I’m hee-eere – in DC. Sorry for blackout day; technical difficulty due to obstincacy of travel notebook but I’m back now. PZ is over there finishing a post he started on the plane; lobby blogging.
Stephanie took this in the hotel restaurant last night. I don’t think she’ll mind if I share it.
That’s Jason and Simon. We were having a good time. I’m looking sarcastic on purpose. I wasn’t really being sarcastic.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Maryam has a lovely message from Imad. (It was Imad day today, which I forgot to promote because of a deadline and a thing and another thing and an extended errand and leaving tomorrow).
… Read the restI don’t feel sorry for anything I have said or for the actions I have taken part in, including the 20th February MASAYMINCH Movement, and the establishment of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco – the first atheist organization in a country with Islam as the state religion.
Dear friends, we have a long way to go to break down those Middle Aged myths and ways of thinking, those oppressive and repressive rites in the name of religion or culture, those violations of human rights
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
From What Is It Like to be a Woman in Philosophy: “Don’t say shitty, undermining things”: how hard can that be?
… Read the restI was scheduled to be a speaker at a workshop in my area, which was canceled due to lack of funding. The conference organizer wrote this to me:
unfortunately for the only other workshop i have in mind the organizing theme is one where you won’t fit, but on the other hand for purely cynical political reasons i will need a token woman.
When I replied that I didn’t want to be his token anything and found his attitude disrespectful, he told me that the cancelled workshop
was 50% women, so if any of them were tokens they would
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Gender policing? What gender policing? Garance Franke-Ruta says what gender policing.
Niall Ferguson dismisses economist John Maynard Keynes’s work as the product of an “effete” sensibility more interested in talking ballet than building a family with his wife.
Daily Caller writer Matthew K. Lewis blasts coverage of the gun control debate and declares, “Newsrooms should also hire a few journalists who aren’t effete liberal p*ssies.”
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas dismisses fellow Republicans who considered voting for a de minimis gun-control bill as “squishes.”
Effete squish liberal pussies; we hates’em. We hates women too, because women are where all that effete squish liberal pussiness comes from.
… Read the restThis isn’t policy talk oriented toward coming up with the greatest good
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Oh hey, I just remembered, the Women in Secularism conference starts on Friday.
No I’m kidding, I didn’t just remember, but it kind of feels like it. Despite all the anticipation and discussion, a moment did arrive last week some time when I thought, “Oh, it’s almost now,” as if it had crept up on me.
There’s a story on it in the Houston Chronicle, or in the Houston Chronicle’s blog (or both). Look at Amy there!
photo by Brian S Engler
And Debbie Goddard over by the back wall, under the light.
… Read the restFrom May 17-19 over 300 women will be convening in Washington D.C. for the Women in Secularism 2 conference, a sequel to the first successful gathering
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A guest post by Athyco in a comment on A new way to stir up trouble.
It has been a knotted mass of stupid from the beginning, and each one contributes their little bit to the mess.
I looked over the comments to Karla’s It’s Personal blog post dismissing this WBC contact, then clicked on her banner to look at some other post titles. I wasn’t looking for anything that would relate to a tweet/con problem, but one surprised me.
Did you know that Karla, as one of four organizers, was not at all happy to have a tweet to #NEPABlogCon (single day September 2012 con for Northeast Pennsylvania bloggers) from someone who wasn’t interested in promoting/attending the con?… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three states in northern Nigeria because of the way Boko Haram keeps killing people.
It is not the first time that the president has declared a state of emergency, but this is a clear admission that far from being weakened by the army offensive, the threat of the Islamist militants is growing, says the BBC’s Will Ross in Lagos.
And it is the first time that Mr Jonathan has admitted that parts of the country are no longer under central government control, says our correspondent.
The Beeb says 2000 people have been killed in “the violence” since 2010. It doesn’t say how many were people blown up or shot down by … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Sigh. Really?
The Huffington Post on Disney’s makeover of Merida, the heroine of Brave.
She wasn’t hot enough for nine-year-old girls? Nine-year-old girls want hotties for their hero-characters?
Sure. Now let’s put a G-string on Mary Lennox. Let’s give Laura Ingalls Wilder silicone injections. How about a pair of stilettos for Harriet the Spy?… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
James Dobson. I don’t talk about James Dobson enough, do I.
James Dobson has a question for his Friends.
Are you tired of hearing about same sex marriage coming from President Obama, liberal Congressmen, media spokesmen, leftist commentators, activist judges, entertainment moguls and homosexual advocates? These and other powerful influencers have set about redefining marriage as it has been known for 5,000 years.
Yeah, 5000 years. Or wait – wasn’t it more like 50? The Donna Reed Show – that wasn’t 5000 years ago was it?
Marriage 5000 years ago meant men with whole stables full of women, which I don’t think is what James Dobson is urging on our attention, although maybe underneath he is, the filthy devil. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Wahay – Bill Donohue (who likes to call himself “The Catholic League”) says there’s no sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church! Whew, we can all pack up and go home.
… Read the restBill Donohue comments on the 2012 Annual Report by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the subject of sexual abuse:
The survey, done by an institute at Georgetown University, shows how utterly absurd it is to maintain that the Catholic Church continues to have a problem with priestly sexual abuse. Of the nearly 40,000 priests in the U.S., there were 34 allegations made by minors last year (32 priests, two deacons): six were deemed credible by law enforcement; 12 were either unfounded or unable to be proven;
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I saw The Invisible War on Independent Lens last night, and was duly and thoroughly horrified.
It’s about sexual assault in the US military. There’s a lot of it, and it goes almost completely unpunished. 20% of women are raped during their service, and 1% of men are. Because there are a lot more men than women in the military, the 1% is a big absolute number.
The military is exactly like the Catholic church in this respect – sexual abuse including rape is dealt with in house – with the major difference that in the case of the military that’s legal.
But guess fucking what - that doesn’t work. It’s in house, so the people who should be policing … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Melvyn Bragg doesn’t like the way A C Grayling and Richard Dawkins talk about religion.
He said: ‘The intellectual slackness and terrorism of these atheists, people who I otherwise respected – Richard Dawkins as an explainer of zoology is peerless, and AC Grayling is a great explainer of philosophy. ‘But when they start discussing religion, it’s disgraceful. Religion is basically a great body of knowledge, and we don’t have many bodies of knowledge.’
No it isn’t. That’s just what it isn’t. It’s anti-knowledge. It’s un-knowledge. It’s a huge body of claims to know things that no one knows. It’s an insult to the very idea of knowledge.
Granted it is certainly possible to know a lot about religion…but it’s possible … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I watched quite a good show on the Discovery Channel last night, about grizzly bears. A crew got (we were told) closer than anyone ever before had gotten for an extended period to a bunch of grizzlies at a bay in Alaska where more grizzlies gather than anywhere else. They gather for the salmon.
I confide this bit of gossip to you for a reason. I noticed an interesting thing – not at all surprising, but interesting. It’s a hard life being a bear. You have to pack in the food in order to survive the winter. You can’t decide oh well it’s ok I’ll just keep hunting all winter, because you’ll be hibernating instead.
It’s a hard life, so … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has said he will sign the bill on Tuesday. The law would take effect August 1.… Read the rest
The Minnesota Senate approved the same-sex marriage bill which the governor has already said he will sign.
12!
Twelve and counting.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
One of the things that proud or “movement” skeptics like to say is “you have to be skeptical of everything.” No sacred cows!
But I don’t think even proud or “movement” skeptics really believe that, apart from a few psychopaths. I can think of lots of things I think no one should be skeptical of, and I’d be surprised to get much disagreement.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Rebecca has a post about the fetish for “dialogue” which starts with some great tweets by Jeff Sharlet pointing out how stupid the fetish is.
What I keep saying. There is no “dialogue” to be had with people who just enjoy harassing people. They’re not confused or uninformed, they’re just people of that type, who have found a safe way to engage in harassy behavior without paying any social costs. That’s all. Normally adults have to give up that kind of thing, or displace it into more covert and disguised forms like office politics. They are very lucky to be alive now when it’s possible to go on acting like a pubescent shit for the rest of your life. Trying … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
PZ on his own post on Justicar’s latest jeu d’esprit:
… Read the restYou know what also annoys me about this? It’s explicitly counter to the goals of the wider atheist movement, in which we want people to step forward publicly and be the face of atheism. Look at that story about Gage Pulliam, for instance: he went public despite public opprobrium for atheists.
Jen puts her name and face up front for the cause. Regressive asshole atheists use that to harass her personally.
And conversely, this coward Justicar/Integralmath hides behind a pseudonym, bragging about how careful he is to keep his identity covered, while sniping at the atheists who have more guts than he does. You wanna know why he and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The Audacity of being public post was mostly about this, but I was being cryptic for the time being. I’ll stop being cryptic now: it was about Justicar doing a video to call Jen a fucking nitwit for not totally concealing her location from creeping stalking peering thugs like Justicar – who takes very good care to keep his particulars secret, so that he can creep and stalk and peer and call names with impunity.
I watched it and it made me fucking furious, for the reasons mentioned in The Audacity of being public. I was disgusted by his fake rage at Jen for daring to tweet a picture that included a street sign, and by his starting … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
This thing about feminism and skepticism, and the idea that they make a natural pair…
I don’t think they do, really. I think they can be compatible, but I don’t think they’re made for each other.
You can be skeptical about any given social arrangement, but since feminism can be a social arrangement, that means you can be skeptical about feminism too. Or to put it another way, you can be skeptical about social arrangements and about proposed alternatives to those social arrangements.
Of course most of the justifications for social arrangements in which men as a group are above women as a group are stupid and don’t stand up to interrogation, and in that sense skepticism and critical thinking … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
