Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Facebook’s little jeu d’esprit

    Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.

    Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?

    So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, so it didn’t.

    What it did instead was – here’s where its wit and playfulness become apparent – it told Salman Rushdie he could have his ol’ account back, re-activated, but he would have to stop calling himself Salman and call himself Ahmed, instead. World-famous Booker of Bookers-winning Ahmed Rushdie.

    That’s a thigh-slapper, don’t you think?

    And that sure is what Facebook is for – making its users stop using their own names and start using new ones that they’ve never used, so that nobody will be able to find them or have a clue who the fuck they are.

    All very amusing except that Salman is going to quit Facebook in disgust, and he tells good jokes there, so that would be bad. I’ve been shouting at Facebook.

  • In conversation: Kiran Desai meets Anita Desai

    Does one live the lives one has written as much as one writes about lives one has known?

  • The Shafia girls lived like political prisoners

    Zainab, Sahar and their sister Geeti, just 13, fought ferociously for their small freedoms.

  • Matt Ridley on scientific heresy

    A theory so flexible it can rationalize any outcome is a pseudoscientific theory.

  • Leo Igwe on fighting witchcraft accusations in Africa

    It is not only in Ghana where those accused of witchcraft are banished or maltreated. In Burkina Faso, hundreds of elderly women accused of witchcraft are also living in camps.

  • Conservatives plot to destroy Scott Walker recall petitions

    These plans, discussed in Facebook posts, entail posing as recall supporters and gathering signatures, only to later destroy the petitions.

  • Progress report

    Current glitch is that comments are coming in but they’re not visible (except to me), and that the two “wait patiently” posts I did today are gone. The comments are excellent, especially one from a student at Penn State – good luck with Westboro! – and they will show up eventually, so keep commenting.

  • James Kirchick on Bruce Crumley on Charlie Hebdo

    What made Crumley’s entry into the genre singularly poisonous is that it was written by a working journalist, not an academic, politician, or anti-“Islamophobia” activist.

  • PSU protesters blindly ignore real victims

    Petulant chants of “One more game” and “We want JoePa” united the crowd in a  bond of youthful stupidity and shortsightedness

  • How is college football like the Catholic church?

    The football program at Penn State was so sacrosanct as to be almost untouchable.

  • Spiked sneers at humane animal slaughter law

    Portrays it as a “sign of religious intolerance.” What the animals might think is not mentioned.

  • Separation of church and state essential for civil liberties

    “When we are dragging religion into politics, then we are not searching for  truth, but we do it to support our agenda in order to preserve our position.”

  • Go all fucking Gandhi on their arses

    Hipster guy tells Rebecca Watson what’s what. Really funny stuff that nobody’s thought of saying before, like hey you’re an adult and you’re all upset that some guy wanted to fuck you, grow up, people like to fuck, especially at 4 a.m. See what I mean? Witty.

    Tim Minchin commented. Hmph. Rebecca has all the fun – well, except for being called a cunt 85 times a day. Anyway Tim Minchin commented.

    No permalink – how tiresome. Use CTRL F.

    I stay in a lot of hotels and travel in a lot of elevators. They are very helpful, what with their elevating properties and all. Sometimes, I am in an elevator with a woman. Just me and her. In this little, quiet, rumbly box. Actually, this happened this evening here in New York, just a couple of hours ago.

    And I thought to myself, “What would it be like right now if I asked this woman for a coffee”? I’ve pondered this many times in the months since Rebecca’s video managed to unlock the secret door into the mysterious fuck-head chamber of the personalities of a thousand commenters, and the answer is always: fucking weird.

    It would be really pretty fucking weird. No, not “deserving-of-arrest, definitely-a-rapist, just-as-bad-as-female-circumcision” kind of weird. But just about weird enough to justify, say… a comment. Y’know, the sort of comment you might make if you were, say, a video blogger who talks about life and skepticism from a woman’s perspective.

    I have been substantially depressed by the scale and tone of the subsequent brouhaha.

    Some advice, if you’ll forgive me, from someone who has, in the past, been rude to people on the internet, and also has been the subject of plenty of abuse:

    Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever. On the internet, or in your life.

    Just imagine, as you sharpen your pen, that every man is your uncle or your brother, and that every woman is your mother or your sister. Just don’t spread vitriol. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it doesn’t improve anything, it fails to educate, elucidate or encourage debate. It’s lazy. It’d be boring if it wasn’t so awful.

    Just stop. Breathe. Don’t be defensive. Think hard about what you think. Clarify your point of view in your head. Try to find a way to articulate it – if you still feel you must articulate it – in a manner that assumes the person you are addressing is an actual human.

    Preferably make it rhyme. Rhyming your anger seems to help, in my experience.

    Go on, I dare ya – go all fucking Gandhi on their arses. Even if you hate them. It’s a good feeling. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.

    You can experiment on me, if this post ignites your ire.

    It’s too chilly for sandals right now, let alone the loin cloth, but apart from that – Gandhi R us.

    Jamila Bey was asking Rebecca earlier why this stuff happens and why it doesn’t get called out. I don’t know why it happens, although I have some ideas, but – it does get called out now. We’re all over the calling out.

  • Kurt Metzger totally pwns Rebecca Watson

    Then Tim Minchin says go all fucking Gandhi. Even if you hate them. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.

  • Colbert defends the religious right to bully

    “That’s not me, that’s God, the all-knowing all-loving creator who made all things and hates some of them.”

  • “Reformed” atheist turned rabbi says religion is good

    This is all a real search for something transcendent because that transcendence exists in the world.

  • Prepare for FTB outage

    There is a big upgrade in the works for tonight so FTB will be down for 2 to 3 hours starting at 7 pm my time which is 10 pm in New York and 3 am in London and…I’m not sure what time in Sydney. Late morning or noonish maybe – yes that should be right – it’s late there when it’s early for me and early there when it’s late for me, so around midday should be close.

    4 hours and a quarter from now, anyway.

  • Ethan Clow on CFI, skepticism, and women

    It’s been reported that CFI Vancouver, and presumably CFI Canada, have decided not to sponsor feminist-skeptical meet ups.

  • More personhood for zygotes

    64 Republicans are pushing a bill that would extend personhood to all zygotes in America.

  • Whether it is morally outrageous to suppose

    Andrew Brown goes out of his way to misunderstand William Lane Craig and Richard Dawkins on William Lane Craig. Does he really misunderstand or is he just playing silly buggers? I often think coat-trailing is all Andrew Brown ever does. He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.

    What he misunderstands is the part about the slaughtered children of Canaan.

    …if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy.  Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

    Brown misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the outrage at that claim of Craig’s.

    The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that the innocent victims of such crimes go to heaven.

    No it isn’t.  The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that that belief makes it perfectly all right for “God” to “command” humans to kill them. It’s not whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that people go to heaven; it’s whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that because people do go to heaven therefore it is fine to kill them, at least if you’re “God” or obeying “God’s” command. That’s Clifford’s leaky ship. Human beings have no right to believe that their spooky mysterian boss tells them to massacre people and that that’s ok because the innocent ones will go to heaven. That’s a reckless, negligent, self-serving belief that would justify horrors.

    via WEIT