30 November 2010 (pm)

Academia: This is from Canada instead of the United States, but this is unbelievable: a doctoral student is given an exam waver. Ok, ok; if they want to give someone a waver because the make some original, substantial contribution to the subject. More here.

Science Here is a neat list of 10 consequences of our being evolved. Here is one example:

3. Backaches
The backs of vertebrates evolved as a kind of horizontal pole under which guts were slung. It was arched in the way a bridge might be arched, to support weight. Then, for reasons anthropologists debate long into the night, our hominid ancestors stood upright, which was the bodily equivalent of tipping a bridge on end. Standing on hind legs offered advantages—seeing long distances, for one, or freeing the hands to do other things—but it also turned our backs from an arched bridge to an S shape. The letter S, for all its beauty, is not meant to support weight and so our backs fail, consistently and painfully.

Gay Rights: The Illinois House passed a Civil Unions bill. The State Senate should follow suit and Gov. Quinn will sign it.

The Nation flops This clown is calling for Notre Dame football to be shut down on the basis on the tragic death of a student from a tower (who shoudn’t have been up there) and a unresolved sexual assault allegation:

t’s past time that the storied Notre Dame football squad had its program suspended. In a season of heartbreak and horror under new coach Brian Kelly, the Fighting Irish have more than earned what’s known as the NCAA’s dreaded “death penalty.” Historically, teams have received the “death penalty” for illegal recruiting or paying players under the table. The cynics—or perhaps the realists—will point out that most of the programs on the college football map are dirtier than a Vegas city council meeting. Why single out Notre Dame? Simply put, those running the football program in South Bend are guilty of something worse than the payoffs and kickbacks that pepper many of the top so-called amateur teams.

Oh, so we are going to see lots of evidence, right?

The Sullivan story was awful enough. Now there is the emerging truth behind the September 10 suicide of first-year student Elizabeth Seeberg. Seeberg overdosed on antidepressants ten days after telling friends and campus police that a University of Notre Dame football player had sexually assaulted her.

After the alleged attack on August 31, Seeberg wrote an account of what took place, was treated at a local hospital and gave DNA samples to the authorities. There is no evidence that the case was taken seriously, and the accused player, who has been neither charged nor cleared, remained on the team.

Evidence that the case was taken seriously? Basically, the author of this article is implying that those responsible for investigating such incidents are guilty of gross incompetence, lack of professionalism, and unethical behavior. And he is basing this on……no evidence.

In the days following her statement to police, Seeberg, according to reports, became fearful that she would be outed as someone hurting the team. She made a point of wearing her Fighting Irish gear around campus and getting fake ND tattoos on her face, all the better to blend in. It all proved to be too much for her, and the 19-year-old, who had dreams of becoming a nurse, took her own life. She was found in her dorm room by rape-crisis coordinators who were alarmed that she’d missed her latest session.

Ok, this woman committed suicide. I am sorry for her family and friends; really. But:

It’s a horrible story that shines light on something that occurs on far too many campuses, where sexual assault is part of the culture of entitlement conjoined with big-time men’s college athletics.

Ok, where is the evidence for this statement? Where is the evidence that people who play men’s sports sexually assault at a higher rate than other students? Or, are we supposed to take this statement at face value because it fits this clown’s narrative?

But even worse was the response by the supposed adults in charge. Less than a month after the death of Declan Sullivan, Coach Brian Kelly—the guy with all that “character,” remember—was asked by reporters about Seeberg’s suicide. Coach Kelly repeatedly deflected the question. When the fourth reporter from the Tribune company asked Coach Kelly, he smirked, “I didn’t know you guys could afford all those guys,” referring to the financial foibles at the paper.

It is called “due process”; one can’t suspend someone from a team/the school based on an allegation. What is the rest of the evidence?

Certainly if this young man did what he was accused of, he should be kicked out of school and face jail time. Even suspension requires some sort of standard (e. g., like the standard to arrest someone or detain them).

This goes to show you: even liberal magazines publish trash from time to time.