I’ve been reading a bit about the history of the textile industry lately, because I’m a dufus who will read any book my friends place in front of me.
But it’s actually interesting stuff, and I was struck by an aspect of that history that is also present in other areas; that being the very real phenomenon where developments or advances for the common good nevertheless have negative residual effects.
For example, the invention of the cotton gin had a profound positive effect on the textile industry, and that effect trickled down to bolster other industries, from agricultural to medical. But the invention was directly responsible for a resurgeance in the slave trade in the southern United States that by many accounts, was dying out in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Also, the massive production output of textile plants in European cities clothed and comforted millions, but children in cities like Manchester, England became all but slaves working in deplorable conditions.
So today’s question(s):
Does skeptical activism, obviously geared for the common good, nevertheless hurt some people? Who? How? What negative effects in the modern world that come about this way concern you most? Do you notice any negative residual effects in the “good” that you do personally?
Interesting tidbit: Since cotton wasn’t indigenous to Europe, some early Europeans were quite confused about the commodity. There was actually a pervasive belief that a plant produced sheep as its fruit, and that’s where cotton came from. Alexander the Great is said to have referred to cotton as “tree wool”.
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
Now that Skepchicamp is under our belt, it’s time for me to start kicking it into high gear for Skepchicon. Things are moving along nicely, and I have a solid guest list put together, with many returning faces, and a few fresh ones. Greg Laden and Stephanie Zvan will be back, as well as our good friend Dr Pamela Gay, Skepchicks Bug Girl, Maria Walters, myself, and Surly Amy (who will be selling her wares in the dealer’s room). We are still working on getting Rebecca to join us. We’ll keep you posted on that one. PZ Myers will once again attempt to join us. If the Germans detain him again, we may have to send minions to teach them a lesson. I’m very excited to announce two new and very special guests: Debbie Goddard of CFI and science and media maven Jennifer Ouellette!
On the fundraising front, I have good news: A couple of awesome readers have come forward with very generous donations, and an offer to match your subsequent donations. Big thanks to all of those who have contributed already. We have $578 left to reach our goal, and from this point on, your donation dollars will count for twice as much thanks to this wonderful matching offer. So really, we’re just looking for another $289 from you guys. This money will mostly help us pay for airfare and hotel for our out of town guests, and what’s left will cover party supplies and decorations. Any help you can offer is very much appreciated.
As of the time of posting, the Sofitel still has rooms available. Continue to watch the Skepchicon page and our Facebook group for more information.
No evidence accupuncture boosts chances of IVF baby – “There is no evidence acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine increase the chance of getting pregnant through IVF, fertility experts say in new guidance.” From Zoltan.
And in personal news, all you Bostonianss better prepare yourselves because I’ll be moving down there soon to attend grad school. I can’t wait to meet and get to know the Boston skeptic crew.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’
Isaac Asimov
Like many scientists, I feel that I spend an unfortunately large amount of time writing research grants. Having to devote so much time to finding money to do science (instead of actually doing science!) is one of the aspects of academia that I dislike. I actually meant to start writing this skepchick post earlier, but I just spent the last two hours working on an application for funds to attend the upcoming Goldschmidt geochemistry conference. [Read more →]
I am happy to bring you another edition of, The Skeptic Next Door! This edition brings you a lovely and crafty skeptic I discovered while out stalking a.real.girl at a drinking Skepchickally in San Diego. Allow me introduce the awesomeness of, Tawnya Mendonsa!
This is the inevitable, hilarious result the anti-vaccination brigade deserves: an article in The Daily Fail about a batty organization called Canine Health Concern that says vaccinated dogs are getting autism just like Jenny McCarthy says happens to the widdle people babies.
The best part is that the organization’s Grand High Contessa of Dumbassness Catherine O’Driscoll gave the Fail some beautiful quotes, all of which appear to be lifted directly from the kooks at Age of Autism but cleverly reworded to change “bebbies” to “puppehs”:
Why are you reading a wrap up of Saturday’s event on Wednesday? Because that’s how long it’s taken me to regain enough energy to write it. Hosting an unexpectedly large and popular and successful event when you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re sick, and you’re 7 months pregnant is no small feat! I highly recommend considering that if you happen to find yourself peeing on a stick seven days before you have your first Skepticamp planning meeting. I also highly recommend getting SurlyRamics and Skeptical Inquirer to sponsor your event for some really kick ass schwag to sell and hand out to your attendees! Even if you’re not pregnant!
But this isn’t about me or my poor life planning; this is about Skepchicamp. And ho-lee-shit did we blow the roof off Chicago last weekend! It was so great, I hear Oprah is planning on skipping town before we do another one!
A quick tip, though, before I get to the breaking down: If you end up with a venue issue and are forced to find a new one, and you find a new one and they tell you that it’s no problem for them to host a small and informal conference for 60 people, ask them if they actually have 60 chairs to accommodate your group. Then when you ask them how many people the room can actually hold since you are considering raising the head count, ask again how many chairs they will have for you. After being told that the room could easily hold 120+ people, I went ahead and raised the ticket maximum to 80. The room can easily hold 80 people, who are all standing, and who don’t have to make room for a “stage” and AV equipment. The room was not great for our size… and there weren’t enough chairs… and we found this out just 2 hours before the event. Lesson learned. (Though, thanks to being pregnant and sick, attendees were insistent that I always had a seat. Which was kind, generous, and really wonderful.)
The venue... 2 hours before the event!
As our slaves and gofers arrived at noon, I was tapped for jobs to assign because the planning committee showed up at 11:00 and finished everything that needed to be done. Way to be amazing and on top of everything, jerks!
At 12:15 pm the room was packed. And we were still waiting for another 50 or so people. [Panic and excitement sets in. The crew keeps kicking ass while I walk around saying, "Holy shit. We're doing this today!" Over and over again.]
Opening Ceremonies
1:00 pm, we get our MC, Matt Lowry – The Skeptical Teacher, on “stage” and he talks about how great everything is then has me mutter some incoherent rambling about how everyone is fantastic and this is unbelievable. But we started on time, and that’s my point.
Skepchick Panel, featuring Rebecca's head!
1:10 pm, I realize that I didn’t actually know Rebecca’s Skype name and that we had been trying to call some other Rebecca Watson for the last 10 minutes. I imagine the other Rebecca is used to it by now. I also imagine that she’s a homeopathic psychic Scientologist and she wasn’t on Skype that afternoon because she was out taking pictures of the Big Foot and Nessie honeymoon on a UFO. But that’s all irrelevant. We got a hold of the Good Rebecca in time for the Skepchicks to do a full one hour panel about Grassroots skepticism and have a Rebecca Watson Giant Head to lead the way. It was rad.
At 2:15 the real people started giving their talks. I found that boring so I left and came back for dinner at 5.
Ok. I didn’t.
But I’m not going to go into a play by play of each individual speaker because Don at Action Skeptics has already done it for me! He live blogged the entire event! And one thing I learned from reading that live blog is that even though I’m 7 months pregnant, I still have an impressive bladder… or perhaps my bladder is average and Don had an averse reaction to some deep dish pizza… or Don needed some alone time a lot because Skepchicamp was so great it was actually erotic. Actually, I’m just going to assume Don was really thirsty and stop thinking about why he pees so much.
Geez! Enough about Don peeing already! What is with you people and pee all the time? Can we move on? Please? [Read more →]
Speaking of, a UK pharmacist refused to serve a mother-of-two with a prescription for the contraceptive pill because it went against her religious beliefs. (From Jon.)
Kansas pastor Fred Phelps and his family run Westboro Baptist church totally hates your face, oh and the rest of you too. And they don’t just hate you. They pretty much hate everybody. If you are not familiar with the shenanigans of the vitriolic hate-spewing-sign-holding clan watch the video below. I really recommend you check it out cuz it’s creepy. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Did you see that? Did you see his kids? Did you see the little one sing at the end? They don’t even know what or why they hate. They just hate because that’s what they have been raised to do.
So in a nutshell, the big news of the day is that the family of a dead soldier sued the Phelps after they picketed their dead sons funeral with signs that said things like, “God hates soldiers” and “You’re in hell.” The family originally won an 11 million dollar settlement for invasion of privacy and emotional distress but the Phelps first negotiated the settlement down to 5 million and then had the case overturned on appeal. So now the family of the dead soldier is appealing that decision and the case is now going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I am a strong supporter of first amendment rights but I also don’t think these people should have the right to further their opportunistic hate-filled agenda at the cost of bereaving families. It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court decides.
What do you think? Should the Phelps have the right to have their angry religious protests at funerals? Or is telling them to hit the road going to jeopardize our first amendment rights?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3pm ET.
I deactivated Google Voice last week because the service usurped my voicemail and translated my messages to text (badly), yet these messages were for Kay, Karina, or Carol.
People often mistakenly hear my name as Carol. This isn’t just an accent issue, this happens to me in Australia, and the US.
Sometimes I just go along with it…sometimes I correct them and they don’t remember anyway…
I also know a Nick who’s known as Mick and a Matt known as Max.
I thought I’d tell the Skepchick readers a little about my ongoing thesis research, which I’ve been working on for about a year and a half now. I was trying to think of the best way to explain my thesis research to a general audience, and I remembered that I already had! Last fall a few of the wonderful science writers here at Woods Hole Hole Oceanographic Institution (where I’m a grad student) put together an audio slideshow about my research. A print article related to this slideshow should be coming out sometime this spring, so I’ll be sure to post a link after it’s been published. My thesis research (as I’ll probably blog about in the future) is a little more complex and specific and far less likely to “save the world” than this slideshow suggests, but this is the general idea of the research project I’m working on.
Sorry for a somewhat shameless plug for my research, but there are pretty pictures of the Omani desert. Also, I’d suggest an accompanying drinking game: drink every time I say the word “fascinating.” I hope you enjoy!
Hi everyone! Guess what? I’m posting again on human timescales. I have tried and failed (at least twice) in the past to regularly post a “Geology Word of the Week.” Third time is a charm, let’s hope! I’ll do my best to post a geology word of the week every Friday. I think I tried before on Mondays… Fridays might be better as it’s easier to justify procrastination at the end of the week.
This week’s geology word of the week is actually a phrase: volcanic bomb. [Read more →]
overturned on appeal. So now the family of the dead soldier is appealing that decision and the case is now going to the U.S. Supreme Court.
qyiet on 
stacie on 
Chasmosaur on 
LtStorm on 