Talk:Virginia Heffernan

Biography

What is the objection to including biographical information on this writer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs) 23:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Why isn't anyone discussing this? The changes get reverted but nobody's talking here about why this writer's biographical information isn't allowed to be included on her page. --bsnyd 18:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

There is plenty of discussion below this comment of yours. Please state clearly what and why you want to include in the article, but do it at the bottom of the page. 79.147.107.181 (talk) 13:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Creationism

She's not saying she believes dinosaurs walked with man. She's saying she likes the metaphor of the biblical origin story. It's all theoretical. It may have drawn a lot of attention, but so have other things she's written. And if you're going to include this, I think it needs its own section that addresses counter-arguments and other interpretations of the piece (see: http://io9.com/is-spirituality-really-the-opposite-of-science-773335253 ) --Briannasnyder83 (talk) 00:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)BriannaSnyder83 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

Indeed. But self-describing as a creationist, even in this way, is a little like self-describing as a fascist because you like the hats and the co-option of Norse mythology (if I can immediately Godwin my argument). Which is to say, the second part kind-of gets lost in the shouting caused by the first part. Judging from the response that she has triggered, I suspect that she will follow this post up with a clarification that seriously back-pedals on her earlier post quickly. We should give it a week or so and then edit the article to reflect things then. Among other things to avoid charges of recentism. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 08:05, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The article linked to, creationism, explains that there are different types of them. Most to these agree that Earth is so old as science says. 79.157.138.106 (talk) 08:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The column is also a comment on science/athiests' general intolerance for religion and religious ideas. This is satire and irony. And, respectfully, comparing biblical creation stories to fascism (Godwinning, perhaps cheekily) is a direct illustration of her point. She's talking about religious literature, mythology. Metaphor. If it helps make it clearer, she endorsed this reading (in particular, see the third page): http://page88.tumblr.com/post/55392769206/a-little-late-to-this-but-im-going-to-say-that ) -- If we're going to say she's a Creationist, then I think we need to say more than "2013, she publicly admitted she's a Creationist" (which, you have to admit, comes across like she admitted she was a pedophile or a Nazi, when really she just said she likes poetry.) --bsnyd 12:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It might sound as if we are insulting her, but no, the sentence is perfectly normal. It's you who seems unable to accept her faith. 188.78.54.227 (talk) 12:59, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

While I've already put my oar in above, if everyone is intent on edit-warring, can I suggest that the text added at least makes sense? At present the offending sentence is "2013, she admitted publicly being a Creationist", which simply doesn't make grammatical sense. Previous iterations of this spat had versions of the text that read like they were written in English. Finally, while I'm all in favour of attacking creationists where needed, it's pretty clear from the offending article that we're not looking at a full-blown crazy YEC here. Can't we just wait a few days to see if she recants? It will certainly be difficult to be a journalist who's pro-technology but anti-basic science, so I'm expecting some sort of roll-back. --PLUMBAGO 13:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

She's not a Creationist. That interpretation is wrong. Irony. Satire. But OK if we're waiting for her to spell that out for everyone more clearly than she already has, shouldn't we at least link to the Yahoo piece she wrote, rather than Slate's interpretation? --bsnyd 14:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

Nope. The interpretation is not wrong. Read her own article at http://news.yahoo.com/why-im-a-creationist-141907217.html. (Personal attack removed) 188.78.54.227 (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

You're clearly just reading the headline. Not sure you know this, but often writers don't write their own headlines. Even if she did, you can't sum up the article by the headline. --bsnyd 17:34, 17 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

There is no much doubt about her views on science and the bible there. She might be not a Young-Earth Creationist, but even then, she's believes in it. 188.78.54.227 (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not her PR person. I'm just someone who knows how to read. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs) 18:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Then read: " I am a creationist. There, I said it. At least you, dear readers, won’t now storm out of a restaurant like the last person I admitted that to. In New York City saying you’re a creationist is like confessing you think Ahmadinejad has a couple of good points. "

or

", I heard no end of Bible stories as a kid"

or

" “The Origin of Species” [was] the “Star Trek” of its time."

Her entire argument for Creationism is that the Bible is more entertaining than The Origin of Species. Okay, then I believe in faster-than-light travel because Star Trek is more entertaining than Einstein's "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." She could have just said: "oh, like you know, THINKING, just, you know totally is hard." This is basically saying I like the idea of god and science is confusing so I am a creationist.

188.78.54.227 (talk) 18:39, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

She's being contrarian. Guilty of a little provocation, sure. But you're editing with bias here. She says:

"I heard no end of Bible stories as a kid, but in the 1970s in New England they always came with the caveat that they were metaphors. So I read the metaphors of Genesis and Exodus and was amused and bugged and uplifted and moved by them. And then I guess I wanted to know the truth of how the world began, so I was handed the Big Bang. That wasn’t a metaphor, but it wasn’t fact either."

and

"In the hazy Instagram picture I have in my mind of the mechanisms that animate my ingenious smartphone—a picture that slips in and out of focus, and one I constantly revise—it might as well be angels." -- she's clearly being hyperbolic/ironic, making the connection between the wonders of tech and the wonders of mythology.

"Star Trek," she's talking about TONE. And she goes on to say about Origin of Species: "The book also alights on a tautology that, like all tautologies, is gloriously unimpeachable: Whatever survives survives."

and:

"I still read and read and listen and listen. And I have never found a more compelling story of our origins than the ones that involve God." -- She says compelling. It's interesting to her and she likes it more as literature. This whole thing is about literature.

I get that people are outraged about this whole thing, but she's not saying what they think she's saying. She is not advocating for intelligent design, she's not teaching her kids that the Big Bang is fiction. She's just saying of all the origin stories, Creationism is the most poetic. That's it. I object to limiting the description of her as "a Creationist," without clarifying her point. (I've been reading her a long time. She's very smart, and not a psycho.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs) 18:51, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

To go on with this interpretation, you'll need to ignore many comments at the bottom of the article and articles in well-established media like Slate and the less serious Gawker. Incidentally, not many people are of your opinion when it comes down to construe her text. Up to now, I haven't read any one defending your "it's just a beautiful story."

On the top of that, there are creationists defending her of the whole lampooning. They recognize her as one of them. Obviously, maybe we should explain that she's is not young-Earth creationist (most of them aren't), but more a kind of a "hippie, it's all magic out there, and science is so dry and boring."

Besides that, she's also a climate change skeptic, but since this feature is not notable, maybe it should be left out of the article. 83.60.170.21 (talk) 20:49, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I realize the piece as been widely misinterpreted. Also, within the context of all her other work, "creationist" -- the way most people understand the term -- is punitively applied here. Here is a piece in the Guardian explaining what she means: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jul/18/virginia-heffernan-creationism-nothing-wrong If other creationists are coming to her defense, they've also probably misunderstood. And she's not a climate-change skeptic. She says she doesn't fear a climate change apocalypse. That is hardly the same thing.

I don't think she should recant and I'm not trying to sanitize her page. I just want to know exactly how pertinent it is to include "In 2013 she wrote she was a Creationist" even is. Shouldn't we go deeper into her coverage of tech and tech culture, then, to better frame her body of work? It's obvious to me the only reason we're having this discussion at all is because "Creationists" are ridiculous in the eyes of the tech/science people, deserve ridicule and denigration, and should be branded as morons. If she were actually saying she were a Creationist, I probably wouldn't be arguing against this branding (nor would I care about her or her work), but she's really, really not. She's aesthetically a creationist, which may be nuanced and complex, but I think that should be clarified. Maybe under a Controversy head or something. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.166.23.243 (talk) 17:17, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

We could put it in a more factual tone, like: In 2013, she wrote the article "Why I'm a creationist". That would be objective, but not judgmental. 188.76.165.244 (talk) 17:27, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, that's fine. But should we also say "In 2012, she wrote about the myth of shorter attention spans"? Or "Also in 2013, she wrote a series of articles about Google Glass"? You know what I mean? --bsnyd 17:40, 18 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

If that was notable, sure. But it doesn't appear to be the case. Ĩt's difficult to match the amount of media frenzy that she attracted with her last article. 188.76.165.244 (talk) 17:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with it going in, as long as we clarify that the piece is ambiguous. --bsnyd 19:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

We don't analyze the text here. Saying "She wrote the article 'Why I am a Creationist'" is a fact, and it's notable due to the amount of media commenting it. Do not look down on the reader. He doesn't need to be told how to construe the word. He can both go to the article of Creationism and go to the original article of Virginia and make up his mind.2.138.252.139 (talk) 21:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I think it should be made clear why it's being included. "She wrote the article 'Why I'm a Creationist,' which has generated some controversy." You're still trying to say -- now in a less direct way -- that she's a Creationist. How do you even know she wrote that headline? Without clarification, someone could reasonably look at that and think YEC or some other nutty thing, and it's been established that she isn't. You're punishing her because you think she's a stupid Creationist (and she's not). I thought the goal was to be neutral. --bsnyd 21:53, 18 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

Also, that's disingenuous. I just looked at several other Wiki pages of other journalists, and there is plenty of text "analysis," with quotes from cited pieces, critics of those pieces and general reception of those writings. A reader comes to Wikipedia to find out about who Virginia Heffernan is and she would benefit from just one line of explanation for the inclusion of an errant sentence like "VH wrote an article." She has written other pieces that have stirred up responses. And "media frenzy" is a strong term, by the way. Gawker and Slate were two big ones, but the Guardian is big too, and they came to her defense. Is that not worth noting?--bsnyd 22:04, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Ĩ'm OK with including quotations from Slate. They did a fabulous job. But let's try not slipping into dissecting by our own means this article. That would drags us into a much longer discussion, possibly for ever. And I don't think we need to debunk her utterly flatulent piece with its litany of non-sequiturs and logical fallacies. Others have done a better job of that than we could. But I am going to say that the belief that we get to choose the reality we live in, is idiotic and harmful. You don't get to choose your own facts: however 'moving' you find the creation story. 2.138.252.139 (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Ahem, and I quote. "Also, at heart, I am a creationist. There, I said it." Call me crazy, but that seems pretty hard to misinterpret, and yes, I have read the rest of the piece, flowery garbage that it is. You have to realize that distinctions between creationism and YEC amount to little else than petty syncretic dickering. Science has definitively shown the earth to be billions of years old, which isn't anywhere near the (at best) 10,000-ish year old biblical account of the earth's supposed age. You either understand the science, swallow the blue pill and cling to the bible and take license to believe whatever you want to believe, or are lost somewhere in between. She's clearly made her decision known.71.236.136.184 (talk) 04:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Oops. I did a Google search for Heffernan while looking for one of her articles, and saw the creationism bit, so I added it to the article. I didn't realize it was the subject of such debate. It definitely belongs in the article, with (1) a fair statement of what she believes and (2) a WP:NPOV summary of the reaction she got. FWIW I think creationism is kind of strange, but people like Forrest Mims are creationists, so we have to accept their unconventional views and judge their professional work on its merits. --Nbauman (talk) 23:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Brianna Snyder should explain if she's connected to Virginia Heffernan somehow. It appears that she was hired as a PR agent to push a specific point of view. 79.147.107.181 (talk) 13:42, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a PR person. But I am a fan of Heffernan's and I've read her for a long time. It's bugged me that she's come under fire for this when I know she's not some psycho Bible-thumper. I know she's not speaking literally, because I'm familiar with her other work. Which is why I'd like to add more history/biography as well as a quote from the Guardian piece that interpreted the Creationist piece differently: "Heffernan seems confused by what she calls "creationism". She is certainly not a young-earth creationist or someone who takes the biblical account literally. But she wants stories where people find hope and courage in the events of the world around them, and she finds them in religion, not in science." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jul/18/virginia-heffernan-creationism-nothing-wrong --bsnyd 14:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

Including that in the article would be OR, and we don't do that here. No one accused her of being a "psycho Bible-thumper." If someone wants to read her text, he's free to do that, it's linked there. Most creationists are not YEC, so there's little chances of misunderstanding here. It look that YOU have a problem with the word creationist, even more than she. BTW, Virginia Heffernan also seems to be confused about basic science. Should we also write this into the article? 79.147.107.181 (talk) 14:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

What is OR? And I do object to the literal interpretation of "Creationist," yes, as do you, who wants to punish her for writing philosophically about religious and scientific origin stories. --bsnyd 14:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Briannasnyder83 (talk • contribs)

Why would someone want to punish her "for writing philosophically?" Indeed, I don't even think this piece of hers could be construed as remotely related to philosophy. It was more a kind of outing than anything else. It was not about why some people relate to the bible, it was all about why she's still a Creationist, although she "reads and reads." Furthermore, compared to other web-pages, who go as far as calling her a "clueless cunt", I see this page as pretty objective. 79.147.107.181 (talk) 20:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

That's real nice. NOT calling her a clueless cunt means we're being fair and objective. So we're including the Gawker takedown, but not the Guardian defense. Why wouldn't we present both sides.--bsnyd 15:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding biographical and other information pertinent to her career and style to fill out and balance the page. Not sure what's POV about pointing out she wrote a blog for the NYT and focuses on various subjects at Yahoo. Reverting. --167.166.23.243 (talk) 15:47, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Article protected

This article has been protected from editing for one day to try to generate talk page discussion of the disputed content. Please follow the WP:BRD guideline. You may also wish to consider dispute resolution (WP:DR). Mark Arsten (talk) 18:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

no need

to add several links to her Yahoo coming-out. The reader will find it with just one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.76.169.87 (talk) 12:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

bio info about her career belongs here. what else is this page for. by the way your literal interpretation of the piece ("coming-out") is wrong. --108.176.198.127 (talk) 02:22, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Reactions?

Is there any reaction from Heffernan's side towards the torrent of criticism, insults, put-downs, mocking and whatever that she got? 95.20.116.138 (talk) 16:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Aside from Storifys of tweets between her and Carl Zimmer -- in which she defends herself in the abstract -- there aren't many, sadly, that come to her defense in the same league of Gawker and Slate except the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jul/18/virginia-heffernan-creationism-nothing-wrong --108.176.198.127 (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Facebook

According to this, Facebook can be used as a source if it is the page of the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links/Perennial_websites#Facebook.2C_Myspace — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.166.23.243 (talk) 16:23, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The link says FB can sometimes but it's generally discouraged. You have to log-in there normally, it changes with time, it can be a fake. FB implies many problems when it comes down to using it as a source. Heffernan has other web-presences, so let's stick to these. 79.156.170.130 (talk) 16:55, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not a fake. And I think it's necessary here considering the overwhelming amount of criticism she's received to include her clarification on what she means by "creationism." Also, aren't you the person who added in all that stuff about Biblical origins of her kids' names? Why is it OK to mention her kids without a source but not her significant other? Reverting, because in this case I think the Facebook post (which is public, so anyone can see it) is pertinent. --167.166.23.243 (talk) 17:32, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I didn't add her kids names. Indeed, I think they shouldn't be in the article. FB shouldn't be cited, except in the most extreme cases. She has a column, she can add her own opinion there whenever she wants.

And do not post private information, unless it's relevant and sourced. 79.156.170.130 (talk) 17:39, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but the Wiki guidelines didn't say "extreme cases." I think it's necessary here. I disagree with you. And I mean you added that stuff about the "righteous young boy." So clearly your judgment can't be trusted. --167.166.23.243 (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The FB post is not public, you have to login to see it. The link you gave says clearly why perennial sources are inappropriate.

Benjamin is a "righteous young boy". If you read the bible as much as Virginia, you'll know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.156.170.130 (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Using FB?

" Facebook is particularly discouraged" " Regular websites are strongly preferred, but exceptions are made for official links when the subject of the article has no other Web presence."

That's the policy. Link to reliable, relevant sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.156.170.130 (talk) 17:48, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Further career info - possibly trivial

The article above by Heffernan may be useful as it mentions her career activities in marketing. It certainly is not the main object of her career, but it may be worth a sentence. Somers-all-the-time (talk) 17:20, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Bibliography

I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section:

• Cite templates will be used where possible.
• I prefer capitalization and punctuation to follow the standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, rather than "title case".
• Links to potentially unreliable digitised copies and to booksellers may be removed.

This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 00:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)