I thought it was a great conference, and I know I had a great time there. But there are dissenters registering their dissent.
Sara E. Mayhew @saramayhew
If we want to be good at popularising skepticism, orgs need to cut cheap imitation speakers; Myers, Watson, Benson, Szvan, Skepchick/FTB.
That’s how to popularize skepticism.… Read the rest
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And from the Halloween party last night – the winner of the costume contest – Martin Marvin the Martian, who was hilarious in person, being very tall, so it was like a 10-foot-tall cartoon character.
Michael DeDora was a convincing Clark Kent.… Read the rest
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The last talk at the CFI Summit was perhaps the most inspiring of all: it was by Bill Cooke, the Director of International Programs at CFI, telling us what the programs do. They do enormously important things with a very small budget. I was frankly unaware of the International Programs before. I feel a little less embarrassed about that because I’m not the only one; lots of people were exclaiming that they’d had no idea. Bill said he blames himself for not publicizing it more, because he’s not very techy. Well!! Neither am I, but I do happen to have this noisy blog here, lying around not doing anything, so I can use it to give the International Programs a … Read the rest
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I’m back! So if you’ve been holding any complaints, suggestions, insults, compliments, orders until I had more time to deal with them. you can send them now.
I kid. As if anyone would wait.
But I am back. I had a great time. They’re a great bunch of people.… Read the rest
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Well for the last talk before lunch I could see Bill Nye in profile a couple of tables away listening seriously.
In the afternoon Leonard Mlodinow talked about the unconscious mind. One item I can’t make any sense of, which is that touch increases trust, even (and especially) very slight unobtrusive touch. There was a study in France that involved (of course) a guy going up to a woman and saying “You’re very pretty and I have to go to work now but can I call you later?” The study found that if the guy touched the woman on the shoulder very lightly- he did better. Syd and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Mlodinow said the … Read the rest
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Here I am. The panel I was on was this morning, and it was good fun. I went last so I thought I might as well tease everyone by preaching on the sermon “Reason isn’t everything.” Surprisingly, though, no one objected (that I heard, anyway).
Ron Lindsay just did an excellent talk on the 10 Commandments. He said just what I think, so naturally it was excellent.
Michael DeDora and I had a chat about movements and allies and rifts and working together.… Read the rest
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And another item, from the ever-valuable David Robert Grimes: Climate change is real, ignore the denialists in the Irish Times.
… Read the rest…climate change has been scientifically beyond doubt for a long time. Yet despite virtually all climatologists and researchers confirming this with vast swathes of supporting evidence, there are still loud voices doing their utmost to persuade us that the issue is still somehow open for debate.
In the US roughly half of media reports on climate change have doubted its existence. Publications like the Daily Mail, the Wall Street Journal and numerous Murdoch press give editorial support to these views.
Cynical and insulting
Such contrarian writers and broadcasters paint themselves as climate “sceptics”, but this is a calculated misnomer.
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I have to leave for Tacoma and the CFI Summit soon, so I’ll just point to an item or two for your reading pleasure, and possible discussion later.
There’s Jaclyn Friedman in The American Prospect on the “Men’s Rights” movement.
… Read the restWhat makes the MRAs particularly insidious is their canny co-optation of social-justice lingo. While Pick Up Artists are perfectly plain that all they care about is using women for sex, MRAs claim to be a movement for positive change, with the stated aim of getting men recognized as an oppressed class—and women, especially but not exclusively feminists, as men’s oppressors. It’s a narrative effective enough to snow the mainstream media: Just this past weekend, The Daily Beast ran a profile
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Amanda Marcotte is just a little surprised to find Fox News pundits saying “You can’t legislate behavior.” Huh, yeah, I’m surprised by that too. You can’t legislate behavior? So there are no laws against murder, theft, assault, fraud, rape, kidnapping, extortion? Or are we to understand that murder, theft, assault, fraud, rape, kidnapping, extortion are something other than behavior?
And whatever happened to the old law&order brand of conservatism? Did it get washed away in the flood of tea, or what?
… Read the restAnyone who has ever subjected herself to right-wing talk radio or Bill O’Reilly’s show knows that conservatives have an affinity for a good, old-fashioned bully. Even so, it was a bit surprising to see Shannon Bream on Fox News
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Guest post by Stacy Kennedy.
The Men’s Rights Movement emerged in the early 1970s. If we set the beginning of American Second Wave feminism at the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the two movements are approximately ten years apart.
Inspired by the recent mini-surge of interest in the MRM from 20/20 and The Daily Beast, I decided to compare and contrast the two.
CULTURAL PRESENCE/VISIBILITY
WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
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The first duty of a desperately impoverished nation most of which is under water is to find somebody or something that is unIslamic and pitch a fit.
… Read the restAfter being accused of “sucking blood” from the poor, Bangladesh’s only Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus faces a new state-backed hate campaign seeking to paint him as un-Islamic and a spreader of homosexuality.
Following years of attempts to discredit his legacy as a pioneer of micro-finance – since copied the world over as a development tool – the hounding has turned more personal and dangerous.
The perceived crime of the 73-year-old was to sign a joint statement along with three other Nobel laureates in April 2012 criticising the prosecution of gay people in
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A horror I didn’t manage to catch up with last week -
… Read the restGlenda Xiomara Cruz was crippled by abdominal pain and heavy bleeding in the early hours of 30 October 2012. The 19-year-old from Puerto El Triunfo, eastern El Salvador, went to the nearest public hospital where doctors said she had lost her baby.
It was the first she knew about the pregnancy as her menstrual cycle was unbroken, her weight practically unchanged, and a pregnancy test in May 2012 had been negative.
Four days later she was charged with aggravated murder – intentionally murdering the 38-to-42 week foetus – at a court hearing she was too sick to attend. The hospital had reported her to the police for a
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There’s a Facebook group called Misogyny Overheard at Oxford University. It’s an open group, so its content is public. (Our Alex is a member, because he’s been an Oxford student.)
It has this poster, which has appeared at university poster sales.
First things first, eh?… Read the rest
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A UN Human Rights Council resolution against child marriage is only that, but it is a start. But not everyone even agreed to that much. Want to know one country that refused? India. Yes, the world’s largest secular democracy said No.
India, the world’s child marriage capital, has once again failed its under-age brides.
The country has refused to sign the first-ever global resolution on early and forced marriage of children led by the UN.
The resolution was supported by a cross-regional group of over 107 countries, including almost all countries with high rates of child marriage—Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Guatemala, Honduras and Yemen.
Almost all? That doesn’t look like almost all to me. Nowhere near almost all.… Read the rest
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Last month the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for the elimination of child, early and forced marriage to be considered in the post-2015 development agenda. This is a first.
… Read the restThe Ambassador of Sierra Leone, Yvette Stevenes, introduced the resolution to the Human Rights Council, stating that “efforts [to end child marriage] need to be strengthened to address this breach of human rights of some of the most vulnerable groups in society”. According to UNICEF, 44% of girls are married before the age of 18 in Sierra Leone; 18% before the age of 15.
…
The resolution also stresses the value of empowering and investing in women and girls for “breaking the cycle
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Good news for the people of Turkey: they now have access to a halal online sex shop. W00t!
Yes that’s right, a halal sex shop. A shop where the sex products are halal as opposed to haram. Good eh? Reassuring. If only everything in life were halal as opposed to haram. How much more tidy everything would be.
The website describes its products as completely safe and halal according to Islamic rules.
When Internet users enter the online shopping site, there are two different links for men and women that lead visitors to separate sections for male and female products.
Well all right! That makes it halal right there all by itself – strict separation of women and men. … Read the rest
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Yes that’s right – it’s not some horrible joke.
… Read the restThe Sultan of Brunei introduced tough Sharia-law punishments on Tuesday including death by stoning for crimes such as adultery, hailing what he called a “historic” step toward Islamic orthodoxy for his country.
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah — one of the world’s wealthiest men — said a new Sharia Penal Code in the works for years was officially introduced on Tuesday in the tiny, oil-flush sultanate and would be phased in beginning in six months.
Based on individual cases, punishments could include stoning to death for adultery, severing of limbs for theft, and flogging for violations ranging from abortion to alcohol consumption, according to a copy of the code.
The code applies only
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Just in case you were thinking Boko Haram was taking a break…it’s not.
… Read the restMilitants wearing army uniforms have killed 19 people at checkpoints on a road in Nigeria’s Borno state.
The armed men reportedly stopped motorists on the road and ordered them out of their cars before shooting them or hacking them to death.
…
The latest attack happened early on Sunday morning near the town of Logumani, not far from the Cameroon border.
Survivors said the gunmen were dressed as soldiers and were riding motorcycles before they ambushed their victims.
“We were asked to get out of our vehicles and lie face down by nine men dressed as soldiers who blocked the road,” one man, who
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Via Imad Iddine Habib, who translated.
The Jihadist: “it’s Haram to eat UN Food, it’s from the Kuffars.”
The woman: “what about the bomb you’re holding?! Isn’t it made by the Kuffars, too?!”
Heartbreaking.… Read the rest
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Eve Garrard wrote about Norm Geras for the Guardian last Sunday. She’s a colleague and friend of his, and one of the editors of Thinking Towards Humanity.
His interests were rich and varied, but his thought and writings form an integrated whole. He was centrally and always a man of the left, but one who became a scourge of those parts of left/liberal opinion which, in his view, had slid away from commitment to the values of equality, justice and universal rights, and in so doing ended up by excusing or condoning racism and terrorism.
And sexism – the most godawful sexism on the planet.
… Read the restFrom his perspective, the response to the events of 11 September 2001 was appalling.
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