The new fossils, from two separate locations, are about 10 million years older than Archaeopteryx. … Read the rest
All entries by this author
Girl’s Refusal to Be Child Bride Inspires India
Sep 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe refused to be married off and stayed in school instead; now other girls in the village are doing the same.… Read the rest
Simon Schama on Ahmadinejad
Sep 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNot the least repellent aspect of his reiteration that the Holocaust was a lie, was the muffled response.… Read the rest
Dwight Furrow on ‘Values Voters’
Sep 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey claim to adhere to a culture of life – except for Armageddon of course.… Read the rest
Global Warming and Anti-science
Sep 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonModern anti-science is most skilfully executed by a small subset of lobbyists and PR agencies. … Read the rest
Death Threats for Public Eating During Ramadan
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMoroccan campaigning to change law against eating in public during Ramadan says he got 100 death threats.… Read the rest
Christian Legal Centre Making Trouble
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe CLC claims that Lord Phillips allowed his personal views to colour his judgement in the Purdy case.… Read the rest
Mo Has Been Reading Tariq Ramadan
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe executes the steps gracefully.… Read the rest
Iran: Mannequins Must Wear Hijab
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNext stop, the twilight zone.… Read the rest
UN Says ‘Witch’ Killings Are on the Rise
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMurder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading globally.… Read the rest
Tariq Ramadan dances a minuet
Sep 24th, 2009 11:41 am | By Ophelia BensonTariq Ramadan explains things.
My position on homosexuality is quite clear…Islam, as Christianity, as Judaism, as even the Dalai Lama…[are] not accepting of homosexuality, saying that this is forbidden according to the principles of our religion…My position, with homosexuals, is to say, “We don’t agree with what you are doing, but we respect who you are,” which I think is the only true liberal position that you can have.
Why no, actually, that’s not the only true liberal position you can have. On the contrary. The true liberal position would be to look carefully at those ‘principles of our religion’ and ask whether they are good principles or not, in secular, human, this-world terms. The true liberal position would … Read the rest
Who needs to see objects that far away?!
Sep 23rd, 2009 5:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonOkay, so life is shit for women in Poland.
When Alicja Tysiac became pregnant in February 2000, three eye specialists told her having another baby could put her eyesight at serious risk. But neither the specialists nor her GP would authorise an abortion. After giving birth later that year, Ms Tysiac suffered a retinal haemorrhage and feared she [might] go blind. She now wears glasses with thick powerful lenses but she cannot see objects more than a metre and a half (5ft) away.
Yeah, so? If she didn’t want to go blind she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant! Not in Poland anyway.… Read the rest
Habits
Sep 23rd, 2009 5:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonSusan Haack makes a very interesting point in ‘Irreconcilable Differences? The Troubled Marriage of Science and Law. She makes many such points, but one in particular grabbed my attention.
… Read the restBecause of its adversarial character, the legal system tends to draw in as
witnesses scientists who are in a sense marginal – more willing than most of their
colleagues to give an opinion on the basis of less-than-overwhelming evidence;
moreover, the more often he serves as an expert witness, the more unbudgeably
confident a scientist may become in his opinion. An attorney obligated to make
the best possible case for his client will have an incentive to call on those
scientists who are ready to accept an answer to some
Doctors Told Her She Would Lose Her Eyesight
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe sought an abortion, but she was refused, and a Catholic magazine compared her to a child killer.… Read the rest
BBC Looks Into Far-right Extremism
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonQuotes Edmund Standing, author of The BNP and The Online Fascist Network. … Read the rest
Loser Condemns UNESCO Vote
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonZionists, north and south, politicized, Jewish pressure, newspapers.… Read the rest
Irina Bokova Voted New Head of UNESCO
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFaruq Hosni not.… Read the rest
Amnesty’s Sierra Leone Blog
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Irene asked the crowd to raise their hands if they had lost a woman to maternal mortality and there was a sea of hands.’… Read the rest
Ahmedinejad, Lion of Islam, Gives a Squeak
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe scolded Bush over Guantanamo, but Iran’s prisons are not a beacon of justice.… Read the rest
Education Based Only on Reason is Incomplete
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSays the archbishop. ‘When theologians said that God was rational, they meant that he was consistent with himself.’… Read the rest