No wonder Republicans are trying to pretend the Charleston terrorist attack was just some random “incident.” The New York Times reports:

The leader of a white supremacist group that apparently influenced Dylann Roof, the suspect in the killing of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church last week, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican campaigns, including those of 2016 presidential contenders such as Ted Cruz,Rick Santorum and Rand Paul, records show.

Mr. Cruz, a Texas senator, said Sunday night that he would be returning about $8,500 in donations that he had received from the Texas donor, Earl Holt III, who lists himself as president of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

The council of conservative racist citizens.

The group is regarded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading authority on hate crimes, as a white supremacist extremist organization that opposes “race mixing” as a religious affront and that vilifies blacks as an inferior race.

None of which has anything to do with America’s history as a slave state. Nope, that all went away a long time ago, before any of us were born.

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

Interesting priorities. This news item is from the reliably-reactionary Washington Times:

Vandals spray-painted “Black Lives Matter” and other racial messages on a memorial honoring fallen Confederate soldiers in the South Carolina community still rocked by a church shooting last week that left nine black people dead.

“Black Lives Matter” in red spray paint covered the inscription on the base of the statue, which honors the “Confederate Defenders of Charleston” who died at Fort Sumter, Yahoo News reported.

Oh no, vandals. The horror. And on a memorial to soldiers who fought for the slave-owning Confederacy, too – the horror the horror. The soldiers were “fallen” so it is not permissible to point out that they were fighting for the slave states. Once fallen, always heroic.

I’m not sure “vandals” is the right word to use here. It’s not unlike calling freedom riders “trespassers” or protesters “thugs.”

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

Connie St Louis set up a petition. It has only 195 signatures so far. Let’s do better.

Its time to elect a female president to lead the Royal Society

The Royal Society was founded in 1660. In that time there has never been a female President at its helm. This may not be surprising in the light of sexist comments made by one of it’s Nobel Laureates, Tim Hunt, in Seoul, Korea on 8 June 2015 at a lunch sponsored by the Korean Female Scientists and Engineers. Royal Fellow and Nobel Laureate, Tim Hunt took the podium: identifying himself as a “male chauvinist pig,” he declared that he found the charms of “girls” who enter scientific fields inherently distracting, and, astoundingly, proposed “single-sex labs” as a solution. The Royal Society have refused to censure him in any way and have only distanced themselves from his comment.  If they are ‘committed to a diverse science workforce”, why have they not elected a female scientist to be the head of this organisation? Please join me in asking them to redress this inequality in November 2015 when a new Presidential term begins.

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

I like Richard Carrier’s post on Dawkins v Feminists v Tim Hunt.

Dawkins cries watery tears whines hyperbolically almost every time he is criticized. (Just google around. The number of examples documented on the Internet is so bewildering it’s become a well known trope.) It’s always the same thing: someone exercising their free speech rights to express their negative opinion of him or things he said, becomes a “witch hunt” and an “inquisition” by a wild “angry mob.”

In fact it is never any of those things, but basically a lot of serious, thoughtful, often well-argued criticism. Mere free speech. And often well done and spot on at that. Not email bombs sent to his in-box to harass him. Not sea lioning. Not pornographic cartoons of him being shot in the head posted in public. No actual torches and pitchforks, prison time, or setting him on fire. No actual mob. Just a citizenry peaceably assembling and expressing their grievances to those with power.

No one even asked any organization to fire Hunt. He was only fired from a few honorarypositions whose role was to promote the values of those organizations, entirely on those organizations’ own initiative. Because epically failing at your job, and embarrassing your employer on precisely a mission point of what they are actively fighting against, means you suck at your job. People who suck at their job can get fired. That’s how life works. Stop crying whining about it.

Just what I say. He wasn’t given those positions as if they were shiny baubles for him to play with forever. He was given them as a way to add extra fame and glory to the donating institutions. Once the fame and glory started smelling like the rotting oysters one of the #DistractinglySexy scientists tweeted she always smells of, they had no reason to continue to clutch him to their bosoms. He acted like a sexist jackass in public, so he was bounced.

I’m sorry, but this behavior makes Dawkins look like a child. He can’t handle criticism.

Either A:

He shivers in terror, hiding in his closet (or as he calls it, the “muzzle” his critics have apparently sent thugs to attach to his face and hands), deathly afraid of being criticized, and blames thecriticism for chasing him into that closet (muzzle). It’s all their fault, for criticizing him. Not his childish fear of criticism. Or his inability to deal with it. Or just stand up for his criticized views and laugh the critics off (like he would creationists and theologians). Or recognize his mistakes and value them as learning experiences. And then try harder to help us combat sexism, for example, instead of acting like a clueless twit hyperbolically attacking us for being against sexism.

Or B:

He wildly overreacts to criticism with a massive display of a shocking sense of entitlement. And learns nothing. And doesn’t even notice he has this flaw. He certainly doesn’t notice how sexist and insulting it is for him to use the witch hunt trope when defending his or others’ sexism or their right to be immune to the consequences from it. A lot of Big Atheism dudebros do the same (like Peter Boghossian). They also constantly cry watery tears whine hyperbolically when criticized, lashing out in an irrational state of intemperate anger and indignance, using the same inapplicable and inappropriate tropes.

They do, they do.

Happy World Humanist Day.

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

This happened. The British Humanist Association publicly posted a Happy Humanist Day message on Facebook:

A humanist is someone who does the right thing even though she knows that no one is watching.

[Random bolding theirs.]

A good message, right?

Ah no, not so fast. There’s a problem.

Jane Brown Why the she? Big mistake to be so gender specific.

Did your jaw hit the floor? Mine did.

“She” is gender specific, in sharp contrast to “he,” which is not.

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Anyway, happy world humanist day.

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

Someone’s been arguing with me about Tim Hunt on Twitter on and off since yesterday. He started off a little aggressively but it became a conversation after that. He cops to some empathy for Hunt because he cringes at things he said himself ten years ago. Ok, but that’s not a reason not to criticize what Hunt said, or a reason to call that criticism “witch hunts” or “lynch mobs.”

His latest pair of tweets, last night, is interesting.

Atticus_of_Amber ‏@Atticus_Amber 13 hours ago
@OpheliaBenson Super successful people often live in a bubble. Their own fault; but they’re often unaware of it until they get a rude shock.

@OpheliaBenson My view is that we should be administering more of these bubble-breaking “rude shocks”, but the shocks should be less lethal.

Well the shock wasn’t actually lethal – Tim Hunt is still alive. He lost three honorary positions – and yes that is a steep price to pay, but at the same time, such positions are based on merit, just as non-honorary ones are. They are awarded for reasons. They’re not a right, and they’re not a permanent unconditional possession. His Nobel prize is a permanent unconditional possession, if I understand it correctly, and that wouldn’t be withdrawn unless he were exposed as a fraud or similar. But the honorary position at UCL and the one at the Royal Society and the one on the European Research Council’s science committee were all merit-based and, clearly, not irrevocable. They were revoked because Hunt was seen as not meeting their criteria in some way. They’re allowed to have criteria. The positions did not come with tenure – they were not tenure-track positions. Academics of all people know the difference between tenure and no-tenure. Hunt didn’t hold those three positions as some sort of permanent right, and he lost them because he publicly expressed contempt for women in his field, women per se, women as women. If he’d expressed contempt for other races, or Jews, or Muslims, I doubt we’d be hearing about lynch mobs.

But the more interesting point is the one about the bubble. What is that bubble exactly? What is that bubble that super successful people live in?

It’s the bubble in which people don’t say anything when you talk sexist or racist shit. That bubble.

That means it’s the bubble in which everyone else who has to live in that bubble – the one where super successful men get to talk sexist and/or racist shit – are left to put up with it, because people don’t want to challenge Mr Sir Professor Important FRS.

That’s a bad bubble. That bubble sucks. It’s a very pleasant bubble for Mr Sir Professor Important FRS, but it sucks for everyone else. It sucks hard for the underlings – the people of the wrong gender and the wrong race and the wrong nationality.

So a shock to that bubble is a good thing. That bubble needs a shock – and not a mild soft gentle shock. Of course the shock should not be literally lethal, but then this shock hasn’t been that, so that’s ok. But should it be forthright, and warm? Yes, it should.

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

Well this is a useful thing to have.

Via Hayley Stevens

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

This is a nice change from surly pig-headed anti-feminist science dudes – A Mighty Girl on another mighty girl.

Dubbed the ‘Malala’ of Syrian refugees, 16-year-old Mezon Almellehan goes from tent to tent each morning to encourage girls in her camp to go to school. “We have the right to attend school and I feel I have a responsibility towards the community,’ Almellehan told the Malala Fund. ‘As a girl, I can find friendly ways to convince a girl to continue with her studies.'”

Today marks World Refugee Day, an annual observance to raise awareness of the plight of the nearly 60 million refugees in the world today — more than any time in recorded history. Like four million of her fellow Syrians, Mezon fled from her war-torn country with her family and now lives in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan. According to the UN, half the world’s refugees are children like Mezon.

Last year, Mezon had the opportunity to meet Malala Yousafzai during the girls’ education activist’s visit to the Zaatari refugee camp where Mezon was living at the time. Malala was so impressed by Mezon’s passion for education that she invited her to be one of her guests when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway last December.

Mezon, who hopes to be a journalist one day, faces many obstacles — such as the fact that her school lacks electricity — but she remains undaunted in her pursuit of education and her efforts to encourage other girls to continue their studies. Malala has also been a major inspiration to this determined Mighty Girl: “To me, Malala is a big hero because she suffered a lot and she almost died of her injury. For me, as a refugee, this means I do not have to give up hope, which means I can get an education.”

To read more about Mezon on the Malala Fund blog, visit http://bit.ly/18Nv0vZ

Nearly two million Syrian refugees like Mezon live in camps run by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency — to help support their efforts to save the lives of these families fleeing war, visit http://bit.ly/JOFn6A

 

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

Originally a comment by MrFancyPants on But we have to wait.

A related personal anecdote.

My mother’s family is Estonian, with a tradition of Saturday evening sauna baths. It starts in the early afternoon, with the women of the family preparing a large meal while the men do whatever. Just about the time the meal is being finished, the men go into the sauna and spend 30-40 minutes there. It’s a wet sauna, so they enter into a warm, dry, very comfortable sauna room, and proceed to get the benches very wet. After the hot sauna, we men then wash up in a connected anteroom, getting that room soaking wet as well, and then get dressed and begin the untouched meal that the women had set out while the women proceed down to the sauna. The men then finish their meal, and retire to have coffee (also preprepared by the women) in the adjacent room. The women then finish their sauna to come up to what is left of the meal, and then they clean up the dishes and join the men. The next day, they cleaned up the sauna.

Growing up, I thought this was just normal. Nobody complained, and it had always been done that way. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that (1) going into a sauna second, after it has already been used by another group, is not anywhere nearly as nice as entering the warm dry room initially, (2) the women did ALL the work, from food preparation to cleanup of both the dishes and kitchen as well as the sauna, (3) the men considered it their day of relaxation (which it was, because all they did was relax!), while for the women it was just another day of work.

I once suggested that the roles be reversed, and that the women use the sauna first, while the men prepared the meal. One of my uncles is a very good cook, and I’m not shabby myself, so it’s not like it was undoable. The very idea was met with incredulity–we ALWAYS did it this way before, why should I want to change it now, they asked.

I haven’t been back to participate in that “tradition” ever since, but from what I hear, my much younger cousins (and their wives) are continuing it exactly as before. Mind you, this is in Sweden, where my mother’s family has lived since fleeing the invading Russians in WWII. Sweden, which is not exactly known for being grossly unfair to women, and where my cousins were born and have lived their entire lives, making them basically culturally Swedish. It’s not even possible to make the argument that the women did the housework while the men earned incomes, because—being Sweden—both the women as well as the men hold jobs for pay. They just do all the housework and come second, too.

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