The conference finished yesterday. In the meantime, during the night between Saturday and Sunday, the cold passed on to me by the two lavishly sneezing coughing guys who sat next to me on the plane made itself known; I felt crappy all of yesterday and coughed enough for ten people. Oddly, though, it’s much better today. (But thanks, guys on the plane. Thanks a lot. Thanks for never properly covering your coughs and sneezes during the ten hours of that flight. Thanks for never giving a thought to the people trapped an inch away from you for ten hours. You’re real pigs, both of you.)

[pause to cough]

For dessert last night we went to a comedy bar for a … Read the rest

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I was on a panel this morning, so now that’s over. I thought it was terrific (leaving my part aside). Clare Daly TD is someone you want on your side and part of government! She’s a pistol.… Read the rest

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I’m here.

Took a quick walk through Merrion Square, then Stephen’s Green. Two swans with eight cygnets in the latter.

Jane Donnelly picked up Maryam and me at the airport. Good times.… Read the rest

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I’m at Schiphol. I survived! Mind you I expect to get very ill, because the guys on each side of me coughed and sneezed all over me for 10 hours.

I like the airbus though. There’s a nice little passage in the back where if things are quiet you can stand and exercise and stretch. I did that twice.… Read the rest

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In this matriarchal culture where jokes about rape are simply forbidden…

Brave heroes each…and every one of you. [salutes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjWd9eJbIGI

… Read the rest

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I leave for the airport in under three hours. I keep vaguely thinking I should be doing preparing things, but they’re mostly done really. I’m neurotic about travel.

It’s raining here. I keep thinking I should take a hoody because rain, but I don’t want to. I’m neurotic about packing.

It will get quiet here while I’m on the road, because I won’t have time (or Wifi) to post much. You guys should make this a nice coffee house thread to discuss all the things, so that you don’t get lonely for each other.

You could discuss

• travel
• places you’ve never been to that you want to be to
• how to endure ten hours on a plane in an inside

… Read the rest

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Sensibly, a Lothian (Scotland) NHS board decided to stop funding homeopathy yesterday.

Homeopaths are fighting back.

The British Homeopathic Association (BHA), which claimed the controversial 
alternative medicine had been the victim of a “hate campaign”, today refused to rule out a challenge in the courts.

The organisation believes the removal of clinics, used by around 500 people a year in the region, constitutes a “major service change” and is therefore a decision for the Scottish Government, rather than NHS Lothian.

However, other groups expressed delight that the service had been cut, calling the decision a victory for “evidence over superstition”, and said the BHA should “shut up”.

Shut up and listen? Or just shut up.

I kid, I kid.

The

… Read the rest

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A guest post by Torcant Torcant

Warning: it’s a horror.

Dilan (18) was married 20 days ago to her husband Selcuk Dogan, in Dogubeyazit at Agri province in Turkey. She was actually her husbands maternal aunts daughter. Dilan and Selcuk were engaged a year ago after an arrangement made by their families. Dilan was in love with someone else, but nevertheless she couldn’t resist her family and accepted the engagement. During the period she was engaged she made clear that she didn’t love and want her arranged husband and later she openly confessed to Selcuk that she was in love with someone else. But who cares? Did she have a vagina? Yes! She was forced to marry. After the marriage,… Read the rest

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Wired has a nice amusing interview with Richard Dawkins. They asked him about comment moderation at RDF the website.

I’m afraid the internet is filled with people using really very intemperate language. I’m in favour of ridicule, but not abuse and I think we do a pretty good job on RichardDawkins.net of controlling the abuse.
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Part of the problem all over the internet is anonymity. Because people are anonymous they would say things to other people that they would never dream of saying to their face and would never dream of saying if they had to sign their own name to it. But if

… Read the rest

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A court in Burma found two Muslim women guilty of setting off a recent outbreak of sectarian violence, which seems a tiny bit suspect given that it’s usually Muslims who are the victims of sectarian violence in Burma.

Myint Thein of the pro-government National Unity Party, who attended their trial, said Wednesday that the two women in the central township of Okkan were convicted of “insulting religion.” Both were sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor.

Sigh. Has it all, doesn’t it. Minority religion. Women. “Insulting religion.” Two years. Hard labor.

Although the vast majority of victims of the Buddhist-Muslim violence in the past year have been Muslims, most of those convicted of serious offenses in the

… Read the rest

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Even though the Republicans in the Texas Senate tried their best to cheat, the bill still failed.

The final outcome took several hours to sort out.

Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.

At 3 a.m., Dewhurst emerged from the meeting still insisting the 19-10 vote was in time, but said, “with all the ruckus and noise going on, I couldn’t sign the bill” and declared it dead.

Still insisting … Read the rest

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Yeah. It’s in the Washington Post, right nearby, so it must be true.

The Supreme Court Wednesday struck down as unconstitutional the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married in the states where they reside.

The decision was 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court’s liberals to form the majority. It did not address the question of whether there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriages.

But the court said it violated equal protection to provide benefits to heterosexual couples while denying them to gay couples in the 12 states plus the District of Columbia where same-sex couples may marry.

Now this is good:

“DOMA instructs

… Read the rest

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David Robert Grimes takes a beady-eyed look at the way theocrats distort scientific research to support their opposition to things.

The abortion debate provides numerous examples of such contrivances. In this paper recently, Breda O’Brien  brandished a study by Ferguson et al (2013) and claimed abortion damages women. However, her championing of this study is textbook cherry-picking that fails to withstand even a cursory examination.

The scientific consensus is that abortion does not damage mental health, a conclusion supported by volumes of meticulous research and recently reiterated in high-quality major reviews by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2011) and Johns Hopkins University (2008). Ferguson himself has expressed dismay at pro-life groups using this study, calling this use “misleading”.

More dubious

… Read the rest

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I’m still thinking about dissonance theory and self-justification and how it relates to quarrels and feuds and rifts.

I’m wondering if it does me any good at all (in terms of avoiding some of the cognitive dissonance and thus some of the self-justification) that I actually don’t think of myself as an easy person to get along with. I’m well aware that I can be irritable, rude, and sometimes worse. It doesn’t rock my view of myself to realize that I’ve been obnoxious.

Tavris and Aronson address that, on page 199 of Mistakes Were Made, but they do it in an odd way.

Who do you imagine would be most likely to blame the victim: perpetrators who think highly

… Read the rest

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She started this morning.

At 11:18 this morning, State Senator Wendy Davis took to the floor of the Texas State Senate, beginning a filibuster that Democrats hope will stop the passage of a bill that targets abortion rights in the state. Senator Davis wore pink tennis shoes, ready for the almost 13 hours she must continue speaking to keep Republicans from calling for a vote.

She can’t sit down. She can’t leave to pee.

That makes Senator Davis a lonely combatant in the War on Women. She alone must continue to speak until midnight tonight, when the 30 day special session will expire, along with the abortion bill. Senator Davis says she plans to read the stories of women and

… Read the rest

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It’s a press release, which several people have published already.

On Friday, Point of Inquiry’s two co-hosts—Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney—resigned from their positions at the Center for Inquiry. On Monday, Point of Inquiry producer Adam Isaak followed suit. This note is to explain our reasons for departing CFI and our future plans.

In May of 2013, when the Women in Secularism II conference took place in Washington, D.C., Point of Inquiry—the flagship podcast of the Center for Inquiry—was more successful that it has ever been. Following a format change in 2010, our audience has increased by 60 percent and our growth rate has doubled in the last year and a half. We’d recently done a highly successful live show … Read the rest

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The scope of the FGM problem is appalling to contemplate. It’s huge, and hidden, and implacably hard to deal with.

More than 70 women and girls in Britain seek treatment every month after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM), with the actual number subjected to the illegal practice likely to be far higher, figures reveal.

The NSPCC is launching a helpline on Monday to protect children from FGM after research found that more than 1,700 victims were referred to specialist clinics in the past two years, likely to be a fraction of the true figure for women affected. The youngest victim was seven.

That’s just within Britain. It’s much worse elsewhere, obviously.

“The UK’s child victims of female genital

… Read the rest

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Let’s talk about mumbling and muttering.

I mean – lsss tbb mmmmmnmmmmmmmnga.

Too many actors mumble their way through their lines, neither enunciating nor projecting words clearly enough for audiences to understand them, according to leading figures in theatre.

Edward Kemp, artistic director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) and actress Imogen Stubbs are infuriated by the mutterers, who they believe let down playwrights and audiences. Kemp said that some directors and producers encouraged mumbling, believing that “laidback mumbling is more truthful”.

Well sometimes it is, but you don’t want it to be so “truthful” that no one can understand it. Think Brando in the cab with Steiger. “You shoulda looked out for me a liddle bit.” … Read the rest

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Girl likes football. Girl plays on team in 6th grade. Girl gets kicked off team in 7th grade because Impure Thoughts.

A private school outside Atlanta recently informed 12-year-old Madison Baxter that she would not be welcome at tryouts for the 7th-grade football team, even though she started on the sixth-grade team and has been playing football since second grade. The reason she won’t be allowed on the field? Because her male teammates are beginning to have “impure thoughts” about her, Strong Rock Christian Academy school administrator Patrick Stuart told Baxter’s mother.

Uh huh. And that’s not Christian, so female people have to be kept at a distance. In the kitchen, once the war is won, but in the … Read the rest

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