- We need better atheists: The smug humanism of Lawrence Krauss – And the review of The Unbelievers also in the Village Voice. From Sarah.
- Female developers can’t even submit a game to Greenlight without harassment – Zoe Quinn took her game off Greenlight after receiving sexually harassing phone calls. Now she’s put it back up and is sharing her story. From CriticalDragon1177.
- New princesses rescue girls from a distressed damselhood – And fight against GMOs! Wait….what? From Audrey.
- The ghost of Darwin past – Appreciate what you have…or don’t.
The comment thread on the Zoe Quinn piece is quite a piece of work.
The usual crowd claiming that the ‘real victims’ are the people whose abusive is being pointed out. Its like watching Fox News reporting on racism.
Harassment is a really big problem in the online gaming world and it is shrinking the market for the games.
Phillip Hallam-Baker,
Sounds like something for Man Boobz
Fixing it is actually a serious research problem. I am pretty sure that an answer would be worth serious money to Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Steam etc.
I’ve played her game, too, and it’s really interesting. It’s great she’s speaking out about the harassment and from the comments on her Greenlight page now, a lot of people are angry about the treatment she received.
Amanda,
Glad to hear that. They should be.
I don’t like Lawrence Krauss at all but this guy really doesn’t like his pants.
I saw ‘The Unbelievers’ (and even showed up in it for a fraction of a second in the Reason Rally segment), and while I certainly have issues with Krauss myself (after that post on Skepchick linked in the article above) the review seems a bit excessively harsh regarding his behavior specifically in the movie. He was smug, as per usual, but the review seems hyperbolic to me. And it misses out on critiquing something else (besides it being not a very engaging documentary for aesthetic reasons in my opinion). There are 18 white men that are featured, who speak, including Dawkins and Krauss. Three women: Sarah Silverman, Cameron Diaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali was also the ONLY atheist person of color. She was also the ONLY ex-Muslim.
Here’s the list of the white dudes:
Woody Allen
Daniel C. Dennett
Ricky Gervais
Sam Harris
Stephen Hawking
Werner Herzog
Eddie Izzard
Penn Jillette
Cormac McCarthy
Ian McEwan
Tim Minchin
James Morrison
Paul Provenza
Bill Pullman
James Randi
Adam Savage
A pedestrian documentary rehashing much of the same talking points we’ve heard in the atheist sphere for years, that you can glean from YouTube, shown to smaller audiences than that website could provide, makes little sense to me. And once again, a missed opportunity. Having mostly white, male celebrity faces kinda punctuates how absolutely tone deaf this community can be at diversity outreach.
I really wish I hadn’t ended up for a split second in this movie as a “background” Asian (the Singapore Atheists got a few seconds with the camera on them). Though, I guess it could have been worse, as the only other POCs who were “heard” in the movie were the fundamentalist Islamist protesters outside the Atheist Convention in Sydney.
Ugh, 18 white dudes, really? That is both unsurprising and disappointing.
And you make a really good point. Yeah, smugness is pervasive (especially with all those old white dudes) but the lack of diversity in the film is just…ugh.
“We need better atheists: The smug humanism of Lawrence Krauss”
smugmanism?
wait, that sounds like something else…. [/gutter-level contribution of the day]
I suppose I’m mildly disappointed that someone thinks Krauss isn’t funny, diplomatic, or charismatic. I haven’t seen this film, so I have no real judgement about how it depicts him. I have seen the film of the lecture that is the basis for his book The Universe from Nothing. I thought he was affable and engaging in that piece. I don’t recall having a sense of smugness, but that’s a highly subjective judgment that’s difficult to get from a film like that. It’s perhaps not surprising, though, that any idol, to the extent that a cosmologist can be construed an idol, has feet of clay. From what I’ve read now and again, including here at Skepchick, Dawkins can be a right proper ass so that comparison isn’t compelling to me.
I support the idea behind the Guardian Princesses, but I’m a bit disappointed that the villain in the book described in the article appears to be genetically modified food. There are certainly huge issues with how we produce and distribute food, but I’m not sure that going “all natural” (whatever that means) is the way to go. Is “magic” a metaphor for “science” here?