“Allah doesn’t like it,” said Abou Dardar of Ansar Dine. “We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area.”… Read the rest
If you want to give Ed Brayton a hand
Dec 23rd, 2012 10:33 am | By Ophelia BensonEd had open heart surgery a few days ago.
… Read the restThe good news is that I have health insurance, which I pay on a COBRA from my job with AINN (it runs out in six months and I’ll have to get my own insurance, which thankfully can’t be denied anymore because of the preexisting condition). But I’m still going to have some significant out-of-pocket expenses and loss of income during the recovery period (it’s going to be a couple months before I’m really back to normal). So you can certainly help out financially if you have the means to do so and it would be greatly appreciated. You can donate through Paypal (if neither of these work below, just go to
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You keep prodding and poking at them
Dec 22nd, 2012 4:07 pm | By Ophelia BensonOy, here we go again – the Daily Mail is reporting on Dawkins’s 2006 “fear of hell is worse than mild abuse” claim, all over again, as if it hadn’t just been beaten to death again only a month ago, and as if it hadn’t started on its career of being beaten to death way back in 2006.
… Read the restRaising your children as Roman Catholics is worse than child abuse, according to militant atheist Richard Dawkins.
In typically incendiary style, Professor Dawkins said the mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse carried out by priests.
He said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a
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Prince Charles pretends to be a medical expert again
Dec 22nd, 2012 12:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonHe talks the usual holistic bollocks, which the newspapers duly solemnly repeat for him.
The Prince Of Wales called today for a health service that recognises “the core human elements of mind, body and spirit” as well as treating disease.
Charles said health professionals should develop a “healing empathy” to “listen and honour what is being said and not said by patients” so they can find their own way towards better health.
Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, he set out a vision of healthcare that includes “the physical and social environment, education, agriculture and architecture”.
Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine? How does someone with no medical or scientific training of … Read the rest
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There are pink aisles and blue aisles
Dec 22nd, 2012 12:07 pm | By Ophelia BensonIf the New York Times notices…
… Read the restIMAGINE walking into the toy department and noticing several distinct aisles. In one, you find toys packaged in dark brown and black, which include the “Inner-City Street Corner” building set and a “Little Rapper” dress-up kit. In the next aisle, the toys are all in shades of brown and include farm-worker-themed play sets and a “Hotel Housekeeper” dress.
If toys were marketed solely according to racial and ethnic stereotypes, customers would be outraged, and rightfully so. Yet every day, people encounter toy departments that are rigidly segregated — not by race, but by gender. There are pink aisles, where toys revolve around beauty and domesticity, and blue aisles filled with toys related to
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One every three days
Dec 22nd, 2012 11:20 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Huffington Post puts numbers to what I was saying the other day about the cumulative Newtowns that don’t get the kind of attention that Newtown got.
… Read the restPolice reports about the final moments of Demetrius Cruz’s life include the kind of information that is at once difficult to fathom and yet somehow part of the ordinary but tragic tapestry of life in the U.S.
Cruz was riding in a car with his cousin on a Denver street Saturday when the driver of a white car started bumping, following and then chasing the teens’ car. Cruz called his aunt. He was scared. Someone in the white car fired several shots, striking and killing Cruz. He was just 15 years old. That
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Oh look there we all are
Dec 21st, 2012 5:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is entertaining. I was browsing through stuff trying to recall previous disagreements with Shermer (I know I’ve had some, though only unilateral ones) and I found a post of Jerry Coyne’s from more than three years ago. It’s about Shermer as accommodationist.
Amusingly, I start by arguing that Shermer can be read as describing a view rather than endorsing it. Funny, isn’t it! Since now I’m getting shouted at for confusing the two in the case of “it’s more of a guy thing.”
Then there’s the whole pragmatism question.
… Read the rest
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A good guy with a gun
Dec 21st, 2012 3:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnd there’s the eagerly-awaited press conference where Wayne LaPierre of the NRA explained why it’s desperately urgent that there be hundreds of millions more assault weapons in the hands of everyone.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s vice president, at a packed media event was interrupted twice by protesters demanding tougher gun controls.
No, that’s wrong. The thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, much more safely and in time, is not letting him get one in the first place.
… Read the restAngry and combative, Mr. LaPierre, who has led the N.R.A.’s operations for two decades, complained that the news media had unfairly
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Not a single adult male on the school premises
Dec 21st, 2012 3:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe National Review Online has figured out what went wrong at Sandy Hook school. It was too feminized! There weren’t any men around!! Feminist witch hunts!!!
Charlotte Allen makes the case:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers.
And men aren’t, because they’re … Read the rest
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The feminist witch hunt continues!
Dec 21st, 2012 10:59 am | By Ophelia BensonNow I know why I got such an unusual number of first-time commenters on my post about Shermer on subliminal influences yesterday, all of them wrong about what I’d said. It’s because Shermer did a Facebook post about it, in which he completely missed my point.
That’s partly my fault; I didn’t spell it out. As usual, I wrote for regular readers, who would get the implications. That saves a lot of tedium for the regular readers, but it can confuse others.
Nevertheless – I think Shermer’s response is a good deal nastier than it needed to be. (I note, again, that he didn’t email me to ask for clarification. I note, again, that he has never directly … Read the rest
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Pakistan: polio campaign will go on despite murders
Dec 21st, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe CIA may have used a vaccination programme (though not of polio) to find bin Laden, but polio still needs to be eradicated.… Read the rest
Delhi gangrapists yanked the victim’s intestines out
Dec 21st, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDoctors say only five percent of her intestines had been left inside her when she arrived at the medial facility on Sunday.… Read the rest
American Atheists goes after tax-exempt status
Dec 20th, 2012 5:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonThat’s probably why Dave Silverman is on Hannity tonight, which he is.
Anyway – yessssssssss. AA is suing the IRS.
… Read the restAmerican Atheists and two co-plaintiffs today filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky a lawsuit demanding that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stop giving preferential treatment to churches and religious organizations via the process of receiving non-profit tax-exempt status under the Internal Revue Code (IRC) procedures and definitions.
“American Atheists receives tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3),” said American Atheists President David Silverman, “but because the organization is not classified as religious it costs American Atheists, along with all other secular non-profits, significantly more money each year to keep that status. In this lawsuit,
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What the word “perfunctory” is for
Dec 20th, 2012 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe thing about the NPR think piece on theodicy that was really annoying was the foregone conclusion that it doesn’t make any difference.
I knew that was going to be the conclusion as soon as whoever it was introduced it. I knew what was going to be said, and I knew what wasn’t going to be said. I knew they would say the obvious – god; all-knowing and good; bad things; Newtown. I knew they would get clerics to knot their brows. And I knew that would be that. Next story, then the pause to thank the MacArthur foundation.
I knew there would be not a trace of a genuine recognition that there’s a disconnect here, and that it matters, … Read the rest
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Raef Badawi
Dec 20th, 2012 4:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother item we need to sign. I saw this one via Waleed Al-Husseini’s Facebook page.
… Read the restTo: Secretary-General of the UN
CC : – Amnesty International – Front Line Defenders – Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) – Human Rights Watch—————————————————————
Raef Badawi, a Saudi who is one of the establishers of the “Liberal Saudi Network”, which angered Ultra-orthodox clerics of Saudi-arabia could be beheaded soon for a claimed “apostasy” if no action is taken.
The news in Arabic about this issue is numerous, in English it has not got good attention till now, however, this piece of news has been published by AFP: “A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to
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Who has the deepest and most resonant voice?
Dec 20th, 2012 12:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonI found something interesting while browsing Michael Shermer’s columns in Scientific American. It’s about how subliminal influences affect our choices.
… Read the restWITH THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION looming on the horizon in November, consider these two crucial questions: Who looks more competent, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? Who has the deepest and most resonant voice? Maybe your answer is, “Who cares? I vote for candidates based on their policies and positions, not on how they look and sound!” If so, that very likely is your rational brain justifying an earlier choice that your emotional brain made based on these seemingly shallow criteria.
Before the election, I urge you to read Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules
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There’s even a word for reconciling this paradox
Dec 20th, 2012 10:45 am | By Ophelia BensonNPR’s All Things Considered did a deep thought piece on the problem of evil last night. All summed up in 3 minutes 48 seconds, including the reporter’s name check at the end.
When a human tragedy occurs on the scale of the Newtown shootings, clergy are invariably asked an ancient question: If God is all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent, why does he allow such misfortunes?
There’s even a word for reconciling this paradox: theodicy, or attempting to justify God’s goodness despite the existence of evil and suffering.
And thus the stage is set – it’s this recurring problem, so recurrent that there’s even a word for it, but it’s not really a problem, it’s just a paradox, so don’t worry, by … Read the rest
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Violence in metaphor
Dec 19th, 2012 3:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonCrooked Timber has a statement on Erik Loomis. Before the statement, there is the background.
… Read the restThis past Friday, in the wake of the tremendous grief and outrage millions of people felt over the Newtown mass shooting, Loomis tweeted the following:
I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.
Wayne LaPierre is the head of the National Rifle Association.
It seems obvious to us that when Loomis called for LaPierre’s head on a stick, he had in mind something like this from the Urban Dictionary:
A metaphor describing retaliation or punishment for another’s wrongdoing, or public outrage against an individual or group for the same reason.After the BP Oil
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Heed the warning of the Holy Father
Dec 19th, 2012 11:57 am | By Ophelia BensonLeftSidePositive pointed out yesterday that when Catholic archbishops prate of freedom of conscience they are bullshitting, because they don’t believe in or promote other people’s freedom of conscience to have nothing to do with Catholic rules.
This needs to be mentioned more often.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement on religious freedom last April. It is of course that kind of bullshit from beginning to end. They don’t mean religious freedom in general at all; they mean only “freedom” for them to coerce everyone else, including non-Catholics.
… Read the restWe are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of
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Devon and homeopathy calling it quits
Dec 19th, 2012 9:25 am | By Ophelia BensonThere’s one bit of cheery news – an NHS “homeopathic outreach clinic” in Devon is closing because of falling demand.
But why did such a clinic ever exist in the first place? Homeopathy isn’t a thing. The NHS doesn’t have outreach clinics that do bloodletting, does it? Or exorcisms? Or treatment for an excess of black bile?
… Read the restPatients who use the centre for treatments for conditions including rheumatism and allergies have reacted angrily to the news.
The trust said patients would be offered continued care in Bristol.
Greta Rankin, from Willand, is one of the patients against the closure.
She said: “They will lose all that personalised expertise. The approach of the homeopathic doctors is completely different. If I want
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