A Tory MP says astrology could have “a role to play in healthcare”. The Guardian has the risible details.

David Tredinnick said astrology, along with complementary medicine, could take pressure off NHS doctors, but acknowledged that any attempt to spend taxpayers’ money on consulting the stars would cause “a huge row”.

And why would it cause a huge row? Because it’s bullshit, and medicine is supposed to be non-bullshit. The only way astrology could “take pressure off NHS doctors” would be by diverting patients into the Bullshit Department, which defeats the purpose of having a health service at all. I mean you could take the pressure of NHS doctors by deporting all their patients, too, or by executing them, or by sealing them up inside their houses. That wouldn’t be much of a favor to the patients though.

He criticised the BBC and TV scientist Professor Brian Cox for taking a “dismissive” approach to astrology, and accused opponents of being “racially prejudiced”.

Astrology is a race? I did not know that.

He told Astrological Journal:

I do believe that astrology and complementary medicine would help take the huge pressure off doctors.

Ninety per cent of pregnant French women use homeopathy. Astrology is a useful diagnostic tool enabling us to see strengths and weaknesses via the birth chart.

No, it isn’t. And people using things ≠ things being effective.

Mr Tredinnick, 65, added: “Astrology offers self-understanding to people. People who oppose what I say are usually bullies who have never studied astrology.

“Astrology was until modern times part of the tradition of medicine … People such as Professor Brian Cox, who called astrology ‘rubbish’, have simply not studied the subject.

“The BBC is quite dismissive of astrology and seeks to promote the science perspective and seems always keen to broadcast criticisms of astrology.”

Good lord.

Lots of things were until modern times part of the tradition of medicine – because the science of medicine (like other science) is cumulative and progressive. That “until modern times” bit is important: it’s a signpost for the fact that research got done. Lucky us to live at a time when medicine can do better than astrology.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It had been thought that ISIS burned 8000 manuscripts and documents from the Mosul library. Now, the Independent reports, there’s a corrected estimate.

AL RAI’s chief international correspondent Elijah J. Magnier told The Independent that a Mosul library official believes as many as 112, 709 manuscripts and books, some of which were registered on a UNESCO rarities list, are among those lost.

Mosul Public Library’s director Ghanim al-Ta’an said Isis militants then demolished the building using explosive devices.

“People tried to prevent the terrorist group elements from burning the library, but failed,” a local source told IraqiNews.com.

Other reports indicated that Isis militants later broke into the library and constructed a huge pyre of scientific and cultural texts as university students watched in horror.

Among the documents believed lost are a collection of Iraqi newspapers from the beginning of the 20[th] century, maps, books and collections from the Ottoman period.

Because it’s the khalifa now, and all that pagan shit is haram.

A University of Mosul history professor told the Associated Press extremists began destroying the library – established in 1921 and symbolic of the birth of modern Iraq – earlier this month.

He claimed Isis members had inflicted particularly severe damage to the Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library.

Oh well, it’s just a chunk of human history and culture.

Allahu akbar.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A public Facebook post by Valerie Tarico –

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Uh oh – another celebrity star famous guy brought down by multiple accusations of rape.

This one’s a famous star yoga guy.

He has a stable of luxury cars and a Beverly Hills mansion. During trainings for hopeful yoga teachers, he paces a stage in a black Speedo and holds forth on life, sex and the transformative power of his brand of hot yoga.

Not to mention his black Speedo.

But a day of legal reckoning is drawing closer for the guru, Bikram Choudhury.

He is facing six civil lawsuits from women accusing him of rape or assault.The most recent was filed on Feb. 13 by a Canadian yogi, Jill Lawler, who said Mr. Choudhury raped her during a teacher-training in the spring of 2010.

…

The first complaint was filed two years ago. As more surfaced, and more women spoke publicly about accusations of assault and harassment, their accounts have created fissures in the close-knit world of yoga students and teachers who have spent thousands of dollars to study with Mr. Choudhury; opened studios bearing his name; and found strength, flexibility and health in his formula of 26 yoga postures in a sweltering room.

Deep rifts. Deep rapey rifts.

“A lot of people have blinders on,” said Sarah Baughn, 29, a onetime Bikram yoga devotee and international yoga competitor whose lawsuit against Mr. Choudhury in 2013 was like an earthquake among followers of his style of yoga. “This is their entire world. They don’t want to accept that this has happened.”

…

A statement issued by lawyers for Mr. Choudhury and his yoga college, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuits, said that “Mr. Choudhury did not sexually assault any of the plaintiffs” and that the women were “unjustly” exploiting the legal system for financial gain.

“Their claims are false and dishonor Bikram yoga and the health and spiritual benefits it has brought to the lives of millions of practitioners throughout the world,” the statement said.

Maybe it’s not the claims that do that.

An August trial date has been set in Ms. Baughn’s case. In her complaint, she said Mr. Choudhury pursued her starting with a teacher-training she attended in 2005, when she was 20. She said he had whispered sexual advances during classes, and had assaulted and groped her in a hotel room and at his home.

In the other case involving a 2010 teacher-training, Mr. Choudhury’s lawyers argued that the woman had waited too long to file the lawsuit, beyond the statute of limitations. But the judge denied parts of the lawyers’ argument, saying the woman, known in court papers as Jane Doe No. 2, had endured so much damage to her life and psyche that most of the suit could move ahead.

It’s probably her karma.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Also at the Geneva Summit today…

[T]he 2015 summit’s “Women’s Rights Award” was given to Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad, the creator of a Facebook page titled “My Stealthy Freedom,” which shows pictures of Iranian women without hijabs. The page now has nearly 770,000 Facebook likes.

Addressing summit attendees before the awards ceremony, Alinejad said she was forced to wear a headscarf from the time she started going to school, aged seven. She explained that, to her, a headscarf is not just a small issue and it is not “just a piece of cloth,” but a way of quietening her voice and the voices of other Iranian women.

“Every time when I was running or walking in a free country and feeling the wind through my hair it just reminds me that for 35 years I didn’t have this freedom,” the journalist told the assembled activists, adding that her “hair was like a hostage in the hands of the Iranian government.”

During her acceptance speech, Alinejad said that she had ruminated carefully about whether to travel to Switzerland to accept the prize. “For Iranian journalists or for Iranian civil rights activists it is normal to be scared,” she said, adding that being Iranian and talking about human rights “comes with accusations.” However, Alinejad said that she had eventually come to a simple realization: “Whether you speak out or not they’re going to label you.”

And here she is:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-CwajPs9ro

?list=PLrf9i5CED35oe_25vZI753d0IdcCVuDb1

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

They do these things better in Denmark. Jesus and Mo Author was impressed. He tweeted about it, twice.

AuthorJ&M @JandMo · 6h
So impressed with Danish press + TV. All J&M reviews + interviews incl images without fuss. Miles ahead of UK

Go Denmark!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Pope Fuzzy explains how people who mess around with the god-given nature of gender are like nuclear weapons. (Spoiler: they both wreck everything.)

The Pope has compared the threat of transgender people to nuclear weapons.

The head of the Catholic Church made the claims, that have come to light this week,  in an interview for a book last year.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, he said: “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings.

“Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.”

And there you have it. They mess with GOD’S HOMEWORK.

“With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator.

“The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate.”

It’s only the ideologies that consider humans a toy created by a god who get everything right and thus have “the true custody of creation” – whatever that might be.

Well hey, I was born not knowing any language. Isn’t it messing with creation to change me into something that does know a language? Isn’t that like nuclear weapons and the gender theory too?

Maek you think.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Kiran Opal’s report on the International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights last October in London is now available.

A few months ago, I was privileged to participate in, and speak at, an historic conference, the two-day International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights held in London, UK on 11th-12th October 2014. At the conference, I got to meet and speak with some of the world’s most interesting activists who work tirelessly to promote human rights and secularism, and I presented a talk on The Human and the Kafir: How Fear of Apostasy Fuels Islamist Power.

Then Atheist Alliance International asked her to write a report on the conference, and with help from Maryam Namazie (who organized it) and Hilary Baxter, she did.

A slightly condensed version of this report is now published by Atheist Alliance International (AAI) in the First Quarter 2015 issue of their membership publication, Secular World. Please go to AAI’s website if you’d like to read the complete publication which includes my report.

This report published here includes links to each video of the panels and speakers whose talks I tried my best to summarize. I would highly recommend clicking on the links to hear the speakers speak for themselves.

In putting this report together, I got to listen intently to all the speakers again and gained a much deeper understanding of the complex issues of which they spoke. To condense two intense, fully-packed days of incredibly nuanced and detailed talks and discussions into a relatively short report was not an easy task. So many of the speakers at the Conference could be and should be writing books on the issues and experiences they spoke about – in fact a few of them are already published authors (Elham Manea, Pervez Hoodbhoy, AC Grayling, among others), and several of them are active on blogs, various publications, and Twitter. I encourage you, the reader, to look up any and all of the speakers whose words and ideas move you. Please share this post, this report, and the ideas and insights from the Secular Conference.

Here it is (pdf):
Secular Conference Report by Kiran Opal AAI 2014

A feast awaits.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Lots of people seem to think Patricia Arquette basically said gay people and people of color should stop fighting for their rights and instead fight for the rights of rich white women.

I don’t think she said that.

Soraya Nadia McDonald at the Washington Post tells the story:

…while the language in Arquette’s acceptance speech may have set off some silent alarms, her follow-up comments backstage proved more incendiary to some.

Said Arquette:

“The truth is, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are at play that do affect women, and it’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we all fought for to fight for us now.”

Here’s where things really got dicey, and this is what made a lot of people unhappy with Arquette. Over at RH Reality Check, Andrea Grimes called Arquette’s statement an “intersectionality fail.”

I disagree.

To be fair, I do agree that it can be read that way. There’s ambiguity in the wording. But then, she was talking live, in conversation, and it’s pretty damn hard to remove all the possible ambiguity in what you’re saying in live conversation.

But why, when it’s ambiguous, assume that she meant the worst thing possible? Why not just say well she could have worded that better but right on, or she could have worded that better but meh?

I think she was simply calling for solidarity across all the lines, in other words for more intersectionality.

I don’t think she is the enemy.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This won’t end well. The BBC reports that IS has grabbed up a bunch of Christians in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 90 men, women and children were seized in a series of dawn raids near the town of Tal Tamr.

Some Assyrians managed to escape and made their way east to the largely Kurdish-controlled city of Hassakeh.

…

The militants have reportedly taken the male captives to nearby Abdul Aziz mountain, while the women are being held in the village of Tal Shamran, where activists say most of those captured came from.

The men will be killed and the women will be enslaved. That’s the purpose of separating them.

Islamic State’s online radio station, al-Bayan, reported on Tuesday that its members had seized “tens of Crusaders”.

Osama Edward of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network, who has relatives in the area, told the BBC that his wife’s elderly aunt and her cousin were among the hostages.

“My wife tried to call her cousin’s house and there was somebody who picked up the phone and said: ‘This is not Akram’s house. This is the Islamic State’s house’.”

Allahu akbar.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Caroline Fourest opened a Geneva summit on free expression today.

Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer · 13h 13 hours ago
Courageous journalist @CarolineFourest, ex-Charlie Hebdo, opens @GenevaSummit: “No shelter anymore; ppl die in Paris”

She tweeted:

“Les démocrates doivent nous aider à défendre le droit au blasphème qui permet la démocratie.” @GenevaSummit

Democrats have to help us defend the right of blasphemy which allows democracy.

And another tweet:

Saa, l’une des élèves ayant réussi à échapper à Boko Haram raconte son évasion au @GenevaSummit

Saa, one of the students who succeeded in escaping from Boko Haram tells the story of her escape at the Geneva Summit

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The CEO and president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe says Gamergate sucks.

In an in-depth and reliably entertaining interview with Metro’s David Jenkins, Ryan labelled the online movement “absolutely horrible”.

Asked for his thoughts on the matter Ryan said: “Well, more females are playing games now than ever before. I think the GamerGate thing is absolutely horrible. I agree, I read what you wrote about it, again your language was intemperate – as befits your views on an issue…”

Referencing Jenkins’ passionate views on the hate group – which last year gave rise to a sustained campaign of abuse targeting female game developers and vocal critic Anita Sarkeesian, leading to one of the gaming industry’s most depressing periods – Ryan said he shared the same opinion.

Shocking about the intemperate language though. I can’t bear that kind of thing myself.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There was a debate at the British Academy last week about whether or not philosophy is dead, apparently inspired by Stephen Hawking’s related claim that scientists rather than philosophers “have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” (That really is a different claim. Discovery isn’t all there is, and not doing it isn’t the same as being dead.) The Times Higher tells us things about the debate.

According to Tim Crane, Knightsbridge professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, Professor Hawking himself proved that philosophy is unavoidable, since he put forward a lot of philosophical views. Unfortunately, these amounted to “bad philosophy, because he is unaware of it as a discipline and a practice with a history,” Professor Crane said.

Philosophers say that a lot. That’s probably because there are a lot of people doing that kind of bad philosophy.

“If you’re pro-reason,” said Rebecca Goldstein Newberger, a research associate at Harvard University who is currently a visiting professor of philosophy at the New College of the Humanities in London, “you need all the resources you can get.” Recent outbreaks of “philosophy jeering” such as Hawking’s were ill-informed, incoherent and irresponsible – faced with today’s extremes of irrationality”, she added.

I’ve seen a good many of those.

Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College, put the case for philosophy’s role in “raising autonomous critical thinkers”.

He asked whether, since “I have an unavoidable responsibility to make my own moral judgement, a responsibility I can’t hand over to some supposed expert… shouldn’t our education system both confront us with that responsibility, and also ensure we have the intellectual and emotional maturity we’ll need to discharge it properly?”

If recent decades had seen “great moral advances in our attitudes towards women, gay people and other races”, this was “largely as a result of our being prepared to question received moral opinion and to think things through in just the way philosophy requires of us”, he continued.

It’s also because of changes in feelings though. The two are connected, but feelings are prior, for good and ill.

And the academic discipline itself has become very conformist, Crane said.

Professor Newberger took a similar line, reflecting that she had “only managed to maintain my enthusiasm for philosophy by staying away from philosophers”.

Goldstein, he meant, but anyway it’s a good line.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Universities and student unions don’t generally invite Nazis to give talks, do they? Free inquiry is good, open discussion is good, but that isn’t necessarily taken to mean that it’s good to have proponents of genocide give talks to university students, is it?

I’m wondering why Islamist preachers with fascist leanings get invited to give talks at universities.

A controversial preacher who described homosexuality as a “scourge” has been invited to speak at a London university the day before a national gay pride event takes place there.

More than 500 people have signed a petition against allowing Haitham al-Haddad to speak at the University of Westminster’s Islamic Society event on Thursday.

Dr al-Haddad has called homosexuality a “criminal act”, as well as saying there is a “proper” way of performing FGM. He has also argued that the authorities should not become involved in domestic disputes, saying: “A man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because this is something between them.”