{"id":364,"date":"2010-07-02T03:03:38","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T03:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/07\/02\/on_boggling\/"},"modified":"2010-07-02T03:03:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T03:03:38","slug":"on_boggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/07\/02\/on_boggling\/","title":{"rendered":"On boggling"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, I really hate<\/em> to send traffic over to Pharyngula, because it’s rather tiresome and whatnot, but Henry Gee<\/a> just alerted me to something quite extraordinary.<\/p>\n

\nThere’s a lovely, well-crafted Futures<\/em> this week<\/a> (sorry, subscription required) by Shelly Li. And a response on Pharyngula, full of hate, bile and spittle<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\n…aimed at Henry.<\/p>\n

\nThe piece is about a dystopian future in which people of faith are identified by certain brain signals (when they pray) and subsequently ‘cured’ by forced surgery. You can take the story several ways, seeing metaphors for forced sterilization, eugenics; just about anything.<\/p>\n

\nBut the PZMyerites, the most blinkered load of reactionary anti-intellectuals I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across, see it as a direct attack on atheism. Even if it that was Li’s target, I fail to see a problem (why should atheists have a privileged position above satire and ridicule anyway? It’s not as if every other classification doesn’t get its fair share of abuse), and, as Henry writes on Facebook<\/a>, <\/p>\n

I think Li is a super author… And what PZ and his crew don’t quite grasp is that the views of characters in stories needn’t bear any relationship to those of the author, let alone the editor, or anyone else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nIt strikes me that people who get upset at such things, and turn that upset into personal and misguided attacks, were possibly dropped on their heads as children (and need to smoke something, seriously dudes). Or maybe it’s because saying outrageous things is bound to attract attention, and giving the business model, attention = $$$.<\/p>\n

\nSound familiar<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, I really hate to send traffic over to Pharyngula, because it’s rather tiresome and whatnot, but Henry Gee just alerted me to something quite extraordinary. There’s a lovely, well-crafted Futures this week (sorry, subscription required) by Shelly Li. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-stupid-it-burns","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}