One thing that has made my new job even harder is dealing with the financial fallout in Michigan as it affects state and university budgets. A review of several books that deal with University funding appeared in the New York Review of Books last week, and it pretty well describes some of the pressures I’m seeing.

It’s a longish essay, and well worth reading if you want to understand the Hobson’s Choice we face in higher education right now.  Some highlights:

“at public institutions, where tuition historically has been kept relatively low by means of a subsidy derived from tax revenue, the financial model is also at risk. These institutions—long before the current crisis—were seeing … “massive disinvestment” by the states.

…On the expense side, one finds the usual strategies: salary and hiring freezes, reduction of staff by layoffs or attrition, cancellation or postponement of construction projects….On the revenue side, some institutions…are increasing the number of undergraduate students they admit, in order to collect additional tuition to help close the budget gap….

such a strategy stretches the capacity of existing dormitories, classrooms, and advisers at just the time when more and more students, facing a contracting job market and longer odds against getting into and paying for graduate school, are turning to the career and counseling services for help

In short, the financial crisis not only is threatening the livelihood of faculty and staff but is also degrading the experience of students.

Yup. That’s about right.

Yay! Big props to Vermont, Iowa (??? who knew), and DC for recognizing marriage between any two people that love each other–regardless of parts. 

Rather predictably, while most of us rejoice, some others think the world is ending.  I just loved this graphic from Pam’s House Blend illustrating fundamentalist reactions–It make me laugh very much.  I hope they don’t mind me swiping it

Other good news:

New York is closer to passing a bullying bill.

While MSU did not beat UNC, they did come awfully close, and made a lot of Michiganders happy.

It finally stopped snowing.

Yeah, this doesn’t fix the world, but it does help to win a few for a change.

I haven’t had a WTF in a while, and I do try to keep the blog “all bugs, all the time.” But. 
People.
If one more person tells me we are in a “post-racial America” because a person of color is running for president, I’m gonna slap em.  How can ya’ll not see that some ugly stuff is boiling to the top of the pot?

I’m also mourning the loss of Studs Terkel, a great American voice.  Here’s an excerpt from his book Race: How Blacks and Whites think and feel about the American Obsession:

“‘I think you become an adult when you reach a point where you don’t need anyone underneath you. When you can look at yourself and say, “I’m okay the way I am.” One of the things that keeps my class of people from having any vision is race hatred. You’re so busy hating somebody else, you’re not going to realize how beautiful you are and how much you destroy all that’s good in the world.’”

He’s right. We need to Grow Up and learn to deal with difference. And embrace it, not fear it.  What made Studs great was his willingness to listen to anyone, anywhere.  He believed they had value, and their stories had meaning. For all of us.

I’m focusing on race in this post, but there is plenty of other hateful crap to call out–Christian litmus tests, demonizing of Atheists, and increased violence and hate speech against LGBT folks.

Here’s a partial list of things I’ve seen.  I’ll put it below the fold, since it’s depressingly long. Have you seen these? Have you been paying attention?

• If you click on only one link from this post, click on this one: A Real American. It just about made me weep.
• Racialious asks How post-racial are we?
• Big surprise: Limbaugh continues to be a bigoted ass.
• The Guardian covers the assassination plot and 14/88. Did you know that Bob Miles, past Grand Dragon of the KKK, lived in Michigan?  It ain’t just a Southern thing.
• GOP email claims of “carloads of black supporters” from the inner city are coming to your neighborhood.  To support Obama, who’s a Marxist. Uh huh.
• The chick that faked an attack by an Obama supporter is effectively deconstructed by Angry Black Woman
• What does “that one” really mean?
• Pam from House Blend has been doing a great job covering some of the hate–here’s a partial list from her site: (I swiped her list, since I think it’s important)
  Latest McCain mob of hate – Denver, Colorado
  Black bear cub shot, covered by Obama sign and left on Western Carolina University campus
  Arizona: more from the Base: ‘Vote KKK’
  TX: More McCain/Palin patriots – trashing of car with Obama sticker
  McCain/Palin mob: 30 cars owners find tires slashed after NC Obama rally; voters heckled
  MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan: Powell Endorsement Of Obama Due To Race
  OH: Obama-labeled ghost hanged in effigy in man’s yard
  The parade of racist images continues: Obama ribs ‘n chicken
  California: Sacramento GOP web site calls for the torture of Barack Obama
  Mike Signorile listens to The Hate Out There
  Here we go again: another Palin groupie shouts ‘kill him’ at PA rally
  Own it, bigot
  Missouri: More of the McCain/Palin/GOP Base
  Frank Rich on the fires stoked by McCain/Palin
  The GOP ticket draws, and apparently embraces, the bigot eruption crowd
  More fun in post-racial America
  John McCain forced to denounce racist, homophobic member of Virginia leadership team
  Kentucky, I know you can do better than this
  FL: middle school teacher uses ‘nigger’ to describe Barack Obama
  Palin praised racist writer who called for RFK’s assassination

Values at the Values Voter Summit – Obama as a Muslim Aunt Jemima
Westmoreland stands by ‘uppity’ remark about Obama
White supremacists: Obama’s boosting our movement
John McLaughlin: Obama fits the ‘Oreo’ stereotype
Georgia: publication features Obama in crosshairs on cover for article on white supremacist threat
Bigot eruption: GOP House member refers to Obama as ‘boy’
South Carolina: black reporter attacked by white family (on camera!)

I hope all of you in the US will vote Tuesday, and if you see someone behaving badly at the polls–call them on it! Take photos. Make sure everyone knows that it isn’t ok to be a bigot.

I was going to try to stay on the insect topic all week, but enough stuff keeps happening that I just can’t.

On the 45th anniversary of the 16th Street Bombing, Angry Black Woman connects the deaths of black children in the past to an assault on the nursery in a Mosque in Ohio Last week. How. Is. This. NOT. A. Hate. Crime? From the news coverage:

“Mosque board member Tarek Sabagh said many people within the mosque speculated that the incident was the result of a DVD about Islamic radicalism titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” that was mailed to area homes by its producers and circulated as a paid advertisement with more than 70 newspapers, including the Dayton Daily News.”

We got a copy of that video too–as did everyone I know in Michigan. Some racists have really deep pockets.

And, yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd. Two men tortured in horrible ways because of who they were.

We have come a long way–but we still have so far to go.  These are important topics in Michigan, since we are home to a group called FAIR–Federation for American Immigration Reform.  New documents that have come out this month show that the FAIR leader has pretty clear Neo-Nazi ties.  FAIR has argued that “some immigrant groups” are engaged in “competitive breeding.”  I think you can read between the lines, there.

Hatred is still here, and it is still very real. I hear a lot of white folks discussing the Obama campaign, and saying “I can’t believe that people are still so racist they wouldn’t vote for a black man!” and “I didn’t think there are still Skinheads!”

Hello? Have you been paying any attention?

Yes, things are much better than they were. But we can’t relax.

To repeat an earlier post quoting  Holly at Feministe:

“When any of us have a soapbox, an opportunity to get up and talk, we must continue to stand by those who aren’t called on. If you want to consider yourself an anti-racist or a white ally to people of color — if you want anyone else to consider you those things — then it behooves you to swim against the current. If everyone did, perhaps the tides would turn, even if it was just in our corner of the blogosphere….

When you find yourself in the inevitable currents of our society that always flow towards greater privilege, away from the marginalized, the oppressed, be prepared to swim against that tide. Don’t just stand there and let sand pool around your ankles.” (emphasis mine)

I happened to run into Michigan’s Head of Public Deliberation last night, and she introduced me to the National Issues Forums publications:

National Issues Forums (NIF) is a nonpartisan, nationwide network of locally sponsored public forums for the consideration of public policy issues. It is rooted in the simple notion that people need to come together to reason and talk — to deliberate about common problems. Indeed, democracy requires an ongoing deliberative public dialogue….

Forums are led by trained, neutral moderators, and use an issue discussion guide that frames the issue by presenting the overall problem and then three or four broad approaches to the problem. Forum participants work through the issue by considering each approach; examining what appeals to them or concerns them, and also what the costs, consequences, and trade offs may be that would be incurred in following that approach.

You can download a ton of PDFs (or order paper copies) for use  in discussing different controversial issues.  There are also leader guides, teacher guides, and teacher forums!

Enjoy!

Today, July 1st, 150 years ago, the joint paper of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace was read to the Linnean Society of London: “On the tendency of species to form varieties, and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection.”

Nature had a nice essay about Wallace, who tends to be overshadowed by Darwin.  Of modest origins, Wallace financed his tropical travels (with Henry Walter Bates) by selling specimens to museums and collectors.   His first trip to the Amazon ended in ruin–after four years of collecting he lost nearly all his specimens when the ship he was returning to England on caught fire. I don’t think any graduate student could ever be unmoved by his life story!

There’s a great deal of back and forth about who was *first* to articulate the theory of natural selection and evolution, and I’m not terribly interested in that. The reality of science is that there usually isn’t a single brilliant mind working in isolation, or a single author of an idea.  Wallace was, however, unquestionably the spur to Darwin’s plodding, methodical writing, and sped up the announcement of a radical idea about the Origin of Species.

Nature printed an excerpt from the text of Wallace’s speech accepting the first Darwin-Wallace awards from the Linnean Society of London in 1908:

“His speech on “Why did so many of the greatest intellects fail, while Darwin and myself hit upon the solution of this problem” is vintage Wallace; a mixture of self-deprecation and insight. His conclusion? ‘In early life both Darwin and myself became ardent beetle hunters.‘” {emphasis mine}

Why beetles? Beetles represent 20% of ALL species described.
25% of all ANIMAL species that we have identified are beetles. Simply put, there’s just a shitload of beetle species.
And right now, your brain is probably asking the same question Darwin’s and Wallace’s did:

WHY?? Why in the world are there so MANY kinds of beetles?

Tracing down the answer to that…that’s the spark that started the evolutionary fire.   Long may it rage.

Fun Beetle Sites:

• An inordinate Fondness for Beetles
• A Collection of all sorts of random beetle factoids by the St. Petersburg Museum
• Living Jewels–amazing photos of beetles
• A non-technical answer to the question of “why so many beetles?”
• The Science paper they reference

Lovely Photo from Thomas Hawk

If you don’t know what Juneteenth is, it’s the day that word of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached Texas. Slaves in texas had actually been “free” for several months before they found this out.

From the Texas State Library:

Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, is the name given to emancipation day by African-Americans in Texas. On that day in 1865 Union Major General Gordon Granger read General Order #3 to the people of Galveston. General Order #3 stated “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.

Of course, things didn’t immediately resolve themselves on Emancipation Day. They still aren’t resolved. We have a long way to go.

But as someone who was bused to Booker T. Washington Jr. High School, I want to pause today to celebrate that we have made progress. And to recognize that change is possible.

Racialious had an interesting post last week, where they pointed out that history has an interesting sense of timing:

August 28, 1955 – Emmitt Till is murdered in Mississippi
August 28, 1963 – Martin Luther King gives his “I Have A Dream Speech”
August 28, 2008 – Barack Obama accepts his nomination officially at the DNC

That’s just amazing.

And WE did it. And WE–all of us–must keep pushing for the “absolute equality of personal rights” promised almost 150 years ago.

Michigan, unfortunately, has become a home to many neo-nazi types recently. So I’ve had to deal with not only noose incidents, but an actual, bona fide, student hate group. Ugh.

The student hate group invited Ryan Sorba, author of a (unpublished) book called “The Born Gay Hoax”, to Michigan State University. (The talk was advertised with flyers proclaiming “Gays Spread AIDS“, by the way.)

Sorba repeatedly makes a connection between homosexuality and child molestation, and uses some very distorted readings of some very specious papers to try to prove that homosexuality is an unnatural choice. He’d also like to recriminalize sodomy.

He’s obviously full of BS, so I won’t go into debunking that here. Short version: He’s nasty and hateful.

Sorba also recently visited Smith College, and the two visits couldn’t be more different.

At Smith College: (Via Pam’s House Blend)

“After about twenty minutes he was forced to abandon his speech after protesters forced their way into the room and drowned him out.”

From MSU: (Via HateWatch)

“About 100 MSU students made it to the talk. At least two-thirds were anti-YAF demonstrators who silently protested Sorba’s message by wearing brightly colored “I Have a Story” T-shirts and holding signs aloft throughout Sorba’s 90-minute presentation.”

There also was a “Seven Nights for Equal Rights” series of programs that focused on bringing positive speakers, and a showing of the film “For the Bible Tells me So.” And a fundraiser where people pledged a penny for each Word of Hate uttered by Sorba to the Michigan Equality Campaign.

Same hate speech; two very different treatments. Which is better?

Discuss

(cross posted at Skepchick)

Two skeptical things to read for Tuesday:

The Skeptic’s Circle is up at Andrea’s blog! Check it out!

And–

I’ve written a long navel-gazing post at Skepchick about race, skepticism, and the F word.

Photo from Porifera, since some people think I don’t post about insects enough. Hmpf.

:p

Fagbug! What an awesome story of someone taking an act of hate and turning it into something positive.

From a news article covering her story, and the rainbow makeover courtesy of Volkswagen:

“Fag Bug has become much more than when it started. And to be able to transform it into something positive, rather than have people look at my car and be upset and hurt, I’d rather they look and see how bright the colors are, see something fun and playful instead of something hurtful,” Davies said.

One year ago someone spray painted anti-gay slurs on her car. Instead of removing it, she drove around the country for a year and documented reactions to the hateful words. It was difficult both financially and emotionally.”

I’m very interested in seeing the documentary she’s working on.