So there’s this blob on a wall where some water damage happened, and damned if that blob isn’t the spitting image of The Virgin Mary™ – or rather of the outline of one of those creepy statuette things that are supposed to represent The Virgin Mary™.

It’s cool, too, because on the wall to her right hangs her son on his execution-by-torture device. Idn that pretty? They’re together again, or at least little statue-type deals that are supposed to represent them are together.

(Have you ever noticed that it’s oddly hard not to see dolls and stuffed animals and the like as just a little bit sentient? Because I have. I guess that’s just because the recognition of what is … Read the rest

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

Yo! Breaking news – Malala has indeed been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yessssssss.… Read the rest

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

Michael Nugent points out a classic example of the special rules by which what would be an utterly normal tone of voice and wording and manner in a man get called “shrill” when it’s a woman speaking. The woman is Senator Ivana Bacik, asking questions at the parliamentary hearings on abortion law. She speaks firmly, and with an edge, but not the least bit “shrilly.” But hey, she’s a woman, and she’s talking firmly and with an edge to men. Must be shrill. Stands to reason.

In an opinion piece titled ‘We can’t be cowed by shrill voices’, editor Michael Kelly wrote:

“Ms Bacik clearly disagrees with the Catholic view that all human life is sacred and

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

Here are Michael Nugent and Ivana Bacik responding to abortion law questions at an Irish parliamentary hearing.

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

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

Aw, another innocent marketing decision goes awry.

Sandwich shop chain Pret A Manger has withdrawn a new “Virgin Mary” brand of crisps following religious complaints.

The firm, with about 350 shops in the UK, launched the spicy tomato crisps – based on the non-alcoholic version of a Bloody Mary cocktail – last week.

This prompted complaints, including from Catholic groups, that it was an offensive reference to Jesus’s mother.

A company spokesman said it had noted complainants’ “strength of feeling” and withdrawn the product to avoid offence.

Now look here, Jesus’s mother isn’t the only virgin Mary in the world. How do the complainers know that Pret A Manger didn’t mean their cousin Mary age six? How do they … Read the rest

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

Oh swell, it’s “World Hijab Day.” Whatever the hell that is. It seems kind of early, since it was also “World Hijab Day” back in September, according to Taslima. I wonder when World Chains of Enslavement Day is.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain forum has a page on the subject.

I begrudgingly wore the headscarf until very recently. I started disliking it when I was 13, and my dislike for it got more and more intense until I absolutely fucking hated it by the time I was 17. I didn’t express my feelings towards the hijab, partly because as a Muslim I felt guilty for feeling that way, but mostly because I was too scared that my

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

I’m tired of this, so I’m going to set the record straight, even though it’s futile. I did it once last summer, and now I’ll do it again.

I did not “compare TAM to Nazi Germany.” The harassers have been posting that version all over the place and it’s a stupid malevolent lie.

Here is what I said. Exactly what I said, not a new and improved version of what I said invented by the mildew people.

Responding to DJ Grothe’s “a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe” quoted by Rebecca,

I said:

As Jews in Germany circa 1936 might have created “a climate where Jews — who otherwise wouldn’t —

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

I was just rereading this post from a month ago, which quoted Michael Nugent’s response to Thunderf00t’s plea command to organizers of secular conferences to shun feminists:

Thunderf00t concludes with a call to conference organisers and leaders of secular groups:

“Seriously, those who organise conferences, get a grip. You do not have to appease the request of every PC whiner. The secular community can achieve great things, but it will never achieve anything while it has poison like this being dripped into its heart. Please forward this video to leaders of secular groups who you think need to hear this message.”

Thunderf00t, I’ll give you a straight answer. As an organiser of conferences and as chairperson of Atheist Ireland,

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

A panel in Oslo discusses Deeyah’s film Banaz: a Love Story. The panel is Deeyah; Diana Nammi, Director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation; Detective Superintendent Caroline Goode who led the investigation into the murder of Banaz Mahmod; and anthropologist Unni Wikan.

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

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

Things it’s good to hear are now lying in the dirt…

A leaflet listing the regulations for women under Islamist rule now lies in dirt here at the tribunal in Timbuktu. Rule No. 1: The veil should cover the entire body. Rule No. 4: The veil cannot be colored. And Rule No. 8: The woman should not perfume herself after putting on the all-enveloping fabric.

Any of those rules or other rules broken? 95 lashes.

Several days after French special forces parachuted in and liberated this storied city, there is a growing sense of freedom. Though in the houses immediately facing the Islamic tribunal, many of the 8- and 9-year-old girls are still wearing the head covering.

“It is

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

Daniel Kahneman explains that there is such a thing as the affect heuristic,

where judgments and decisions are guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning.

The example he had just given was the chief investment officer of a large financial firm, who told Kahneman he had just invested tens of millions of dollars in the stock of Ford Motor Company. Why? He’d gone to an automobile show and been impressed by Ford cars. “Wo, good cars!” Yes but that’s not the relevant question. The relevant question is whether the stock is currently underpriced.

The cio did an affect heuristic thing – which is pretty funny, really, given his job. But the thing is, Kahneman … Read the rest

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

Some grey bloke did a nice video last October. I may have already posted it but never mind, here it is again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-FSzy3Mbqo

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

Coming up this week at the Tate Modern:

a major performance-art event conceived and curated by US artist Suzanne Lacy. Silver Action will see 400 women aged 60 and over – who have taken part in some of the last century’s major political protests, from the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike to Greenham Common – converge on the gallery’s subterranean performance space, the Tanks, for a live, unscripted performance about ageing and activism.

Why? Well one reason is…

One evening a couple of years ago, 82-year-old Barbara Robson was crammed in a rush-hour London tube train. Politely, she asked a young man near her, smart in his suit and tie, if he might move along a little. “He

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