Guest post by Simon Trepel, MD. He has more essays at Simon’s Creative Behavioural Therapy.

Truthfully, I probably would not have cared so much, about the shitty thing that Lubitz did, but I was literally stranded on a desert island, thousands of miles across the ocean from home, when he crashed the plane. Now, stranded is a relative term, the island was Hawaii, and I could only be less stranded while being on a desert island, if I was in Australia. But that is where I received the parcel of hate that he chose to deliver to my meme mailbox, that elephant part of your brain that never forgets, yet we call it the hippocampus. That would be a … Read the rest

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

Another “uh oh no you can’t make jokes about erm you know that one guy” episode, this time at the University of Bath.

[“]According to CWIPS” was the title of the performance that had the cramped, upstairs-corner of the Bath Brew House roaring with laughter. The show combined pop culture, Richard Dawkins, and the bestseller of all time – the Bible – to construct an amusingly witty performance. However, prior to the opening night, the society was met with some rather strong requests to edit the show.

…

[D]uring the opening week one of the SU officials quietly attended one of the rehearsals. Just four hours prior to opening night the committee of CWIPS was told that a sketch

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

More from Siobhan Heanue, because she’s a journalist (for ABC, the Oz one) and she was looking at temples when the earthquake hit, so she’s tweeting these heartrending photos.

12 hours ago there was this

LIVE on #Periscope: Patan Durbar Square Kathmandu Nepal https://www.periscope.tv/w/Vxxh_zkyNDU5fDcwMDA0MjN-CfrLnC9NHLD72y5BqYsxHoOM8DxADi3oiGWyFeAi9w== …

Then an hour later

Huge earthquake in Kathmandu. I’m terrified.

Locals dragged her into a cafe, she said, but she was still afraid; aftershocks.

Then the first photo

Devastation in patan. Kathmandu earthquake.

Then more photos

Kathmandu patan district. Old royal square devastated.

Looking for survivors:

Kathmandu quake aftermath. Clearing rubble to search for survivors.

She has lots more. Good luck to her.… Read the rest

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

Meanwhile in Nepal…

(I must say I was disgusted to go to Google News for earthquake news and find at the top of the page headlines about ten dead on Everest rather than the hundreds dead in Nepal. A little too katiehopkinsesque, that.)

CNN has accounts from people in Kathmandu.

Kashish Das Shrestha in Kathmandu

“Some of the historical sites are completely devastated.

“Most of the people — a lot of the people — are walking through the city. They’re confused and scared. A lot of people are crying.

“They’re out with their pets and their families and a lot of locals are volunteering in rescue operations.

“In several parts of Kathmandu, a lot of people seem trapped under

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

I’ve seen the name Eboo Patel often in discussions of “interfaith” activities, but I haven’t (that I recall) read anything of his until now. He has a long piece at Religion Dispatches arguing that we should be more accommodating toward haredi men who refuse to sit next to women on airplanes. That’s where “interfaith” takes you, I guess. It’s where privileging “faith” over more reasonable and careful ways of thinking takes you.

He starts by pointing out that people often do change their seats to be helpful to others – parents traveling with children for instance.

The obvious question: why is exchanging seats on an airplane with a senior citizen, a mother with children or a uniformed veteran considered

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

Originally a comment by latsot on Actual dehumanization.

As awful as Hopkins is, the UK media are at least equally to blame (I’d argue they more to blame than Hopkins herself) for all her hateful nonsense. I don’t just mean outlets like The Sun. If anything, the more liberal outlets are even more complicit.

Hopkins has set herself up as a professional troll: professional with a capital P. According to an article I now can’t find, she has a team of people scouring news stories and (it’s presumed) coming up with the objectionable responses they can think of, which are then announced by Hopkins. Media outlets call her office for a rent-a-bigot quote. I wouldn’t be surprised if they … Read the rest

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

A Catholic girls’ school in Croydon is telling students a bunch of bullshit about what secks will do to them.

Students at a Catholic girls’ school have been warned that sex outside marriage can “destroy their soul” and “make their bodies sick”.

The “warnings” were handed out to 17 and 18-year-olds during a Sixth Form talk at Coloma Convent Girls’ School, in Shirley, Croydon.

Leaflets handed out during a personal, social and health education session (PSHE) warned that condoms and the morning-after pill put people “at risk” and make them “isolated”.

Well it’s like this. Some very puritanical Catholics hate secks and hate girls who do secks and especially hate girls who do secks with pills or condoms. So girls … Read the rest

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

One way to make a point about vaccinations…

That was posted on Facebook by an Australian anti-vax group. The SMH reports
:

It is not the first time the group has made the same comparison. In a tweet in January 2011, the group compared a court ordering a five-year-old girl to be vaccinated to “court orders rape of a child”.

Almost immediately, supporters of the group expressed their disgust, with one commentator, Rachelle Taylor, posting: “This is disgusting. Are you saying you believe your child being immunised is as bad as your child being raped? This could also be very triggering for victims of sexual assault.”

The group responded to one comment on its page, defending its decision to liken

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

Zoe Williams wrote a good piece about Katie Hopkins on Sunday (which no doubt Brendan O’Neill would call a bad piece, because what she says is so literal and unparadoxical). Hopkins’s piece was two days before that, then came the capsized ship on Sunday, then Williams’s piece.

The controversialist Katie Hopkins, writing in the Sun 48 hours before the latest mass drowning, suggested using gun boats on migrants; her idea proved unnecessary, of course. Why waste the money when you can let people die by doing nothing, for free? But Hopkins’ phrasing was interesting: “These migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.” The

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

I didn’t know who Katie Hopkins was until just now. I’m catching up. She was once on The Apprentice, therefore she’s a “media personality.” She wrote a column for the Sun in which she called migrants such as the ones who drowned in the Mediterranean on Sunday “cockroaches.”

Now the UN High Commission for Human Rights has compared that to propaganda for genocide.

Well, yes. It is comparable. That’s what genocide propaganda sounds like. That’s how it works. It persuades people that certain kinds of humans are not human.

A column in which media personality Katie Hopkins described migrants as “cockroaches” and “feral humans” resembled pro-genocide propaganda, the United Nations has said.

In a strongly worded statement issued on

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

More on Sabeen Mahmood.

Her last tweet must have been moments before she was murdered. It’s only 3 hours old now; it was 2 hours old when I first saw it.

Her self-description on her Twitter profile:

Post Modern Flower Child. Unabashed Mac Snob. Pink Floyd & Bruce Springsteen Devotee. Tetris Addict. West Wing & House MD Fanatic. Will Die for Hugh Laurie

From Dawn in 2013:

T2F Director Sabeen Mahmud never wanted to walk the off-beaten path; she simply walked, or actually ran full speed in the direction she wanted to. Never mind that everyone else seemed to be going in the opposite direction. She barely noticed. She was too busy running.

A rebel’s daughter who gave up

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

Terrible news out of Pakistan – another valuable person murdered. Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Karachi today.

The Mary Sue did a write-up about her two years ago.

Sabeen Mahmud (above, in blue), who says she fell in love with technology the first time she ever saw a Mac, just organized Pakistan’s first ever Hackathon last month, aimed specifically at finding ways to use technology to fix or at least alleviate Pakistan’s political problems. According to a piece by Wired, the gathering was pretty amazing for everyone involved.

Mahmud runs a small technology firm, but hosted the gathering of forty (whittled down from 120 applications) in her café The Second Floor, which she founded because

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

Surprise surprise, comedy that aims at the frat boy crowd turns out to be so obnoxious (aka racist and sexist) that actors actually walk off the set. Surprise surprise, it’s an Adam Sandler movie.

Nearly a dozen Native American actors and a cultural adviser walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie that’s currently filming because of depictions they found insulting, according to a report by Indian Country Today Media Network.

Actor Loren Anthony said the script, penned by Sandler and his longtime screenwriting partner Tim Herlihy, was insulting to Native women and elders and inaccurately portrayed Apache culture. He said the actors, who were supposed to be playing Apache men and women, were made up to resemble

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

Wow – evil in America. The ACLU blog has the details:

A committee of the US House of Representatives decided that employees in the District of Columbia could be fired for using in vitro fertilization to start a family or for becoming pregnant while unmarried.

That’s right, people of D.C.: members of Congress just voted to let your boss fire you for personal decisions you make at the doctor’s office — because your boss believes those decisions aren’t consistent with his religious beliefs. Now, the whole House may take a vote on this discriminatory measure.

What’s next? Will this committee vote to let employers fire people for being atheist, for reading Dan Savage, for not reading the … Read the rest

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

Of course. [Some of] Gamergate is picking up Dawkins’s cool hashtag. Make #‎UPINFY‬ trend wooha!

DragonKing ‏@BahamutDKing 6 hours ago
#gamergate Earthquake time make #UPINFY trend and show these there are no safe spaces we can’t prove are not safe from facts.

Kozi ‏@SergeantKozi 8 hours ago
@_Icze4r Check the #UPINFY tag for the latest culture war front, (University Probably Is Not For You) in response to Based Mom’s treatment

Video Culture Replay ‏@VCR_Blog 8 hours ago
If you are triggered by clapping and different opinions than those taught by mainstream “academic feminists”, #UPINFY

Ross The Boss ‏@gigagiga333 8 hours ago
#Gamergate please boost this tag #UPINFY

Akashi ‏@Onetailedfox3 8 hours ago
We should really just start replying to any

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

Originally a comment by quixote on California has the “personal belief” exemption.

Some little municpal health department near Vernal, Utah, was trying to figure out how to up the vaccination rate. The vaccination cost $25. A personal belief exemption involved ticking a box on a form.

Well, a local live wire figured they should reverse the incentives. They made the vaccination free and charged $25 for administrative costs to fill out a more time-consuming exemption form.

Presto, vaccination levels shot up into herd immunity levels (above 95%) and the problem was solved.

What struck me about this story that I heard from a relative is how little it took for people to decide their deeply held personal beliefs were … Read the rest

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