You know how we keep being told that Indonesia is an example of a country where Islam is the majority religion but is not oppressive?

Oh really?

The Jakarta Post has defended the publication of a cartoon criticising Islamic State (IS) militants, after its editor was named in a defamation case.

The cartoon shows a flag similar to ones used by IS with the words “there is no God but Allah”, and a skull and crossbones.

That is, the IS flag has the words “there is no God but Allah” and a plain oval; the cartoon made the plain oval a skull and crossbones.

Published on 3 July, the cartoon replaces the oval shape on the original flag with a

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The view from up there – Lake Michigan, Chicago, St Louis, Memphis…

Image Credit: NASA/Barry Wilmore

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore took this photograph of the Great Lakes and central U.S. on Dec. 7, 2014, and posted it to social media.

Toronto, Buffalo…Columbus…Atlanta…… Read the rest

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Another woman has a Bill Cosby story. (No, it’s not a story of how he spotted some guy spiking her drink and gave the guy a damn good talking to. Nope.) Beverly Johnson tells hers in Vanity Fair.

She grew up admiring Cosby. She was delighted when he asked her to audition for a bit part on his show. She met with him in his office and thought he was fabulous. She and her young daughter had lunch at his house and she thought he was even more fabulous.

Looking back, that first invite from Cosby to his home seems like part of a perfectly laid out plan, a way to make me feel secure with him at all

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Wow. What not to do: make a point about climate change by trampling on a fragile, restricted, ancient artwork.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/

The BBC reports:

Peru says it will sue activists from the environmental pressure group Greenpeace after they placed a banner next to the Nazca Lines heritage site.

The activists entered a restricted area next to the ancient ground markings depicting a hummingbird and laid down letters advocating renewable energy.

Peru is currently hosting the UN climate summit in its capital, Lima.

So Greenpeace rewards Peru by stomping on the Nazca lines, where people are not allowed to walk. What will they do next, have a rave in the Lascaux caves? Build a campfire at Stonehenge? Skateboard all … Read the rest

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Atul Gawande is horrified at the way medical doctors helped the torturers.

In a series of furious tweets on Wednesday, the New Yorker writer castigated clinicians for their role in helping the CIA carry out torture — and in some cases, effectively doing it themselves.

Reviewing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s newly released report, Gawande points to nearly a dozen individual examples of physicians playing a role in the CIA’s interrogation and treatment of detainees.

For instance, at least five detainees were subjected to forced rectal feeding or rectal rehydration — where CIA torturers infused large amounts of liquids into their rectums — one of the most gruesome parts of the Senate’s report, the Daily Beast‘s Shane Harris

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Via a Catholic group on Facebook –

Did Jesus feed the hungry as a general thing? I know about the loaves and fishes but that was a one-off, and it was “the hungry” in the sense that a bunch of people were together for awhile and time passed so they got hungry – it wasn’t about feeding the chronically hungry poor.

Did Jesus clothe the naked? Did he care for the ill?

He is reported to have done some good things, like talking to despised people and commending forgiveness, but he wasn’t a social justice warrior. And as for the Catholic church…

Also, notice “the unwanted child”…Subtle, huh?… Read the rest

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The BBC reports that jihadist (I would call them Islamist) attacks killed more than 5000 people

in one month.

It has useful graphics. Iraq and IS are much the worst, but Nigeria and Boko Haram get second prize.

The data gathered by the BBC found that 5,042 people were killed in 664 jihadist attacks across 14 countries – a daily average of 168 deaths, or seven every hour.

About 80% of the deaths came in just four countries – Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Afghanistan, according to the study of media and civil society reports.

Iraq was the most dangerous place to be, with 1,770 deaths in 233 attacks, ranging from shootings to suicide bombings.

In Nigeria, 786 people, almost

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Good PR for the American Enterprise Institute – an NPR story on Dick Cheney defending the use of torture on prisoners, illustrated with Cheney in his native habitat.

Pro-unregulated market, anti-feminist, pro-torture, anti-climate science, pro-bosses, anti-unions – the friend of all humanity.… Read the rest

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17 women are in prison in El Salvador for having miscarriages or abortions. The Center for Reproductive Justice is campaigning to get them freed.

With one of the world’s most extreme abortion bans, El Salvador prohibits women from receiving an abortion under any circumstance—not in cases of rape or incest, not even to save their lives. Since 1998, dozens of women have been wrongfully criminalized and imprisoned under this law—even when the pregnancy ended due to natural causes. Take action today to pressure the Salvadoran government to release Las 17 in time to go home to their families for the holidays.

It shares some of their stories.

Twenty-nine-year-old Teresa worked in a sweatshop in San Salvador and lived in

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So James Watson’s little trick worked. The rich guy who bought his Nobel medal did indeed buy it to give it back to him.

Russia’s richest man has revealed that he bought US scientist James Watson’s Nobel Prize gold medal, and intends to return it to him.

Steel and telecoms tycoon Alisher Usmanov said Mr Watson “deserved” the medal, and that he was “distressed” the scientist had felt forced to sell it.

The medal, awarded in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA, sold for $4.8m (£3m) at auction.

The medal was the first Nobel Prize to be put on sale by a living recipient.

Cool way to make 5 million bucks. Dignified, too.

In an interview

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Shaheen Hashmat did an interview for the Scottish Sunday Mail ten days ago, and she has the article on her blog.

This is the transcript of an article by journalist Jenny Morrison featuring the most in-depth interview about my experiences that I’ve done to date. It took me a while to agree to do this, as it would a mean a lot more detailed exposure closer to home and my fear of a backlash was greater. But the imbalance of efforts to raise awareness and provide support throughout the UK is too significant to dismiss an opportunity to at least try and address this. Please note the minor clarifications I’ve included below the transcript.

She’s brave.

She was just

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Not to flog the deceased equine too much or anything but there’s an interesting little point in here. Slate has a pre-apology piece about the law and consumers and redress, and it reminds me of a larger issue.

Summary: Edelman was wrong about the law, too: “treble damages” isn’t mandatory but at the discretion of the judge, and anyway there’s a $25 minimum.

MGL 93a(9)(3) requires that before bringing suit the plaintiff send a demand letter to the business asking for rectification of the unfair or deceptive act or practice. That gives the business a chance to settle things for something like actual damages. The whole purpose of the demand provision is to encourage settlement and to act as

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Fair’s fair. I pointed at him for being a poopyhead so it’s only right to point out that he’s agreed he was a poopyhead and apologized for being it.

Here is Edelman’s newest statement, via his personal website:

Many people have seen my emails with Ran Duan of Sichuan Garden restaurant in Brookline.

Having reflected on my interaction with Ran, including what I said and how I said it, it’s clear that I was very much out of line. I aspire to act with great respect and humility in dealing with others, no matter what the situation. Clearly I failed to do so. I am sorry, and I intend to do better in the future.

I have reached

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Via Center for Reproductive Rights on Facebook:

Today is International Human Rights Day! There’s no better day to tell Secretary of State John Kerry to stand up for the fundamental rights of El Salvador’s #Las17. SIGN the petition now to bring them home: http://bit.ly/Las17-Petition

 … Read the rest

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Originally a comment by quixote on The gulf is rising.

I was a grad student at Tulane in the late 1980s and took many field trips out to the Gulf swamps. Some of them were to help a researcher studying sedimentation rates. Biologists knew then that what is happening now was going to happen. Even then, it would have been expensive to do anything about it, but about one hundredth or one thousandth what it costs now. And one millionth of what it will cost in a few years.

There are two main causes of the problem. Levees along the Mississippi push all the sediment out at one spot near Venice ( and make Gulf dead zones) instead of … Read the rest

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It turns out that the pink princess model for girl children in the US is just as parochial in time as it is in place, according to Elizabeth Sweet in the Atlantic.

When it comes to buying gifts for children, everything is color-coded: Rigid boundaries segregate brawny blue action figures from pretty pink princesses, and most assume that this is how it’s always been. But in fact, the princess role that’s ubiquitous in girls’ toys today was exceedingly rare prior to the 1990s—and the marketing of toys is more gendered now than even 50 years ago, when gender discrimination and sexism were the norm.

The princess thing makes me pull my hair with disgust. It’s so infantilizing, so diminishing, … Read the rest

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Leo Igwe tells us that humanists and atheists in Africa are starting to speak up.

An increasing number of Africans do not have any religion. Many people across the continent are going open and public with their humanist, atheistic and skeptical views and identity. Non religious Africans are leaving the closet in their numbers. African unbelievers are beginning to organise like their religious counterparts in many countries. One of such countries is Ghana. Ghana is a religious country. But the country’s religiosity does not preclude irreligion. Non religious people in the country are a minority but they are not keeping quiet. They are no hiding. Godless people in Ghana are becoming visible. Non religious people are speaking out. The

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And now for something completely frightening.

The Louisiana coast is rapidly sinking into the sea. There are efforts and plans to move sediment around to save New Orleans and some pipelines and fishing grounds, but much of the Delta is doomed (and the planned fixes are hugely expensive, and Louisiana is a  poor state).

Southeastern Louisiana might best be described as a layer cake made of Jell-O, floating in a swirling Jacuzzi of steadily warming, rising water. Scientists and engineers must prevent the Jell-O from melting — while having no access to the Jacuzzi controls.

The problem is human-made. Over the last 80 years, Louisiana’s coast has been starved of sediment by river levees and eviscerated by canals dredged

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Not everything Time magazine does is awful. It has an excellent long piece on The Ebola Fighters as part of its Person of the Year feature. (The only trouble is it’s a huge pain in the ass to read because it gives you only a tiny window of written material at a time, and there seems to be no way to convert to the printable version. Apparently that’s fabulous for people reading on phones, but I’m not reading on a phone. grump)

A sample:

Why, in short, was the battle against Ebola left for month after crucial month to a ragged army of volunteers and near volunteers: doctors who wouldn’t quit even as their colleagues fell ill and died; nurses

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An elegant young Harvard Business School associate professor ordered some Chinese food the other day. Boston.com has the story.

Ben Edelman is an associate professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit.

Ran Duan manages The Baldwin Bar, located inside the Woburn location of Sichuan Garden, a Chinese restaurant founded by his parents.

Last week, Edelman ordered what he thought was $53.35 worth of Chinese food from Sichuan Garden’s Brookline Village location.

Edelman soon came to the horrifying realization that he had been overcharged. By a total of $4.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a Harvard Business School professor thinks a family-run Chinese restaurant screwed him

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