We’re arguing about it in comments, so I’ll bring it up here to argue some more. (And watch: now no one will argue any more. That always happens.)

We’re arguing about this question of whether it’s ok for conference speakers to hook up with attendees, assuming mutual enthusiasm and availability.

I’m not on the side my haters* would expect.They would expect me to screek in horror and demand that everyone be taken away in chains. You know the drill – ugly old bitch, crazy bitter ugly angry old bitch jealous of all the hot young people having secks, wants to see them all boiled in oil.

But nah. I don’t see the problem. I agree that the bigger stars … Read the rest

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Brian Dalton has a follow-up to his “how to say no to more wine” video.

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

It’s obnoxious. For some reason he makes a big issue of the fact that the “no more wine thank you, I’m good; see how easy that was?” segment was about this one bit of PZ’s post and not about the other bit. Well I knew that but it doesn’t amaze me that other people didn’t, and anyway, I don’t see why he makes a big issue of it since he didn’t spell that out in the original video. If you do a parable and people don’t figure out exactly what the reference is, it’s conceivable that that’s your doing and not theirs. It’s … Read the rest

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It’s the turn of “Ardent Atheist” Emery Emery to try to peddle the line that all this talk of sexual harassment is actually a campaign to stop everyone having sex. It’s a campaign to shut down pleasure and fun and joy and good things altogether.

The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape. The problem with this tactic is that it obfuscates actual acts of sexual predation while criminalizing very healthy sex-positive human interaction.

No actually we have not. Not at all. We’ve been attempting (as have many others – we sure as hell don’t deserve all the credit for this) to define sexual harassment as sexual harassment. Flirting is … Read the rest

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Maryam Namazie writes:

PROTECT NAHLA MAHMOUD

Following her interview on Channel 4 on Sharia law, Islamists have threatened Sudanese secular campaigner and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) Co-Spokesperson Nahla Mahmoud with death, calling her a ‘Kafira’ and ‘Murtada’ who has offended Islam and brought “fitnah”. The threats have been reported to the police who have advised that nothing can be done about the particular threats made by Salah al Bandar who has until recently been a Lib Dem Councillor. The police have even urged Nahla not to “anger” him further.

Hundreds of individuals and groups have already signed on to an open letter calling for the authorities to take action. You (and/or your organisation) can read more about … Read the rest

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Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast – I totally know the Buffalo Beast, they interviewed me once, like a million years ago – Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast, I say, had a little chat with Michael Shermer.

A friend warns, don’t read it aloud to someone who’s driving a car. That clearly implies also don’t read it while drinking, eating, lighting a match, balancing on a high wire, cutting your toenails, sitting with a cat on your lap, holding a baby, soldering a pipe, crossing a street, swimming.

It starts this way:

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER is known as an editor, a skeptic, a TED talker, a thinker. Others see him as “that intellectual lightweight who loves Ayn Rand

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Yesterday I told you about that stupid Facebook page Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. Today Rebecca presents some new information about one of the people behind that page. First, there was a message…

A few days ago, I received this email via the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe contact form:

From: Cecil Fuson

Email: Viciousvestments@gmail.com

Location: Raleigh, NC

Category: Question for the Show

Subject: quote request

Message: Good day, my name is Cecil Fuson. Together with Brandi Olson and a member of the Atheist news group (A news) we run a small Facebook group that is called Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. We currently have 87 members and are growing everyday. It should be noted that a

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John Scalzi quoted an informant who emailed him about ElevatorGATE and harassment via Twitter and Storify yesterday. (The quoting was with permission.)

A Twitter and Storify user who goes by the handle “@elevatorGATE” is a well-known cyberstalker of women via social media. His latest method of doing this is to compile thousands of pieces on Storify, often including every single tweet sent by his chosen targets, and then publish them, which notifies the women in question that he had published yet another piece archiving their every word. After repeated complaints and requests for help, Storify temporarily deactivated the notification feature on his account, which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

In a conversation yesterday with Xavier Damman, the Storify CEO

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Oh and did you know Alex Gabriel has joined Freethought Blogs? He has.

This is very good news.

Of course, it’s sad for him that FTB is in imminent danger of collapse – well people do keep telling us that, so it must be true – but he’s young, I’m sure he’ll bounce right back when it happens.… Read the rest

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A beautiful Jesus and Mo yesterday.

I love the “women still dodgy” bit, also the fact that it’s in the Guardian.… Read the rest

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Oh I think I get it – what DJ Grothe meant by saying he thinks “unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity.”

He means if we get our way, and sexual harassment at atheist/skeptic conferences becomes unfashionable (aka “politically incorrect”), then there will be less sex at those conferences. There will be less total sex. Our goal, if achieved, would lead to less sex. That equals sex negativity.

Yes, if you define it that way, he’s right. The kind of sex where a dudebro plies a woman with alcohol until she becomes too out of it to consider whether or not she wants to have sex with him and just has it – that kind of … Read the rest

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And for today’s installment of thinly-veiled loathing – Stephanie quotes DJ Grothe on Facebook.

It’s rank.

There is an impressive distemper these days on the internets.

Many smart, good people that I know personally seem to fear this “call-out culture” online that is going on right now in many communities online. Folks are immobilized by a moral scare or panic that they think they are watching unfold presently. As for me, I think it all seems increasingly like some surreal science fiction imagining of some bizarre future dystopia. And so, I say:

Consensual sex — between any mature adult male or female etc. — is a human good. It is something that should be prized and promoted (would there

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Transcription courtesy of John Morales.

I want to take this time today to answer this question I get a lot: why don’t I believe in the gospels.

Um — the first big problem I have with the gospels is that they are anonymous — a lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.

Um, and no good skeptic, atheist, freethinker should ever accept any anonymous report just offhand; aah especially when we’re talking about something truly awful — I mean, the gospel writers have Jesus doing some pretty ugly stuff.  Umm, killing a tree for no reason, which makes him look completely insane; they have him claiming to be God, which would have been a major … Read the rest

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A three-year-old observation by John Scalzi, just because I saw it and like it. The failure mode of clever is asshole.

So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone you’ve not communicated with privately before, for whatever reason you might have. And, wanting to stand out from the crowd, you decide to try to be clever about it, because, hey, you are a clever person, and as far as you know, people seem to like that about you. So you write your clever bit and send it off, safe in the knowledge of your cleverosity, and confident that your various cleverations will make the impression you want to make on the intended cleveree.

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Behold: an asshole.

Start at 5:15.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZ86PGVOQk

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American Atheists has sent out a press release.

Cartersville, Georgia—Beginning Wednesday, visitors to Georgia State Parks vacationing in government-owned rental cabins can read atheist books during their stay courtesy of American Atheists. The national non-profit announced that its former President, Ed Buckner, will distribute hundreds of donated copies of atheist literature to the Red Top State Park for placement in cabin bedside drawers, alongside Bibles already placed there, on Wednesday morning.

Additional atheist books will be distributed to A.H. Stephens Historic Park in Crawfordville, Georgia at 2:00 PM EDT on Wednesday afternoon, with more parks to follow later this week.

In May of this year, Buckner was vacationing in Amicalola Falls State Park with his family, where he had rented … Read the rest

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We need a painting.

Vermeer

The Geographer

… Read the rest

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Because it’s a hot afternoon. Also because they kept making me laugh.

@TheTweetOfGod

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But then there’s like two million more after that, so what’s the point?

Laurie Penny @PennyRed

That’s a shame-  the main reason I do politics is so that internet creeps will want to fuck me.

Then I read the conversation in that one. That part isn’t amusing. It’s stupid.

Guardian Reader @guardianista

Not trying to sound sexist or anything, but who do you think’s more attractive of tonight’s debaters: @AlexandralSwann or @pennyred?

So that’s enough of that conversation. And good old “Don’t take this the wrong way/Not to be politically incorrect or … Read the rest

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