Majikthise

Phylis Schlafly: rape denier

KathyG excoriates Washington University for offering an honorary doctorate to anti-feminist crusader Phylis Schlafly:

[V]ery rarely—in fact, almost never—do you see a great university honor someone who, throughout her public life has shown nothing but contempt for the values of the academia, values such as intellectual honesty and integrity, rational discourse, and the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge. Who has been, not a champion of human rights and human progress, but rather, at every turn, sought to thwart the aspirations of millions of female and nonwhite Americans and deny them equal justice under the law. Who has attempted to leave the world a far worse place than it was when she came into it, and in many ways has succeeded at this.

Schlafly is a very talented political operative, but she's not a deep thinker. Feministing excerpts an recent interview with Schlafly in which she argues that marital rape is a contradiction in terms because a woman issues blanket consent to sex by getting married:

Could you clarify some of the statements that you made in Maine last year about marital rape?

I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That's what marriage is all about, I don't know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn't mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn't rape, it's a he said-she said where it's just too easy to lie about it.

Was the way in which your statement was portrayed correct?

Yes. Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them.

So you see this as more of a tool used by people to get out of marriages than as legitimate-

Yes, I certainly do. [Student Life]

Schlafly believes that a husband is entitled to extract sex from his wife against her will, as long as he doesn't physically hurt her in the process.

Schlafly also implies that we can't have laws to protect wives from their husbands' sexual demands because someone could make a false allegation. If you take Schlafly's logic to its ultimate and logical conclusion, all rape laws should be struck down because of the mere possibility of spurious allegations. She's advocating the sex crime analog of tort reform: Alleged victims don't deserve the right to arbitration in the courts because someone might eventually bring a frivolous case.

I'm very disappointed that WashU has chosen to reward such a morally reprehensible alum.

Mike Gravel mashup

HT: Rad Geek, by way of commenter, bunty.

Mindf--ck: A&E ads make New Yorkers hear voices

A&E is literally targeting consumers with hypersonic beams on billboards. The rays broadcast sound in a beam, so the noise is inaudible unless the consumer/victim strays into the target area--in which case they may experience the sound as a voice in their head.

David Giantasio of AdWeek's magazine's blog, AdFreak:

Now, Holosonic Research Labs (sounds like something out of Scanners) strikes some new notes in the urban symphony with a creepy audio outdoor effort for A&E’s Paranormal State. From the release: “People passing by the Manhattan billboard suddenly hear a voice talking to them, but when they take another step the noise is gone. The sound captures their attention and the message appears as though it is just for them.”

Earlier this year, CourtTV used similar technology for a campaign called "Mystery Whisperer":

During the month-long campaign, targeting eleven bookstores and cafes throughout Manhattan, the Audio Spotlight directed more than 100,000 messages to shoppers asking them to tune in to the new Court TV television series.

"Because the message delivered by the Audio Spotlight system is only audible when directly in line with the narrow beam of sound, we were able to capture consumers' attention in a whole new way," said JP Freeley, owner of BlueBlast Media. "We left consumers with a message that resonated instead of one they just walked right past." [Holosonic Press Release, 2007]

Holosonic Research's website offers customers a chance to "put sound where they want it." Great.

The company's PR team has convinced some reporters that this wonderful invention "preserves quiet," which technically it does, on average...at least compared to a megaphone, which broadcasts sound waves in all directions. The ray sends sound to one point, so unless you wander into the beam, you can't hear anything coming from the billboard. None of the gushing media coverage notes that laws against noise pollution preserve quiet even better.

Josh of Gawker got hit by an A&E ray at on Prince St. between Mulberry and Mott. He describes what it was like to literally get shot with an ad for some TV show about ghosts. He was walking along, minding his own business when suddenly he heard a woman's voice in his head saying, "Who's there?"

According to Holoonic, the devices have also been used in libraries and galleries to deliver audio without headphones. I don't know whether people interpret the sound as being inside their head when they are told what to expect.

It's one thing to direct patrons to stand in a particular spot if they want the audio tour. It's totally different, and completely unethical, to bombard unconsenting passers by with unsourced sounds on public sidewalks.

New York needs to ban this nuisance, assuming it isn't already prohibited by existing laws. You can't even put up an outdoor billboard in this city without permission. Corporations should not be allowed to colonize patches of our sidewalks for their stupid brands.

The AAA and engagement with the military

Anthropologist, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Last week, I spent a couple of days at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, DC. I went for the unveiling of a much-anticipated report on anthropology and the military. I came away feeling like the committee took the easy way out.

The report focused primarily on relatively non-controversial kinds of engagement, such as studying the military, teaching in the military university system, and providing academic input to military leaders on very broad questions like the definition of "culture." In fairness, these relatively straightforward forms of engagement are far more common than exotic HTS-type assignments. Still, what the membership and the media really wanted to talk about were the hard cases like the fledgling Human Terrain System (HTS).

HTS embeds anthropologists and other social scientists on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the short term, Human Terrain Teams provide direct social science support to a brigade commander. However, the ultimate goal of the project is to create a continuously updated map of the "human terrain" that will be available to any government agency that wants to see it, including intelligence agencies. 

HTS has no internal ethical review board. Any American university-based academic who wanted to go live with tribes in Iraq and call it anthropological research would have to submit a detailed research proposal for ethics approval. In HTS, there are no controls over what kind of information these social scientists can gather, or how it must be safeguarded to protect the informants.

The Executive Board of the AAA issued a preemptive statement of disapproval prior to the ad hoc committee's report, in large part because a major New York Times article had thrust HTS into the spotlight.

I can't fault the ad hoc committee for not addressing HTS in more detail. They began their investigation with a much broader mandate two years ago when AAA members noticed that the national security sector was stepping up its efforts to woo anthropologists. HTS didn't even exist when the ad hoc committee got started.

Even so, the report still reads like a cop out. It's not as if the really difficult issues are new. Anthropology has had a long and uncomfortable relationship with the military since the inception of the discipline.

The proponents of HTS see themselves as humanistic mavericks who just want to help the military learn more about culture. They hope that increased cultural understanding will make the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan less violent and more effective. The official line is that a Human Terrain Team reduced "kinetic operations" (the application of military force) by 60-70% in one brigade's territory in Afghanistan. It's hard to know what to make of this statistic without a lot more data, which the military isn't at liberty to share. Correlation isn't necessarily causation.

But let's assume that HTS really is helping the US military apply force more effectively, with less collateral damage. It's still not clear that HTS or, any other program that provides direct operational support to a combat brigade in wartime, is compatible with AAA's code of anthropological ethics.

I discuss some of the ethical dilemmas raised by HTS in greater detail here.

The bottom line is that, according to the the Code, anthropologists doing field work are supposed to put the welfare of their subject population first.  It comes down to the basic moral principle that you shouldn't use people. As a social science that studies real people's everyday lives, anthropology has walk a fine line between exploration and exploitation.

There's a general consensus that it's not right to ingratiate yourself with a group, learn from them, and turn that knowledge against them. Applying anthropological expertise to help kill some of the members of the population under study is not easy to reconcile with the field anthropologists' responsibility to avoid harm to his or her informants.

Some HTS proponents claim that they don't do targeting--that may be true of their operations so far, but there are no rules to ensure that won't happen in the future.

Now, one might argue that anthropological ethics need to be revised in order to balance the well-being subjects with some greater national interest, or a larger duty to minimize harm to innocents. That's certainly the approach the some HTS spokespeople use.

However, I didn't hear anyone at the AAA arguing that the code of ethics needed to be radically revised to accommodate embeds. The debate was couched in terms of what the code already allows. I agreed with the participants who complained that the report, and the "Empire Speaks Back" panel discussion that followed the unveiling of the report were too focused on the kinds of cooperation that might be allowed, and too hesitant to address what might be out of bounds, and why.

Support Retrospectacle for blogging scholarship

Science blogger Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle is up for a $10,000 student blogging scholarship.

I love Retrospectacle. I hope Shelley gets some long-awaited support for her efforts through this competition.

Shelley Batts is a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. She studies hair cell regeneration in the cochlea, and is just embarking on that quixotic quest called 'thesis.' She lies awake at night pondering how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower. Follow me and my parrot on the quest to get funded, get a PhD, and stay sane.

Cast your vote here.

Cops turn stun gun on student at Kerry event (video)

Live Leak has the raw footage of police Tasering a mildly disruptive student at a John Kerry event at the University of Florida:

RAW STORY has three videos of the incident. Kerry has condemned the use of the stun gun on the 21-year-old student.

PZ Myers sued over negative book review

Prominent skeptic and science blogger PZ Myers is in the middle of a legal battle because he had the temerity to pan some crank's book (twice!).

The embittered author, Dr. Stuart Pivar, filed a lawsuit against Myers' publisher in New York's Southern District Court on August 16th.

Andrea Bottaro of Panda's Thumb reports that Pivar is seeking $15 million in damages from Myers and his publisher Seed Media Company.

Pivar claims he was libeled why Myers described him as a "classic crackpot." Here's my favorite part of the complaint (pdf):

16. On July 12, 2007, Defendant Myers maliciously, and without cause, defamed Plaintiff by referring to him as "a classic crackpot."

17. Upon information and belief, Defendant Myers' references to Plaintiff as "a classic crackpot" were necessarily intended to disparage Plaintiff's abilities as a scientific enquirer and were intended to hold Plaintiff up to ridicule and embarrassment in this specific area of Plaintiff's professional endeavors.

18. Myer's defamatory remarks were made with actual malice; Myers called Plaintiff "a classic crackpot" fully knowing that statement to be false as a statement of fact and in reckless disregard of the truth about Plaintiff because Myer's knew full well, the time of publishing his defamatory statement that no scientist holding the international reputation ofany of Hazen, Sasselov, Goodwin or Tyson would endorse or review the work of a crackpot.

19. Myers has publicly described himself on his web log as a "cruel and insensitive person".

Grampa Simpson couldn't have said it better himself!

Federal charges for threatening emails

Sometimes threats have consequences:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) _ A college professor accused of launching a campaign of threatening e-mails and phone messages after losing his job last year was tracked down with the help of former colleagues and arrested, authorities said Friday.

Xiang Li, a 42-year-old Chinese national who worked at Morrisville State College during the 2005-2006 school year, is being held on federal charges he made interstate threats to injure or kill another person.

David Rogers, the school's dean, said Li was enraged when told his temporary contract as a professor of computer information technology was not going to be renewed because students found him abusive and sometimes belligerent.

"This isn't over yet. People who hurt me, I hurt them. And this isn't over," Rogers recalled Li saying.

Li was fired and barred from the campus after the confrontation with Rogers in May 2006. He then moved out of New York and began threatening Rogers and others at the school in September, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Among the messages were threats to castrate a former colleague and to kill the child of another and the taunt, "Do you think they can protect you from a man who wants to die and wants to kill you?" [AP]

Computer science profs teamed up with the FBI to track Xiang Li down. He was arrested by U.S. Marshals last month in a Pittsburgh airport.

Brits convicted for exposing Bush's plot to bomb Al-Jazeera

Larisa on how the assassination of journalists was protected by state secrets--two British men were convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act for leaking a memo that recounted a conversation in which George W. Bush proposes bombing Al Jazeera in Qatar.

You can read Larisa's story about the contents of the leaked memo here:

According to sources familiar with the case, the classified government memo, consisting of minutes of an April, 2004 meeting between UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush, described a disagreement between the two leaders over plans to silence anti-US sentiments in the middle-east.

The memo alleges that President Bush expressed his frustration with al-Jazeera, which is the equivalent of a large broadcast news company such as CNN and has a viewership of 50 million, and wanted to bomb their headquarters using US bombers stationed nearby.

Blair, according to the memo, dissuaded the President from this action because Qatar is an ally of the US and such an action would result in severe backlash. [Raw Story]

Now, the civil servant and the legislator's aide who leaked the memo have been found guilty of violating the Official Secrets Act--following a largely secret trial.

UNC brands anorexic as campus threat

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, the University of Northern Colorado published the photographs of 24 students who had been barred from campus for "honor code" infractions ranging from alleged violent crime to anorexia. 

One of the students whose picture was splashed on the UNC police department website was Brittany Bethel, who was been banned from UNC after collapsing on campus from anorexia nervosa:

Bethel is on UNC's banned student list. The list of names and pictures were posted on the site this week. The school says it is a response to the shootings at Virginia Tech University, but it admits not everyone on the list is a potential danger.

"It is associated with the shooting at Virginia Tech, so it's being implied that the people on it are somehow a danger to someone else and I am in no way a threat to anyone else," she said. [9News]

There are so many civil liberties issues here, it's hard to know where to start.

The university should not be publicly identifying people as threats without overwhelming evidence that they are a danger to the community. It might make sense to publish photographs of students who had, say, outstanding warrants for their arrests, or restraining orders barring them from campus. Short of that, the university has no business pinning scarlet letters on its students.

Imagine how that mugshot page would look to a prospective employer. Branding someone with the stigma of school shootings is no joke, especially the state where the Columbine shootings happened. People on the UNC list might even become the targets of harassment themselves.

It's doubly shocking that the university knowingly published the photographs of students who weren't deemed threats to anyone but themselves.

How dare the University of Northern Colorado stigmatize an woman suffering from a serious medical condition? How was it even legal to bar her from campus for being sick in the first place?

To publicly brand her as a threat heaps insult on injury.

UNC should immediately reinstate Ms. Bethel and compensate her for the ordeal she has endured.

[HT: Body Impolitic]