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I have so damn much stuff I have to get done in the next 24 hours but so help me I cannot unglue my eyes from this:
I can see why Dawkins might be a little brassed off about the video's presentation -- it's a balls-out parody of Eminem, and while Eminem does the call-to-arms thing quite well (cf. "Mosh"), his calls to arms invariably involve an element of "shut up and listen to what I say" which I find a bit disturbing. This could well be taken as a slam on Dawkins et al as well; I've heard rumours that the video is actually a viral marketing effort for Ben Stein's upcoming movie "Expelled", which promotes "intelligent design". (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spider88 remarked, earlier this evening, "If so, it's backfired.") I won't be surprised if the rumours turn out to be true; equating Dawkins and Eminem as "rebel authoritarians" (i.e., "Here are my revolutionary new ideas intended to destroy the establishment, now take them as gospel and do not question, what do you mean that creates a new establishment?") is probably really funny to folks who think that modern biologists are just mindlessly parroting Darwin.
I do not think that most scientists expect people to listen to them because they are scientists. I think most scientists do expect (perhaps naively) that people will listen to their arguments, recognise that the scientist has undertaken rigorous analytical steps in order to produce those arguments, and evaluate said arguments critically and independently. I also think that most people who aren't scientists are used to people arguing from authority, and interpret scientists' matter-of-factness and lack of weasel-words as authoritarianism. They couldn't be further from the truth, but few take the time to familiarise themselves with the register in question; it's like taking offense to a phrasing which means something derogatory in your dialect but which is totally unmarked in the speaker's.
(Side-note: you will notice that I use the phrase "I think" or equivalent a lot in the remarks above. If you haven't noticed that I try rather hard to make a clear distinction in my writing between points on which I am certain and points on which I am speculating, you either haven't been reading me very long or haven't been reading me very critically, perhaps both. :P )
But anyway, where I was going with this is that I (and my LJ biologist friends thus far, apparently) cannot stop laughing when we watch this thing. Eugenie Scott in a bikini! Blunt-smoking Christopher Hitchens! Daniel Dennett in a pimp hat, waving a cane! Popping and locking Charles Darwin! And on top of all that it's just a dis track that puts Monzy to shame, capturing Eminem's lyrical stylings better than any other nerdcore rap I've seen. We computer scientists have enjoyed the fruits of nerdcore for most of its existence; the biologists have gotten the short end of the stick, even if you count MC Hawking's nods to bio.
(Side-note #2: I wonder if we have so much CS nerdcore because hackers are cocky little fuckers who like to show off and argue -- cf. all the religious wars about programming languages, for instance. [Have we seen a rap battle between proponents of static vs. dynamic or duck typing yet? There should be one. It would be funnier than mailing list arguments.] I've never seen chemists getting into throwdowns about how best to work up a reaction, but then maybe I don't hang out with enough chemists. Anyway, maybe this will kick off a new avenue of creativity in the evolution wars. The voyeur in me can only hope!)
Also, I think PZ Myers and my former boss, Andy Peek, may be long-lost twins. (I dunno. Is PZ Myers 6'3" and built like a linebacker? Some day I want a photo of them together. Evo-devo biologist and population geneticist, separated at birth?)
I can see why Dawkins might be a little brassed off about the video's presentation -- it's a balls-out parody of Eminem, and while Eminem does the call-to-arms thing quite well (cf. "Mosh"), his calls to arms invariably involve an element of "shut up and listen to what I say" which I find a bit disturbing. This could well be taken as a slam on Dawkins et al as well; I've heard rumours that the video is actually a viral marketing effort for Ben Stein's upcoming movie "Expelled", which promotes "intelligent design". (
spider88 remarked, earlier this evening, "If so, it's backfired.") I won't be surprised if the rumours turn out to be true; equating Dawkins and Eminem as "rebel authoritarians" (i.e., "Here are my revolutionary new ideas intended to destroy the establishment, now take them as gospel and do not question, what do you mean that creates a new establishment?") is probably really funny to folks who think that modern biologists are just mindlessly parroting Darwin.I do not think that most scientists expect people to listen to them because they are scientists. I think most scientists do expect (perhaps naively) that people will listen to their arguments, recognise that the scientist has undertaken rigorous analytical steps in order to produce those arguments, and evaluate said arguments critically and independently. I also think that most people who aren't scientists are used to people arguing from authority, and interpret scientists' matter-of-factness and lack of weasel-words as authoritarianism. They couldn't be further from the truth, but few take the time to familiarise themselves with the register in question; it's like taking offense to a phrasing which means something derogatory in your dialect but which is totally unmarked in the speaker's.
(Side-note: you will notice that I use the phrase "I think" or equivalent a lot in the remarks above. If you haven't noticed that I try rather hard to make a clear distinction in my writing between points on which I am certain and points on which I am speculating, you either haven't been reading me very long or haven't been reading me very critically, perhaps both. :P )
But anyway, where I was going with this is that I (and my LJ biologist friends thus far, apparently) cannot stop laughing when we watch this thing. Eugenie Scott in a bikini! Blunt-smoking Christopher Hitchens! Daniel Dennett in a pimp hat, waving a cane! Popping and locking Charles Darwin! And on top of all that it's just a dis track that puts Monzy to shame, capturing Eminem's lyrical stylings better than any other nerdcore rap I've seen. We computer scientists have enjoyed the fruits of nerdcore for most of its existence; the biologists have gotten the short end of the stick, even if you count MC Hawking's nods to bio.
(Side-note #2: I wonder if we have so much CS nerdcore because hackers are cocky little fuckers who like to show off and argue -- cf. all the religious wars about programming languages, for instance. [Have we seen a rap battle between proponents of static vs. dynamic or duck typing yet? There should be one. It would be funnier than mailing list arguments.] I've never seen chemists getting into throwdowns about how best to work up a reaction, but then maybe I don't hang out with enough chemists. Anyway, maybe this will kick off a new avenue of creativity in the evolution wars. The voyeur in me can only hope!)
Also, I think PZ Myers and my former boss, Andy Peek, may be long-lost twins. (I dunno. Is PZ Myers 6'3" and built like a linebacker? Some day I want a photo of them together. Evo-devo biologist and population geneticist, separated at birth?)
