I’ve been meaning to get to this for days. You’ve known it for days, but I want to post about it anyway, just because. I’m talking about the fact that Philae woke up.

The European Space Agency (Esa) says its comet lander, Philae, has woken up and contacted Earth.

Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, was dropped on to the surface of Comet 67P by its mothership, Rosetta, last November.

It worked for 60 hours before its solar-powered battery ran flat.

The comet has since moved nearer to the Sun and Philae has enough power to work again, says the BBC’s science correspondent Jonathan Amos.

They thought it might, but they thought it might not.… Read the rest

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PZ also did a post about Dawkins’s Outraged of Sevenoaks to the Times, I saw after I’d done mine. On it anteprepro wrote an extended comment which everyone should read.

A teaser:

Gather ’round, gather ’round! Won’t you join me? Come along, boys and girls, for another episode of Fun Times on Richard Dawkins’ Twitter Page!

Chapter One: A Tweeter Treatise on Witch Huntery, Tone For Thee but Not for Me, and Nobel Prize Granted Immunities, with guest star Gibbertarian Website Citation!

King Lord Dawkins, Noble Holy and Pure Knight Emperor of Logic-hood, doth proclaim:

“A moment to savour”? Really? Please, Guardian, could we just lighten up on the witch-hunts? #ReinstateTimHunt. http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/13/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim-hunt …

And one his loyal subjects did

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Katie Mack tweeted:

Katie Mack ‏@AstroKatie 4 hours ago
It’s amazing how much paranoid hyperbole the act of speaking out against sexism can elicit. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/19/tim-hunt-the-victim-of-self-righteous-feeding-frenzy-says-richard-dawkins …

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Back to BuzzFeed’s reporting on the victims of the terrorist attack at Emanuel AME church in Charleston.

More on Cynthia Hurd, the librarian.

[Her brother Malcolm] Graham, a former state senator, told the Charlotte Observer that his sister would have turned 55 on Sunday.

He said it was “typical” of her to be at the church on Sunday. He also fondly described her as a “nerd” who got a masters in library science from the University of South Carolina.

Hurd lived with her husband Steve in the east side of Charleston, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Graham, who last saw his sister in May when she attended his daughter’s graduation, said she always acted like his mother. “She was the

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AMM’s very powerful follow-up comment:

Rob @14

@9: It’s like when my father convinced me (for an afternoon) that I could sell stuff door-to-door. I went out and canvased the neighborhood. And I realized: it’s just not me. I am not, cut out to be a salesman

@10: AMM, I love that analogy.
I don’t. Facile as it may seem this is because being a salesperson (in the widest sense) is a learnt skill, not a state of being. People we call naturals at sales simply have personalities that better enable them to quickly get over the hump of sucking at it and finding it hard. They probably learn how as kids. It’s closely linked to performing (acting). For

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Next, a comment by besomyka.

We seem to conflate sex and gender in these discussions even though we know better. When we say I feel or don’t feel like a woman, for example. Do you mean woman in the social constructed sense, the stochastic physical sense? What?

When I say I’m a woman, I happen to mean both. I think that if you considered me a woman, that your mental shortcuts about what that meant would be more true about me than the other option. Is it perfect? No, of course not. I’m a person, not an abstract. But it IS more accurate.

I also mean it physically. I am quite sure that if we destroyed the concept of gender … Read the rest

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Now I’ve caught up somewhat after the conference, so I can do what several people requested and make guest posts of some of the comments from the Discomfort with the more social aspects of gender discussion last week.

I’ll start with one by AMM:

There’s something that a lot of trans people report and I’m becoming aware of in myself that doesn’t get mentioned in feminist discussions of gender.

It’s that feeling that at some fundamental level, you just don’t belong with the people you share a birth gender with, and in many cases you don’t feel right in your body. That something just doesn’t fit, no matter how perfectly you may seem to fit. And when you transition, … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)