I’m on duty today, at work, doing my job. One of my jobs. The others involve writing; this one, my main breadwinner, involves being the temporary resident human of a lovable dog. So here I am hard at work, looking out at the Pacific Ocean while the dog sleeps next to me.

We just got back from a long walk on the Pebble Beach golf course. This time I took us all the way to the Carmel end of the course, which I haven’t done before. It’s a long and spectacularly beautiful walk – yes even with golfers and golf carts and sand traps in view.

I was thinking as we walked that for many of the people playing there … Read the rest

Another reason not to run away from home to join Islamic State, besides the fact that they’re murderous woman-hating humanity-hating theocratic horrors: they’ll kill you if you try to leave.

(But really the first is far more important. The first is about countless other people you harm by joining IS; the second is only about you.)

The Times of India tells us of one teenage runaway:

A teenage girl who ran away from her Vienna home to join ISIS in Syria has reportedly been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, travelled to Syria last year with her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15.

The two became a ‘poster girl’ for ISIS, also known as

Via Barry Duke at The Freethinker –

Prayar Gopalakrishnan, above, the new head of the famous Sabarimala temple in Kerala, sparked outrage after saying that women would only be allowed to enter the temple after a machine was invented to check their ‘purity’.

According to this report, Gopalakrishnan told reporters at the Kollam Press Club:

These days there are machines that can scan bodies and check for weapons. There will be a day when a machine is invented to scan if it is the ‘right time’ for a woman to enter the temple. When that machine is invented, we will talk about letting women inside.

That’s so interesting, isn’t it? I wonder if Prayar Gopalakrishnan has any idea how … Read the rest

Vyckie Garrison has an article at Raw Story about godless people giving thanks.

Amanda Marcotte’s is the first (the list is alphabetical by first name):

I’ve been doing Friendsgiving long before they called it that, and I’m grateful to have such wonderful, loving friends to eat a bunch of food with and to chat about our mutual obsessions without judgment. Oh, and without praying. I’m in my 30s and still have no idea what to do when people are praying.

Mine changes “thankful” to “glad”:

I don’t love the word “thankful” in this context, I suppose because it sounds too personal and who would that person be if not some version of “God”? But I’m very glad to live

About ISIS and Joyce Carol Oates and humanity and whether or not there’s anything good to say about groups like ISIS or the people who join ISIS…

Here’s my view. I don’t think there is anything good to say about ISIS as a group. Its purpose and actions are rooted in a theocratic loathing of human beings. Its prxis is about what you would expect from such a loathing.

But the people who make up ISIS? That’s a very different question. Some may be thoroughly horrible yet still redeemable, some may be thoroughly horrible full stop, some may be more deluded than horrible. I don’t know. There are a lot of such people, and it’s all but certain that they … Read the rest

So I’m here on the peninsula again so posting will probably be light for the next few days.

The Pacific ocean is just over there and it’s caaalling me.

I like my job. Both my jobs.… Read the rest

I’m on the road – specifically, on a bench at the San Jose airport which seems to be the only spot next to an electrical outlet in the whole place. (Wouldn’t you think? In the heart of Silicon fucking Valley?) I’m here in the interval before the 4:05 shuttle to Monterey.

Anybody else on the road? Or just out for a walk? Tell us stories of your travels.… Read the rest

The BBC tells us the Archbishop of Canterbury suddenly noticed something.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said the terror attacks in Paris made him “doubt” the presence of God.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby told BBC Songs Of Praise he had prayed, asking “where are you…” after the attacks.

Really?! The Paris attacks! And nothing before that? None of the Boko Haram attacks, which have killed thousands? Not the murders in the Emanuel AME church in Charleston? Not the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia? Europe? Africa? He must be quite astonishingly inattentive…much like god, if his god exists.

He said his reaction to the attacks had been “first shock and horror and then a profound sadness”, heightened because he

Sarah Ditum wrote about gender and her daughter last January.

Not all the encouragement you received has been positive. You did a term of judo, then you stopped because some boys in the class began shoving the few girls who attended. They didn’t tell you this was because you were a girl, but it was because you were a girl: they decided this class was their space, so they pushed you around till they pushed you out. “Push them back, and harder,” I wanted to say – you are going to grow up tall and powerful, and right now most boys your age are smaller than you – but fighting is only going to get you in trouble, and anyway,

Zany madcap Joyce Carol Oates is stirring up the hornets again.

A tweet:

Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates
All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?

Yes, query is naïve.

Puritanism and the punishments that enforce it are what ISIS is all about. There is of course joy and celebration, when for instance they smash ancient monuments and buildings in Palmyra, or when they seize another town, or when they find more women to rape. But the joy and celebration are for the alpha males, not for anyone else, and their source is not what minimally compassionate people consider healthy. They rejoice in violence and cruelty and conquest.

Was … Read the rest

The CBC did a story on the “no yoga for you!” situation at the University of Ottawa, so we no longer have to rely on the right-wing tabloid the Ottawa Sun.

Jen Scharf said she’s been teaching a free yoga class for the university’s Centre for Students with Disabilities, which is run by the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, for the last seven years.

It’s free, and it’s for students with disabilities…so you’d think it would be an all-around good thing, wouldn’t you?

When she checked back in with the centre in September, she said she was told by them the class wouldn’t be happening because some students and volunteers were uncomfortable with the “cultural issues” involved.

“I

Frank Bruni talks about how hard it’s been to make religion as accountable as other human institutions.

James Porter was convicted of sexually abusing 28 children in the 1960s, when he was in the Catholic priesthood. He was believed to have abused about 100 boys and girls in all, most of them in Massachusetts.

Major newspapers and television networks covered the Porter story, noting a growing number of cases of abuse by priests. Porter’s sentencing in December 1993 was preceded by two books that traced the staggering dimensions of such behavior. The first was “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” by Jason Berry. The second was “A Gospel of Shame,” with which I’m even more familiar. I’m one of

Shock-horror, Bette Midler is unimpressed by Caitlyn Jenner.

Bette Midler ‏@BetteMidler Nov 19
People, #CaitlynJenner says she is STILL voting GOP in 2016. Regardless of gender identity, I guess she identifies most as “uninformed.”

Pink News has more.

This week, Jenner revealed she still plans to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate – despite most of the contenders being staunch opponents of trans and LGB rights.

Speaking to the LA Times after the Democratic Presidential debate, she said: “They didn’t convince me.”

The frontrunners for the Republican nomination are currently billionaire Donald Trump and Dr Ben Carson – a former Fox News pundit who thinks gay weddings are a Marxist plot and never wants to pee next to

Don’t miss #ExMuslimBecause on Twitter.

A sample…

Professor Food ‏@hossain_food Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I was tired of trying to fit inside a box that was never made for me.

Aliyah Saleem ‏@Ali_Jones89 Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I don’t believe that there is any evidence for God’s existence. Can’t be a Muslim if you don’t believe in a creator…

Milad Jama ‏@MiladJama Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I can’t believe in a God who roasts humanity bc they don’t believe he whispered to a guy by proxy 1400 years ago

#ExMuslimBecause As a Black African I cannot support a prophet who actively took slaves of any color.

Yazeed ‏@DudeInDistress Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I can’t follow a “prophet” who raped a Jewish girl the

Yet again – one keeps checking to make sure it’s not The Onion. It’s not, though, it’s a respectable Ottawa newspaper. [Updating to add: actually a right-wing rag, which sounds like that Sun across the pond.]

Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of “cultural appropriation.”

Sorry, white people, you no longer get to stretch. White people have always been stiff and it’s colonialist to try to change that.

Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students … there are cultural issues

And more news from Kashif Chaudhry:

So after burning down a factory owned by an Ahmadi last night, an extremist Sunni mob ransacked an Ahmadi Mosque in Kala Gojran (Jehlum), cleansed it by burning its property in the streets and then offered Asar prayer inside. Now it’s a Sunni Mosque.

Kashif tells me the employees of the factory did escape, through a back door at the last minute, so that’s a relief. But Pakistan is clearly hell on earth for them, just as it is for atheists and apostates and every other kind of religious non-conformist.

 … Read the rest

Kashif Chaudhry is a doctor and blogger in Massachusetts, originally from Pakistan. He’s also an Ahmadi, and he posts a good deal about their persecution in Pakistan.

I just learned via a public Facebook post of his that Muslims applying for a passport or national ID card in Pakistan have to sign this:

I was staggered and incredulous, so I did a Google search for “I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Quadiani to be an imposter nabi” – and got passport applications. It’s right there. At the bottom of the second (and last) page, it says exactly what’s in that image.

(i) I am Muslim and believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (peace