My friend Dave Richards composed a prayer in the style of CPAC on Facebook today. He gave me permission to quote it.

Dear God-

We thank you for the 4110 children who will starve to death today and every day. We know you want them to come to live with you in Heaven. Except for the ones who aren’t Christian; they can suck it. We know they did not get a chance to experience life, and that the life they did experience was probably miserable, but, hey, the little brats would doubtless grow up to be ingrates anyhow, as all children do. Or they might have just been a drain on society. You know: takers. If they didn’t want to starve, they should have gotten up off their lazy asses and gotten a job. Or perhaps even started their own business, so clearly it’s their own fault. Anyway, we thank you for smiting them. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

It gets at what annoys me perhaps most of all about piety – if they think “God” did all this why aren’t they furious at that “God”?

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

The LSS has drawn up a petition. It has also issued a statement: LSS condemns Law Society’s practice note on “Sharia compliant” wills.

The LSS is very concerned to learn that the Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, has recently issued a practice note on “Sharia compliant” wills. See LSS member Sadikur Rahman’s blog post from last week about it.

This morning the Sunday Telegraph devoted their front page to this story. The Sunday Times (paywall) also covered it, specifically mentioning the LSS and Sadikur Rahman. The story has also been picked up by the Mail on Sunday and the Independent.

Practice notes are guidance issued by the Law Society for specific areas of law. This practice note contains the following wording:

“The male heirs in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir of the same class. Non-Muslims may not inherit at all, and only Muslim marriages are recognised.”

“…illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs.”

Commenting, LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian said.

“This is a very worrying move by the Law Society, and the LSS strongly condemns them for issuing this practice note.

“By issuing this practice note the Law Society is legitimising and normalising – or at the very least being seen to legitimise and normalise – the distribution of assets in accordance with the discriminatory provisions of Sharia law. The Law Society is therefore being seen to legitimise and normalise Sharia law more generally. This is a matter of grave concern for the LSS given that Sharia law is inherently discriminatory against women and non-Muslims.

“As a matter of law, testators (the person making the will) can generally dispose of their assets as they wish, but there are restrictions to this principle, for example to ensure dependants are provided for.

“Although the Law Society’s practice note does not change the law, it does undermine, for example, the way adopted children, children born out of wedlock, and children who are deemed to be of another faith are viewed. This is a worrying precedent to set. At the very least this practice note undermines the dignity of these children; at the worst it starts to slowly undermine the legal protections rightly afforded to them.

“The practice note is dangerous to the priceless notion of equality before the law for people of all faiths and none. It potentially paves the way, ultimately, for a change in the law so that different laws of intestacy (the situation where someone dies without making a will) are applied to Muslims, or those who are deemed to be Muslims.

“The practice note states that ‘there are specific differences between Sunni and Shia rules on succession. These differences are not covered in this practice note’. In time will the Law Society publish different guidance notes for different branches of Islam?

“The LSS calls on the Law Society to withdraw its shocking practice note without delay.”

Sign the petition

You can sign our petition calling on the Law Society to withdraw their practice note here.

Do sign the petition.

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

The Telegraph and the Times today report on that guidance from the Law Society on how to draw up “Sharia-compliant” wills.

The Telegraph:

Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills.

Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.

The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs.

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

A Republican state senator in Alaska really doesn’t think much of women.

He wants the state to provide free pregnancy tests in bars.

Kelly envisions the government contracting with a nonprofit to make the tests widely available at places that serve alcohol. As he explains, “So if you’re drinking, if you’re out at the big birthday celebration and you’re kind of like, ‘Gee, I wonder if I…?’ You can just go in the bathroom and there should be a plastic, Plexiglas bowl in there, and that’s part of the public relations campaign, too. You’re going to have some kind of card on there with a message.” 

The interviewer asked Kelly whether he would also support offering state-funded birth control in bars. Alaska does not accept federal money from the government’s Medicaid expansion, which would fund contraception, and state Sen. Fred Dyson (R-Eagle River) recently spoke out against it, declaring that if people can afford lattes, they can afford birth control. In response to the birth control question posed by Anchorage Daily News, Kelly said he wouldn’t support it:

No, because the thinking is a little opposite. This assumes that if you know, you’ll act responsibly. Birth control is for people who don’t necessarily want to act responsibly.

What? Using birth control is not acting responsibly? It’s irresponsible to use birth control? It’s responsible to refrain from using birth control, regardless of whether or not you actually want to conceive?

Nope, I can’t get that to make sense, no matter how I turn it and hold it up to the light.

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

Well, yes, but…

Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties.
Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety on the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centers, women’s refuges, reforms in the law.
If someone says, “Oh, I’m not a feminist,” I ask, “Why, what’s your problem?”
Dale Spender

Yes, but.

That’s not an exhaustive list. It’s a list of practical tangible things, but it omits the more fuzzy things. Feminism’s battles have also been for no or better stereotypes, a better culture, fewer belittling jokes, fewer sexist epithets, less harassment, less casual telling women what to do (“Smile!”), less interrupting, more representation…Fewer hurdles, fewer asymmetrical expectations (he is aggressive, she is a bitch), more sharing of domestic work from dish-washing to child care, more representation, more representation, more representation.

That’s the answer to the question, too. “What’s your problem?” Their problem is that that stuff is about every day life, and it’s all the time, and it gets in everywhere. It’s not some quick discreet crisp fix, that once it’s done it’s done; it’s changes in the self and attitudes and behavior and conversation.

On the other hand, the rewards are large.

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

What about all those untested rape kits gathering dust in police departments around the US? 400,000 of them, we’re told. Is that “hysteria about rape culture”? (Thank you, American Enterprise Institute hack Caroline Kitchens.) It sounds more like bland indifference to rape, to this puzzled observer. But maybe the police just know all of them are false accusations, without checking?

Anti-rape activists are quick to point out that, although one-third of women experience sexual violence in their lifetimes, only 3 in 100 rapists will ever spend a single day in jail. 

That doesn’t sound like some kind of hysterical over-reaction. It sounds more like no reaction at all.

But still we need to have a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute telling us via the uber-mainstream Time that talk of rape culture is “hysteria.”

Rape culture theory is doing little to help victims, but its power to poison the minds of young women and lead to hostile environments for innocent males is immense.

What about the hostile environments for innocent females? What about the environment of that party in Steubenville? What about all those neglected rape kits?

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

Ok this is big. The Salvation Army caved on a religious discrimination case it had been fighting for years. I first read about it in Michelle Goldberg’s great book Kingdom Coming. Dan Arel reports at the Huffington Post:

In 2004 a group of 19 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the Salvation Army. The group claimed that the organization, which is a registered evangelical church and charity organization in the United States, was using public taxpayer money to proselytize their evangelical religious beliefs, discriminate, and terminate employees based on religious beliefs.

Anne Lown, a former employee of the organization, felt that this alleged practice was wrong and complained to her management and was subsequently terminated. Lown, who is Jewish, along with the other plaintiffs, contacted the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), alleging that their religious beliefs were often brought into question and that they were threatened with termination or simply fired.

Note the date – four years into the reign of George 2 and his “faith-based” backdoor theocracy (which Obama has unpardonably continued).

In 2010 a settlement was reached that barred the organization from proselytizing when working under a public contract, but the settlement denied any workplace discrimination and dismissed other “lesser” charges. The NYCLU appealed and continued to fight to address all the charges of violations of the U.S. Constitution.

This week the Salvation Army caved, and a new settlement has been reached, a settlement that upholds the separation of church and state and will no longer allow the organization to hold those they serve or those they employee to any religious standards while receiving taxpayer dollars. The organization will also pay $450,000 to two of the plaintiffs who were wrongfully terminated.

George W. Bush’s administration and their “faith-based initiative,” a program that has been continued under the Obama administration, made it very easy for organizations like the Salvation Army to receive taxpayer money for their services. Both administrations have consistently dodged questions about workplace-discrimination procedures at such organizations.

Well hoofuckingray about the new settlement and boooooooo Obama for dodging the questions.

For decades it’s been charged that the Salvation Army has hidden behind its religious charitable status to get away with such actions, but this new settlement finally says that regardless of their religious status, they can no longer use public funding for proselytizing and discrimination.

This is a major victory for groups like the ALCU, NYCLU, Americans United, and other secular groups fighting for the continued separation of church and state. In a statement on this week’s ruling, Americans United showed their continued support for religious freedom and secular values, saying:

Americans United has consistently opposed this type of taxpayer-funded religious discrimination. We’ve pointed out that sectarian groups are free to discriminate when they use privately raised funds for programs that are wholly church sponsored. But government money changed the equation.

We’ve also opposed proselytism in tax-supported programs. People in need should never be required to sit through a sermon in order to get fed.

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

Science deniers don’t like the new Cosmos series, Chris Mooney reports in Mother Jones.

Well of course they don’t. That’s because it doesn’t go

God made this.

Then God made this.

Then God made this.

[Repeat until it's time for the commercials]

Mooney gives somewhat thicker detail, such as the reaction to the second episode’s account of natural selection.

Over at the pro-”intelligent design” Discovery Institute, they’re not happy. Senior fellow David Klinghoffer writes that the latest Cosmos episode “[extrapolated] shamelessly, promiscuously from artificial selection (dogs from wolves) to minor stuff like the color of a polar bear’s fur to the development of the human eye.” In a much more elaborate attempted takedown, meanwhile, the institute’s Casey Luskin accuses Tyson and Cosmos of engaging in “attempts to persuade people of both evolutionary scientific views and larger materialistic evolutionary beliefs, not just by the force of the evidence, but by rhetoric and emotion, and especially by leaving out important contrary arguments and evidence.”

Like the ones that carried the day at the Kitzmiller trial??

Oh wait…

Thus far, Cosmos has referred to climate change in each of its two opening episodes, but has not gone into any depth on the matter. Perhaps that’s for a later episode. But in the meantime, it seems some conservatives are already bashing Tyson as a global warming proponent. Writing at the Media Research Center’s Newsbusters blog, Jeffrey Meyer critiques a recent Tyson appearance on Late Night With Seth Myers. “Meyers and deGrasse Tyson chose to take a cheap shot at religious people and claim they don’t believe in science i.e. liberal causes like global warming,” writes Meyer.

Yes, global warming is a liberal cause – we’re all out there with our heat lamps and torches, trying to warm the damn thing up. In our Birkenstocks.

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

One more for the files, via Iram Ramzan by way of Chris Moos on Facebook.

Why the fuck not?

Why the fuck would I want to cover my whole body while I’m still alive?

I wouldn’t, nor should I.

Brothers! Why is it only sisters you tell this bullshit to?

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

Uh oh, did somebody somewhere disturb the conventional wisdom? Quick! Hurry! Get someone to repeat the consoling fictions, before there’s a tear in the space-time continuum and everything falls off.

To the rescue: Caroline Kitchens in Time, with all the clichés piled up next to her keyboard ready to go.

There is no rape culture, there is only rape culture hysteria.

There we go; everyone can go home now.

Recently, rape culture theory has migrated from the lonely corners of the feminist blogosphere into the mainstream. In January, the White House asserted that we need to combat campus rape by “[changing] a culture of passivity and tolerance in this country, which too often allows this type of violence to persist.”

Tolerance for rape? Rape is a horrific crime and rapists are despised. We have strict laws that Americans want to see enforced. Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there’s no evidence that it’s considered a cultural norm. Twenty-first century America does not have a rape culture; what we have is an out-of-control lobby leading the public and our educational and political leaders down the wrong path.

Really? So the Steubenville case never happened? All rape cases are prosecuted? High school and college athletes never get away with sexual assault defined away as consensual sex regretted the next day? There’s never any questioning what the woman was wearing, where she was, how much she’d had to drink?

But now, rape culturalists are confronting a formidable critic that even they will find hard to dismiss.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is America’s largest and most influential anti-sexual violence organization. It’s the leading voice for sexual assault victim advocacy. Indeed, rape culture activists routinely cite the authority of RAINN to make their case. But in RAINN’s recent recommendations to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, it repudiates the rhetoric of the anti “rape culture” movement…

We know it does.

Good job, RAINN. Thanks a lot.

H/t Courtney

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

Dang…this is something I wouldn’t want to see if I were in the hospital, or visiting someone I liked who was in the hospital.

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

Isis reports on a colleague including sexist graphical abstracts with his papers.

The last one looks like this:

Haha. So funny. So science.

A woman who is a scientist – Professor and Graduate Program Director at Johns Hopkins type woman who is a scientist – tweeted a criticism and he replied with “I wonder if you have been trained in the Vatican.”

Oy.

Isis comments:

Why is this a problem? Because Professor Righetti is continuing to publish his hilarious graphical abstracts (see this month’s issue)  and I suspect it is but a matter of time before we get more titties. He is also on the editorial board of several journals (Electrophoresis, J. Chromatography, J. Capillary Electrophoresis, BioTechniques, Proteomics, Journal of Proteomics, and Proteomics Clinical Applications, according to his faculty page), including the journal with his hilarious graphical abstracts. He’s essentially using his leadership to be a huge creeper.  Worse, the leadership of the journal is letting it happen. It is impossible to consider submitting a paper to that journal without thinking that the associate editor (and perhaps his affiliates) see me as nothing more than a holder of coconuts. Nothing more than an object.

Have a helpful flow chart.

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

Update: Facebook finally took it down. Good. Now for all the rest of them.

Thanks to Udo for alerting us to this page.

_____________________

Just to be clear.

And trigger warning again, because this is a horrifying photo.

I reported this photo with the text to Facebook.

Facebook looked at it; I know this because the response wasn’t instantaneous, as it was when I reported the whole page. Facebook looked at it, and sent the usual reply:

Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the photo you reported for containing graphic violence and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.

Yes, I “feel,” with all my squishy subjectivity, that that photo may violate Facebook’s Community Standards, and anyone else’s, apart from Nazis and members of WBC and the like. Yes, I do feel that that photo may violate Facebook’s Community Standards. But Facebook says it doesn’t. I would like to know why. I would like to know what the fuck is wrong with them.

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

Remember last fall Nick Cohen wrote about the appalling conditions for migrant workers in Qatar in the run-up to the World Cup? Like, How many more must die for Qatar’s World Cup?

Not all the fatalities are on construction sites. The combination of back-breaking work, nonexistent legal protections, intense heat and labour camps without air conditioning allows death to come in many guises. To give you a taste of its variety, the friends of Chirari Mahato went online to describe how he would work from 6am to 7pm. He would return to a hot, unventilated room he shared with 12 others. Because he died in his sleep, rather than on site, his employers would not accept that they had worked him to death. There are millions of workers like him around the Gulf.

And, Will Qatar’s World Cup be built on a graveyard?

Since I wrote about the rising piles of corpses in Qatar two weeks ago, Robert Booth of the Guardian published a fine investigation, which claimed that the World Cup could cost 4,000 lives if nothing is done.

And guess what; nothing has been done. This time it’s Business Insider reporting.

A report from the International Trade Union Confederation says 1,200 migrant workers from India and Nepal have died in Qatar since the country was awarded the 2022 World Cup.

The ITUC estimates that 4,000 migrant workers will die by the time the first game is played in 2022.

The report is in line with recent death numbers from the embassies of the two countries.

The Nepalese embassy in Qatar reported last month that 400 Nepalese workers had died working on World Cup projects since 2010. The Indian embassy reported that 500 Indian workers had died in Qatar since 2012.

But on the other side you have…the World Cup. What’s a few thousand foreign lives compared to that?

There are 1.4 million migrant workers in Qatar, the ITUC reports, many of whom are now tasked with building the infrastructure necessary to host a World Cup from scratch.

From the ITUC report:

“Whether the cause of death is labelled a work accidents, heart attack (brought on by the life threatening effects of heat stress) or diseases from squalid living conditions, the root cause is the same – working conditions.”

…

Workers at the Lusail City construction site told the Guardian that their bosses have withheld pay, forced them to work in 122-degree heat with no rest for food, and confiscated their passports to make sure they don’t leave the country.

Combine those complaints with squalid living conditions, and some are calling the situation in Qatar “modern day slavery.”

Hello, FIFA? People are watching.

…

there’s a new report from the Telegraph that says ex-FIFA vice president Jack Warner is being investigated by the FBI for taking a $2 million payment from a Qatari company shortly after the 2022 World Cup vote. The company in question is owned by a man who was given a lifetime ban from FIFA after being found guilty of bribery charges.

FIFA’s decision to hold the World Cup in Qatar was criticized from the beginning. In the three years since they won the right to host the event, Qatar has done little to change that widespread skepticism.

Watching.

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

One reason (one that most people are probably already aware of, at least intuitively) for adults not to model lying to children.

A new experiment is the first to show a connection between adult dishonesty and children’s behavior, with kids who have been lied to more likely to cheat and then to lie to cover up the transgression.

Not a big surprise, is it. Children take their cues from adults. Where else are they going to take them? Goldfish? They learn what to do from people who are older than they are.

So there’s one of those lab experiments, which seems fine as far as it goes but not necessarily all that relevant to more natural kinds of relationships.

The study was not designed to get at the reasons that children are more likely to lie when they have been lied to, but to demonstrate that the phenomenon can occur, Carver said.

What happens when trusted care-givers do the lying also remains an open research question. But Carver and Hays are still urging restraint. Even if it’s expedient for an adult to lie — to get cooperation through deception, for example, or to get children to control their emotions — it’s probably a bad idea in the long run.

That would include religion. Of course hardly anyone will take it that way, but it would. It would include all kinds of claims framed as certain when they’re not even close to certain.

H/t Dan Fincke.

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

NPR has a great story about an inspirational music teacher and what students get from her teaching. I’m not going to lie, I’m a sucker for stories like that.

Debra Kay Robinson Lindsay rehearses one more time with her Honors Chorus group before a concert for Music in Our Schools month, a national event to celebrate music and emphasize its importance in school curriculum.

(Students singing)

Parents beam and students eagerly share what they’ve learned from Mrs. Lindsay, an award-winning music educator, author and composer who has taught in Fairfax County public schools for 39 years.

Students: I’ve learned that the people who you see on television who are really good singers, you need to really work hard and you really need to want this if you want to end up like them . . . She’s taught us a lot of things, especially looking at her and also inhaling and exhaling at the right moment of a song . . . Mrs. Lindsay has taught me numerous things but the one I remember the most is just to believe in yourself, not to be afraid just because of what other people think of you, just go for it, go for your dream.

It’s the obverse of what I’ve been saying about modeling, in a way. There is some overlap – public performance, being looked at – but there is also difference. There’s more than just being looked at.

Although the arts are often targeted in school budget cuts, advocates like Lindsay point out that music instruction helps brain development and overall student achievement.

Debra Lindsay: We teach them experience, we work with them on writing, about what music is, understanding terminology, learning how to write about music, comparing and contrasting, learning how science and sound are related. It’s just not music, it is learning all around.

Lindsay invited her students to help give a training session at the Teaching and Learning 2014 conference in Washington, DC. It’s the first time most of them are performing publicly and while some admit they’re nervous, the performance is a hit and helps demonstrate Debra Lindsay’s teaching techniques.

So that will be a big thing in their lives, which is great.

And then…

Musician Bobby McFerrin is headlining the closing plenary at the Teaching and Learning conference.

McFerrin: And he’d march the whole class out to the front lawn and we’d sit under a tree and have a jam session.

(McFerrin singing)

Mixing his improvisational songs with stories about learning music, it doesn’t take long for McFarrin to ask the audience to get a bit closer.

McFerrin: Come sit on the stage if you want to, we can probably pull up some of these chairs and you can sit up here if you want to …

A couple dozen people move toward the stage; Some bravely join him in song, others ask questions. About 40 minutes in, he hands the mic to the youngest on stage – one of Debra Lindsay’s students:

Nelsa Tiemtore: My name is Nelsa, I’m from Lyles Crouch Traditional Academy, Virginia Public Schools.

McFerrin encourages Nelsa to sing. After some hesitation, she chooses her song.

(Nelsa, McFerrin singing)

How cool is that?!

I saw this story via a tweet by Ron Lindsay. He knows Debra Lindsay.

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

Why did nobody think of it before? Get a homicide detective to investigate the Jesus story. Of course! Then even the small minority of people who are atheists will throw in the towel.

A New Jersey church will put a spin on the Easter story by bringing in a professional detective to examine Christ’s death and resurrection.

Homicide investigator J. Warner Wallace will utilize his “cold case investigation skills” to examine the historical circumstances surrounding Christianity’s sacred weekend in a four-week series that starts on Sunday at Liquid Church’s four locations.

“Cold case investigation skills” can investigate stories from 2000 years ago to determine the truth of elements of the story? I did not know that! Right then; let’s start with Euripides. Did Medea really kill her children?

“We know people’s faith rests on understanding if the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was real or not. What better way than to bring in a CSI detective and have him examine the biblical evidence available for a homicide investigation?” Tim Lucas, lead pastor of Liquid Church said in a statement.

The biblical evidence? Words in a book count as evidence of more than the fact that this story has been told?

A self-proclaimed “angry atheist” for 35 years, Wallace shares on his website that he enjoyed frequently debating his Christian friends, and admits that he was “hostile to Christianity and largely dismissive of Christians.”

But once Wallace began to use the same tools he used in the field to examine Christianity, he “found the evidence for Christianity to be as convincing as any cold case I’d ever investigated.”

Uh oh. Maybe some of his cases should be re-opened.

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