I’m going to Niagara Falls this afternoon. I was here for nearly 3 weeks in 2007, and I never managed to get to the Falls, though I did get to the Finger Lakes (all the way to Skaneateles) and Niagara-on-the-Lake, which were cool. The omission has always bugged me, so I’M GOING.

So there.

Meanwhile I think I’ll have time for a walk this morning. Ima go over to the entrance to the university, if I can make it without being run over – there are literally no sidewalks here. None. You have to walk in the street. Hey, you’re not supposed to be walking in the first place, so don’t look at us! It’s extra fun because people go … Read the rest

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I’m about to go to the 2 hour Point of Inquiry interview of Richard Dawkins. Could be interesting.… Read the rest

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A great moment. At the secularism panel just now with Barry Kosmin and Ron Lindsay and Phil Zuckerman, moderated by Paul Fidalgo, Paul asked the audience, how many of you have attended a Secular Sunday Assembly?

A LOT of hands went up.

Ron said something I didn’t hear, and Paul said, “That’s a great question – how many of you have gone twice?”

One hand went up.… Read the rest

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Taslima took this action shot yesterday.

… Read the rest

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Taslima tweeted yesterday evening –

… Read the rest

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I got here.

Talked to all the people at the reception.

Dropped food on the floor.

Generally misbehaved.… Read the rest

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I upset quite a few people the other day with that Nail polish post. Some of the people who were upset are, frankly, assholes, and they can go ahead and be upset, but a lot of them aren’t, and I’m sorry I upset those people.

I didn’t like or agree with everything in that Elinor Burkett article, and I skipped over most of them – but maybe I should have said I wasn’t endorsing the whole thing.

Someone in a Facebook group recommended this tumblr post cis by default, and I found what it says resonates with me a lot. It starts with some body discomforts, and then moves to the social.

I also just had a lot

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The second one was the next day, after I’d re-read some Anne.

May 25, 2009

But physical punishment or ‘correction’ has been morally unproblematic until very recently, some of you retort.

I don’t buy it. I’m at least very skeptical. I agree that it’s been widespread – but not that it’s been morally unproblematic. Of course it was morally unproblematic to some people, to many people, but I’m claiming that to a substantial minority it was not. (I’m talking about the 19th century onwards, if only because there’s so much more literature for children and about children starting then. I could talk about Hogarth on cruelty – but I won’t, for now.)

After writing about Anne of Green Gables from … Read the rest

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I’m leaving tomorrow to go to the Reason for Change conference in Amherst (outside Buffalo). Things will be slow here.

If any of y’all have something you want to say in a guest post, send it to me in the next few hours and I’ll schedule it for while I’m gone (unless it’s no good, but how likely is that?).

Also, go to the conference!

Critical thinking is not an end in itself. It is a means to effect positive change, to transform our world for the better. At “Reason for Change,” the Center for Inquiry’s 2015 international conference, we’ll bring the skeptic and humanist communities together to do just that.

And we’ll do it in a place that many

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Meanwhile, in another part of the primeval forest…

Steven Spielberg has been trolled by numerous Facebook users after a photo was shared of the director with a mechanical Triceratops on the set of 1993 film Jurassic Park.

The image was posted on the Facebook page of Jay Branscomb as a joke, alongside the caption:

“Disgraceful photo of recreational hunter happily posing next to a Triceratops he just slaughtered. Please share so the world can name and shame this despicable man.”

Incredibly, a fair few members of the public didn’t grasp that the picture was taken from the Jurassic Park set, believing that Spielberg had actually poached a dinosaur…

Well and besides, it’s obviously not dead – it’s resting.… Read the rest

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Federal appellate court to Texas women – Sorry, sucks to be you.

A federal appellate court upheld some of the toughest provisions of a Texas abortion law on Tuesday, putting about half of the state’s remaining abortion clinics at risk of permanently shutting their doors and leaving the nation’s second-most populous state with fewer than a dozen clinics across its more than 267,000 square miles. There were 41 when the law was passed.

Ten clinics, for a state bigger than France.

Bigger than Germany, bigger than the UK.

A three-judge panel of the appellate court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, sided for the most part with Texas and the abortion law the

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First ever  UK prosecution for forced marriage:

A 34-year-old Cardiff man has become the first person in the UK to be prosecuted under forced marriage laws introduced a year ago.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was jailed for 16 years after admitting making a 25-year-old woman marry him under duress last year.

He also pleaded guilty to charges of rape, bigamy and voyeurism at Merthyr Crown Court.

The “under duress” sounds mild. The details are not mild.

The judge said the offences began when the woman became engaged last year and in March 2014 he took her to his house under the pretence of having a meal with his wife.

“Your house was empty, you

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Karen James has good things to say on Twitter about this “phwoaaar women in the lab eh” bullshit. (That’s something Twitter is good for. Arguing about complicated subjects, no. Commenting on sexist or racist bullshit, yes.)

Karen James ‏@kejames 6 hours ago
That Tim Hunt & others feel comfortable being overtly sexist in public says a lot about the larger environment in science.

Brava @girlinterruptin on the larger problem around Tim Hunt’s remarks, this para especially. http://occamstypewriter.org/sylviamclain/2015/06/09/cry-cry-cry-for-backwards-nobel-laureates/ …

I dislike the workforce argument 4 why sexism & other isms are wrong. MT @royalsociety Science needs women http://ow.ly/O5t5c #wcsj2015

I had the same thought when I read the Royal Society’s statement. It annoyed me. Never mind the faff about “we need … Read the rest

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Is it something in the Bovril?

Cat Ferguson at BuzzFeed reports:

Tim Hunt, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on cell duplication, was speaking at an invitation-only lunch in honor of women in science. He reportedly opened his talk by saying: “Thanks to the women journalists for making lunch.”

The 72-year-old scientist went on to say that he has a reputation as a chauvinist, and that labs should be segregated by sex. The problem with female scientists? “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!”

“You” of course are a heterosexual male. Isn’t everyone? Everyone who counts?

Hunt is a member of the

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