University of North Georgia. College course catalogue. Illustration inside said catalogue.

Interesting choice, especially with the caption.

 … Read the rest

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Children at a London primary school were banned from watching the eclipse for “religious and cultural reasons.”

Council officials demanded an explanation from the head of the school in a multi-cultural suburb of west London.

Phil Belman, the father of a seven-year-old girl at North Primary School in Southall, rang the headteacher to express his anger.

My daughter was sent home yesterday to make a pinhole camera for the eclipse.

This morning I heard for religious and cultural reasons the kids were going to be banned from any part in the eclipse.

I was put through to him straight away and he confirmed it, religious and cultural reasons. I said that was totally outrageous. I asked him to elaborate and

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The Big Questions last Sunday – starting 20 minutes in they talk about apostasy. Amal Farah, an ex-Muslim, explains what it can be like to be an ex. Abdullah Al Andalusi bullshits for Britain. Kate Smurthwaite is there too. (The first twenty minutes are devoted to talking about whether Britain has become intolerant of blokes, which was so annoying I skipped ahead after a few minutes, but Kate was doing a good job of replying to the Bloke Representative.)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncx8NiTbiuw… Read the rest

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Are you kidding me.

A public school in New York state’s foreign language department arranged to have “the pledge of allegiance” recited in a different language each day for a week. I despise “the pledge” for many reasons – I think it’s nationalistic, coercive, theocratic, and just generally dopy and obnoxious – but if you’re going to have one, reciting it in different languages is quite a cool idea.

And Pine Bush High School in Pine Bush, New York decided to do that and it did it but uh oh uh oh, one of the languages was…brace yourselves…Arabic. Oh no!! Not Arabic!

So people pitched fits and the school said it was so so sorry and will never … Read the rest

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The European Space Agency took a snap.

… Read the rest

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I learned about that gap in my knowledge via a 2012 post of Stephanie’s, We don’t do that anymore, which shares some pretty staggering information. She shares correspondence between Earl Kemp, chair of Chicon III, and Isaac Asimov, in 1961. Go read it: she has permission to post it and I don’t.

[pause while you read it]

Got that? Hahaha let’s do a thing about pinching women’s bums, with some women you can demonstrate on; hahaha yes let’s, I’ll “stiffen the manly fiber of every one in the audience” (because women don’t count as part of “everyone” even though they are there, in the audience).

That was how sexual harassment and assault was dealt with at the genre’s major

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Catching up on my history at the moment.Filling in gaps in my knowledge. I didn’t know the one about Harlan Ellison at the Hugo Awards in 2006. Now I know about it.

Here’s the thing.  When Harlan Ellison took it upon himself to grab the spotlight at the Hugo Awards by grabbing the breast of the Guest of Honor, Connie Willis, it wasn’t funny.  Nor was it clever.  Nor was it satirical.  Nor was it a joke between friends.  And, just be clear, it was NOT part of a scripted routine.  Yes, the shtick between her and Robert Silverberg was a planned routine to make the evening amusing for the audience, but Harlan’s actions were unplanned and unwanted.  It

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Kate Lycett is having an exhibit in Hebden Bridge opening March 26. She’s doing a giveaway.

It’s giveaway time! It is just 4 weeks to go til my exhibition opens at Heart Gallery, in Hebden Bridge On Thursday March 26th. I have a good size (30cm squ) artists proof here, hand-finished with gold leaf and gold thread, to give away. Please could you comment and share to spread the word about the exhibition. I will pick a random number on March 13th.

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Sayeeda Warsi is palling around with Islamists again – Islamists who would, if they had the power, force her to stay home.

The American preacher Yasir Qadhi has fashioned an entire career out of promoting obnoxious views.

Women are not spared, oh no. Have a look at this exchange:

A question from the audience: “What kind of occupation would you recommend for a sister? A job that a sister could do?”

Qadhi’s answer: “Well the question arises, would I recommend a job for any sister? And the answer is in general, in general no. In general it’s not something that a sister should do.”

“A sister” of course is a mollifying way of saying “an inferior being.”

Women may teach

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It’s being reported, though not (yet) widely, that Daesh has blown up another ancient building in Iraq.

Islamic State (Isis) militants have allegedly blown up parts of the ancient monastery of Mar Behnam near the predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, according to pictures from IS media shared on twitter and a Kurdish media report.

The photos, released by IS members, show the 4th-century monastery’s tomb complex of Mar (Saint) Behnam and Mart (Saint) Sarah reduced to rubble.

Dr Nicholas al-Jeloo, an expert on Assyrian monasteries in Iraq from the University of Melbourne, visited the monastery, previously run by the Syriac Catholic Church, in January 2010 and confirmed the authenticity of the pictures to IBTimes UK.

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James Bloodworth has a somewhat similar take to mine on the appeal of Adventures With the Islamists. He wrote about it in the Independent a couple of weeks ago.

[F]or all the arguments which put Islamist violence down as a ‘terrible indictment’ of this or that aspect of Western policy, London Mayor Boris Johnson was probably closer to the mark when he described Jihadists as “porn-obsessed losers who can’t get girlfriends”.

Put another way, bitter and socially awkward virgins are often drawn to ideologies which seek to police women’s chastity and reap violent revenge on the society that has shunned them.

Ideological creeds like Isis, which seek to turn women into sex slaves and cling to a cartoonish masculinity

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Well that must be very cheerful. David Sirota at Salon points out that super-rich people think they’re not super-rich.

By Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s reckoning, being a millionaire does not constitute living high above the ranks of ordinary people. Lew said last week that back when he was in the private sector enjoying six- and seven-figure pay packages, “My own compensation was never in the stratosphere.”

Lew made that pronouncement as he sought to defend President Barack Obama’s embattled Treasury undersecretary nominee Antonio Weiss from charges that as a financial executive, he is out of touch with the interests of regular people. Lew was seeking to cast his own lot with the ranks of ordinary Americans at a time

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