Author: Ophelia Benson

The student union at Reading University has informed the RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society that it has come to the conclusion that the Society acted in breach of the behavioural policy. Its decision is that the Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society should be referred to a disciplinary panel.

You remember what this is about, I trust. The RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society had a table at the student fair; on the table it had a pineapple with the label “Mohammed.” Some students said it was offensive. The Society members were ejected from the fair.

The BBC’s Panorama was just on, and Twitter lit up like a plane with a wing falling off. It was about Jimmy Savile and how the Beeb looked the other way for a few decades.

I haven’t seen the episode, but I saw a lot of tweets about it, and then the hashtag, which led to some very pungent comments. I gather the gist of it is, the Beeb couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) do anything about it, because the sources were

just the women.

Ah.

After all these somber and/or infuriating items, a funny one. Justin Vacula on Facebook.

A lengthy post I authored months ago concerning what certain Freethought Bloggers are calling ‘stalking’ and ‘cyberstalking’ is below. This is especially relevant considering Ophelia Benson’s recent post “It’s all trolling, when you come right down to it” in which she claims that the “pro-misogyny crowd” stalks bloggers “day in and day out.”

TL;DR – criticism, even when it is excessive, isn’t stalking or cyberstalking. Public figures who make their controversial opinions known to the world will get responses. Reductio ad absurdum: Major cable news networks must be stalkers for their coverage of Obama and Romney.

Well thank you! That is very flattering. I’m as important as Obama. Who knew?!

But let’s be real. I’m not a “public figure.” That phrase doesn’t mean people like me. It means truly public; famous. I’m not famous by any stretch of the imagination.

And then, saying that people “will get responses” doesn’t mean that all responses are fine, or that there is no reason to say some responses are more reasonable or acceptable than others. It’s just a factual statement, so obvious that it’s almost empty. It amounts to “if you say something, you might get replies.” It says nothing about whether some kinds of reply are intrusive or aggressive or stalker-like.

What about this claim that excessive criticism isn’t cyberstalking? I think it’s dead wrong. I think highly excessive – indeed, obsessive – criticism is indeed cyberstalking. It’s cyber because it’s not literally someone following you down the street, so it is less scary than literal stalking. It’s mostly a lot less scary than that. But it is stalkerish in being obsessive out of all proportion to anything actually done or said or otherwise perpetrated. Having people posting and tweeting about you every day, repeating the same meagre list of offenses over and over again, monitoring every word you say – yes, that is stalkerish.

Another thing. What we get isn’t “coverage.” It isn’t journalism, it isn’t reporting, it isn’t news. It’s a campaign of vilification. That’s all it’s about; that’s its only purpose. It never stops. I posted a lot about Chris Mooney during the summer of 2009 – but that was because he kept writing articles for major media outlets, attacking “new” atheists. I posted about those articles. He stopped writing them, and I stopped writing about them and about him. I didn’t latch onto him like a lamprey and never let go.

So, no. None of what he said is right. I’m not talking about disagreement and discussion. I’m talking about non-stop monitoring and lying and smearing. I’m not a public figure, much less Obama or Romney, so no, the same rules don’t apply.

The New Yorker has an article on billionaires who’ve convinced themselves they’re “victimized” by Obama.

A hedge-fund billionaire called Leon Cooperman wrote an open letter to Obama which has been “widely circulated in the business community.”

Evident throughout the letter is a sense of victimization prevalent among so  many of America’s wealthiest people. In an extreme version of this, the rich  feel that they have become the new, vilified underclass. T. J. Rodgers, a  libertarian and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has taken to comparing Barack  Obama’s treatment of the rich to the oppression of ethnic minorities—an  approach, he says, that the President, as an African-American, should be  particularly sensitive to. Clifford S. Asness, the founding partner of the hedge  fund AQR Capital Management, wrote an open letter to the President in 2009,  after Obama blamed “a small group of speculators” for Chrysler’s bankruptcy.  Asness suggested that “hedge funds really need a community organizer,” and  accused the White House of “bullying” the financial sector. Dan Loeb, a  hedge-fund manager who supported Obama in 2008, has compared his Wall Street  peers who still support the President to “battered wives.” “He really loves us  and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it; he just gets a little angry,” Loeb  wrote in an e-mail in December, 2010, to a group of Wall Street financiers.

Oh lordy – it’s so funny and so disgusting, both at once.

It’s familiar, certainly. I’m distantly acquainted with some rich people who talk that way. Aggrieved; resentful; embattled…in their huge SUVs and their 14 expensive houses.

It’s also familiar from the way MRAs and white supremacists and the Vatican talk. We are the real victims around here – we the rich, we the white, we the men, we the priests and cardinals and popes. We are not the bullies, we are the ones who get bullied.

Nick Hanauer is a Seattle entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was one of  the first investors in Amazon. In a book published this year, he argues that  since the Reagan era American capitalists have enjoyed a uniquely supportive set  of ideological, political, and economic conditions. Their personal enrichment  came to be seen as a precondition for the enrichment of everyone else. Lower  taxes for them were a social good, rather than a selfish perk.

“If you are a job creator, your fifteen-per-cent tax rate is righteous. If  you aren’t, it is a con job,” Hanauer told me. “The idea that the rich deserve  to be rich is a very comforting idea if you are rich.” Referring to Obama’s “You  didn’t build that” remark, at a rally in Virginia in July, which became a  flashpoint with the right, Hanauer said that “the notion that you built it  yourself is what you need to believe to feel comfortable with yourself and your  desire not to pay too much in taxes.”

I know people like that. They don’t just think all that, they even think everybody agrees with them. It’s bizarre.

As you probably know already, Paul Kurtz is gone.

The Center for Inquiry marks with great sadness the passing of Paul Kurtz, founder and longtime chair of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry, who died at the age of 86. A philosopher, activist, and author, Kurtz was for a half-century among the most significant and impactful figures in the humanist and skeptic movements.

“Impactful”…ah well, I won’t do a fogeyism about it. Anyway yes, he was.

Kurtz’s legacy includes the above organizations, the creation of the skeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, independent publisher Prometheus Books, and a library of books and scholarly articles that will continue to inform discussions of morality, ethics, reason, and religion for generations to come.

I knew him a little. I was at CFI Amherst for almost three weeks in 2007; I did a talk and hung out. PK was a fan of B&W at the time, and he was pleasant to me. He took a bunch of us to lunch one day and invited me to go in his car. We talked about B&W and he said (very flatteringly, so perhaps not truthfully) that he’d had thoughts of setting up a skeptical inquiry website but then decided it would just duplicate B&W so why bother.

Free Inquiry has been one of my favorite magazines for years and years, with Skeptical Inquirer close behind it. I have a lot of Prometheus books on my shelves. I’m not the only one.

I’m grateful for all of it. I’m not the only one.

Hey kids! Got dreams of being a scientist? Well don’t do it – because if you do, you risk being thrown in prison for six years, barred from public employment for life, and liable for court costs and damages, all because you failed to say exactly when an earthquake was going to happen.

Yes really.

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L’Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

…

The seven – all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks – were accused of having provided “inexact, incomplete and contradictory” information about the danger of the tremors felt ahead of 6 April 2009 quake, Italian media report.

In addition to their sentences, all have been barred from ever holding public office again, La Repubblica reports.

…

The judge also ordered the defendants to pay court costs and damages.

The irrationality of it is frightening. Yes it was a really bad earthquake, but the badness of the earthquake doesn’t make scientists who failed to predict it more guilty. Jeezis. Wouldn’t you kind of expect a judge to realize that?

I have a prediction: Italy will suddenly find itself bereft of scientists.

Tahrir Square. Another live broadcast, another reporter attacked and groped by a mob. The French journalist Sonia Dridi was the target this time.

A mob of about 30 men has turned “crazy” and groped and robbed a French  television journalist near Tahrir Square in Cairo, in the latest case of  violence against women at the epicentre of Egypt’s protests.

She’s ok now, but it was frightening and nasty.

Ashraf Khalil, a colleague who works with France 24′s English language service,  said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live  reports on a side street off Tahrir.

…

Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant called Hardee’s, which  had a metal door, to keep her out of the reach of the attackers.

He told The  Guardian: “What was depressing is that the employees inside Hardee’s  knew exactly what to do because this seems to happen all the time. Some terrified woman running in one step ahead of a mob.”

That’s incredibly depressing.

Khalil said the doors were locked and when he later went out to hail a taxi  and usher Dridi out, there were men banging on the bonnet of the car.

“Sexual harassment is a 20-year problem here, but now there’s a feeling of  impunity and the knowledge that the police won’t do anything about it, it breeds  this culture of lawlessness.

…

“Sexual violence is a way of denying women journalists access to the story in  Egypt,” Logan said.

“It’s not accidental. It’s by design.”

British journalist Natasha Smith of the Fair Observer also reported being sexually assaulted by a mob near Tahrir  Square.

The square has seen a rise in attacks against women since protesters returned  this summer for new rallies, including incidents of attackers stripping women –  both fellow demonstrators and journalists – of their clothes.

No official numbers exist for attacks on women in the square because police  do not go near the area and women rarely file official reports on such  incidents, but activists and protesters have reported an increase in assaults  against women.

And although sexual harassment is not new to Egypt, suspicions abound that many of the recent attacks are organised by opponents of various protests in a  bid to drive people away.

Amnesty International said in a report in June that such attacks appeared  designed to intimidate women and prevent them from fully participating in public  life.

That would do it, too.

I hadn’t heard of Backbone Zone before. Ant Allan informed me via tumblr. They have some great posters.

You can order them at their site.

I like this one, too:

I like it because I detest the “shame men by calling them girls” trope. It makes me feel murderous.

Another good one (they’re all good):

About Polk County and the 14-year-old girl charged with first degree murder of her newborn…and about Amanda Todd, and many other people and incidents, and a way of thinking.

From the Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 13. The scene is a Testifying session during the re-education phase of Gilead.

It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it’s safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it’s Janine, it’s probably more or less true.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger.

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.

Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us.

She did. She did. She did.

Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?

Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.

Aunt Helena, meet Brady Judd. You two will get along just fine.

A 14-year-old girl in Lakeland, Florida has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of her newborn infant. You probably know the story: secret pregnancy, birth in the bathroom of mobile home with mother a few feet away, dead infant in shoebox under the bed.

They’re trying her as an adult, which is moronic, since that’s just what she isn’t. But no surprise – this is Lakeland, Florida. It’s Polk County. It’s Sheriff Grady Judd.

Polk County, where Cassidy attended high school, teaches community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in its schools. Nurse Jamie Kress facilitates Polk County’s Prevention Program that brings registered nurses to schools to cover a variety of subjects that might fall under the category of sex-ed.

According to Kress, contraception is only addressed within the context of marriage, and instead, the program promotes abstinence from all sexual contact as STD and teen pregnancy prevention. A student thinking about having sex, or who is already sexually active, would not be advised to use condoms or other forms of birth control.

If a student were already under the impression that she has committed the one act that runs contrary to the basis of everything she’s been taught in school, I would argue that she would be less willing to approach adults at school with concerns that she is pregnant. Although little has been said about Cassidy’s character, or her home life, the facts of the case demonstrate that she was in dire need of support outside of her family regarding her pregnancy.

According to Sheriff Grady Judd, Cassidy’s mother was “in denial,” ignoring family members who said that Cassidy might be pregnant and the bulge likely visible on Cassidy’s 100 pound, 5’3” frame.

Polk County. Home of Polk Under Prayer, as I wrote last March after the secularism event in Orlando.

One of the first talks was EllenBeth Wachs, who explained what’s been going on in Polk County, Florida. Theocracy, that’s what. The mayor of Lakeland and the Polk County sheriff are involved in something called Polk Under Prayer.

Grady Judd, the sheriff who arrested EllenBeth because she pissed him off. Lakeland, whose mayor is teamed up with Grady Judd to christianize everything they can get their hands on.

Naturally Cassidy Goodson didn’t get sex education in school. Naturally Polk County is trying her as an adult. This is what theocracy looks like.

This is a nice story. Huge map collection not thrown in the garbage, given to Los Angeles public library instead.

The occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February. Greenberg’s job was to empty the home so it could be demolished and its 18,000-square-foot lot, near the top of Canyon Vista Drive, divided into two parcels. His clients had told him to rent a Dumpster and throw away whatever he found inside.

But Greenberg couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially after he read a recent Los Angeles Times article about the Central Library’s map collection. Instead, he invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove.

Creason called the find unbelievable. “I think there are at least a million maps here,” he said. “This dwarfs our collection — and we’ve been collecting for 100 years.”

Creason returned to the home Thursday with 10 library employees and volunteers to box up the maps. The acquisition will give the city library one of the country’s top five library map archives, behind the Library of Congress and public libraries in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, he said.

One map is from 1592.

Feathers’ trove contained both run-of-the-mill gas station and Chamber of Commerce street maps as well as historic gems, Creason said.

“He has every type of map imaginable. There’s a 1956 pictorial map of Lubbock, Texas. He’s got a 1942 Jack Renie Street Guide of Los Angeles,” Creason said. “He has four of the first Thomas Bros. guides from 1946. Those are very hard to find. The one copy we have is falling apart because it’s been so heavily used. We had to photocopy it.”

Gingerly fingering an atlas-sized 1918 map with a faded blue cover, Creason opened it up to show the National Map Co.’s “Official Paved Road” guide to the United States. The tattered pages illustrated the location of paved roads with red and blue ink.

Creason was also enthralled by the discovery of several “Mapfox” Los Angeles street guides published in 1944. Creason said in his 32-year library career he had never seen one. Also tucked into Feathers’ collection was a pocket-size “Geographia Authentic Atlas and Guide to London and Other Suburbs,” showing streets, parks, lakes and rivers that Creason dated as pre-World War I.

I want that one.