Michael Nugent has a post about a joke posted on Facebook and illustrated with a sexist photo of a woman.

It’s an old joke that I first heard decades ago, although then it was about a drunk husband trying to avoid waking his wife. So why were the genders in this old joke reversed?

It might have been to enable the poster to illustrate the joke with a random photo, taken from an up-skirt angle, of an unconscious woman lying face down on the floor wearing a very short skirt.

The joke with the photo is a lot more popular than the joke without the photo. It also attracted a good many skeevy comments, which Nugent includes. A very few … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From Nick Cohen I learn that Labour has shafted the libel reform bill.

The results of the cross-party consensus were not as liberal as I and my friends in the free speech movement wanted. But politics is compromise. The parties agreed on legislation that would have stopped London being “a town called sue” – the global capital of libel tourism – and would have made the British a little bit freer to speak and write. That was good enough for me.

But it went wrong.

Earlier this month and at the last minute, Labour peers in the House of Lords, led by David Puttnam and Charles Falconer, a barrister who has rarely exerted himself to defend our freedoms, spatchcocked proposals

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Guest post by Landon from the Churchland on morality and science thread.

@alqpr: I share the concerns of those who object to the weight you seem to attach to the authority of so-called “experts” in moral philosophy rather than just looking at the quality of the arguments.

To quote Ophelia, “Those? Who?”

In any case, I cannot find a single instance of Ophelia (or myself, for that matter) leaning on the expertise of an individual as a surety that the conclusions are good, rather than as a heuristic device for finding better arguments. In short, do not mistake “Experts are more likely to have good arguments” for “this is a good argument (solely) because it was forwarded by an expert.” … Read the rest

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Guest post by Simon Davis

This is an update to my guest post from yesterday. You can read it here for background.

Earlier today I received an update from the Greek Atheist Union which is tracking this case very closely.

On January 25, several Greek MP’s from the opposition social democratic SYRIZA party submitted an official inquiry[1] to the Education Minister specifically citing this case, naming the school in the Glika Nera suburb, and even included the statement by Principal Kanias about “following the law of Christ”.

Last week on February 14th, there was an official response where the ministry[2] 1) states that all schools have been made aware of the exemption process and 2) reiterates that students exempted from … Read the rest

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Amanda Marcotte wrote a brilliant post on the peril of being a pioneer and looking down on everyone who isn’t a pioneer.

I’ve been watching with interest as Harriet Hall—a doctor, a skeptic and a blogger at Science-Based Medicine—flails around in her very determined but bizarre effort to denounce Women in Secularism (where I’ll be speaking, so come on out!) and all other efforts to improve women’s participation in atheist/skeptic movement stuff: It’s an amusing performance that veers between embracing deterministic arguments (she’s fond of the women-just-aren’t-as-into-that-rationality-thing-and-that’s-just-how-it-is-and-why-question-it argument) while insisting she is too a feminist, and, in the grand tradition of internet rabbit holes, getting into a long, digressive, but admittedly interesting debate about the meanings of words

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The Ottawa Citizen asks: is it ever OK to satirize religious leaders or beliefs?

Which seems like a silly question. Yes, of course it is.

But asking it gets people to say why they think it’s not ok, and it’s useful to know why people think that.

First up is a rabbi, and a radio rabbi at that – head of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa and host of Sunday night with  Rabbi Bulka on 580 CFRA.

…the fact that it is legally OK to make such comments does not translate into  it being OK on other levels.

The Pope was certainly no stranger to controversy, even within the church.  Arguing with his views on matters of principle is

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Just a little random morning item, just a warm up to start the day. There was a tweet about Women in Secularism 2 in my Twitter feed, with the hashtag – #wiscfi – so I clicked on the hashtag to see what else is new. So now you get to see what I see.

Only after all those did I see a genuine, that is a non-mocking non-sneering non-hostile tweet.

Interesting, isn’t it.… Read the rest

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Wo. Ben Radford decided to get back at that so and so PZ Myers once and for all, by putting on his Jonathan Swift hat and being FUNNeeee. He wrote a satire type piece – not on the CFI blog this time – about PZ using up all the straw in Minnesota. GEDDIT? Super funny, right?

A spokesman for the Minnesota Farmers Union is concerned about a shortage of straw and hay available for agricultural purposes around the state—and he is blaming PZ Myers for the problem.

Myers, a prolific blogger and professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, has been accused of hoarding hay and straw for use in constructing his straw man arguments and logical

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Guest post by Simon Davis

Greek public schools hold daily Orthodox prayer, schedule regular church visits, and mandate the taking of a “religious studies” class every year. The “religious studies” classes vary with each grade level but almost exclusively feature Greek Orthodox theology. The governing body overseeing the public schools is the Ministry of Education and Religion. This is the same ministry that pays the salaries of the country’s Orthodox priests.

However, Greek law also allows students to opt out. Due to data privacy regulations that forbid the government to record people’s religion, students cannot be compelled to state their religious affiliation to school officials under any circumstance. As a result, all that is required is to submit a simple … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Indiana Republican legislators decide that raping a pregnant woman with a transvaginal probe once isn’t a good enough way to punish her for seeking an abortion. Nope; gotta rape her twice.

What makes Indiana really stand out, though, is that this bill, SB 371, would require two ultrasounds—before and after the abortion. The bill would require physicians to “schedule a follow-up appointment” two weeks after RU-486 is administered. But that’s not all. Under penalty of criminal and/or civil charges and fines, physicians must “make a reasonable effort to ensure that the pregnant woman returns for the follow-up appointment.”

Because…what? They’re hoping the second probe will persuade the fetus to have a conversation with them in which the … Read the rest

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One piece of good news – Ishtiaq Ahmed has won the Karachi Literature Festival Best Non–fiction Book Prize of 2013. The book is The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed.

I’ve been following his work for years, as you can see by searching at ur-B&W. It seems a healthy sign that the Karachi Literature Festival is aware of his merit.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Harriet Hall has yet another post explaining why she’s right and everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong. She says this is the last post on the subject, and thank god for that. This final post is about the T shirt.

Like the other two, it’s not impressive. She’s astonishingly unwilling or unable to admit even that her intentions were not necessarily self-evident, let alone that she simply went out of her way to make a hostile public statement about some people who had already been on the receiving end of a lot of hostile public statements.

I didn’t want to talk about the T-shirt, but I’ve been repeatedly challenged to explain myself, and I’m afraid I can no longer

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Oddly enough, I find myself completely unsurprised to learn that childhood bullying is linked to a higher risk of psychological disorders in adulthood. It’s more the other way. I find myself wondering why anyone would think it wouldn’t be.

A significant study from Duke, out today, provides the best evidence we’ve had thus far that bullying in childhood is linked to a higher risk of psychological disorders in adulthood. The results came as a surprise to the research team. “I was a skeptic going into this,” lead author and Duke psychiatry professor William E. Copeland told me over the phone, about the claim that bullying does measurable long-term psychological harm. “To be honest, I was completely surprised by

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Timothy Dolan, the New York cardinal who gets angry when newspapers report on the Catholic church’s way with child-raping priests, has given a deposition about priestly child rape in the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese’s bankruptcy case.

Dolan headed the Milwaukee archdiocese from 2002 to 2009, before being named to the New York position. During his term here, archdiocesan officials sought to reach financial settlements with people who had been sexually abused by priests over the years, but those talks weren’t successful. In January 2011, Dolan’s Milwaukee successor, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, announced the archdiocese was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy because the financial claims against it “exceed our means.”

The church put a happier spin on it though.

Joseph Zwilling, communications director

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Uh oh. It’s not just Michael Shermer who is suffering the terrible, scorching aftermath of being witch-hunted and inquisitored for saying something sexist. The poison is spreading. PZ Chris Clarke quotes Jacquelyn Gill’s blog The Contemplative Mammoth. There was a sexist remark on a list-serv. Gill asks a question.

After the sexist comments were made, some did in fact call them out. This was immediately followed up with various responses that fell into two camps: 1) “Saying female graduate students are inferior isn’t sexist” (this has later morphed into “she was really just pointing out poor mentoring!”), and 2) “Calling someone out for a sexist statement on a list-serv is inappropriate.” Some have called for “tolerance” on

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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,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)