Steven Shapin reviews the second installment of Richard Dawkins’s memoirs in the Guardian.

I get a sense that he’s not wholly admiring.

The enemies Dawkins has made are, in the main, the enemies he anticipated. As an atheist, he is a vigorous critic of the creationists, their religious fellow-travellers, the postmodernists, relativists and assorted “enemies of reason”. And as a participant in the scientific cage-fighting that is modern evolutionary theory, Dawkins has one of the sharpest tongues in modern culture.

Yes, but also as a participant in various other kinds of cage-fighting, especially the kind conducted via Twitter. In that avocation he’s made some enemies he didn’t anticipate, such as fellow atheists, scientists, humanists and the like who think he … Read the rest

A teenager gets space in the Washington Post to explain why he refused to read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home because it has drawings of naked laydeez.

Brian Grasso is a freshman.

As a Christian, I knew that my beliefs and identity would be challenged at a progressive university like Duke.

My first challenge came well before I arrived on campus, when I learned that all first years were assigned “Fun Home,” a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. The book includes cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple women engaging in oral sex.

After researching the book’s content and reading a portion of it, I chose to opt out of the assignment. My choice had nothing to do with

The Guardian, August 16:

Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the recently closed Kids Company charity, reportedly has plans to open a food bank for up to 3,000 children and young people.

Less than two weeks after the charity’s collapse, its former chief executive is set to open Kids Dining Room beneath a railway arch in Lambeth, south London, this week, the Sunday Times reported.

Why did it collapse? Well…

Kids Company shut down at the start of August after the government pulled an annual grant of £3m following allegations of financial mismanagement at the charity, which had no funding reserves. The government has had to find alternative support for 6,000 vulnerable children as a result of its closure.

Batmanghelidjh

Editing to add: It appears this is an Onion-type joke. Never mind.

Cardiff Store Apologises For Offensive Shop Banner

… Read the rest

One reason we’re given to back up the claim that concerns about trans people should trump other concerns (such as lesbian and gay rights and feminism) is the high suicide rate among trans people. Kevin K on the Dames on the run thread for instance –

On that note, in light of a suicide rates of transgender kids being 10 to 20 times higher than their peers, I think “thinking of the children” is entirely merited.

But wait a minute. Who are “their peers”? There’s more than one way to slice and dice kinds of kids; trans kids on the one hand and their peers on the other isn’t a very careful way to compare.

What about lesbian and gay … Read the rest

The Sad Puppies adventure didn’t work out well for the Sad Puppies. John Scalzi tells the story.

As most of you know, at last Saturday’s Hugo Awards ceremony, the voters, of which there were a record number, chose not to offer awards in five categories rather than to give the award to nominees who got on the ballot because of the Sad/Rabid Puppy slating campaign. In the categories in which awards were given, in nearly all cases the Puppy nominees in the category finished below “No Award.”

Why is that, do you suppose? Scalzi explains that it’s because they acted like jerks, and performed a series of jerk maneuvers.

2. They gloated about the slates getting on the ballot,

Haha good old fun-loving college boy rape culture haha it’s alive and well at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, the Huffington Post tells us.

Three banners were displayed at a private, off-campus house in Norfolk, Virginia, reading “Freshman Daughter Drop Off,” with an arrow pointing at the front door, “Go Ahead And Drop Off Mom Too …” and “Rowdy And Fun, Hope Your Baby Girl Is Ready For A Good Time …” The students removed the banners after the university contacted them, school officials said.

Haha get it? “Drop Off” so that we can fuck them haha we like to fuck haha that’s what girls are for haha that’s what a university is for haha.

A Virginia man

More Temple of Baal-Shamin:

Via Wikimedia Commons:

Photo by Jerzy Strzelecki

Also Wikimedia Commons:

Photo by Heretiq… Read the rest

Cuttlefish wrote a poem about self-described allies who flounce off in a huff when people don’t take their brilliant advice.

Don’t you see? I am your ally!
One you dare not risk to lose!
So my clever new idea
Is the one you ought to choose!
Okay, fine, my help’s not wanted!
Suit yourselves—it’s just as well.
If you disrespect your allies
Well, then, fuck you—go to hell!

Oh zing.

Mind you…I think attempts to think about an issue are being conflated with offers of help, so then the flouncing off in a huff is misrepresented, since it wasn’t about rejections of unwanted help in the first place. But poets get license, you know.

From the prose commentary after the … Read the rest

Lady Mondegreen alerted me to this horrific story by Martin McKenzie-Murray –

Nazanin left the Nauru refugee camp one morning on a day pass, happy to be visiting some friends who had been settled on the island – she and her family had been in detention for 26 months. “She used a bus, and I called a friend and he said she was there,” Dabal tells me. “My sister was happy to leave this camp for a day.”

She never returned. At 6 o’clock that evening, Dabal and his mother reported her absence to security guards. Something wasn’t right. In response, the guards floated theories of missed buses or an innocent loss of time, benign explanations for what the family

I’m reading an article in the NY Times about the malleability or not of gender identification, and my attention snagged on something tangential.

Is it really so surprising that gender identity might, like sexual orientation, be on a spectrum? After all, one can be exclusively straight or exclusively gay — or anything in between. But variability in a behavior shouldn’t be confused with its malleability. There is little evidence, for example, that you really can change your sexual orientation. Sure, you can change your sexual behavior, but your inner sexual fantasies endure.

What snagged my attention was the contrast between behavior and inner fantasies.

I think maybe calling it “inner sexual fantasies” is what did the snagging – that’s … Read the rest

I just found out about a thing, via Pieter Breitner – Fallacy Ref.

The one I saw is very familiar:

There was a loaded question on the play

Inquiry unfairly restricted answers to force an unjustified conclusion

Uh huh. Been there; had that.… Read the rest

This creeps me out.

[Description: it’s a drawing or cartoon at the top of the Twitter account Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse, with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens striding in line, based on the familiar image of the Beatles striding across Abbey Road.]

Why is it so creepy?

The worship, the fandom, the adulation, the drastic limitation of horizons.… Read the rest

There’s a lot to be disgusted at in Richard Carrier’s inaccurate, patronizing, mental-illness-attributing post about me, but I’ll spare us all and just address one ridiculous assertion.

No one here called for her to depart. She chose to on her own. We all maintain many disagreements with each other at FreethoughBlogs, and criticize each other often, without this result. It appears Benson didn’t think colleagues should publicly criticize each other, particularly in ways she saw as paranoid for some reason. I hope at least she enjoys less stress in her new home.

That’s grotesque. This was not just “disagreement” and it was not just “criticism” – it was vehement moral condemnation and shunning, aided by much misrepresentation.

That is … Read the rest

Another piece of good news, to go with Malala’s spectacular exam results – India has renewed Taslima’s visa again. She was very worried about it.

They should make it long-term or permanent though.

Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen’s visa was extended by a year on Friday, a home ministry official said.

“Taslima Nasreen’s visa has been extended for one more year from the very date it was due to expire,” a ministry official said.

Exiled from Bangladesh in 1994 for “hurting religious sentiments” with her novel ‘Lajja’, Nasreen took refuge in Kolkata in 2004. Since then, she has been getting Indian visa on a continuous basis.

No, not continuous – she never knows it’s going to be renewed. It’s … Read the rest