The Guardian put the count of missing schoolgirls in Nigeria at 88 last night, with 24 more having escaped.

The Borno state education commissioner, Musa Inuwo Kubo, said on Friday night some of the latest escapees were found on Wednesday nearly 50km from their school.

Extremists had attacked schools and slaughtered hundreds of students in the past year. In recent months they began kidnapping students, who they used as cooks, sex slaves and porters.

But this week’s mass abduction was unprecedented. The attackers also burned down many houses in the town.

I don’t even think “extremists” is the right word. They seem more like psychopaths. Their only goal seems to be to kill and destroy, while having slaves to … Read the rest

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Something I missed back in 2008 – which doesn’t surprise me, because I don’t pay attention to the minutiae of election campaigns – was a throwaway characterization of Hillary Clinton by Christopher Hitchens.

I happened to see a reference to it in a book, one that has nothing to do with atheism or the atheist “movement” or the deep rifts in the atheist “movement” or anything like that. I wasn’t looking for it, I just happened on it.

But it’s a moment when I’m particularly tired of the atheist movement’s habit of drooling over the same 5 or 6 men year after year after year, especially when the men in question have a habit of dismissing or insulting a woman … Read the rest

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The newly elected mayor of Latta, South Carolina, just fired the town’s first female police chief because she is openly gay. She’s been a cop there for more than 20 years, with an exemplary record.

Bullard was recorded by a city council member making several unsavory statements about Moore and other town employee.

According to a local news report (which obtained the audio), Bullard said:

“I would much rather have.. and I will say this to anybody’s face… somebody who drank and drank too much taking care of my child than I had somebody whose lifestyle is questionable around children.Because that ain’t the damn way it’s supposed to be. You know.. you  got people out there — I’m

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Amanda Marcotte looks at some of the laughably typical scandals plaguing the reactionary-Christian movement.

There’s the resignation of Doug Phillips, and even better, there’s what is revealed in the lawsuit filed by the woman he’d been “inappropriately” “romantic and affectionate” with.

While the complaint never mentions sexual intercourse, it does claim that he repeatedly groped and masturbated on her while she protested. The plaintiff alleges she was basically moved into Phillips’ house with his wife and children, taken on many family vacations, and given work as a caretaker for the family, all while secretly being bullied into sexual encounters without consent. She even claims that Phillips told her that they would marry soon, as he believed that his wife was

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I was hoping AA just hadn’t seen those painting, but no, that’s not the case. They tweeted one of them yesterday.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh… Read the rest

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Another psychologist explains PTSD. Caleb Lack asks Can one get PTSD via Twitter? and answers yes, easily.

I don’t really keep up much with drama and goings-on in the skeptoatheist online world. I’ve got friends who do, though, and they pointed me to a recent post with the in no way linkbaitesque title of:

Woman claims she has PTSD from Twitter and Cyberstalking

Twitter gave me PTSD’: Woman claims mean comments and ‘cyberstalking’ gave her an illness usually suffered by WAR VETERANS

I was asked by this friend, basically, “Can one get post traumatic stress disorder from Twitter?”

In a word: Yes.

That second link isn’t to a post at all, it’s to an article…in the Daily Mail. Yes, the … Read the rest

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The BBC reports on an academic study that finds the US is an oligarchy rather than a democracy. I knew that, but it’s interesting to have a study.

the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy

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The BBC is still reporting on the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. Their reporter there, Will Ross, says the government is saying 99 girls are missing but parents are saying it’s 150 to 200.

The attack on the school in Chibok, a remote part of Borno state, happened late on Monday with gunmen reportedly storming the school, stealing food supplies and ordering the students onto lorries.

On Wednesday, the military said most of the abducted students had been freed “as troops pursuing the terrorists close in on the den of those believed to have carried out the attack”.

But Mr Olukolade said it was based on a report “filed in from the field indicating that a major breakthrough had been

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Richard Attias at the Huffington Post points out the lack of coverage of the kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls in Borno, Nigeria.

The Western media has made barely a mention of this story and appears resigned to ignore this abduction, which is an act of terror and unprecedented barbarism against these students whose only crime was to go to school.

That’s actually not true. It may be true of US media, but it’s not true of for instance the BBC World Service – it was the top story on Wednesday and it got a lot of minutes. He probably had no idea how much coverage there was in French, German, Swedish, Spanish etc etc media. Be careful  not … Read the rest

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For refreshment after that – the new xkcd.

… Read the rest

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NSFW

Two more, for the total of three, at the Art Show and Silent Auction at the American Atheists’ Convention in Salt Lake City.

I’m told this one is hanging just below one of Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

This one is sculptural; the hand is part of it.

… Read the rest

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NSFW

So the American Atheists Convention is going on this weekend – Easter weekend, you know. Tom Flynn has the glory of giving the Easter sermon.

There’s an art show and auction. I loved the one last year. I kept wandering back to it to gaze some more.

But this year…There’s one guy who has a bunch of portraits of The Godmen of Atheism, and along with them – some naked women. The Godmen are all fully dressed, and the women, not so much.

Like this one:

See the oh so witty caption? “What glass ceiling?” Hahaharight, because naked woman among all the Godmen in suits – yeah that’s busting the glass ceiling all right. And the Women’s Rights barcode? … Read the rest

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Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 100 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in Borno State.

The government closed all schools in Borno three weeks ago because of frequent attacks in which hundreds of students have been killed in the past year. The girls who were kidnapped had been recalled so they could write their final exams.

The extremists have been using abducted students as cooks, sex slaves and porters.

Boko Haram has been on a rampage this week, blamed for four attacks in three days that started with an explosion at a busy bus station during the Monday morning rush hour in Abuja, the capital, which killed at least 75 people.

Two attacks in northeastern villages killed 20 people

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From the Guardian:

Few writers have produced novels that are acknowledged as masterpieces not only in their own countries but all around the world. Fewer still can be said to have written books that have changed the whole course of literature in their language. But the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, who has died at the age of 87 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease achieved just that, especially thanks to his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Since its publication in 1967, more than 25m copies of the book have been sold in Spanish and other languages. For at least a generation the book firmly stamped Latin American literature as the domain of “magical realism”.

Born in the

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Another message to men – specifically geek guys – about sexual harassment.

That women are harassed online is not news. That women in comics and the broader fandom cultures are harassed online is not news. That these women are routinely transmitted anonymous messages describing graphic sexual violence perpetrated upon them for transgressions as grave as not liking a thing… that is actually news to me, and it’s probably news to a lot of you guys reading this.

But it’s not news to a lot of women I know, and to women whose work you’ve read here and around the Web.

Nope, it’s not.

The Internet is a boon to humanity. It is also terrible. That is its special nature.

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This business of rape being something that’s done to the man who owns the woman who is raped…I watched some of the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder the other day, and was struck by something the defense lawyer-protagonist (Jimmy Stewart) said. One character said of another, “He was a nice guy.” Jimmy Stewart responded, “Yeah, a nice guy, except for his habit of raping other men’s wives.”… Read the rest

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The horror…

A woman in India sought to enact revenge on her daughter’s rapist, so she got four men, including her own husband, to gang rape the wife of the accused man.

According to reports, the revenge rape, which happened in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, India on Sunday, left the accused rapist’s wife struggling for life on the side of a road.

The mother of the teenage girl that was originally raped allegedly called on three men and her husband to rape the wife of her daughter’s rapist in retaliation for the crime. The four men wound up abducting the woman, taking her to an area near a police station in a neighboring village, and gang raped her.

Later on, the

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