Day: April 1, 2002

Are We All Alone in the Universe?

The Independent (UK) published excerpts from a lecture given by professor of environmental sciences Andrew Watson about the possibility of ever encountering alien life forms. Watson argues that for all intents and purposes, human beings are probably alone in the universe.

Watson notes that the best evidence is that life began about 3 billion years ago on this planet, and it took 2 billion years after that for complex life to arise. Life on Earth has only about 1 billion years left before changes in the sun and environment lead to a runaway greenhouse effect that will render life impossible. So, assuming other planets where life develops are similar to Earth, sentient life has a very narrow (by the universe’s standards, at least) window in which to evolve.

According to Watson,

Out beyond our own special planet, complex life is rare, and sentient life (aliens) rare still. That a large number of planets probably exist does not make it reasonable to assume that sentient life is inevitable on at least some planets if the chances of it arising are infinitesimally low. Our evolution at a late stage of our planet’s history is consistent with beings like us being so rare that we are very unlikely to contact any other. Whether we like it or not, therefore, we are probably, in effect, alone in the universe, and this planet the only place we will ever know where the universe has come into self-awareness.

Well, hopefully we will expand onto other planets, but don’t expect any visitors to come knocking anytime soon.

Source:

Forget about aliens: we’re all alone in the universe. Andrew Watson, The Independent (UK), March 28, 2002.

Independent Women’s Forum on the Inaccuracies in Women’s Studies Textbooks

Christina Stolba has written an excellent 33-page summary of the overwhelming deficiencies of the most popular textbooks used for Women’s Studies courses in the United States. According to Stolba’s report,

Rather than offering young men and women exposure to knowledge, these texts foster a cynical knowingness about women’s status in society, one that consistently emphasizes women’s supposedly subordinate position. The danger of such a worldview, particularly for a generation of young men and women who enter the classroom already steeped in popular myths about women’s place in society, is that it will ripen into a form of anti-intellectualism.

One of the textbooks Stolba looks at is Sheila Ruth’s Issues in Feminism, which I skewered here many years ago.

Stolba goes through the litany of problems from absurd factual errors to stereotyping to the anti-intellectualism (in too many of these textbooks, critical thinking is blasted as an artificial construct of the patriarchy). But the most absurd abuse of the textbooks is their condescending attitudes toward young men and women.

Stolba notes, for example, that the authors of the textbook Gender & Culture in America conducted surveys of their students and found that, “nearly all of the women, but none of the men interviewed, plan to curtail or cease their paid employment after their children are born.” They cite one female student proud of her GPA and career prospects but who tells the authors that she believes “children suffer if their mothers work outside the home.”

Of course to a movement that places so much emphasis on reproductive choicest, there can be no room for allowing young women to make their own choices in other areas. The authors of Gender & Culture in America simply conclude that women like this student are victims who “are apparently unaware that in these decisions they are following traditional gender stereotypes.”

Except when having an abortion, no woman in radical feminism ever makes choices except when their actions agree with the radical feminist view of the world. Anything else is chalked up to false consciousness, patriarchal oppression, and/or implicit societal-wide threats against women. And yet, even though radical feminists constantly circumscribe the range of acceptable choices for young women, they still scratch their collective heads in amazement at the general rejection of their philosophy.

Could it possibly be that, unlike their sisters in academia, young women in fact take the pro-choice message about deciding for themselves to heart. For academic feminists, “pro-choice” is just a convenient ideological term that serves a political purpose. For many younger men and women, however, choosing for themselves is a way of life, and such people have as little use for the boring constraints of radical feminism as they do for traditional anti-feminism. And good for them.

Source:

Just in Time for Women?s History Month, Review of Women?s Studies Textbooks Reveals Questionable Scholarship, Ideological Bias, and Sins of Omission. Independent Women’s Forum, March 20, 2002.