All entries by this author
Dec 24th, 2021 10:15 am |
By Ophelia Benson
John Dickson is a historian, an actual practicing working credentialed historian, with a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and a visiting scholar gig at Oxford, yet he wrote this absurdity.
A survey found that only 49% of Australians say “Jesus was a real person who actually lived.” You mean 51% don’t?! The horror!
But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.
Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical
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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
48 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 4:40 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Rex Murphy on The Uninvited:
Who was not invited to participate in the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special? Why, the very woman, who in the most difficult of circumstances, and by the power of her own will and invention, brought the entire phenomenon into existence. She was effectively blacklisted from the celebration of what she created while three pretentious and above all blasphemously ungrateful actors held the spotlight, and further — I’m looking for an elegant verb — dumped on the woman who made them. Made them, almost as completely as she made Harry Potter.
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Last year when certain authorities began promoting the phrase “people who menstruate” as a replacement for a term familiar since the birth of
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13 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 4:03 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Now there’s a headline.
Tesla, bowing to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving
Great god almighty. As if people don’t already drive insanely enough.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion.
Meaning that currently drivers can play video games while tailgating people going the speed limit in a downpour on a dark winter afternoon. Fabulous.
“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said.
But haha manufacturers pay no attention … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 12:01 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
https://twitter.com/NationalNOW/status/1472963266985013258
No [clap] No [clap] No [clap]
Meanwhile the National Organization for Women, like other national and global organizations for women, should be doing its job and focusing on women, not men who call themselves women and not trans people and not “non-binary” people. You don’t see labor unions dropping all their labor issues to say Respect [clap] the [clap] bosses [clap]. Why is it that women’s organizations are so eager to throw women overboard and “center” the concerns of male people instead?… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
7 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 11:48 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Tory MP Caroline Nokes just wants to make the Gender Recognition Act kinder.
In order for an individual to have their acquired gender recognised, a person has to prove to a panel of strangers that they will never meet – the gender recognition panel – that they are either feminine or masculine. It has caused a great deal of concern in the transgender community that the panel, in effect, sits in judgment upon them and their transition. Who is anyone to decide whether someone is feminine or masculine enough?
Well, since you ask, why should whether someone is “feminine” or “masculine” be a matter for government at all? Why should it be officially “recognised”? Why should it even be … Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
12 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 11:13 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Meanwhile in Crouch End –
https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1474006071115231233
Because men who say they are women are infinitely more deserving and important and worthy of deference and “be kind” than mere women.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
11 comments
Dec 23rd, 2021 11:09 am |
By Ophelia Benson
This is a novel way for shops to go about things.
Bookstores deciding which books are well written and thus to be sold and which are not and thus to be unavailable to customers. What a fantastic customer service! Apparently they read all the books themselves to save the buying public time.… Read the rest
Posted in Notes and Comment Blog |
10 comments
Dec 22nd, 2021 4:37 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
We always have to be kinder. Kinder and kinder and kinder and kinder. There’s never enough. No one bother about being kinder to us though. We’re just old boots.
Trans rights are a major part of the remit of [Tory MP Caroline] Nokes and her committee, which is currently undertaking the inquiry into the government’s response to Gender Recognition Act reform. (May’s government held a long consultation on updating the GRA and committed to introducing those reforms, which were later shelved by Johnson’s administration.) The committee hearings are extraordinarily sensitive, empathetic and detailed sessions with some of the leading figures on both sides of this debate, one of the most bitter in the current political landscape.
Nokes, in
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16 comments
Dec 22nd, 2021 11:02 am |
By Ophelia Benson
I don’t think so.
I don’t think it’s daft or purist or obstinate or stupid to dislike customized pronouns. It’s maybe somewhat stupid or wrong to tell off other people for using them, but I think we have good reasons for objecting to them in general.
For one thing they condition us, as is the plan. If we say it we start to … Read the rest
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7 comments
Dec 22nd, 2021 10:41 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Jolyon Maugham, aka The Good Law Project, continues his bullying of the LGB Alliance.
The Tribunal has agreed to hear our arguments as to why the LGB so-called Alliance (LGBA) should not have been given charitable status and why their activities are not those of a charity. This means Mermaids, the claimant in the case, will have the opportunity to present the facts in full. The hearing will take place in May 2022.
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To be registered as a charity, an organisation must be established exclusively for purposes which the law recognises as charitable, and it must pursue them in a way which gives rise to tangible benefits that outweigh any associated harms. We don’t believe that legal
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3 comments
Dec 22nd, 2021 7:02 am |
By Ophelia Benson
James Kirkup thanks Harry Miller and Fair Cop.
He talked to Harry almost three years ago about what the cops had done.
After all, he’d broken no law, and even the police force involved confirmed that. Instead, he was contacted and a record was made of his conduct under rules around ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs). These were introduced after the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, with the intention of giving the police a means of tracking behaviour that, while not crossing the threshold of a crime, gave a fair indication that a person’s actions were likely to escalate to full-blown crime.
Aaaaand does that apply to gender critical tweets? Are gender critical opinion-havers likely to commit full-blown crimes?
Of … Read the rest
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Dec 21st, 2021 6:00 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
A fossil of a dinosaur about to hatch.
Scientists have announced the discovery of a perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo that was preparing to hatch from its egg, just like a chicken.
Perfectly preserved skeleton, that is.
The researchers say it’s 66 million years old or more.
The discovery has also given researchers a greater understanding of the link between dinosaurs and modern birds. The fossil shows the embryo was in a curled position known as “tucking”, which is a behaviour seen in birds shortly before they hatch.
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6 comments
Dec 21st, 2021 3:48 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
The “you can’t tell me what to do!!” party continues to embrace death by suffocation.
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, used the same week that the US passed 800,000 Covid-19 deaths to tell a rightwing gathering she would add to that toll herself before she would agree to be given a vaccine.
“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” Palin told a cheering crowd. “I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”
Awesome! So brave, so defiant, so protective of her kids’ right to die instead of getting vaccinated.
Palin, who tested positive for Covid in March, was speaking at AmericaFest
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16 comments
Dec 21st, 2021 3:35 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Let’s have a round of applause for You Cee ELLLL.
University College London has become the first university to formally cut ties to the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, saying its membership of Stonewall’s programmes could inhibit academic freedom and discussion around sex and gender.
UCL announced that it would end its involvement with Stonewall’s workplace equality index, which rates employers on their policies, and its diversity schemes, following a recommendation from the university’s most senior academics.
“Following a period of debate within our community and careful consideration of the issues, UCL has now taken the decision that we will not re-join Stonewall’s diversity champions programme or make a submission to the workplace equality index,” UCL said in a statement.
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