CFI on the Trump administration’s new rule letting godbothering employers refuse to include birth control in their employees’ health insurance:

The Center for Inquiry condemned the new rules announced by the Department of Health and Human Services, dramatically curtailing the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act’s Contraceptive Mandate.

Under the new rules, any employer may claim an exemption to the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage without co-payment, whether the employer’s objection is based on religious grounds or any other moral reasoning. This fundamentally undercuts the purpose and operation of the Contraceptive Mandate, a rule that was effective in ensuring broad access to reproductive health care for women.

The Contraceptive Mandate, a key part of the Obama administration’s signature health care

CFI is explaining to public school administrators about the First Amendment. It’s kind of pathetic that such administrators have to have it explained to them.

The Center for Inquiry challenged two high schools in Louisiana, as well as the administrators of public schools and public school athletics, to cease recent policies that fringe on the First Amendment rights of students.

In a joint letter from a broad swath of the secular movement, CFI told Waylon Bates, principal of Parkway High School, as well as others in charge of school policies in Louisiana, that threatening to discipline student athletes for protesting during the National Anthem is unconstitutional. CFI demanded retraction of the threat as well as a commitment that organized

That time they threw a feminist conference and forgot just one little thing.

When a pink flyer promoting a feminism conference at Mexico’s biggest university was posted on social media this week, it did not take long before people noticed something was amiss.

The lineup featured two panels with 11 participants – and all of them were male.

Well…men know more about it, and they’re better at speaking, and they have more free time…it all makes sense.

The pink flyer though – that’s just stupid. We like other colors and pink doesn’t=women.

Organised by the humanities department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico(Unam), the 11 October conference appears to be intended as a homage to the

Ricky Gervais again.

"I now pronounce you cunt & wife" pic.twitter.com/BVSaSFAkeH

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 30, 2017

I would like to apologise to anyone offended by me using the 'C' word. I will change my ways. You stupid over sensitive kunts.

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) October 3, 2017

… Read the rest

Now the idiot in the White House wants a fight with Iran. Yes that should work out well.

President Trump plans to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on an emerging White House strategy for Iran said Thursday.

The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, which would blow up a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities that the country reached in 2015 with the U.S. and five other nations.

Of course the five other nations will … Read the rest

The Times editorial collective on the Trump sleazery.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., acknowledged that he dropped the case after a visit from President Trump’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who has contributed to Mr. Vance’s political campaign, but said he did so because it was the right thing to do.

Perhaps it was, and perhaps the president’s son and daughter did nothing criminal. But the deceptive behavior at the heart of the case would be familiar to anyone who’s observed Mr. Trump’s business career. The hustler is in the White House now, and the young members of the Trump family, with the cloud of suspicion that now constantly surrounds them, are top advisers.

They’re crooks, grifters, cheats, hucksters, … Read the rest

Kazuo Ishiguro has himself a Nobel prize.

Mr. Ishiguro, 62, is best known for his novels “The Remains of the Day,” about a butler serving an English lord in the years leading up to World War II, and “Never Let Me Go,” a melancholy dystopian love story set in a British boarding school. In his seven novels, he has obsessively returned to the same themes, including the fallibility of memory, mortality and the porous nature of time.

That description of Never Let Me Go is very incomplete, I guess because spoilers? But surely bans on spoilers can’t last forever, and anyway you couldn’t review the book properly if you avoided saying what it’s about. The … Read the rest

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad, but now it seems of some interest to know what kind of prize package the Milwaukee people invited to their event.

I am one of the people who were trying to warn the Mythcon organizers as to the nature of their speakers, particularly Sargon of Akkad, a fellow I have unfortunately known for some time. When it became clear that the Mythcon people were not interested, my peers and I just tried to warn as many others in the community as possible. If they want to platform people like this, at the very least we would make sure they had to own their decision, and we

Dave Silverman has spoken out about the mess at Mythcon in Milwaukee last weekend.

I saw the video of the Mythcon event. I heard people laugh and cheer at a victim of sexual assault being taunted via Twitter with a shameful shitty tweet.

My blood boiled. My adrenaline flowed. My bile bubbled. If you’re one of the people who cheer when victims get taunted, you’re an asshole. And I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I want nothing to do with you until you figure out how to have some empathy.

When you’re organizing an event, the most important thing you can do is make sure that people feel welcomed. Celebrating the diversity of our community

Right? RIGHT?

https://twitter.com/blablafishcakes/status/915530902100377601… Read the rest