Paul W has a long interesting comment on Ben Nelson’s The Unquiet Scientist post from last year, a post which has been quiet so long that Paul’s comment might be missed.

One or two highlights:

…experimental data that seem to support the opposite view—including a bunch of very basic and very well-known social psychology results from the 1960’s and 1970’s about bracketing, conformity, and groupthink. They seem to support Overton reasoning: if you don’t voice the “extreme” views, the group tends to converge on a new center position, midway between the views that are voiced. The center thus shifts away from the people who self-censor their (perceived) “extreme” views.

And

The individual psychology of belief fixation is complicated, and the

Once again Chris Stedman is at the Huffington Post (home of woo and worse, home of Jenny McCarthy in deep denial about the exposure of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud) saying how great it is when atheists Reach Out to peopleoffaith.

He had a good time at Christmas. He went home and hung out with his family. Excellent; lovely; I have not a word to say in dissent. But he drew a moral from it, which seems to be that atheists are grumpy therefore it is urgent for humanists to Reach Out.

The trouble with that is that not all atheists are grumpy and that, especially, even atheists who are grumpy are not necessarily grumpy all the time. Things aren’t … Read the rest

I don’t know how Leo Igwe keeps going, I really don’t.

Leo Igwe, an activist arrested last Tuesday in the ongoing onslaught against child rights activists by the Akwa Ibom State government, was released today by the Police who claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.

Confirming his freedom in a telephone chat with Saharareporters, Mr. Igwe described his incarceration as a nasty experience.

It was a terrible encounter and it was premeditated going by the way they executed the plot to hold me accountable for “kidnapping;” my hands were tied behind me and they beat me mercilessly,” he said.

Martin Robbins has a good, longish piece on the subject today. More publicity, which could make it harder … Read the rest

Jerry Coyne said some things about atheism and anger today, giving a few of the excellent reasons to be angry about religion.

What is the proper response to all this religiously-inspired nonsense?  Anger, of course.  No, you don’t have to be a red-faced, sputtering jerk when confronting the faithful, but controlled anger is without doubt the right response to a form of superstition that wreaks uncountable harms on humanity.  And not “transitory” anger, either—permanent anger.

…

Again, the proper response to religious stupidity, as it was to segregation in the South, is anger—persistent anger.  Anger that remains until the kind of religion that forces its tenets and superstitions down humanity’s throat vanishes for good.

It’s odd … Read the rest

Via a commenter at Jerry’s, a salient remark by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker in 2002, in a Talk of the Town piece on Niceness.

The problem, of course, is that niceness is overrated as a virtue. Many cultures are nice. The Southern antebellum aristocracy was marvellously well-mannered; its members left tasteful calling cards, entertained gracefully, and conducted their personal affairs with the utmost discretion. But they had few other virtues; in fact, it was the practice of niceness that helped to keep other values, such as fairness, at bay. Fairness sometimes requires that surfaces be disturbed, that patterns of cordiality be broken, and that people, rudely and abruptly, be removed from their place. Niceness is the

I’m relieved to see that somebody in the UK is aware of the…….erm……..the lack of warmth in the ahem service professionals there. I wondered if it was just me.

No I didn’t really; instead I wondered if everybody there is crazy.

Surly, slapdash and dreadful. That’s how chef Michel Roux Jr sums up customer service in the UK.

“It’s not just in restaurants, you get bad service anywhere,” he says. “Even buying a newspaper you can find that you’re not even acknowledged. There’s no eye contact, no greeting or anything. Bad service is unforgivable and it’s everywhere in the UK.”

It’s true you know. It’s the surliness I can’t stand. Dignity would be all right; a polite reserve would be … Read the rest

Two of the ACLU attorneys who signed the letter to the feds did a blog post on it. The ACLU website has a whole section on Reproductive Freedom. Useful stuff.… Read the rest