Mary Ellen boiled down the irony of the pope’s retirement very neatly on Monday, but unfortunately in the rush of various flying missiles I didn’t get to it until today.

Guest post by Mary Ellen Foley

Somebody gets into a situation in which their health begins to fail, and if they stay in that situation, it might kill them.  They believe that God himself put them into that situation, but they just don’t feel that they can see it through — the strain is just physically too much.  And anyway, they’d prefer a quiet life, and they want to spend their time studying.

So if this person is a pregnant woman whose pregnancy is life-threatening, the Pope says she has … Read the rest

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

The Tories want to re-describe poverty as being not to do with a lack of money. Next project: re-describe hypothermia as being not to do with lack of heat.

The government’s desire to alter the official definition of child poverty risks deliberately downplaying the importance of money just as a series of government policies will reduce the incomes of poor families, a group of senior academics warn in a letter to the Guardian.

Let’s define it as a lack of initiative, shall we? A shortage of grit and determination and ambition? A refusal to get up at 5 a.m.? A habit of eating three pieces of pie every evening?

A consultation on how to measure child poverty more

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

More on Ahmed Rajib and the context of his murder.

A blogger who had been critical of Bangladesh’s Islamist groups was killed in the capital late Friday, police said, a day after he attended a big rally against leaders of the country’s largest Islamic party.

…

Police found the body of Ahmed Rajib, 35 — better known by his online identity Thaba Baba — near his home in Dhaka’s Pallabi suburb, with his head hacked apart with a machete.

“We recovered the machete. It is clear the attacker wanted to murder him. They did not touch his laptop or other valuable objects,” police official Sheikh Motiur Rahman told AFP.

Police have not commented on a possible motive for the killing,

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

Another upcoming event, this time in Dublin. Atheist Ireland is doing a conference called Empowering Women Through Secularism the weekend of 29-30 June 2013. I will be there.

Everybody should go to this! It will be fantastic.

Speakers will include

• Ivana Bacik, Irish Senator and member of Atheist Ireland
• Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation, USA
• Ophelia Benson, author and commentator, USA
• Ann Brusseel, Member of Flemish Parliament, Belgium
• Mairin de Burca, writer and secularist, Ireland
• Jane Donnelly, Education Policy Officer Atheist Ireland
• Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freedom From Religion Foundation, USA
• Anthea McTiernan, Editor Irish Times Ticket Magazine
• PZ Myers, science professor and blogger, USA
• Maryam Namazie, Council of Ex-Muslims

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

An activist blogger was murdered in Dhaka today.

A blogger and online activist, who was active in the Shahbagh movement, was killed in the capital’s Pallabi area Friday night, prompting the Shahbagh protesters to return to their 24-hour demonstration.

Police recovered the body of 30-year-old Ahmed Rajib Haider, full with indiscriminate stab injuries, from near his Kalshi residence in Mirpur.

I know nothing about the Shahbagh movement, but if he was killed for being an activist, I know something about the movement’s enemies, and thus a little about the movement by inference.

Pallabi police also confirmed that Rajib was an active participant of Shahbag movement.

Rajib used to write a Bangla blog nicknamed ‘Thaba Baba’.

He had also written

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

Brave hero JREF Saviour ElevatorGATE storifies an “exchange” between two Twitter accounts that use my real name as their handles. No harassment here folks! Public figure! Freeze peach!

Conversation with @OPHELlABENSON and @OpheIiaBenson

1.  
   O’FemFührer Benson@OPHELlABENSON ACHTUNG! send us donations to annoy zee haterz ! zend us all the moneys now! #ftbullies#opheliabenson 3 hours ago ·

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2.  
   Ophelia F’ing Benson@OpheIiaBenson @OPHELlABENSON HAIL OPHITLER! 3 hours ago ·

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3.  
   O’FemFührer Benson@OPHELlABENSON @OpheIiaBenson  danke schon. vee kan do thinky.  HEIL OPHITLER!#opheliabenson 3 hours ago ·

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4.  
   Ophelia F’ing Benson@OpheIiaBenson @OPHELlABENSON who ist dast femfuhrer? You ist dast femfuhrer! Hail thinky femfuhrer

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

A new study provides evidence that yes Virginia in online gaming women are harassed much more than men. (This is in sharp contrast to philosophy, math, computer science, engineering, the military…wait…)

Using Halo 3 and choosing its most popular playlist as a sample group, they established three gamer tags, each assigned to either a pre-recorded male or female voice, or no voice at all, and recorded the reactions of their opponents after playing back innocous phrases designed to engage, but not anger, them (ex: “Hi everybody” or “I like this map”).

Taking into account negative and positive comments as well as neutral queries, this simple experiment (the full methodology of which you can read here) revealed that

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

You know that thing where you make a point, and it gets ignored, and then a guy makes the same point – (yes, “you” are a woman in this particular that thing) and the guy you were talking to is all “good point, dude, thanks, I totally get it now”?

That.

Stephanie summed it up in a tweet. (One of the virtues of tweets, innit. Summing up.)

Nothing like watching a male colleague be thanked for making the point I’d just made in a different form. Especially when talking sexism.

Ayup.

 … Read the rest

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

The Ottawa Citizen reports -

OTTAWA – An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a  “perversion” and a “sin” is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats.

Well that seems like bad planning. The funding is for unrelated activities, but the government of Canada should find non-homophobic organizations to fund for unrelated activities.

The federal government has denounced virulent homophobia in that East African  country and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has condemned plans for an  anti-gay bill that could potentially include the death penalty for  homosexuals.

At the same time the government is providing $544,813 in funding for  Crossroads Christian Communications — an Ontario-based evangelical group that 

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

Good old NPR, always middlebrow to a fault. Talk about atheism and religion? Well you know what will be said, because NPR wouldn’t allow anything else to be said.

Sometimes the debate between atheism and religion can be enlightening, showing us how both of these different approaches dive deeply into the currents of human experience. Sometimes, however, it can be deeply depressing, devolving into hard lines and acrimony. As an atheist, I often find myself exasperated with what I call “strident atheism.”

The banality, it…well it doesn’t burn. It stifles with fuzzy fluffiness. Atheism and religion are “approaches,” which are different but not more or less accurate. They are approaches that dive (how can an approach dive?) “deeply into … Read the rest

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

Private medical records. Photos taken on the roof of a parking garage. Ultrasound. About as invasive as it could get.

H/t Stuart F Taylor.… Read the rest

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

[inarticulate scream of rage and disgust]

PZ tells us what a Saudi father – a “religious scholar” – did to his five-year-old daughter. Read it, if you can bear horrors.

Maryam tells us too.

The father had to pay a little blood money. That’s all. Half the blood money he would have had to pay if Lama had been a boy. (But if Lama had been a boy he wouldn’t have done what he did to her.)

I know heinous child abuse, rape and torture occurs everywhere. I’ve heard some of the worst cases right here in Britain. But it is only under Sharia (and religious laws) that there is always some Islamic justification for leniency or for blaming the

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

You know that trope about the expansion of or meaning-shift in the word “misogyny”? The one that says it’s being used to mean the same thing as sexism? I don’t use it that way, but I’ve found an example that, I think, does.

It’s a petition to the White House asking the Obama administration to

Stop using the “wives, mothers, & daughters” rhetorical frame that defines women by their relationships to other people.

The petition is hopeless of course, but it’s a good point. But I think the word “misogyny” doesn’t belong.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said: “We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free

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