedophilia.” And then he added asshattery to asshattery by suggesting a similar distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape.”
Anyone seeing these comments as insensitive twaddle designed to minimize both “mild” pedophilia and date rape has good reason to do so. As you may recall, in the earlier controversy about so-called “mild” pedophilia, Dawkins told an interviewer for the Times magazine that
I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.
He went on to tell the interviewer that when he was a child one of his school masters had “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” But, he added, he didn’t think that this sort of “mild touching up” had done him, or any of the classmates also victimized by the teacher, any “lasting harm.”
Huh. If Dawkins says that a teacher groping him was no big deal, I guess this kind of “mild” abuse shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, either, huh?
I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of logical fallacy here.
Given his history of minimizing these “mild” sexual crimes, it’s not a surprise that his crass tweets today inspired a bit of a twitterstorm.
Dawkins has responded with his typical petulance, and has stubbornly defended his comments as an exercise in pure logic that his critics are too irrational to understand.
What I have learned today is that there are people on Twitter who think in absolutist terms, to an extent I wouldn't have believed possible.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
.@mikester8821 Yes, it is so obvious it is painful. But they aren't debating, they are emoting.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
If you take a few moments to go through his timeline you’ll find many more tweets and retweets reiterating this “argument.” Dawkins is not the sort of person to admit to mistakes. Indeed, he so regularly puts his foot in his mouth it’s hard not to conclude that he must like the taste of shoe leather.
But these recurring controversies can’t be doing much for his reputation. Indeed, they seem to cause more and more people to wonder why anyone takes Dawkins seriously on any subject other than biology. Even his critics on Twitter are growing a bit weary.
https://twitter.com/somegreybloke/status/494045464308629505
https://twitter.com/markleggett/status/494044606342782977
https://twitter.com/endorathewitch/status/494071064008597504
Good lord. Look at Dawkins feed. Like every third tweet (or sequence) is something deplorable.
— 🦇VaginoplASCII🦇 (@nataliereed84) July 29, 2014
It seems that no matter what point Richard Dawkins tries to make, he only ever ends up proving that Richard Dawkins is a tosspot.
— Steph. 🏳️⚧️ (@EccentricSteph) July 29, 2014
Seems like it. I’m beginning to wonder why any atheists — at least those who are not also asshats — continue to think of Dawkins as an ally of any kind.
oh noes, I missed a semi-colon, it won’t compile.
Maltesers … Crunchie bars … VIOLET CRUMBLE …
All this complicated facial hair is so far outside my experience. With Mr C it’s either “has facial hair” or “has shaved” – no shaping involved.
Mr K liked changing his quite often, his haircut too (he did not wear wigs as some nitwits claim). Shorter and curlier, longer and less curly, more beard, less beard, more ‘tache, less ‘tache.
And Jaffas even longer than that in Australia. Of course, you have to be as old as me to remember the pure glee aroused when someone sort of accidentally on purpose dropped a handful of these hard round bouncy things on the sloping wooden floors of old picture theatres. Bonus points if you were up in the highest mezzanine rows so that they bounced, bounced, bounced … all the way down to the front. (It was never me, I was a bit of a goody two shoes but I could snigger and giggle along with more adventurous friends. And I liked eating Jaffas anyway.)
As for coffee. Are Starbucks still in Fed Square? I thought they took their bat and ball and went home when they found that people who had been introduced to coffee by Greeks and Italians just wouldn’t drink the awful stuff.
I learnt early on that my hair was too damn curly to listen to me, so all that creative energy and dashed dreams went into my facial hair 😛
And now I must away to bed and dream of owning a private jet because thanks to this damned chocolate conversation I have a craving for both Thornton’s truffles and Fremantle chocolates, and Cassandra’s mentioning of wine gums and maltesers has sent me on a wave of nostalgia so I need to stop in on South Africa on the way to pick up some childhood favorites.
*shakes fist at all of Mammothdom*
Nite guys
Good heavens! I’ve made it to the moderation queue. Another gold star day!
Thornton’s! That’s one of the things I miss about the UK at Christmas.
(Is mentioning a holiday affiliated with religion OK or do I have to go to New Atheism Jail for that too, even if for me it’s the holiday that celebrates food and presents, not Jesus?)
mildlymagnificent – goonness knows why you were modded, but I’ve fixed it. Probably the thing David’s mentioned, the spam/mod filters going silly when there’s a lot of traffic.
I never did the rolling the Jaffas thing either, but I do remember the ads and the idea!
Starbucks were still in Fed Square last time I was there a few months back. Not all their shops got culled, though I think it was about 80% of them. I see they handed over to the mob who run 7/11 back in May.
declarative statements detected;
feminists detected;
activateDawkinsBot;
println(“the spam/mod filters going silly when there’s a lot of traffic”);
println(“I have a craving for both Thornton’s truffles and Fremantle chocolates”);
println(“If you think that’s an endorsement of spam/mod filters going silly, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to think logically.”);
feminists==0;
deactivateDawkinsBot;
Borderline, I think.
I can think logically!
Spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam.
I have been wondering about a Woody bot which will just take one sentence entirely at random from the posts on the AVfM site. I just can’t be bothered with programming the html sweep that I’ll need to generate the text file. That can all be done in R.
Ah Woody. He’s like that little puppy that doesn’t know any better and keeps coming inside to piddle on the carpet.
Except puppies are cute and trainable.
Maddie has found the best place to be on a very cold day.
Pecunium, sorry to confuse, and thanks for the pen info, idk, maybe it’ll be enough for him to track it down.
Sweet tarts, never eating those again. I decided to turn the end of New Who season one into a drinking game, “never drink to Dalek diatribes” ended up written on the message board after I just HAD to do one more shot in honor of the Bad Wolf…and then plaster a wall and the bathroom with sweet tarts (and then, instantly sober, clean up after myself). Hey don’t taste good on the return trip!
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the new doctor, anyone else watch Torchwood’s Children of Earth miniseries? Yeah, that guy cannot be the doctor, particularly not when Timey Whimey would imply that the doctor CAUSED THAT SHIT.
Generally I enjoyed Torchwood instead of some of the character subarcs, which were like: really, would a person in that profession exhibit really non-professional behaviour like that?
You talking about Capaldi, Argenti? That series hasn’t shown here yet. I’m looking forward to seeing him. First, I like him, second, I would rather see an older Doctor again.
That’s so cute, is that a chenille yarn? How’s she going with the meds/food?
Apropos of absolutely nothing, I cannot find the WHTM thread where the best BB cream was decided. I am hoping to buy some, and I am very disappointed I can’t locate the one that people tended to agree was best. 🙁
For the cheap stuff, Skin 79. Which one depends on your skin tone and how dry/oily you are.
In my 20s to early 30s, which is the last time I really wore foundation, I used to wear http://www.shiseido.com/powdery-foundation/9990000000027,en_US,pd.html&cgid=makeup-face-foundation&&dwvar_9990000000027_color=00027_I00 and if I wanted light coverage, I just wouldn’t wet the sponge.
Whenever I tried liquid foundation, it went on way too think. I was thinking of something not too far removed from a tinted moisturiser. I’m combination skin now, with oily T zone still.
It went on way too thick. I did not apply it directly to my brain, nor did I snort it. That was a Mary Quant(sp?) from when I was a teenager and it put me off liquid foundations for life.
For Skin 79 BB creams, the orange and the green are very light/pale, pink, gold, and purple are light to medium. There’s a new bronze one that I haven’t tried that’s designed to work for darker skin, but in terms of where it falls on say the MAC scale I have no idea. I’m a MAC NW25 or so if I don’t have a tan and pink, gold, and purple all work for me. BB cream should go on very light, at least the original Korean ones, and can be built up for more coverage.
If more coverage is what you want then you probably want Lioele’s Beyond the Solution or Triple the Solution, but those are both very pale. Missha’s BB creams actually come in shades that you can pick and are OK, but don’t feel as good on the skin as the Skin. BRTC’s BB creams are great too, and the Jasmine Water is particularly good for dry skin, but again, pretty pale. There are also a bunch of fancier and more expensive ones, but I’d suggest trying the cheaper ones first to see if you even like BB cream before investing in one of those.
You might want to check out this website even though they’re too far from you to ship just for the reviews.
[LASER DEATH CAT LINK REMOVAL]
The American BB creams are mostly useless thus far, IMO. Dior makes a more traditional BB cream but it’s super expensive even by Dior standards.
LOL wrong link. Kittehs, can you remove that?
Correct link
http://prettyandcute.com/Makeup/Face/BB-Creams-c130/
Kitteh, yep, that’s the one. And I’ve no problem with an older doctor, just not him. It hasn’t aired here yet either, so maybe my opinion will change, but he played a baddie on Torchwood and it’s the same universe and I can’t reconcile that. (Older doctor, fine, female doctor, fine, non-white doctor, fine, gay or bi doctor, also fine [though idk about ten! he certainly didn’t mind kissing Jack], etc. previous whoverse baddie as the doctor? Brain overload, shut down sequence initiating)
I’m a winter, who pretty much wore blue all her teenage years, then branched out to purple and black. Emerald looks great on me too, so does a strong yellow and I can get away with mustard, but anything pastel (citris?) makes me look washed out. White is awful on me, as is brown, and I have to be very careful with red. Strong pink looks great, but pastel is bleh. I’ll see where I lie on the MAC scale.
White is actually super flattering worn next to the face on me. Shame I don’t trust myself not to spill coffee/tea/food on it and thus rarely wear it