This is a horrible story that Sarah Beamish tells:

Tonight I got into a confrontation with an apparently famous (I didn’t know this) local man named David Zancai. He was very large and strong. He got onto the subway and started storming around, yelling, doing pushups and roaring, and ranting about how “ladies” and “girls” need to “keep their knees together” and “stop showing their monkey” to men on the subway. He went on for about five minutes about why men shouldn’t let their girls out of the house dressed in spandex, and the male pedophiles and rapists and voyeurs wandering among us and how women and girls are responsible for such men’s reactions to them and “know what they

This stinks. Maryam reports:

I was invited to speak at Warwick University by the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists’ Society on 28 October 2015. The University Student Union has declined the request for me to speak saying the following:

This is because after researching both her and her organisation, a number of flags have been raised. We have a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus.

There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus. This is in contravention of our external speaker policy:

The President (or equivalent) of

Lauren Rankin wrote about abortion rights as a “not just women” issue at Truthout in July 2013.

The subhead, by Rankin or an editor, puts it this way:

The “War on Women” isn’t just a war on women. Trans men and gender-non-conforming people are losing their rights too, and we need to rework how we frame these “women’s issues.”

The war on women is in fact just a war on women; that’s merely tautological. Saying there’s a war on women isn’t saying there is no war on anyone else. Saying there’s a war on women isn’t saying there is no war on trans men and gender-nonconforming people. I think when people start telling us we should rework how we … Read the rest

This is from two years ago but it’s amazing enough to point and exclaim at now – naturally occurring mechanical gears. Phys.org had the story (the beginning of the sentence is missing for some reason):

a plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe – has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump.

The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent. Scientists say this is the “first observation of mechanical gearing in a biological structure“.

Through a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture of normal Issus movements, scientists from the University

At least 717 people have died in a stampede near Mecca; 863 were injured.

During the Hajj, pilgrims travel to Mina, a large valley about 5km (3 miles) from Mecca, to throw seven stones at pillars called Jamarat, which represent the devil.

The pillars stand where Satan is believed to have tempted the Prophet Abraham.

That sounds like a harmless game, except that it involves huge crowds of people.

Tchima Illa Issoufou, BBC Hausa, whose aunt was killed reports:

People were going towards the direction of throwing the stones while others were coming from the opposite direction. Then it became chaotic and suddenly people started going down.

There were people from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Senegal among other nationalities.

The Feds have been looking at Martin Shkreli, the “that lifesaving pill you need is now $750 apiece” guy, for months.

Since at least in January, Shkreli has been under criminal investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, court records show. And Shkreli is not alone—some of his business associates have also received grand jury subpoenas in the case.

…

The criminal investigation involves Retrophin, a public company where Shkreli served as an officer, director, and 10-percent owner of the outstanding stock before being ousted amid multiple allegations of misconduct. Retrophin focuses on the development, acquisition and commercialization of therapies for the treatment of catastrophic or rare diseases, and was founded by

A public post on Facebook a couple of days ago:

A colleague just returned from a luncheon to benefit the National Women’s History museum, which is proposed for the Mall in Washington. Here’s what was in the bag of shwag they gave everyone who attended: lip gloss, nail polish, copy of “Glamour” magazine, candy, bracelet, dishwashing detergent.

One commenter called bullshit on the dishwashing detergent, but the poster said

No it was a bottle of some eco bullshit dishwashing detergent.

So there’s that.

 … Read the rest

Are missionaries missionaries, part 2. The Atlantic:

From 1769 until his death in 1784, Serra was the head of the missions in the northern portion of California, helping to establish nine communities where natives lived under the supervision of priests in a life of prayer and work. “One of their major goals was to assimilate the native peoples and eventually make them productive peoples of the Spanish empire,” said Senkewicz. “The mission was to contribute to that assimilation in two ways: by making the native people Catholic, and by teaching them European-style agriculture.”

All of which applies a lot of assumptions – that the Spanish got to make California (and Mexico and all points south) part of the Spanish … Read the rest

More beheading planned in Saudi Arabia.

A group of U.N. experts has joined rights groups in calling on Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a Shiite man convicted of crimes reportedly committed as a teenager during protests inspired by the Arab Spring.

Ali al-Nimr, the nephew of firebrand Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, faces execution by beheading and an additional rare punishment of “crucifixion,” which means publicly displaying the body after death as a warning to others, according to Saudi state media.

“Any judgment imposing the death penalty upon persons who were children at the time of the offense, and their execution, are incompatible with Saudi Arabia’s international obligations,” the U.N. group said in a statement Tuesday,

Ok. Abortion rights. Women. Feminism. Abortion rights as part of feminism. Opposition to abortion rights as part of misogyny and sexism. All that.

I think it’s a huge political mistake to talk about abortion rights in terms of “pregnant people” and “people who can get pregnant.” I think it’s a huge political mistake to drop women from the discussion in order to be inclusive to trans men (and gender fluid people and yadda yadda). The struggle over abortion rights is the way it is because of misogyny and sexism. It would be a very different struggle, if it existed at all, if women were and always had been considered equals. For that reason, it’s a massive mistake to talk about … Read the rest

The Ansarullah Bangla Team has published a list of bloggers and writers it wants to murder for refusing to grovel to Islam.

The targets in the list include nine bloggers based in the UK, seven in Germany, two in the US, one in Canada and one in Sweden. Some are Bangladeshi citizens living overseas. Others are dual nationals or citizens of the western nations.

The list was issued in a statement on the internet by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a group that has been blamed for a series of murders of bloggers and activists in Bangladesh over the last 18 months. All those killed have been prominent critics of extremist religious doctrines, especially in Islam.

We know they’re not … Read the rest

Via United Humanists and Bernard Hurley.

… Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bernard Hurley on Your disease is their cash cow.

This is not industrial capitalism in the sense which Smith, Marx or Ricardo would have understood it, rather it is what Ricardo called “rent seeking.” The point is that the prices do not reflect the value of the product on a competitive free market but rather the “economic rent” you can levy in virtue of “owning” property, in this case so-called intellectual property. Ricardo warned that we may end up in a sort of neo-feudal society run by a few rentiers who own all the property, be it real estate, intellectual property or so-called financial assets. Just as the serf could only exist if he/she paid … Read the rest