On the plane, DC to DFW leg. To my surprise, I have free Wifi. I don’t know how that happened. (Then again the Wifi at National refused to connect, so it all comes out even.)

Sarah Moglia and I had a conversation with Ron later in the morning, shortly before I left. I’m not sure how much progress any of us made but at least we had a conversation.

Apart from that whole thing – the conference was amazing. I have so many terrific new friends – Sarah, Monette, Jason, Kim, Miri, Steve – and had so many good conversations with existing ones – Maryam, Melody, Michael DeDora, Debbie, Seanna, Steve W, Ania – oh shut up, I’ll make you … Read the rest

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

I can’t begin to say how weird everything has become.

If you’ve been following the right blogs or perhaps Twitter you already know, but otherwise you don’t.

Oy.

Nevertheless – this conference has been FABULOUS. Just really brilliant. It’s way too late to do anything about that. Sorreeeeeeeee.

Some relevant posts.

Rebecca replies to Ron’s opening talk.

Ron replies to Rebecca.

Opening paragraph.

Rebecca Watson inhabits an alternate universe.  At least that is the most charitable explanation I can provide for her recent smear.  Watson has posted comments on my opening talk at Women in Secularism 2.  It may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea.

PZ comments on the resulting … Read the rest

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

Oh and also – talk amongst yourselves. It looks so dead here when I’m busy elsewhere. Tell stories, complain, argue, explain, debate. Keep the lights on.

Twenty minutes before the first panel. Zoooooooooom.… Read the rest

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No time! I was going to do a quick post last night just to say Rebecca Goldstein’s talk was brilliant, but using the lobby Wifi means one sees all one’s favorite people right in front of one – so, in short, I had deeply interesting conversations with Amanda Knief and Michael DeDora and Seanna Watson and others and the post didn’t get written. So: Goldstein’s talk was brilliant. I’ll tell you why later – meanwhile Miri has a post.

Maryam is on in half an hour, along with others. It’s going to be amazing.

It’s too bad Ron elected to open the conference by using a lot of anti-feminist talking points like “sister punisher” and “privilege” and “shut up and … Read the rest

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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).

I 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?

I 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.

This isn’t policy talk oriented toward coming up with the greatest good

(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.)

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.)

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.

Bill 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.)

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.)