Well isn’t that sweet – the Russian Orthodox Church declares it has “forgiven” Pussy Riot. It forgave them all along. It wanted to see them severely punished, certainly, but hey, that doesn’t mean it didn’t “forgive” them.

Two top clerics in the Russian Orthodox Church said Saturday that it has forgiven the members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot who were convicted of hooliganism and sent to prison for briefly taking over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin.

Tikhon Shevkunov, who heads Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery and is widely believed to be the Russian president’s spiritual counselor, said on state television Saturday that his church forgave the singers right after their “punk prayer” in the

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Paul Fidalgo has a gut-wrenching open letter to Alexander Aan at Friendly Atheist. The petition failed, you know. I should have done more, maybe – I blogged about it twice, the second time with considerable urgency, and tweeted and re-tweeted often. I guess I figured blogging a third time would be counter-productive, like begging Mummy for ice cream once too often and being put on an ice cream fast for a month. But I was probably wrong.

Anyway – it failed, and failed pathetically.

In order to guarantee such a response — and it was a loose guarantee at that — we had to collect at least 25,000 signatures. Alexander, I promise you, I and my colleagues truly believed this

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Ron Lindsay has an interesting post on Jonathan Haidt and his insistence on the importance of “sanctity” as a foundation of morality, which is something I’ve been disputing for more than five years.

In arguing for the importance of sanctity, Haidt relies heavily on the reactions of individuals in other, non-Western cultures to conduct they consider degrading and violative of various taboos, such as a woman eating a meal with men. Haidt maintains, with some justification, that these reactions show that conventional morality in many cultures includes prohibitions based on sanctified custom and a sense or revulsion as opposed to any reasoning about the harm caused.

Yes, but he does it by pointing to the people who end … Read the rest

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Russia tells the world it has learned nothing from its authoritarian history and goes right on being authoritarian by sentencing Pussy Riot to two years in prison. For what? For staging a political protest in a church.

“The girls’ actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church’s rules,” Judge Marina Syrova told the court as she spent three hours reading the verdict while the women stood watching in handcuffs inside a glass courtroom cage.

Maybe all three of those claims are true, but they still shouldn’t be subject to punishment by the state. The state shouldn’t be telling people what is “sacrilegious” or whether or not they’re allowed to do things that are “sacrilegious.” The state shouldn’t be … Read the rest

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One of the 3000 creators of Curiosity Mars Rover, who spent seven years working on it, put together a video about that night. “Touchdown confirmed, we’re safe on Mars.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKogFDM3Zg

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Correction time. Al Arabiya says the “Saudis planning to build a city for women only” was a dud. Says it ain’t true.

Mind you, the real story isn’t very attractive either – the city will be for men and women but there will be lots of segregated facilities, so women will have more job opportunities.

Still separate but equal, in other words. Good that they don’t actually have to go live in WomenOnlyWorld in order to have a job, but bad that they have to work there, since separate is not equal.

It all started with a press release by MODON, the Saudi Industrial Property Authority. The title of this press release reads: “’MODON’ begins Planning and Development for

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Someone that calls itself @ikonographer and describes itself as

atheist. provacateur. all around asshole. (get it? ‘all a round’ asshole). Hey, fuck you, I’ve seen square ones. not pretty.

Someone I don’t know, by the way; someone I’m not aware of ever having had any interaction with, tweeted me

@opheliabenson i always figured you didn’t have scruples. hard to do if you’re not really human. don’t bother. blocked bitch.

People are strange. Strange strange strange strange.

(I know. This is “drama.” Yes, no doubt, but it’s also political. Because it’s political, we have to talk about it. Drama or no drama.)… Read the rest

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