All right! Let’s do this thing.
There’s a hearing in Washington next week:
S.1696, The Women’s Health Protection Act: Removing Barriers to Constitutionally Protected Reproductive Rights
There’s a petition. Sign and share. Tell your Representative and Senators (if you’re in the US).… Read the rest
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Yet more reason to loathe Penn Jillette.
… Read the restPenn Jillette says that people are “burying the lede” in the alleged incident that led to SiriusXM’s decision to fire “Opie and Anthony” host Anthony Cumia. He also argued that he’s never seen any evidence that suggests Cumia is racist as many of his critics have alleged.
“We are burying the lede of this story, which is that Anthony, who has a reputation for being a bit of a hot head, is carrying, comes up gets hit in the face and does not hurt the person back,” Jillette said during his “Penn’s Sunday School” podcast this weekend.
“That is incredible. If I am in the position where I cross somebody who
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Missouri governor Jay Nixon has vetoed a stupid malevolent control-the-women anti-abortion bill.
… Read the restSetting up an election-year showdown with the Legislature, Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed on Wednesday a bill that would have required a 72-hour waiting period for abortions in Missouri.
Nixon said the bill’s lack of an exception for victims of rape and incest was a “glaring omission” that was “wholly insensitive to women who find themselves in horrific circumstances.”
But even if the bill had contained such an exception, he would have vetoed it, Nixon said in unusually sharp criticism of an abortion bill.
Tripling the current 24-hour waiting period “serves no demonstrable purpose other than to create emotional and financial hardships for women who have undoubtedly already
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Saudi Arabia is also (surprise surprise) harsh and bossy about Ramadan even for people who have the bad taste to be not Muslim.
… Read the restThe Interior Ministry has warned that it would deport non-Muslim expatriates found eating and drinking in public during Ramadan.
“Non-Muslim expatriates should respect the feelings of Muslims by not eating, drinking or smoking in public places such as streets and workplaces. They should not think that they are exempted from this because they are followers of other faiths,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry reminded workers that their contracts stipulate that they should respect Islam’s rituals and practices, including the month of fasting.
The ministry warned that it would deport those who break the
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Travel tip – never visit Pakistan during Ramadan. Sahar Majid explains why.
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In 1981, Zia issued an ordinance officially prohibiting public eating and drinking during Ramadan’s fasting hours. The dictate also forced public restaurants and eateries to close. Anyone breaking this rule could face three months in jail and a fine of about $5. (Luckily, the ordinance exempts food service in hospitals, schools, airports, and train and bus stations.)
Eating and drinking – so if you’re visiting Pakistan during Ramadan you can’t even walk around with a bottle of water and drink from it when you get thirsty.
… Read the restZia’s toxic traditions plague Pakistan to this day. His Ehtram-e-Ramzan (“reverence for Ramadan”) ordinance remains in effect because no subsequent government
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Cross-posted from Facebook.
Memo to people who say things.
If you compare someone behaving badly to “a teenage girl” and you get a reaction to the sexism – the right answer is not to call that “PC”.
It’s not “political correctness” (in the pejorative sense) to try to get people to refrain from automatic mindless disparagement of girls&women.
It’s not trivia. It’s not fussiness or pedantry. It’s not a gotcha. It’s not “call-out culture.” It’s not language-policing. It’s not authoritarian.
It’s a long (long long long) term effort to shape a world where girls DON’T grow up constantly being told, directly and indirectly, that they are fundamentally stupider, weaker, more spoiled and whiny, and just overall more annoying and bad … Read the rest
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Dalia Farouk at The Cairo Post reports a bad trend in Egypt:
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is increasing in rural areas in Egypt according to Women and Development Association (WDA) Alexandria governorate head Aida Nour al-Din, Youm7 reported Friday.
Din said that FGM is also common in urban areas due to some religious beliefs that it is a “religious obligation and must be done.”
She also said a 2008 study indicated 86 percent of divorce cases were due to FGM and its negative impact on marital intercourse.
Weird, isn’t it. You’d think people would be able to figure it out eventually. “Let’s see, how to make sure women won’t slut around – I know, mangle their genitals so that … Read the rest
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Not a good way to recruit women? Act as if they all like pink frilly pink frills all over everything.
… Read the restTo start, there were the pitches from college engineering programs in curly purple typeface accented by flowery images. She started to notice that many websites for budding female engineers are pink. Then there was the flyer for an after-school program hanging in a hallway of her high school. Printed on purple polka-dot paper, it read, “Are you a tech girl? Are you a web diva?”
The soon-to-be high school senior aspires to become an engineer of some sort. She has absolutely no interest, however, in a career as a “web diva.”
“It seems so degrading,” Wheat said. “If you’re
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Lisa Bloom explains lucidly in the Washington Post what is so radical about the Hobby Lobby ruling.
… Read the restThe U.S. is the most religious and most conservative first-world nation, and believers have tried to opt out of our laws for centuries. For the most part, courts haven’t allowed it. May Christian Scientists forego lifesaving medical treatment for their children? No. May Native Americans ingest illegal peyote as part of their religious ceremonies? No. May the Amish refuse to pay Social Security taxes that violate their sincere religious beliefs? No.
The simple general rule has always been that you are free to practice Protestantism or Wicca or Zoroastrianism or any belief of your choice, provided your religious practice does not harm others.
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The world cup is abomination, according to a Russian Orthodox priest, because the players wear gay shoes. Gay shoes I tell you!
It’s true, I’ve noticed it myself – bright green, bright orange, bright blue – they’re a treat to watch, plus they make it easier to keep track of the players’ feet. But of course it’s true that they’re also bright bright gay, no getting around that.
Writing in his column on Russian People’s Line, Priest Alexander Shumsky claimed that players are promoting a “gay rainbow” by wearing green, pink, yellow and blue shoes.
He said: “Wearing pink or blue shoes, [the players] might as well wear women’s panties or a bra.”
Oh, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m … Read the rest
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Here’s a question for UK readers, and anyone else with an informed opinion (or just plain information) – why is the abortion issue so huge here and non-existent there?
I want to know so that whatever it is that you’re doing, we can do it too.
You don’t seem to have anything like an equivalent of the USCCB. You don’t seem to have monster bishops running everything. You have Anglican bishops meddling with things, I know that, but they’re mere mouse squeaks in comparison. What’s the deal with your Catholic bishops? Why are they so quiet?
Why aren’t there abortion protesters and “counselors” outside all NHS facilities that perform abortions? Why aren’t people always yammering about it? Why is it … Read the rest
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Rebecca Schuman at Slate on academics who treat their graduate students as a sex pool.
Some things in academia never change. Even in an age when the feminists apparently control everything, it seems that the practice of older (usually male) scholars sleeping with much younger (usually female) graduate students is alive and … well, I wouldn’t say “well.” With two such relationships making recent news in the discipline of philosophy alone, for some of the older generation of male professors (again, mostly male), the grad students are still a dating pool—and vice versa. This is not just icky—it is highly damaging to the profession.
Philosophy! Again! What is it with these guys?
… Read the restIt’s not just a matter of
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Orignally a comment by jesse on Back to reporter school.
Working journalist here.
I’ll say this kind of stuff is needed because, as quixote noted, the issue is really that a lot of communications people don’t do science in their coursework, except for the minimum.
More to the point, the allergy to science starts earlier than university, usually, and comes from the fact that in the US the requirements for high school historically went: 4 years of English, 3 history, 2 math and 2 science as the minimum to graduate. This has changed a bit, but it reflects some rather old-fashioned needs. (It used to be that a lot of engineering-related stuff got covered in shop, before those classes … Read the rest
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It’s only a fraction, but it’s more than 60. >60 is way better than zero.
More than 60 women and girls are reported to have escaped from the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, security sources say.
They were among 68 abducted last month near the town of Damboa in north-eastern Borno state.
But some women who made it home said they feared other escapees had been recaptured, villagers told the BBC.
Boko Haram is still holding more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from Borno’s Chibok town in April.
There’s some disagreement about how they escaped.
… Read the rest18 women who have made it back to villages around Damboa over the last three days – and are being treated at a hospital in
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Oh look, sly dishonest interpretation from James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, in an article on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s ad responding to the Hobby Lobby ruling in the New York Times. (That’s too many things. It’s too confusing. The FFRF ad was in the Times. It was responding to the Hobby Lobby ruling. Writing is hard.)
… Read the rest…the FFRF’s rhetorical approach does not seem finely tuned for the purpose of winning political allies. The ad is more in the spirit of James Blaine than James Madison. It begins with a quote from birth-control (and eugenics) crusader Margaret Sanger, then, in large capital letters, declares: “Dogma Should Not Trump Our Civil Liberties. All-Male, All-Roman Catholic Majority on Supreme
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One piece of good news, amid the gathering shadows of looming Supreme Court justices:
BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air ‘marginal views’.
Yessssss. Should have been done long ago.
… Read the restThe BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.
The report found that there was still an ‘over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ‘other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.
Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses
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Well, at least I have confirmation that I wasn’t exaggerating yesterday when I said Alito lied in the Hobby Lobby ruling. Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West at Slate say the same thing. They say it with considerable heat and energy.
… Read the rest…moments before they adjourned for their summer recess, the justices proved they can act quite quickly and recklessly when it comes to violating the terms of a controversial opinion they handed down only days earlier. It’s as if the loaner car the court gave us in the Hobby Lobby ruling broke down mere blocks from the shop.
In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a “substantial burden” on the religious
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Tour de France? All very well but why is it men only? The BBC asks.
Former Olympic champion Nicole Cooke says it is a “scandal” there is no longer a Tour de France for women, blaming sexism in cycling.
The men’s race, which starts in Leeds on Saturday, is now an iconic event, but the women’s Tour last ran in 2009.
(Sigh – there’s that dopy use of “iconic” again.)
… Read the rest“It’s a scandal there isn’t a Tour for women at the moment,” the 31-year-old said in an interview with BBC Breakfast.
“In the 1980s, there was a women’s Tour de France. It was held over the same stages as the men’s race. They celebrated with equality.
“Since then, women’s
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The speakers, left to right, up to down:
Tawfique Chowdhury
Bilal Philips
Yasir Qadhi
Abdur Raheem Green
Sajid Umar
Waleed Basyouni
Alaa Elsayed
Yahya Ibrahim
Abdul Nasir Jangda
Omar Suleiman
Bilal Ismail
Yusha Evans
Hamza Tzortzis
Navaid Aziz
Daood Butt
Abdur-Raheem McCarthy
Shady Alsuleiman
Fatih Seferagic
Mohammed Zayara
Mulsim Belal
BBps Bilal Philips Yasir Qadhi Abdur Raheem Green Sajid Umar Waleed Basyouni Alaa Elsayed Yahya Ibrahim Abdul Nasir Jangda Omar Suleiman Bilal Ismail Yusha Evans Hamza Tzortzis Navaid Aziz Daood Butt Abdur-Raheem McCarthy Shady Alsuleiman Fatih Seferagic Mohammed Zeyara… Read the rest(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Another fun event for your participatory pleasure: the Night of Power Conference.
The Night of Power Conference – The first-ever global online video conference organised by Mercy Mission, to be held on the 27th Night of Ramadan 1435 A.H. (2014).
The Event shall be streamed LIVE, featuring over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures, for 36 consecutive hours! The theme of the Conference, ‘Spiritual Journey with the Qur’an’ aims to revive the Ummah through knowledge and action.
Behold the over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures. [click to embiggen to get the full effect]
Um…… Read the rest
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