Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear – there’s an excerpt from Chris Stedman’s much-dreaded new memoir Faitheist at Salon, and it’s as maddening as I’d expected, if not more so.

The excerpt is, of course, on the ever-popular subject of The Awfulness of atheists. That’s not what’s so skin-crawling about it though. What I really, really can’t stand is his shameless style of self-presentation – his unbearable self-regard and self-display. It’s worse because it’s dressed up as its own opposite – it’s all about how humble and shy he is. I want to say that doesn’t work, but sadly I know from experience that it will work all too well: lots of people will take him as … Read the rest

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A familiar problem. A 15-year-old girl sends an entry to the Everyday Sexism project; it’s about the way looks trump everything else for girls (and, as she’ll find out, for women).

I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing…successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won’t be. What if my boobs don’t grow? What if I don’t have the perfect body? What if my hips don’t widen and give me a little waist? If none of

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The student union at Reading University has informed the RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society that it has come to the conclusion that the Society acted in breach of the behavioural policy. Its decision is that the Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society should be referred to a disciplinary panel.

You remember what this is about, I trust. The RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society had a table at the student fair; on the table it had a pineapple with the label “Mohammed.” Some students said it was offensive. The Society members were ejected from the fair.… Read the rest

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The BBC’s Panorama was just on, and Twitter lit up like a plane with a wing falling off. It was about Jimmy Savile and how the Beeb looked the other way for a few decades.

I haven’t seen the episode, but I saw a lot of tweets about it, and then the hashtag, which led to some very pungent comments. I gather the gist of it is, the Beeb couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) do anything about it, because the sources were

just the women.

Ah.… Read the rest

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After all these somber and/or infuriating items, a funny one. Justin Vacula on Facebook.

A lengthy post I authored months ago concerning what certain Freethought Bloggers are calling ‘stalking’ and ‘cyberstalking’ is below. This is especially relevant considering Ophelia Benson’s recent post “It’s all trolling, when you come right down to it” in which she claims that the “pro-misogyny crowd” stalks bloggers “day in and day out.”

TL;DR – criticism, even when it is excessive, isn’t stalking or cyberstalking. Public figures who make their controversial opinions known to the world will get responses. Reductio ad absurdum: Major cable news networks must be stalkers for their coverage of Obama and Romney.

Well thank you! That is very flattering. I’m as important … Read the rest

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The New Yorker has an article on billionaires who’ve convinced themselves they’re “victimized” by Obama.

A hedge-fund billionaire called Leon Cooperman wrote an open letter to Obama which has been “widely circulated in the business community.”

Evident throughout the letter is a sense of victimization prevalent among so  many of America’s wealthiest people. In an extreme version of this, the rich  feel that they have become the new, vilified underclass. T. J. Rodgers, a  libertarian and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has taken to comparing Barack  Obama’s treatment of the rich to the oppression of ethnic minorities—an  approach, he says, that the President, as an African-American, should be  particularly sensitive to. Clifford S. Asness, the founding partner of the hedge 

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As you probably know already, Paul Kurtz is gone.

The Center for Inquiry marks with great sadness the passing of Paul Kurtz, founder and longtime chair of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry, who died at the age of 86. A philosopher, activist, and author, Kurtz was for a half-century among the most significant and impactful figures in the humanist and skeptic movements.

“Impactful”…ah well, I won’t do a fogeyism about it. Anyway yes, he was.

Kurtz’s legacy includes the above organizations, the creation of the skeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, independent publisher Prometheus Books, and a library of books and scholarly articles

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Hey kids! Got dreams of being a scientist? Well don’t do it – because if you do, you risk being thrown in prison for six years, barred from public employment for life, and liable for court costs and damages, all because you failed to say exactly when an earthquake was going to happen.

Yes really.

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L’Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

…

The seven – all members of the National

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Tahrir Square. Another live broadcast, another reporter attacked and groped by a mob. The French journalist Sonia Dridi was the target this time.

A mob of about 30 men has turned “crazy” and groped and robbed a French  television journalist near Tahrir Square in Cairo, in the latest case of  violence against women at the epicentre of Egypt’s protests.

She’s ok now, but it was frightening and nasty.

Ashraf Khalil, a colleague who works with France 24′s English language service,  said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live  reports on a side street off Tahrir.

…

Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant called Hardee’s, which  had a metal door,

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I hadn’t heard of Backbone Zone before. Ant Allan informed me via tumblr. They have some great posters.

You can order them at their site.

I like this one, too:

I like it because I detest the “shame men by calling them girls” trope. It makes me feel murderous.

Another good one (they’re all good):

 … Read the rest

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About Polk County and the 14-year-old girl charged with first degree murder of her newborn…and about Amanda Todd, and many other people and incidents, and a way of thinking.

From the Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 13. The scene is a Testifying session during the re-education phase of Gilead.

It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it’s safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it’s Janine, it’s probably more or less true.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up

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