Hmm. American Atheists is having a hard time finding a billboard company in Salt Lake City willing to take one of their billboards to run during next year’s convention. This one for instance:

 So it’s taboo, apparently, to say (conspicuously) that you were once a Mormon and are now an atheist.

Well if it’s taboo, how voluntary is the religion then? If you can’t do something as simple (and, admittedly, visible) as announce that you have left a particular religion…is that religion really fully voluntary? It seems to me it’s not. If there’s that much social disapproval, then it’s not.… Read the rest

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Manboobz tells us that mainstream media in the form of ABC’s 20/20 is airing a long-awaited show on the manosphere tomorrow.

It’s here at last! After numerous delays, the 20/20 story looking at the manosphere — and the part it plays in the online harassment of women — will be running on ABC this Friday, October 18, at 10 PM EST. Among the featured participants: the always charming Paul Elam of A Voice for Men; Anita Sarkeesian, the much-harassed feminist video game critic; and Jaclyn Friedman, the ass-kicking founder of Women, Action & the Media.

Here’s a teaser story on the ABC website which suggests that the 20/20 piece isn’t exactly going to be a triumphant moment in

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One of the comments on The Troublemaker really stood out for me, because I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s by one ADHDJ:

There is a huge overlap between skepticism and mansplaining.

I find cowardice in so much of what skeptics spend their time on — writing a 20 page article debunking a photo of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster and believing you did something intellectually valuable, like that makes you some kind of big thinker.  Considering whether or not fairies exist is worthy of great study and serious analysis, but whether some drunk dude acted like a creepy asshole at 3AM is so unlikely as to never merit a thought.

To quote the great Harry Frankfurt, “one

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Oh, please. Oprah.

Winfrey asked Nyad: “You told our producers you’re not a God person, but you’re deeply in awe?”

Nyad replied: “Yeah, I’m not a God person. I’m an atheist”, prompting Winfrey to question: “But you’re in awe?”

Nyad said: “I don’t understand why anyone would find a contradiction in that. I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist and weep at the beauty of this universe, and be moved by all of humanity. So to me, my definition of God is humanity, and is the love of humanity.”

Winfrey, who has spoken about her Christian faith on television before, replied by telling Nyad that her beliefs did not fit with traditional

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The Guardian published the not yet released Ofsted report on Al-Medinah school. It’s grim.

Overall effectiveness: Inadequate.

Achievement of pupils: Inadequate.

Quality of teaching: Inadequate.

Behaviour and safety of pupils: Inadequate.

Leadership and management: Inadequate.

The Guardian sums up:

An Ofsted report, due to be published imminently, declares that the Al-Madinah Islamic  school in Derby is “in chaos” and has “not been adequately monitored or supported”.

The report, which has been leaked to the Guardian, says teachers at the faith school are inexperienced and have not been provided with proper training.

Pupils are given the same work “regardless of their different abilities” and the governing body is “ineffective”, according to the report which was commissioned amid reports of irregularities

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Things that are not good in coffee:

• olives
• anchovies
• cauliflower
• shrimp
• pineapple
• mustard
• onions
• smoked salmon
• pumpkin

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Hannah Waters has been where Monica Byrne found herself.

At the time of posting a year ago, Monica didn’t call Bora out by name. But she updated her blog post this week with his identity after recent unprofessionalism on Scientific American’s part, seemingly linked to unrealized sexism and racism. Bora didn’t deny what happened.

The reaction on Twitter was one of disbelief and anger from his network of science bloggers and friends. “Science blogosphere, I am tweetless… I can’t even retweet what has left me so stunned.” “Enraged children with a persecution complex are out on a witch hunt, it’ll blow over eventually…” “My closest friend is @boraz. I know him better than almost everyone. I

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Bora Zivkovic has resigned from the board of Science Online.

Since its earliest days, ScienceOnline has sought to gather, grow and support a community of diverse faces, experiences and voices who share a desire to celebrate science, improve our communication skills and collaborate for a better world.

Bora Zivkovic, a cofounder and member of the ScienceOnline board of directors, has been an integral and vital leader in this community. Recent events, though, have identified actions on Bora’s part that are not consistent with the ScienceOnline values he himself vigorously promoted. Bora has taken steps to address these issues, and we look forward to any further clarity and resolution he might offer.

Our lives are full of overlapping communities – personal

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Another one of those times when a look at the stats turns up an interesting link I wouldn’t have seen otherwise: B. Spencer at Lawyers Guns Money on The Troublemaker.

Often when I post about Rebecca Watson, I am helpfully reminded by someone that she is a lightning rod, a troublemaker, looking to stir shit in the skeptic world. From what I have read of her Skepchick blog, this just doesn’t ring true to me. What I’ve been able to gather from following her for a year or so is that she was just a young woman and a skeptic who was rudely introduced to sexism and misogyny in the skeptic world and responded to that by talking about

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Originally a comment by Chris Lawson on Folk remedies with lashings of meridian.

With due respect, I am becoming increasingly frustrated at seeing this argument trotted out repeatedly against acupuncture. I’m just about the strongest possible advocate for evidence-based medicine you can find and I think the vast majority of “alternative” medicine is bunkum, often dangerously so, but this particular argument has broken legs and ought to be taken out the back of the stables and put out of its misery.

What is true: there is a lot of published evidence favouring acupuncture, but most of it is very poor quality. The traditional Chinese theory behind acupuncture — that of Qi and meridians — is utterly wrong. We know … Read the rest

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Oh good god. Another one.

Read this, from last year: This happened, by Monica Byrne.

When you do the first thing you’ll see is the update today, naming the guy in question.

UPDATE, 10/14/13: The man is Bora Zivkovic, Blogs Editor for Scientific American. There’s no reason for me anymore not to name him publicly, which I’d long wanted to do anyway. Reading about this incident is what reminded me (independent of whether or not he had anything to do with that post’s original deletion, which I don’t know).

So you know what’s coming.

A month ago I met with a prominent science editor and blogger. He’d friended me on Facebook, and given his high profile, I was delighted,

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Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry on why pseudoscience is dangerous. (I’m reading their edited collection The Philosophy of Pseudoscience.)

There is no question that some folk remedies do work. The active ingredient of aspirin, for example, is derived from willow bark, which had been known to have beneficial effects since the time of Hippocrates. There is also no mystery about how this happens: people have more or less randomly tried solutions to their health problems for millennia, sometimes stumbling upon something useful. What makes the use of aspirin “scientific,” however, is that we have validated its effectiveness through properly controlled trials, isolated the active ingredient, and understood the biochemical pathways through which it has its effects (it suppresses

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Guest post by Eamon Knight, originally a comment on Why should I?

On meta-ethics, I lean toward Error Theory (this week, anyway), and regard skepticism as a primarily epistemic stance. My usual approach to justifying moral behaviour is to note that it is in my rational self-interest to live in a society where I will receive cooperation from others, fair treatment, and some assistance when I stumble.

But as you note, this only gets us so far. My self-interest is conditioned by my middle-class status in society. For example: since I believe my chances of winding up as a mentally ill, drug-addicted street person are small, I might, if I’m being strictly rational, be reluctant to contribute (whether through private … Read the rest

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Wonderful Jane Donnelly of Atheist Ireland saying why the RTE shouldn’t have a daily call to prayer, aka The Angelus.

Jane’s a pistol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YasmybU9Xe8

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Something I missed last July – Bill Donohue aka “The Catholic League” explains how wonderful Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries were, contrary to all the “myths” about them.

One contemporary example of prejudice is the popular perception of the nuns who ran Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

From the mid-eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, the laundries housed “fallen” girls and women in England and Ireland. Though they did not initiate the facilities, most of the operations were carried out by the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, Good Shepherd Sisters, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The first “Magdalene Home” was established in England in 1758; Ireland followed in 1765 (the first asylum being a Protestant-run entity).

Notice … Read the rest

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One of the reasons skepticism can’t get you there is the fact that it’s always possible to ask questions like, “Why should I care?”

There are answers to questions like that, but skepticism isn’t the source of the answers. Skepticism will just keep asking why we should care. Skepticism won’t necessarily accept the answers. There are no skepticism-defeating answers to questions like that. There’s no “proof” that humans should look after each other.

That’s why some of us are getting so fed up with skepticism. There are people who think it’s the universal tool, that it’s the right way to approach all questions, that if it’s still asking questions then somebody is pulling a fast one.… Read the rest

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