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Tidying up

Mar 15th, 2012 10:03 am | By

A few last notes on QED.

I was doing talk-prep at the start of the morning Saturday so I missed most of a talk on the European werewolf, but I did make it to excellent talks by Steve Jones and David Aaronovitch. (I never met either of them, alas. This event was a big success, so there were a lot of people, so it was impossible to meet everyone.) In the afternoon Richard Saunders did a great talk about being a tv skeptic and how to fake the power balance bracelet demonstration. (It’s simple. First you exert pressure on the subject in a way guaranteed to tip her over, then when she’s put on the bracelet you exert pressure on … Read the rest

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Rape victim forced to marry her rapist, kills herself *

Mar 15th, 2012 | Filed by

Amina Filali, 16, swallowed rat poison after being severely beaten by her rapist “husband.”… Read the rest



US Solicitor General supports appeal of cross ruling *

Mar 15th, 2012 | Filed by

Obama admin sides with theocrats of Liberty Institute, making Supreme Court hearing more likely. What the hell?… Read the rest



Currently in the news

Mar 15th, 2012 7:42 am | By

In Morocco on Saturday, a girl of 16 killed herself by swallowing rat poison. She was raped when she was 15, and then forced to marry her rapist.

Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the “kidnapper” of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honor of the woman’s family.

“Amina, 16, was triply violated, by her rapist, by tradition and by Article 475 of the Moroccan law,” tweeted activist Abadila Maaelaynine.

Abdelaziz Nouaydi, who runs the Adala Assocation for legal reform, said a judge can recommend marriage only in the case of agreement by

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Lord Justice Laws

Mar 14th, 2012 4:40 pm | By

Geoff Whelan at QED recommended to me Lord Justice Laws’s judgement in McFarlane v Relate Avon Limited. It’s a joy to read, he said, so I read it. It is.

The case is the guy who was dismissed for refusing to provide sex counselling to gay couples even though that was part of his job. He claimed religious discrimination. George Carey, the retired archbishop of Canterbury who now writes for the Daily Mail, gave a witness statement.

10. The description of religious faith in relation to sexual ethics as ‘discriminatory’ is crude; and illuminates a lack of sensitivity to religious belief. The Christian message of ‘love’ does not demean or disparage any individual (regardless of sexual orientation); the

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More strident shrill atheism

Mar 14th, 2012 3:34 pm | By

A high school in Iowa got a Christian rock band to come to the school to tell the students some good stuff, but it didn’t work out as well as the school expected. (Secularism? What secularism? We don’t do no stinkin’ secularism round here.)

Everyone anticipated the message from Junkyard Prophet, a traveling band  based in Minnesota, to be about bullying and making good choices. Instead,  junior and senior high students at Dunkerton High School and faculty members  said they were assaulted by the group’s extreme opinions on homosexuality and  images of aborted fetuses.

“They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their  wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, a parent 

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Who wrote this crap?

Mar 14th, 2012 11:01 am | By

An attendee at QED, Al Johnston, posted a pic of me doing my talk on my Facebook page today. It’s quite amusing and characteristic, so with his permission I made it my profile pic. (Note that it’s copyright, so don’t copy it anywhere without asking him – not that you’d want to, but you know.)

(C)2012 Al Johnston, all rights reserved

Anyway – that’s very me.… Read the rest

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Keep your little pulses

Mar 14th, 2012 10:45 am | By

Thestupiditburns.

Melvyn Bragg?! I liked Melvyn Bragg; I think In Our Time is a great thing and I wish we had anything nearly as good in the US. But this is a nasty, ragey, wrong, silly outburst.

What he says about reason is ridiculous, for a start. He begins with a superfluous and venomous announcement that Hume is a much better philosopher than Dawkins, then goes on to argue from authority that Hume said so ha. He also misunderstands what Hume said (which must have been calculated; he’s bound to know better).

Here’s my transcript of that part:

He uses reason to destroy Christianity, and says that reason says there is no all-good god – that’s fine. Reason says there

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Definitely disgusting Bren

Mar 14th, 2012 9:18 am | By

More showoffy pseudo-knowing ”contrarianism” from Brendan O’Neill. This time it’s the daring dangerous idea that libbruls don’t give a shit about gay marriage itself, they just like having a shibboleth to filter out the unhip masses.

The speed and ease with which gay marriage has gone from being a tiny minority concern to become the No 1 battle in the modern culture wars has been truly remarkable – and revealing.

What it suggests is that gay marriage is more a tool of the elite than it is a demand of the demos. The thing motoring the gay-marriage campaign, its political engine, is not any longstanding desire among homosexuals to get married or an active, passionate demand from below

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Jesus and Mo on redefining the pub *

Mar 14th, 2012 | Filed by

Pubs are for beer. Cafés are for coffee. You can’t just redefine things!!1… Read the rest



Brendan O’Neill looks down from a very great height, again *

Mar 14th, 2012 | Filed by

“Supporting gay marriage has become a kind of shorthand way of indicating one’s superiority over the hordes, particularly those of a religious or redneck persuasion.”… Read the rest



Kenan Malik on tolerance as obedience *

Mar 14th, 2012 | Filed by

Tolerance is all too often now about the constraining of speech in the name of promoting a plural society.… Read the rest



Does truth matter?

Mar 13th, 2012 3:33 pm | By

Another chapter of Heathen’s Progress from Julian. The gist is that atheism is currently overcompensating for the stupid idea that atheism is nihilism and despair, by claiming that atheism is chocolates and a stipulated number of either raisins or virgins, and that this is a bad move because life can be shit and godlessness can’t help much with that.

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life? Doesn’t the appropriate response to 4,000

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Is she doing her job in a satisfactory fashion?

Mar 13th, 2012 12:06 pm | By

Jerry Coyne has an interesting post about Jennifer Wiseman, who heads the  “Dialogue on Science, Religion, and Ethics” (DoSER) program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific organization in the world.

I was recently informed (by someone likely to know) that the top people at AAAS are all Christians. I didn’t realize this – or possibly I once did and forgot it.

As I’ve posted before, DoSER is sponsored by not only the AAAS, but by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Smithsonian Institution. These are government organizations, so some of your tax dollars may be going to support a brand of theology. And, of course, the whole

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Secondary

Mar 13th, 2012 10:34 am | By

More about QED later, but meanwhile, something I missed while packing – Afghanistan’s Ulema Council issued a statement outlining “the rights and duties of women under Islam” and Karzai backed it. Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch reports:

The statement said some good things. It prohibited a traditional practice of giving a girl to another family to resolve a dispute (“baad”). It spoke against forced marriage. It confirmed women’s rights to inherit and own property.

On women’s duties, however, the statement took a turn for the worse: Women should not travel without a male chaperone. Women should not mix with men while studying, or working, or in public. Women must wear the Islamic hijab. Women are secondary to men.
The… Read the rest

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Karzai publishes clerical statement that women are inferior *

Mar 13th, 2012 | Filed by

Women  are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education, and must always  have a male guardian when they travel, says the Ulema council.… Read the rest



An atheist at Alcoholics Anonymous *

Mar 13th, 2012 | Filed by

“God is not looking after me and the Cosmos does not care if I relapse on cheap vodka or not.”… Read the rest



Nope, still too strident

Mar 13th, 2012 8:07 am | By

Now to tell you all about it. I realize the one place-holding “post” I did on the subject was just that, a place-holder. There was no need for the slightly acid comment telling me so.

I think I’ll do it in parts, and not necessarily in chronological order. So I think I’ll start with Sunday, with late Sunday morning. I did a panel with Maryam and D. J. Grothe, moderated (and also participated in by [yes you can end a clause with not one but two prepositions]) Paula Kirby. It was both fun and interesting. When it was over people drifted up to the table to talk, and among them was my good friend whom I had never met, Author … Read the rest

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Get me, I have a hand

Mar 13th, 2012 5:38 am | By

I’m back. I had a sensational time. Here’s a photo I saw via Twitter of me telling everyone what’s what.

Update: the photo is Adam Lappin’s; he has a whole post on the talk, along with posts on many other QED talks. (No one person can have posts on all of them because there were usually two going on at once.)

It occurs to me that it may not be strictly necessary to wear one’s badge while giving a talk. Typical. One minute I forget to take it with me and have to go back to 1224 to get it, the next minute I’m wearing it in the shower. You just can’t get it right, can you Basil.

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Philosophers apologize for discussing ethics *

Mar 13th, 2012 | Filed by

It’s a mistake to apologize for discussing ethics.… Read the rest