Jemima Lewis is also not impressed by the Science Museum’s girl/boy brains exhibit.

According to the Science Museum’s interactive test of “brain sex”, I am – in common with others of the female persuasion – possessed of a “good visual memory”, but not so skilled at “seeing things in three dimensions” or “being able to imagine how things rotate”.

This verdict annoys me. What are they trying to say? That just because I happen to have a womb I must be terrible at parking? (I am terrible at parking.) Is the “female brain” really so predictable, so set in its ways, that it can be identified by an algorithm on the basis of just six questions?

Of course … Read the rest

A guy works at the University of New Hampshire library for 50 years, saves all his money, and leaves the University $4 million in his will. Great story, no? Yes, except for what the university elected to do with it.

The university dedicated $2.5 million to an expanded, centrally located career center, it said when it announced the gift two weeks ago. It put $100,000 toward the Dimond Library, where Morin worked, fulfilling the only specific spending request he attached to his donation. And with much of the remaining gift, the university wrote a controversial check.

It put $1 million toward a video scoreboard for its new $25 million football stadium.

Sigh.

Ok the university points out that … Read the rest

Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Do.not.ever.do.that.

The Sun:

GUARDSMAN Chloe Allen has become the British Army’s first female frontline soldier — after being born a boy called Ben.

The 24-year-old joined up four years ago as a man, but changed her name officially last month.

Then that doesn’t count as the British Army’s first female frontline soldier. Just stop.

She will be the first woman allowed to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.

Chloe, from Cumbria, has now started hormone therapy.

Stop stop stop that.

The caption reads:

Chloe makes history as the first female in­fantry soldier since the Army began in 1660

No Chloe does not. Stop doing that.… Read the rest

The largest police union has endorsed the fascist misogynist lying thieving cheating bully Trump.

The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Donald Trump for president on Friday, praising the Republican nominee’s “real commitment to law enforcement.”

Trump met with the 33,000-member police union in early August and its endorsement bolsters his claim that he is the “law and order candidate.”

Oh really? What about all the stealing and lying and cheating? What about the fraud?

Clinton has made reforming the criminal justice system a centerpiece of her campaign, highlighting it during a particularly violent July week in which a pair of unarmed black men were killed by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, leading to nationwide protests. At one such

A woman in Italy killed herself after a terrible year of revenge porn and social media shaming.

Tiziana Cantone, 31, was found dead at her aunt’s home in Mugnano, close to Naples in the country’s south, on Tuesday. Her funeral procession was televised as commentators grappled with the tragic outcome of her torment.

Cantone’s death came a year after she sent a sex video of herself to some friends including an ex-boyfriend .

The video was subsequently posted on the web and viewed almost a million times. The phrase “You’re filming? Bravo”, spoken to her lover in the video, became a derisive joke online and was printed on T-shirts, smartphone cases and other items.

She quit her job, she … Read the rest

Sandra Laville at the Guardian reports:

The government must carry out a full review of family courts to stop them being used by violent men to perpetuate abuse against their partners and children, MPs have said.

They called on the justice secretary, Liz Truss, to act swiftly to tackle deep-seated cultural attitudes among family court judges which put the rights of abusive men over the safety of women and children.

MPs were debating research by Women’s Aid which revealed that between 2005 and 2015, 19 children in 12 families were killed by violent fathers who had been allowed to see them through formal and informal child contact arrangements.

Women who leave their husbands to escape violence and coercive control … Read the rest

A statement released by the Muslim Personal Law (MPL) Reforms Action Group in Sri Lanka consisting of individual human rights advocates, lawyers, and women, as well as community and women’s rights groups:

In 2014, a 14-year old Muslim girl in Eastern province was given in marriage and her schooling was stopped as a result. After a few months of marriage she applied for fasah divorce (initiated by wife) due to severe sexual torture by her husband. The Quazi instead of dealing with the case in a sensitive and appropriate manner chose to interrogate her for over two hours asking her specific details about the sexual violence. This in turn caused the girl serious psychological trauma that she attempted suicide

I envy Canada Trudeau, but I also think he shouldn’t be endorsing gender-segregated mosques by paying them visits.

Trudeau was at the mosque Monday to mark Eid al-Adha, considered the holiest of feast days for the world’s Muslims. Three female MPs accompanied Trudeau during his brief remarks, though they had to arrive by a side door and stand with their heads covered. They did not address the mosque.

Worshippers at the mosque are separated by gender. Men were on the main floor where Trudeau spoke. Women and girls were in a balcony or in other parts of the mosque. [Asra] Nomani said that recent surveys indicate about two of every three mosques separate men from women, but that is

Afghan Atheists posted a very pointed, and poignant, photo, with the caption “When the present meets its past.”

… Read the rest

Frivolous interlude:

… Read the rest

The Guardian has more on the rivers of blood in Dhaka yesterday.

Poor drainage in the city makes flooding a regular fact of Dhaka life. But the problem is rarely illustrated as vividly as it was on Tuesday, after thousands of sheep, goats and cows were slaughtered.

One of the two holiest events in the Muslim calendar, Eid al-Adha commemorates the willingness of the prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son at God’s request.

You know, that’s a terrible thing to commemorate. One, there’s the willingness to murder the child, and two, there’s the elevation of blind (and indeed horrific) obedience. It’s an abomination.

Authorities in Dhaka said they had established hundreds of designated sacrifice spots in the run-up to

Yassmin Abdel-Magied tells us why it was so important for her to walk out on Lionel Shriver’s talk.

As I stood up, my heart began to race. I could feel the eyes of the hundreds of audience members on my back: questioning, querying, judging.

I turned to face the crowd, lifted up my chin and walked down the main aisle, my pace deliberate. “Look back into the audience,” a friend had texted me moments earlier, “and let them see your face.”

The faces around me blurred. As my heels thudded against they grey plastic of the flooring, harmonising with the beat of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my mind was blank save for one question.

“How is this

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The Guardian too is reporting on the criticism of the Science Museum’s pink and blue brains exhibit, and wording it more sharply than Pink News did.

The Science Museum in London is facing criticism for a “junk science” exhibit that asks visitors to test whether they have a blue or pink brain.

…

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, an expert on the teenage brain at University College London who has been advising the Science Museum, said the exhibit in its current form was “out of date, to say the least”.

She added: “I saw it recently and was pretty shocked by the misleading message, which doesn’t correspond to the scientific evidence.”

Prof Gina Rippon, of the University of Aston, said: “The