A doctor tells us about Malala’s progress in a video.
She’s communicating freely, though she can’t talk until the tracheostomy tube is removed, probably in a few days.
She thanks everybody for the messages.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Janet Stemwedel has a sharp and to the point post on sexism among scientists, The point of calling out bad behavior.
There’s a blog discussion of a particular guy and his particular sexism, with lashings of sexism-denial Bingo. Free speech! Whassa big deal?! Give the guy a chance to grow!
It’s almost like people have something invested in denying the existence of gender bias among scientists, the phenomenon of a chilly climate in scientific professions, or even the possibility that Dario Maestripieri’s Facebook post was maybe not the first observable piece of sexism a working scientist put out there for the world to see.
The thing is, that denial is also the denial of the actual lived experience
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
She’s awake, and she has stood up. She’s making good progress. She might make a full recovery.
The hospital held a news conference and said the teenager is aware of her surroundings and making good progress.
Malala, CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reported on “CBS This Morning,” has some memory as to what happened, and remembers she was in Pakistan on a school bus one moment, and then, in the next, woke up in a foreign country. One of the first things she asked when she came out of her medically-induced coma Tuesday, D’Agata reported, was what country she was in.
…
At this early stage, in terms of neurological damage, doctors are say[ing] they hop[e] she will make
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
As many of you probably already know, Greta is in a situation where some financial support would relieve her of some extra worry that she doesn’t need. Passing on that message would help her too, including if you can’t help financially. Kind words also help. So do suggestions of stuff to watch or read while recuperating.
If you can’t or don’t want to donate money, but you still want to help, other helpful things would be:
Help spread the word about this fundraiser: on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, your own blog, any other reasonable means that you have access to.
Buy my book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and/or encourage other people
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I just had a lively few minutes of being spammed by Be Scofield on Twitter. He’s written another article, and wants people to read it. Telling me it was about Atheism+ and interfaith didn’t do the trick, so then he told me he’d mentioned me in it so I might want to read it. Transparent, but effective – ohhhhhhhhhh all right, I’ll go see how you’ve dissed me this time. Fortunately it took only a few seconds to read, and I just said meh (in effect). Disappointing, so he tried telling PZ that he needed to stop doing what he was doing for the good of the whatever. Then he said he wasn’t telling us what to do. Good fun. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
How useful, how apropos, how…right. An online article at the New Yorker on the wrongness of the idea that harassment is part of our glorious heritage of free speech.
It starts with Amanda Todd.
Todd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds the tossing off of a stray insult. In Clementi’s case, the magazine’s Ian Parker chalked the harasser’s motives up to “shiftiness and bad faith,” the kinds of things that criminal statutes can’t easily be invoked to cover. But with
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Almost as if in reply to the “liberal bullies” article, some US publishers say that words matter.
Despite promises to reform their textbooks, the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and incitement. Seven current and former heads of major publishing houses address the critical importance of words.
The critical importance of words? But aren’t we always being told that words don’t matter? That we “radfems” are just batshit crazy, making all this fuss about mere “werdz” because it’s only fists and sticks that make any difference.
As current and former heads of major American publishing houses, we know the value of words. They inform actions and shape the world views of all, especially children. We are
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The pro-misogyny (yes, misogyny) crowd is passing around an article on “liberal bullying.” Of course they are. The people who stalk a few bloggers day in and day out for a year and a half are “brave heroes” and freedom fighters; the people they stalk relentlessly are liberal bullies.
Still, there’s something to it, at least if the descriptions are accurate.
Increasingly, I’ve started recognizing this kind of behavior for what it is: privilege-checking as a form of internet sport. It’s a kind of trolling, with all the politics I agree with, but motivations and execution that turns my stomach. It’s well-intended (SO well-intended), but when the motivations seem to be less about opening dialogue about the issues, and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Here’s an interesting new development. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has expanded its definition of “misogyny” in response to Gillard’s speech on the subject last week.
The dictionary currently defines misogyny as “hatred of women”, but will now add a second definition to include “entrenched prejudice against women”, suggesting Abbott discriminated against women with his sexist views.
“The language community is using the word in a slightly different way,” dictionary editor Sue Butler told Reuters.
In her parliamentary speech, Gillard attacked Abbott, a conservative Catholic, for once suggesting men were better adapted to exercise authority, and for once saying that abortion was “the easy way out”. He also stood in front of anti-Gillard protesters with posters saying “ditch the witch”.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The philosophical primate recommended John Scalzi’s article on Redditt and Brutsch and “free speech” and creepy woman-hating shit, and sure enough.
If someone bleats to you about any of this being a “free speech” issue, you can safely mark them as either ignorant or pernicious — probably ignorant, as the understanding of what “free speech” means in a constitutional sense here in the US is, shall we say, highly constrained in the general population. Additionally and independently, the sort of person who who says “free speech” when they mean “I like doing creepy things to other people without their consent and you can’t stop me so fuck you ha ha ha ha” is pretty clearly a mouth-breathing asshole who
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A guest post by the philosophical primate. Originally a comment on Using anonymity to speak more freely.
Reddit’s terms of service do not in any way guarantee users’ privacy, and anyone who thinks their privacy is protected when using the internet is an idiot anyway. The only privacy that actually *matters* here is the invaded privacy of women and girls having their images exploited without their consent, which is morally reprehensible regardless of its legality. John Scalzi wrote something particularly clear and scathing on this topic yesterday: I encourage all to read it.
The key idea that deserves attention here is that protection of privacy — even anonymity — has a purpose: Whether legally or morally speaking, that purpose … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Damon Poeter at PC mag takes a more rational view than Redditt. (Probably 99% of human beings take a more rational view than Redditt.)
This isn’t very complicated. Posting pictures of people without their knowledge is both an invasion of their privacy and a form of outing them to the Internet. Doing so may be protected speech, but it doesn’t mean it’s good speech, or speech that shouldn’t be shamed from the hilltops as an exercise of one’s own free speech. What’s more, Adrian Chen himself didn’t “do anything illegal” by exposing Michael Brutsch (and yes, Redditors didn’t do anything illegal by blocking Gawker links, etc., etc. — the Ferris Wheel can go round and round, but at some
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Reddit speaks. Reddit says what it’s going to do about stuff like “creepshots.” Nothing, of course.
But Redditt doesn’t admit the nature of the stuff it’s going to do nothing about. Reddit bullshits. Reddit pretends the subject is “distasteful” stuff. That makes Redditt a lying dog.
Social news site Reddit will not censor “distasteful” sections of its website, its chief executive has said.
The site has recently been criticised over sections in which users shared images of, among other things, women photographed without their knowledge.
Yishan Wong told the site’s moderators legal content should not be removed, even if “we find it odious or if we personally condemn it”.
“We stand for free speech… we are not going to ban
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Hilary Mantel won the Booker for the sequel to Wolf Hall. I just got Wolf Hall out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been reading it, and…
I don’t like it. I not only don’t like it, I also think it’s not very good. I don’t think it’s terrible; I’ve seen far worse; but I don’t think it’s very good. I think it’s padded, the way so much “literary” fiction is padded. I’m increasingly allergic to padded literary fiction.
Plus she has this weird thing where you’re supposed to get that an oddly non-specific “he” in any particular passage is always Cromwell, except the trouble with that is that there are often other “he”s … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Heh heh heh. Jesus has a hermeneuticon. Well of course he does.
Find out what kind at Jesus and Mo.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Thugs with guns killed a volunteer who was handing out polio vaccine to children under 5 in Baluchistan.
Not much more to say really.
Except this.
Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.
There have been 30 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan this year according to the government, 22 of them in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Another day, another bad thing done.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes in Pakistan Today that it’s stupid to blame the Taliban while defending the ideology behind the Taliban.
Let’s stop carving out quasi religions, or defending ideologies that we’ve all grown up blindly following as the truth. Let’s call a spade a spade instead and realize that at the end of the day as much as you might have a cardiac arrest admitting it, the root cause of religious extremism is: religion – especially in its raw crude form, which again is the only ‘authentic’ form.
Every single religion has a violent streak. Every single one of them orders violence and killing in one form or the other for the ‘non-believers’. One can quote verses from every
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
There’s a dead rat outside my door. Ew. I’m hoping a crow will come along and take it away. Or a cat. Or a dog. Or a swat team. Or the National Guard. Or the mayor. Or a wolf. Or a raccoon. Or a bald eagle. Or that neighbor with the very loud voice.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The glories of life in Northern Mali now that the Islamists have taken over.
Women and girls no longer have to suffer the indignity of having naked hair and necks, because they are all required to wear the hijab.
Poor Toula for instance used to be able to swim in the Niger river, but happily for her she can no longer do that.
“These barbarians have refused everything. They don’t want to see girls bathing,” says Toula who, like other residents, asked her last name not be used.
The freedoms formerly enjoyed by Toula and other women in Gao, previously one of the region’s most cosmopolitan and lively towns, disappeared almost overnight.
Most noticeably, women are now forced to
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The chances are good that at best Malala will be less than she would have been if those shits hadn’t shot her in the head. Time talked to a brain injury expert.
When will they be able to tell what the long-term damage is?
Months to years. It’s six months to a year before you get a sense of what the long-term damage is. Her recovery and prognosis depend on what the initial neurological deficits are. Young people do much better, prognostically, for recovery. In the early stages there may be a lot of fairly dramatic improvements. The question becomes, What will be the long-term deficits, compared to her baseline? That’s often a much more difficult question that takes time.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
