A useful item that someone gave me on Facebook.

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So the Tories are planning to ditch the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Conservative party is prepared to withdraw from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) after the next election, the home secretary Theresa May has said, as she detailed a fresh drive to curb the appeal rights of 70,000 people who face deportation every year.

“The next Conservative manifesto will promise to scrap the Human Rights Act. It’s why Chris Grayling is leading a review of our relationship with the European court [of human rights],” she told the party’s conference. “And it’s why the Conservative position is clear – if leaving the European convention is what it takes to fix our human rights laws, that

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From April 2009, Jesus and Mo on Blasphemy Day:

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Sara Mayhew is still desperately seeking attention. Every once in awhile I grant her wish. Today is one such time. She fired off a bunch of tweets at me earlier today; I retweeted some; Nick Cohen (who’s a friend of mine) replied to one.

Not quite accurate.… Read the rest

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It’s International Blasphemy Day, people!

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More on Golden Dawn.

A Greek lawmaker sought by police surrendered on Sunday, bringing to six the number of legislators from the extreme-right Golden Dawn party now in custody and facing criminal charges.

Christos Pappas — a lawmaker described by prosecutors as the Golden Dawn’s No. 2 official — was formally charged with membership in a criminal organization with intent to commit crimes, like his five fellow legislators, including Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos.

Besides the six lawmakers, another 14 Golden Dawn members and two police officers have been arrested and charged with the same crimes. Another 10 suspects, for whom arrest warrants were issued Saturday, are still at large, officials said.

They’ve been gathering the goods.

The prosecution

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Have you ever noticed what a terrible literary character “God” is?

Not like the Greeks. Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo – they were interesting, and they got involved. But “God”? Blegh.

That’s why Jesus, you know. People got bored, and they wanted a god who could put bums on seats, one with some good lines. Jesus can be pretty entertaining, in a rebel without a cause way. He’s uneven, but he has moments.

But “God” is so boring they had to get George Burns to play the part, so that people would think there’s someone interesting behind the name. But there isn’t. George Burns was just acting (he was acting George Burns), and the ____________ behind George Burns is boring as fuck.… Read the rest

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Education is Forbidden but murder is not. That’s a strange thing.

Suspected Islamist gunmen have attacked a college in north-eastern Nigeria, killing up to 50 students.

The students were shot dead as they slept in their dormitory at the College of Agriculture in Yobe state.

…

A witness quoted by Reuters news agency counted 40 bodies at the hospital, mostly those of young men believed to be students.

College provost Molima Idi Mato, speaking to Associated Press, also said the number of dead could be as high as 50, adding that security forces were still recovering the bodies and that about 1,000 students had fled the campus.

I suppose they were jealous of the statistics from the Westgate Mall … Read the rest

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Emer O’Toole relates the misadventures of David Gilmour and her reactions to same to, first, her struggles with devising a new curriculum for an introduction to Irish theatre, and, second, internet dating.

Yes, internet dating. I’m new in town, and I’ve joined a site for the first time. Having indulged in outrageous fanfaronade on my profile page and started shopping for mates, I noticed that hardly any of the other singletons on sale – male or female – listed fiction by women in their “favourite books” section. Were they afraid they’d catch pregnancy or menopause from female writers or something? I changed my profile to stipulate that I only wanted to hear from people who read books by women.

Then

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First published in India’s Frontline magazine; reposted here by permission.

Asaram Bapu’s alleged sexual assault on a young girl offers an opportunity to throw light on India’s superstition industry and lift the veil on the state-temple-corporate complex. By MEERA NANDA

At one level, the arrest of Asaram is a rather humdrum, same-old story. One more godman has fallen from grace. So, what is new under the sun? Aren’t we used to discovering the clay feet of our sadhu sants? Perhaps George Orwell was on to something when he said that “saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent”, for no all-too-human godman can ever live up to the qualities of godliness. Perhaps the wise course to take … Read the rest

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Aphorisms. I can’t figure out if I like them or hate them. I suppose the answer is, banally enough, that I like the good ones and the bad ones not so much.

I spotted one I do like a lot. Of course it’s on Twitter; where else would it be? (It’s a funny thing but just a few days ago I heard someone on NPR grumbling about “being told what entrée you chose.” Come on. I was born just as the Vikings invaded Britain and even I know that’s not what Twitter is. There is plenty of random chatty personal stuff, sure, but there are also many many other categories, including fomenting revolution and organizing protests outside the Dáil. And … Read the rest

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This image combined with its caption made me laugh.

You believe in what?… Read the rest

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Yes busted. Booya!

The leader of Greece’s extreme-right Golden Dawn party and four other of its lawmakers were formally charged Saturday with membership in a criminal organization with intent to commit crimes, in an escalation of a government crackdown after a fatal stabbing blamed on a supporter.

It was the first time since 1974 that sitting members of Parliament have been arrested. The arrests underline the Greek government’s efforts to stifle the fiercely anti-immigrant party, which has been increasingly on the defensive since the killing.

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos, party spokesman Ilias Kassidiaris and Yannis Lagos, Nikos Michos and Ilias Panayiotaros were arrested by counterterrorism police. The latter two gave themselves up voluntarily. A sixth lawmaker, Christos Pappas

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Welp, it appears that Pat Condell got pissed off at PZ the other day.

Expect a few rounds of fuming racist comments today — I have been discovered by Pat Condell, and he’s sending his pals over to set us all straight.

Pat Condell @patcondell Many thanks to @pzmyers and everyone at the North Korea of free thought for a most amusing start to the day. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/23/feminism-is-not-an-excuse-for-your-racism-pat-condell/

Ha ha, yes, because a blog network is just like a totalitarian state. I was just telling my kids they need to grow a beard and put on some weight if they ever expect to succeed me.

Pat Condell @patcondell Ha ha. Honoured to be slandered as racist by @pzmyers and his fellow

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And then there’s the academic peonage aspect.

In all the recent talk about dead white males and the living white males who teach them, we’ve missed something about the David Gilmour controversy. It’s not at all unusual for people to want to teach only the things they like, but, generally speaking, it is unusual for them to get what they want.

In other words, why did David Gilmour get such a sweet deal?

Consider this set of well-worn truisms about higher ed: arts enrolment is at an all-time low. The academic job market is bleaker than a house in a novel by Charles Dickens. Actual PhDs, who have trained to teach the curriculum, compete with hundreds of qualified applicants

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Yeah I already knew that, thanks.

Study: Everyone hates environmentalists and feminists

Of course everyone does. And you know why? Because lots of people work hard to make everyone hate environmentalists and feminists. People who hate feminism and feminists themselves work hard to convince everyone else that feminists are witch-hunters from North Korea. Oil companies and other interested parties hire PR firms to make environmentalists seem like soppy tree-hugging fools who will steal your SUV to plant potatoes in.

Writing in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Bashir and her colleagues describe a series of studies documenting this dynamic. They began with three pilot studies, which found people hold stereotyped views of environmentalists and feminists.

In one, the participants—228 Americans

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A bit of spam, exactly as is, including quotation marks and line breaks.

“Wow, this post is fastidious, my sister is analyzing these kinds of things, therefore I am
going
to let know her.”… Read the rest

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So Judge John Jones might as well not have bothered writing that opinion in the Kitzmiller case? I ask because some eternally hopeful types in Kansas have filed a federal lawsuit claiming that science is religion and must be kept out of the public schools.

TOPEKA, Kan. — An anti-evolution group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block Kansas from using new, multistate science standards in its public schools, arguing the guidelines promote atheism and violate students’ and parents’ religious freedom.

So is it promoting atheism and violating students’ and parents’ religious freedom to teach about gravity without any balancing teaching that actually it’s God pushing everything down?

The nonprofit organization based in the small community of Peck, south

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