“David” (in quotation marks because we have lots of Davids, so it might be confusing if I just said David, as if you would know which one) asked in a comment the other day

Ever wonder what your “sacred cow” is? I have no idea what mine is.

I replied

No idea? Really? I can think of several at least semi-sacred cows of mine. Egalitarianism for one; separateness of persons for another; human rights for another.

He said that wasn’t quite what he meant, and did I mean just irrational and personal and impossible to articulate. I said no but

I know they are basic commitments that are at least somewhat immune to disagreement, and that the reasons I can

Via Jean Kazez via a commenter with a squiggly name, Steven Pinker explains how “do you want to come to my room for coffee?” keeps knowledge individual rather than mutual and thus saves face.… Read the rest

BBC BBC BBC – get it right, will you? You don’t ever get it right. You need to learn to get it right.

(No not how to pronounce “Houston,” the one in Texas. They need to learn that too, but this is not that.)

They don’t get it right yet again.

Religious education in schools is under threat, faith leaders have warned.

Leaders representing Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists said
they were “gravely concerned” about the “negative impact” that current
government policies were having.

There are no such peoples. There is no such thing as “faith leaders.” They don’t “represent” anyone. “Representing” people requires some kind of process by which the people represented appoint or elect or consent to … Read the rest

I was going to move briskly on, but…well there’s just this one last thing, or this one last pair of things.

One is that I think I may have figured out what Richard was trying to get at, or at least what he was irritated about. My friend Maryam Namazie was at the Dublin conference, and as always gave a stem-winder of a talk. Maryam works right at the coal face of women’s rights issues. I think Richard may have thought (or felt) there should have been more of that kind of thing and less of the kind of thing Rebecca talked about. That’s not crazy, it seems to me. One doesn’t have to agree with it, but it’s not … Read the rest

Russell “begged” me yesterday to focus on something other than what I had been focusing on, so here is a slightly different focus. To put it another way, here is how to get everyone either shouting at me or deleting me from their list of ok people, instead of just a select few.

I partly sort of up to a point agree with Miranda about the Skepchick campaign. (I was only vaguely aware that there was one, because I haven’t kept up.) (You know, I tend to think I’m a terrible nerd, but at the moment I think maybe I’m not enough of a nerd. A real nerd would be ignoring all of this. I envy that nerd. Maybe I’ll … Read the rest