I go to Twitter and what greets me?

Phalacrocoracidae@CommonCormorant

Loser, hypocrite, bitch, #cuntbucket AND #douchecanoe: @OpheliaBenson < fuck you ruiner of things. >> look: http://www.atheistrev.com/2012/12/michael-shermer-is-latest-to-be.html … think!!

.@OpheliaBenson is a horrible person.

.@OpheliaBenson makes me think I should avoid Seattle. (Even though I was born in Tacoma.)
#douchecanoe
#cuntbucket

Total stranger to me, that person. I thought I would RT the first one, but got the “you can’t” message – so that person tweeted that shit at me and then blocked me. I don’t do this “that feminazi blocked me just because I called her a cunt!!” routine, I don’t do the “you may not block anyone” routine at … Read the rest

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

Hahahaha yeah tell that to Dave Silverman and Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker and Greg Epstein and JT Eberhard and Teresa MacBain and the staff of the SSA and -

oh you meant just the ones you don’t like. Ohhhhhh.

Of course, almost none of them actually do have a “career” in atheism or make a primary income from atheism. So that makes your advice kind of pointless.  But never mind, the spirit of it is clear enough.… Read the rest

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

So the bullies won at least part of their war with Caroline Criado-Perez – she got a new wave of hahaha rape-threats, so she deleted her Twitter account.

Caroline Criado-Perez, who led the campaign to reinstate a woman on an English banknote, took to Twitter on Thursday to vent frustration at the police’s apparent loss of information related to previous death and rape threats, which Scotland Yard has since denied.

The journalist deleted her account after receiving further threats on the site in recent days.

Bullies win, everyone else loses.

 … Read the rest

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

Maybe it wasn’t the Wild and Crazy Guys, maybe it was the compilers of the Hungarian Phrasebook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

Thanks to resident alien for the reminder.… Read the rest

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

You know, MRAs and their fans think (or pretend to think) feminists hate men and say outrageous things about men, but take a look at “Ask Men,” which bills itself an advice site for men. Just the front page is insulting – it’s insulting the way things aimed at women are insulting to me. Sports grunt grunt. Cars grunt grunt. And then there’s “how to get a woman to put out” sorry I mean “top ten ways to flirt with a woman sexually.”

1 Find the double meanings

The English language is literally packed with words you can twist around to create sexual meanings. Wet, juicy, hard, fast, hot — the possibilities are endless. For example, if she says

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

There’s a new documentary, Mission Congo by Lara Zizic and David Turner, that alleges some very dubious activities by Pat Robertson. Charity bait-and-switch fraud allegations.

Robertson has a non-profit organization, Operation Blessing International (OBI). He’s in a position to raise a lot of money for it, given the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network and all. He can just say send money, and people send money. He said send money specifically to aid refugees from the Rwandan genocide who fled to camps in DR Congo.

Chris McGreal, a journalist for The Guardian who was stationed at the refugee camp in Goma, recalled a strange sight. The camp was plagued by a cholera epidemic, which claimed over 40,000 lives.

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

UNESCO has a new finding: 54 million of the world’s 76 million illiterate young women live in just 9 countries.

Notice that Bangladesh is the one place on the list where there are more illiterate young men. I wonder why that is.… Read the rest

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

Hey get a JOB. Hey if you don’t like me harassing you, GET OFF THE INTERNET. Hey if you don’t like the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance, YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE HERE.

That last item of ignorant bullying is from a Fox News personality, Dana Perino. She really did say that.

Massachusetts’ highest court is currently hearing a case against the Pledge brought by atheist parents, who feel that due to its religious wording, atheist children “are denied meaningful participation in this patriotic exercise.” The case specifically involves the phrase, “under God,” which was not actually a part of the original phrasing of the Pledge.

Regarding atheists, Perino said during a live segment, “I’m

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

It’s everywhere. Classical music for instance.

Marin Alsop, who will on Saturday night  be the first female conductor to tackle the Last Night of the Proms in its 118-year history, has suggested society is still uncomfortable seeing women in authority roles such as hers.

In interview with the Guardian, she said: “There is no logical reason to stop women from conducting. The baton isn’t heavy. It weighs about an ounce. No superhuman strength is required. Good musicianship is all that counts. As a society we have a lack of comfort in seeing women in these ultimate authority roles. Still none of the ‘big five’ orchestras has had a female music director.”

And the lack of comfort is created by … Read the rest

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

From the Onion:

Courage requires us to remain steadfast in our beliefs. It asks that we stand by the convictions we express and never give an inch, no matter what the cost. However off base, wrongheaded, or patently false a position we’ve staked out may be, courage nonetheless demands that we blindly pound home our stupid fucking point, never letting up.

Brave hero!

What is the measure of bravery? I think part of it has to do with how firmly we stand our ground when we have absolutely no fucking clue what we’re talking about.

Another part involves having the mental strength to steel our minds against any reasonable argument that might challenge one of our beliefs. This means

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

Suzanne Moore is perhaps even more annoyed about Femen and Victor Svyatski.

If only men ran feminism, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in. We wouldn’t have to worry about offending them or arguing among ourselves. We would simply take instruction from consultants on gender struggle. Only the prettiest would be allowed to fight the gender jihad. And we would have to do it topless.

You can’t make this stuff up. And I am not. It turns out that that Femen, the Ukrainian feminist group known for semi-naked media stunts, slogan “Our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts” was actually founded by a man, Victor Svyatski. It gets weirder. This

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

Oh good grief.

Bim Adewunmi at Comment is Free last Wednesday:

Australian film-maker Kitty Green has named Victor Svyatski as the wizard behind the curtain of Ukrainian feminist group Femen. Green alleges that Svyatski not only supports the group, as Femen had previously acknowledged, but actually founded the organisation, as well hand-selecting the “prettiest girls” for their topless protests. Love or loathe Femen – and it is no secret that I am no fan of theirs – this is plain depressing.

For the documentary, Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, which is being shown at the Venice film festival, Green recorded an interview with Svyatski in which he acknowledges he may have started the group to meet women. His

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

The Observer introduced her last week:

She fought to give women the right to divorce. She campaigned for civil partnerships and against slavery. She was a passionate feminist who died for her ideals – and all this in the late 18th century. Now one of France’s greatest honours could be bestowed on Olympe de Gouges, a woman considered by many to be one of the world’s first feminist campaigners.

De Gouges is one of a handful of women being considered for membership of the Panthéon, France’s secular necropolis. Kickstarting a national campaign, the feminist movement Osez le féminisme (Dare to be a feminist) has just launched an e-petition to put pressure on President François Hollande to admit more women

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

But they’re much funnier in Texas than those lame-ass Nova Scotians. The hilarious thing to do in Texas is stick a decal on the tailgate of your pickup that makes it look as if there’s a woman tied up in the back of the truck.

Geddit? Killer funny, right?

At a glance, the decal is extremely convincing and acts as an optical illusion to make someone think there is an actual woman tied up in the bed of a truck.

But a closer look reveals that the optical illusion is simply a decal, and there is no woman in distress.

The decal is the handy work of Hornet Signs, a marketing and advertising company in Waco.

According to Brad Kolb,

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

Fun and games for the start of a new year at St Mary’s University in Halifax: a chant about the joys of raping underage girls (“o is for oh so tight” is one stanza).

The questionable cheer is based on the word YOUNG – “Y is for your sister … U is for underage, N is for no consent … Saint Mary’s boys we like them young.”

O you already have; “G is for grab that ass” is the other redacted one.

The students didn’t notice anything wrong with it, but now they do. Not noticing seems rather inattentive.

In response, the university is calling in an expert on bullying. (Uh oh – let’s hope it’s not Kristina Hansen … Read the rest

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

Stephanie has a post about standards and how we decide whom to believe and related subjects. In it she links to a document that reveals some important background information.

So here we have to weigh Sarah’s word against that of Cornwell, now the former RDFRS executive director. This would be harder for me if Cornwell didn’t have a history of using falsehood to deflect negative attention from Dawkins. She did this in the forum debacle a few years ago. (Yes, that email has been verified with someone who worked for RDFRS at the time. No, the source of the verification is not Timonen.) She did this by privately “clarifying” that Paula Kirby wasn’t part of Dawkins’ foundation when people were

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

American Atheists posted a statement on Facebook a few hours ago in response to Sarah Moglia’s post at Skepchick.

A recent blog post by Sarah Moglia alleges that American Atheists President Dave Silverman acquiesced to a demand by Richard Dawkins in September 2011 that he choose between Rebecca Watson and Dr. Dawkins as speakers at the Reason Rally in March 2012.

American Atheists and Mr. Silverman do not condone, support, or participate in the practice of allowing potential convention speakers, or convention supporters, sponsors, or attendees, to blacklist or attempt to blacklist other potential speakers and attendees.

While Mr. Silverman does not dispute that an exchange with Dr. Dawkins took place in Miami in September of 2011, there was

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

A guest post by the philosophical primate, extracted from a comment on Prison disagreed with him.

In calling him a bully and a coward, I addressed Castro’s moral character, and expressed a character judgment. That has bugger all to do with retributive justice.

In fact, one of the aims of a legitimate, socially constructive penal system (which we do not have in this country) is that it offers those convicted of crimes the opportunity and resources to reform their character, to become better human beings. As you said, rehabilitation should be our aim, not retribution — and what is rehabilitation but character reform? But even in American prisons, for all their flaws, some people have used their time in … Read the rest

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

Speaking of that Aja Romano piece (as I was yesterday) – she heard from a lot of Team Slime people, on her article and on Twitter. One was Aneris23, who tried to tweet her the right way of seeing things.

Aja Romano to Aneris

wait am I literally watching a guy debate semantics around the words “I want to kick you in the cunt”?

like of course he’s not serious, WHY IS HE DEFENDING A GUY WHO THINKS THAT’S AN OKAY THING TO SAY. like, before anything else, no.

 The he doing the defending is Justicar; the link “Aneris” gave is to one of Justicar’s many tedious self-important videos. So, curious about that particular bit, I took a … Read the rest

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