Michael Kimmel and Christina Hoff Sommers did a dialogue at the Huffington Post. It didn’t create a new bridge between feminists and Christina Hoff Sommers.

Sommers: Now I have a question for you, Michael. In the past, you seem to have sided with a group of gender scholars who think we should address the boy problem by raising boys to be more like girls.  Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but does your praise for my New York Times op-ed indicate a shift in your own thinking?

Ouch; that’s a Radfordesque question. “When did you stop dressing your son in frilly skirts?”

Kimmel: Not at all.  I’m not interested in raising boys to be more like girls any more

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There’s one very odd new theme in the comments on Hall’s belligerent post yesterday. The theme is that her critics are being ageist and picking on her because she’s not young. (Last week she called herself a “tough old hen” as opposed to a chick, which as another tough old hen I quite like.)

yankee skeptic for instance.

The odd part is the emphasis on “You screwed up OLD LADY!” and how we are marginalized and not considered “with it” enough to play a part.  Yet this is truly part of what feminism is supposed to be fighting, women being marginalized after they are over 30.  When did, respecting people, explaining nicely (rather than DEMANDING an apology because hey,

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Yikes, Ben Radford has yet another meta-post saying how everyone was wrong about his first post, yet again drastically misrepresenting his own post in the process. This is getting beyond embarrassing – meta-embarrassing.

Last week I wrote what I thought was a fairly straightforward piece titled “Over It.” It was an introduction to a poem, and then a poem. It was short, in three parts, and about an anti-rape poem by Eve Ensler, and her One Billion Rising campaign to encourage women to dance as a way to end rape.

Dude. That’s not true. That’s not all it was about. That’s far from all it was about.

Second para.

In the first part I explicitly stated that I agreed

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Exciting goings on at a Students’ Union affili­ated society workshop at the University of Manchester: a speaker said that homosexuals would be executed in an ideal Islamic state. Whee! What a lot I missed out on by going to university so many decades ago.

1st year Middle Eastern studies stu­dent Colin Cortbus attended a public meeting at the Students’ Union last Wednesday 13th February organised by Global Aspi­rations and asked the chairperson of the meeting whether “in the Islamic society in which you strive for,” they would “feel comfortable, personally and morally, to kill a gay man.”

She responded, “Absolutely,” and added later that homosexuality was an “atrocity, because it goes against what God says.”

Mr Cortbus sent an undercover

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The Taoiseach delivered a state apology to the survivor of the Magdalene laundries this evening.

Enda Kenny broke into tears as he made an historic and emotionally-charged state apology to survivors of the Magdalene laundries.

The Taoiseach received a standing ovation in parliament after he described the Catholic-run workhouses as the “nation’s shame” and accepted the state’s direct involvement.

“I, as Taoiseach, on behalf of the state, the Government and our citizens deeply regret and apologise unreservedly to all those women for the hurt that was done to them, and for any stigma they suffered, as a result of the time they spent in a Magdalene Laundry,” Mr Kenny said.

Twenty women who were locked up in one of

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As I mentioned at some point, I didn’t like Hilary Mantel’s two Thomas Cromwell novels, as much of them as I read – I began skipping and skimming quite soon with both. But as so often, I do like her essayistic writing, at least as manifested in this talk published by the London Review of Books. It’s sharp, funny, vivid, specific, insightful, witty – it’s just dang good.

It’s about royal bodies, especially those of royal women. Marie Antoinette, Diana, Our Own Dear Queen, Anne Boleyn, Our Own Dear Kate.

And then the queen passed close to me and I stared at her. I am ashamed now to say it but I passed my eyes over her as a cannibal

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Eric MacDonald.

Welcome, Eric! We’re overjoyed to have you here.… Read the rest

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Ben Radford is playing silly buggers again. Check out the title of his new post.

‘Over It’ Follow-Up: Why Would Anyone Criticize an Anti-Rape Poem?

He cites PZ’s post.

In response, PZ Myers wrote a blog titled, “You don’t get to be ‘over’ rape,” telling me (and, by extension, Eve Ensler) that “you don’t get to be ‘over’ rape.” I may disagree with Ensler’s statistics and methods (while agreeing with her goals), but I would never question her motivations, nor tell Ensler that she doesn’t “get to be ‘over rape’.” I am “over rape” in exactly the same way Ensler is “over rape.”

Why PZ Myers (or anyone else) would presume to criticize an anti-rape poem (of all things)

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I find that there’s a right I can have that I didn’t even know I could have. There’s a right to not see gay people. I did not ever know that. A conservative talk show host called Janet Mefferd says there is such a right.

Conservative talk show host Janet Mefferd this week waded into the controversy about an Indiana high school where a group of students wanted to organize a separate prom that would specifically prevent gay and lesbian students from attending.

After lamenting that “public schools are morally bankrupt,” Mefferd asserted that proms which allow all students — gay or straight — to attend actually violate the rights of Christian students who disapprove of homosexuality.

What right

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Dagnabbit. Ben Goldacre is in town, and doing a talk at Town Hall tonight, but I didn’t know about it and now I can’t rearrange things so that I can go. Drat!

Ben Goldacre’s earlier bestseller Bad Science hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science; now Goldacre puts the multibillion-dollar global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope—and reveals a terrifying mess. Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions, says the author of Bad Pharma, but instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data are simply buried—and all of this is perfectly legal. It’s a world

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Massimo has responded to Shermer’s post responding to him, by annotating the post.

…I begin with a Principle of Moral Good: Always act with someone else’s moral good in mind, and never act in a way that leads to someone else’s moral loss…

Well, that sounds good (and mighty close to Kant’s famous categorical imperative), except for the significant degree of begging the question hidden in Michael’s principle (but not in Kant’s). What is a moral good? Reading the principle as it stands I would have pretty much no idea of how to actually act, or whether my acting would lead to someone else’s moral good or loss.

Shermer in italics, Pigliucci below. That’s basically the problem I had, … Read the rest

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The first few pages of Patricia Churchland’s Braintrust make an excellent antidote to Shermer’s amateurish and arrogant attempt to set everyone straight about morality. (It’s rude to call it amateurish, but perhaps not as rude as it would be if I were not an amateur myself. I am an amateur, and that’s why I want to get moral philosophy from philosophers rather than non-philosophers, and why I wouldn’t myself try to set everyone straight about morality.)

Churchland starts with her own amateur thinking about morality when she was in school and confronted with the unfairness of medieval trial by ordeal. Her history teacher tried to put the practice in context, to discourage the too-easy sense of moral superiority, but … Read the rest

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Taslima gives a howl of rage and grief about Bangladesh and the murder of Ahmed Rahjib.

Rajib Haider Shuvo, a 26 years old  architect and talented young atheist blogger was brutally killed by the Islamists last night. He  criticized Islam the way I used to  criticize  Islam 26 years ago when I was living in Bangladesh.  He wrote  blogs under the pen name thaba baba. I wrote the same things in late  80′s using my real name. Thaba baba was killed. I survived but I was forced to leave Bangladesh 20 years ago. I would surely get killed like  Rajib if I lived in that country. I was on the top of the  hit list made by Islamic terrorists.

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Michael Shermer is writing a book on science and morality, and he’s written a preview or summary or overture at Massimo Pigliucci’s blog.

It looks as if he’s just doing Sam Harris’s project all over again, which seems superfluous, but who knows. A sample from the preview or summary:

Given that moral principles must be founded on something natural instead of supernatural, and that science is the best tool we have devised for understanding the natural world, applying evolutionary theory to not only the origins of morality but to its ultimate foundation as well, it seems to me that the individual is a reasonable starting point because, (1) the individual is the primary target of natural selection in

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A long, horrific article about attacks on “witches” in Papua New Guinea.

One excerpt. Trigger warning.

Angela was naked, staked-out, spread-eagled on a rough frame before them, a blindfold tied over her eyes, a fire burning in a nearby drum. Being unable to see can only have inflated her terror, her sense of powerlessness and the menace around her; breathing the smoke and feeling the heat of the fire where the irons being used to burn her were warmed until they glowed. Would she be cooked, on that fire? She must have known it had happened to others before — and would soon infamously happen again, the pictures finding their way around the world.

The photographs witnesses took

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Another dip into the archives. This time our voyage in Time’s charabanc takes us to November 2010. The post was Tragic end of a sock puppet.

A sock puppet goes to jail.

A lawyer was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail after being convicted of an ultramodern crime that was all about antiquity: using online aliases to harass people in an academic debate about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Oh gosh, who would use online aliases to harass people in an academic debate? I never heard of such a thing.

Prosecutors said Golb crossed the line between discourse and crime by using fake e-mail accounts and writing blog posts under assumed names to discredit detractors of his father, a scholar.

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