The new idea about the Neanderthals is that they had very big eyes, so they had a lot of visual processing equipment which means they had little room for higher order thinking. It’s like eagles. Eagles have enormous eyes and most of their headspace is devoted to visual processing. They can see like demons but they’re lousy conversationalists.

It was dark up north in Europe, see.

The research team explored the idea that the ancestor of Neanderthals left Africa and had to adapt to the longer, darker nights and murkier days of Europe. The result was that Neanderthals evolved larger eyes and a much larger visual processing area at the backs of their brains.

The humans that stayed in

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Huh. Even North Korea goes in for sexist insults. Who knew?

When North Korea blamed President Park Geun-hye’s “venomous swish of skirt” this week for tensions on the Korean Peninsula, it brought up an issue that had been mainly unremarked upon in South Korea: Would their leader’s gender color the latest confrontation between the Koreas?

The North Koreans, masters of outrageous propaganda, no doubt picked their phrase carefully for the South’s first female president. “Swish of skirt” was long an insult in Korean culture, directed at women deemed too aggressive, far from the traditional ideal of docile and coy.

The old damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either you’re too aggressive and undocile, or you’re a … Read the rest

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Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has her experience of being both an atheist and a woman.

The religious community in which I’d been raised did not allow female ministers, did not allow female presidents of the congregation, did not allow female elders, and did not, for most of my childhood, even allow female lectors to read the selected Bible readings during the service each week.  Women were for teaching children—and for cleaning: Communionware, the kitchen, maybe a vestment.

I started asking questions about this disparity at age 7, possibly earlier.  I got the usual bullshit answers that are used to justify these things.  I was good enough to be an acolyte (especially since there were precious few teenage boys willing

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The Guardian had a bit more yesterday on UCL’s decision not to be besties with iERA any more. Most of it we already know, in fact some of it could have come from here, but it tells us some new things.

Saleem Chagtai, head of PR at iERA, expressed disappointment at the ban and denied that the group had tried to enforce segregation at the event.

The group has put a time-lapse video of the audience taking their seats before the event on YouTube. But as there is no sound, it does not reveal whether or not men and women were asked to sit separately when they came into the lecture theatre.

It is also unclear whether the video ends

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There were two other girls shot along with Malala that day. One of them is trapped at home in Swat, unable to go back to school.

Due to complications, her home recovery lasted several months. To this day, she endures severe nerve pain and still does not have full function of her hand.

“I want go to school even if the Taliban comes for me again. I will never give up,” Kainat said. It was a gentle resolve, the kind of fortitude that cannot be taught, only earned. When I told her I was a doctor, she beamed. “I want to be a doctor too, so I can help people.”

The “I” in the story is Seema Jilani,

a

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Chris Moos updated us a couple of days ago, and I missed it until now.

I would like to inform you that UCL has banned the iERA, Hamza Tzortzis
organisation, from holding further events on campus:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0313/11032013-meeting?utm_source
=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

We are now informing all universities that Hamza Tzortzis is set to
speak at, according to his website (
http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/events-media/events/islamic-awareness-tour-
2013/ ) on the issue.

Next are:
11 Mar: Kings College London – “The Existence of God”
12 Mar: Salford University – “Muhammad: Liar, Truthful or Deluded?”
Chapman Building, 5PM.
13 Mar: Medway University – “Has Evolution Been Misunderstood?”
18 Mar: Aston University – “Atheism or Theism?”
21 Mar: Brunel University – TBA
King’s College London has not responded yet.
Salford University

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Wait there’s more. Abishek Phadnis found a conference a year ago called The Seeds of Change.

Lauren Booth – sister of Cherie Booth.

Then there’s the Deen Institute, with its “who we are” page.

 You’ll have to click the link to get the full effect. I’ll just say it’s not an accident that you see men first and then women. Last of all is the brazen slut with no hijab.… Read the rest

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Allen Esterson alerted me to a real gem – iERA’s page “Meet our speakers”…

Classic, isn’t it?… Read the rest

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CFI issued a press release on the prospects for a better future with a new pope.

Ron Lindsay’s hopes are not stratospherically high.

As with anyone taking on a position of substantial responsibility, in which decisions can affect the lives of millions, we sincerely hope for the best for Pope Francis. However, even leaving aside the fact that the institution he oversees is based on a fundamentally false understanding of reality, at this stage one cannot be too optimistic about the prospects of Francis bringing the Church into the 21st century. Indeed, even the Church’s dipping a toe into the 20th century seems unrealistic.

Like much of the Church’s hierarchy, his views stem from beliefs and myths formed in previous

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Earlier this afternoon Twitter – always helpful, always tugging on the elbow – told me to follow Cunt of the Day. Huh. No, Twitter, I’m not going to do that.

The current winners.

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

A new pope as Cunt of the Day goes to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as it pays out $10m to victims of sexual abuse. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

North Korea’s tiny twat tinpot dictator Kim Jong Un is Cunt of the Day for making tiny dick threats of imminent war. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

Cunt of the Day goes to officials in Fiji, condemned by the UN, who were filmed brutally

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Chris Clarke at Pharyngula quotes a comment:

As an Argentinian I can confirm your “rumours” and add that this guy was a collaborator with the military during the last coup d’etat during the 70′s : Among many things, he informed to the military that two monks that were working in a low income neighbourhood were no longer protected by the catholic church, facilitating their detention and posterior disappearance.

Mind you, to “dissapear” at that time meant to be detained by the military, held without rights or trial, possibly (and often) tortured under suspicions of being a Marxist/ “terrorist”, being completely incomunicated with your family and finally be killed and buried on an unmarked grave, or thrown form a plane into

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Ok here we go. Stewart posted the link to a piece from January 2011 in the Guardian, on what the high-ups in the Catholic church in Argentina did to help the miliatary dictatorship get away with crimes against humanity. Is the new pope there? Does a bear shit in the woods?

The extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them

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So maybe the new pope will be a little less ruthlessly murderous about condoms. Or maybe he won’t; at any rate we know he won’t be any less convinced that he gets to tell everyone what to do.

While the new pope is reportedly orthodox on matters of sexual morality, “he takes a slightly more pragmatic view on contraception, believing that it can be permissible to prevent the spread of disease,” according to a report in The Guardian.

What that might mean for groups like Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian organization based in Baltimore that works to stem the spread of communicable diseases, isn’t clear. But the pope has an enormous power to shape the doctrine followed by

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So, it’s a guy from Argentina, and he’s calling himself Francis 1.

It’s still the Catholic church though. Still the Vatican. Still a ridiculous archaic intrusive institution.… Read the rest

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