Originally a comment by Gordon Willis on Teach the children well.

I am a private teacher, teaching one-to-one. I teach both adults and children. Some of the children, invariably girls, come from Hong Kong or mainland China. They come aged 13 or 14 or 15, like English children to a boarding school, except that they come alone, because their parents can’t afford the fare for both themselves and their daughters. And they find digs and join a new school of completely foreign people, and they stay, and they learn, and they do not (apparently) suffer trauma and angst and complexes and lack-of-religion, even though their English is terrible (one young lady of 17 studying A-level music with me a couple of years ago told me that she preferred it here, though she hadn’t seen very much of her parents since she was 13, and her English is still pretty bad). Though they are very much alone they just get on with it. Culture, probably. They believe in what they are to do, and they do it. It’s amazing and admirable.

There are problems sometimes, of course. Part of being a teacher is to recognise problems and deal with them. The secret is to shut up and let the student just be. There is no reason to suppose that one has answers, but there is great benefit in simply listening and offering something immediately practical, something that can be grasped and used. Poe clearly feels that he ought to intervene and offer a life strategy to each student, as though each student were not an individual and discrete person but an object which must be changed and directed for life. He feels responsible, by which I mean that he feels that he ought to direct, not merely teach, as though he aspired to offer a life-plan for every young person. Teaching is about learning, and you can’t teach if you are not a learner.

A teacher is not someone who knows everything (and so can “teach”) but someone who understands learning, and the vital importance of learning, and who knows that learning never ends, and that whoever stops learning is not an “accomplished” adult but a carcass fit only for worms or the crematorium. A good teacher can transform a child’s life, but it might not happen, and if it does one might never know. A good teacher is just a teacher.

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

Not everything is postmodernist. Not even everything you dislike is postmodernist. Some things are not postmodernist.

Artistic license is not postmodernist. It has been around for a long time, longer than postmodernism.

Why am I telling you this? Because of some literal-minded bozos who have been complaining that a Hollywood movie about Noah and his big boat CHANGED SOME OF THE THINGS IN THE STORY.

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

The movie isn’t the story in Genesis told in pictures. That fact is not postmodernist.

Brian Godawa, a screenwriter whose Christian films have repeatedly failed to be profitable at the box office, wrote that Noah‘s script “is deeply anti-Biblical in its moral vision.”

“Noah is a kind of rural shaman and vegan hippie-like gatherer of herbs. Noah explains that his family tries to study and heal the world whenever possible, like a kind of environmentalist scientist,” Godawa writes.

…

The environmental message, however, is not Godawa’s central complaint — he is mostly considered concerned with the “postmodernist fancy” that Aronofsky brings to the script. He initially acknowledges that anything not explicitly written in Genesis 6 is fair-game for creative license. “Saying ‘That didn’t happen on the ark,’” he writes, “is sheer ignorance because nobody knows what happened on the ark, because it wasn’t written down!”

However, “postmodernists fancy playing God and changing the meaning of texts to suit their agenda because they believe language creates reality. Therefore, it’s okay to ‘make the Bible say what we want it to say.’ This is manipulative narcissistic nonsense[.]”

No, Brian Godawa, that is not postmodernism. It’s just retelling the story. You know who else did that? Shakespeare. He used other people’s stories, and he changed them any old way he felt like. Shakespeare was not a postmodernist. Changing stories is not a new thing and it’s not blasphemy and it’s not postmodernist.

I’m sure you won’t make that mistake again.

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

The Atlantic has a very long wordy windbaggy article arguing that universities should teach students religion; not about religion, but religion. Why? Because they’re adrift, and only religion can fix their adriftitude.

Long long long introductory passage that tells us far more than we want to know. He used to teach. He got to know some students.

What I discovered was that many of the students I talked to were disappointed, confused, and lost. They were bright kids. Many of them had looked forward to going to the university all their lives. College was, in their imaginations, a sort of promised land, a place where you find your calling and get the skills necessary to pursue it. What they found, however, was not a promised land at all. To them, the college curriculum was a bewildering jumble of classes that led to nothing in particular. 

And so on and on and on in that style, loose and relaxed and endlessly explaining the obvious.

I also learned that because they were adrift in so many ways, they suffered. It was not difficult to get them talking about their distress, probably because no one at the university had ever thought to inquire. There were those who drank too much and got into trouble. There were those who were full-blown alcoholics or drug addicts.

And on and on and on through every type he can think of. Bad writing! We get it; a couple of examples will do; we get the idea. Cut to the chase.

He himself had a crisis once. What to do? Psychiatrists were not much help; they couldn’t get at the core problem. What to do? Religion.

What to do? I had never been religious. Far from it, I was a confirmed atheist. But, in desperation, I began to attend what might generically be called a “spiritual program.” Some call it a “religion” and others call it a “practice.” It doesn’t matter. The important point is that the people in this spiritual program embraced me, identified with me, and told me to do a specific set of things. There was talk of God, but they explained that talking was secondary to doing. I didn’t have to believe in God, they said, all I had to do was practice the teachings of the “religion.” If I did that, they said, I would be relieved of much of my suffering.

And it worked. Why? Because it gave him a way of life.

Without a way of life, I would say, one’s thoughts and actions tend to move at random, like water poured on a surface, spreading out and seeking the lowest places. With a way of life, I would continue, one’s thoughts and actions move in a single direction, like water poured in a channel, moving in a single direction toward a final end.

And that’s why he thinks it’s a remedy for everyone. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it.

There are a few hundred more paragraphs about why it’s ok to teach this to students.

American higher education has, however, one glaring deficiency: it does not teach its undergraduates how to live. It teaches them when the French Revolution was, what the carbon cycle is, and how to solve for X. It does not teach them what to do when they feel confused, alone, and scared. When they break down after a break-up. When they are so depressed they cannot get out of bed. When they drink themselves into unconsciousness every night. When find themselves living on someone’s couch. When they decide to go off their meds. When they flunk a class or even flunk out of school. When they get fired. When a sibling dies. When they don’t make the team.

Believe it or not, there’s more like that. More examples; more “when they”s. That guy cannot write for shit. He should have skipped the religion and maybe even skipped graduate school and just learned how to write.

I do not think he gives good advice about what to teach students.

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

We know affirmative action is a bad thing, right? At least we keep being told so. “People must be selected on merit, not having the right genitalia.”

What about negative action? Is that a bad thing?

Like that applied to Jenny Collier for example?

Haslemere Thursday 15th May – cancelled

7 March 2014 17:32

Hi Jenny

I’m really sorry but the venue has decided they don’t want too many women on the bill and unfortunately we need to take you out of this one. We hope that this doesn’t cause any inconvenience.

Oh no, of course it doesn’t. How could it possibly cause any inconvenience to be “taken out” of a gig you were scheduled to do, on the grounds that the venue doesn’t want “too many” of you pesky women?

No, it’s totally understandable. Don’t forget: women aren’t funny.

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

Another shrewd bit of ad-targeting on Facebook. Yes, I will certainly find this persuasive:

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

Sikivu Hutchinson tells an important story at Religion Dispatches.

On Sunday morning I went to a church service for the first time in decades.

I was there as a community member to support Pastor Seth Pickens of Zion Hill Baptist church in South Los Angeles. A few days before, I’d received an urgent plea from Teka-Lark Fleming, publisher of the local Morningside Park Chronicle newspaper, encouraging progressive black folk to show up at Zion Hill in support of Seth’s pro-LGBTQ stance.

After publishing a column entitled “The 10 Reasons I Love LGBTQ folk” in Fleming’s paper, Pickens came under fire from church officials.  The controversy erupted on the heels of internal criticism he’d received for performing a marriage ceremony for a lesbian couple last year.

Well yes; that would be a compelling reason to go to a church service.

The controversy at Zion Hill is emblematic of a national climate in which traditional black churches are increasingly being challenged on their homophobic policies. Nonetheless, the rhetoric that homosexuality is a white European phenomenon artificially imposed on African descent peoples is still a recurring theme in some black churches. Recently the ATLAH church in Harlem made headlines for a viciously homophobic marquee sign equating homosexuality with whiteness. And terrorist anti-gay legislation in Uganda and Nigeria (sparked and endorsed in no small part by the anti-gay crusades of white American evangelicals) has heightened the stereotype that both African and African descent people are inherently more homophobic than other groups.

Leo Igwe and Yemisi Ilesanmi have both written about this “homosexuality is un-African” bullshit. Props to Sikivu for doing what she can to support Pastor Seth Pickens.

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

If there’s a thing too ridiculous and hostile and contemptuous to be said, you can be sure there will be people to say it. On Reddit. To be passed on by Manboobz.

Her choice in clothing didn’t expose what he took a picture of to the public. He didn’t take a picture of her shins or her knees, he took a picture of the section of her that was under the skirt. It’s exposed to the sidewalk and the floor, but it’s not exposed to the public.

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

The Massachusetts legislature fixed that particular omission.

Massachusetts lawmakers Thursday passed a bill banning “upskirting” in response to a ruling by the state’s highest court that said a law aimed at criminalizing voyeurism did not apply to the snapping of secret photos up a woman’s skirt.

The bill now goes to Gov. Deval Patrick, who has publicly committed to signing it, his office said Thursday.

The bill would make photographing or recording video under a person’s clothing illegal, according to a statement from the office of Senate President Therese Murray.

Good. Thank you.

By the way…Is it illegal in Massachusetts (and all the other states) to, for instance, drill a hole in a neighbor’s wall to insert a tiny camera for the purpose of spying on them? Is that covered by the law aimed at criminalizing voyeurism?

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

It creeps me out to do this because it’s so me me me but Melody says it helps so I’m doing it anyway. If you’re planning to go to Women in Secularism 3 but haven’t gotten around to registering you should do it today if you want the chance to win a signed copy of Why Truth Matters.

Register here.

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

A very important thing, that I did not know about: the white man march.

If you go to the home page you will see a photo of four of the whitest white people anyone ever saw. They are dazzlingly white; whitely white white. They are posed as a family group but who knows if they are really a family. They could just be the four people who won the contest in each of four divisions:

• whitest little girl
• whitest little boy
• whitest woman
• whitest man

There’s an explanation or FAQ page for people who wonder what the white man march is all about.

The White Man March is scheduled for March 15th, 2014, and will involve coordinated pro-white activity around the world. The purpose is to spread information through activism, but also to make a statement that White people are united in their love for their race and in their opposition to its destruction.

Non-white groups such as La Raza have monthly marches and gatherings with many thousands of participants, while groups advocating for White interests remain relatively silent or hidden from the public. One of the major goals of the White Man March is to demonstrate that pro-White people are able to form a unified front and participate in large-scale action simultaneously, which will send a powerful message to our supporters, our enemies, and those of our race who are still on the fence. We also seek to set a precedent that other pro-white organizations can follow in the future.

Where’s the part about why it’s a white MAN march?

I guess that’s just taken for granted, because why would women be included? Crazy idea, amirite?

3. What are the main political and cultural statements you are hoping to make with the White Man March?

We are planning to show that White people are organized and impassioned, that we know what the anti-white agenda is all about, and that we are dedicated to waking up as many of our folk as possible. We will make it clear that we will not sit idly by as our race is discriminated against, mocked, displaced, and violently attacked, all of which amount to white genocide, according to the United Nation’s own definition of genocide. This is why one of our big messages, which will be displayed on many large banners, is “DIVERSITY” = WHITE GENOCIDE. These banners will spread the message to the public at large in the most effective way possible. This “diversity” agenda is being directed at white countries (and only at white countries) with various programs to ensure that there are less white people at schools and in the work force, which is unfair and discriminatory, taking away money and opportunities from the indigenous white people. “Diversity” is a codeword for White Genocide.

The indigenous white people. This is an American group, a US group, and this guy thinks white people are indigenous here. Oy

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

Originally a comment by mildlymagnificent on Or even another Tosh.

My own feeling about the far too many self titled skeptics that I deal with online is that they’ve not really learned to be appropriately skeptical. The first and most important lesson for a real skeptic is to acknowledge that it is no longer possible, if it ever really was, to be a “renaissance man” or a fully rounded autodidact.

There really is a limit to how much of the available knowledge and skill in any given topic a non-expert can acquire. So the first responsibility of being skeptical is as accurate an assessment as possible of one’s own expertise.It really doesn’t matter how clever you are or whether you’ve acquired advanced qualifications of various sorts. Knowing everything is just not possible and you mustn’t let yourself fall into the trap of thinking you can know everything.

To be thoroughly and conscientiously skeptical, you have to develop the skill needed to judge the value of the baying hordes of people claiming expertise in all sorts of areas. If you prefer to say that you can’t venture an opinion until you’ve worked whatever it is out for yourself, then you’re abrogating your responsibility to stick with properly evidenced positions. You simply cannot check all the work of all the astronomers and microbiologists and road builders and physicists and veterinarians and sociologists and epidemiologists and car mechanics and agricultural hydrographers and your own doctors, you have to pick and choose.

It’s how well you pick and choose the experts you will listen to and how you go about judging the quality of the evidence you rely on that makes you properly skeptical. Not a cynical dismissive waving away of everything you’ve not seen with your own eyes or worked out for yourself from first principles. That’s not skeptical. That’s being arrogant or suspicious or untrusting or fearful or some mixture of any of those.

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

So, it’s International Women’s Day on Saturday. Well how fucked up is that, am I right? When is it ever International Men’s Day? When is it Rich People’s Day? White People’s Day? Straight People’s Day? Are we not all human beings???

Fortunately, the president of the Humanist Society of South Australia, Justin Millikan, is on the case. He posted a super-appropriate item on the HSSA page to make this very point. What super-appropriate item is that? A link to an article with the brilliantly aphoristic and wise title:

It is about humanism, not simply feminism

Oh, yes; thank god somebody said that at last. The hell with all this feminism and anti-racism and anti-colonialism and gay rights, the hell with anti-poverty campaigns and affirmative action for dalits and First Nations and indigenous Australians; it is about humanism, period.

Elle Hardy writes:

It is assumed that all women want equality, when many of us simply want opportunity. Indeed there are many of us who stridently oppose quotas, and who believe the merit of the individual should be the sole determinant of success.

Damn, why didn’t I think of that? How stupid of me to think genitalia or skin color or country of origin should be the sole determinant of success.

Except I didn’t think that. What I did think is that the merit of the individual is already not the sole determinant of success, it’s just that people like to assume or pretend it is when in fact other factors play a part in whose “merit” gets evaluated at all. There are filters on who gets called for an interview that are not labeled “merit” but rather things like “similar to me” and “the kind I want to have lunch with” and “the type we are used to seeing in jobs like this” and “looks right for the part” and “seems authoritative and tough.”

Opportunity for women in our country is generally not lacking. We are no longer institutionally subordinated. To phrase it more crisply: one is far better served by being a white female than a black male in Australia.

Er…that’s not the relevant comparison. Is one far better served by being a white female than a white male in Australia? Is one far better served by being a black female than a black male in Australia? Those are the relevant comparisons if you’re trying to claim that women are treated equally or even better.

A couple of women on the HSSA page handed Justin Millikan his head. It’s too bad one of them isn’t president instead of him.

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

An eyewitness tells us in a comment that some of the people at Lev Tahor have fled.

I live less than a kilometre from this group’s houses (I can see them from my backyard across the cornfield) and in the country news travels fast… My neighbour called this afternoon to say that seven cop cars were blocking the entrance to the housing units.

It seems these persecuted families are on the move again…. The Chatham Daily News is now reporting that the 13 children who were due to be taken into protective care today and their parents have now fled to the Caribbean to frustrate justice AGAIN.

Before I saw that comment I saw an email from a reader with a link to the CBC reporting the same thing, along with the news that it looks as if the attempt to frustrate justice will fail. It looks as if they will be sent back to Toronto.

Some members of Lev Tahor, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect from Quebec that fled to a town near Windsor, Ont., last November, have apparently flown the coop again, this time to Trinidad and Tobago, where their journey has been halted.

Immigration authorities said the sect members were in transit to Guatemala, but officials in Trinidad and Tobago have prevented the members from flying to Central America after the authorities allegedly found some inconsistencies in their responses.

Well done, officials in Trinidad and Tobago.

Members of Lev Tahor arrived at Piarco International Airport Monday and have refused to leave, an immigration officer at the airport told CBC News.

The members are not being detained as fugitives.

A spokeswoman with Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of National Security said the group was offered hotel accommodations, but the sect members refused.

She said sect spokesman Avraham Dinkel has continued to negotiate with local authorities to travel on to Guatemala and not return to Canada.

A statement released Wednesday by Trinidad’s Ministry of National Security said, ”the Immigration Services have been advised to pursue the decision of having the group return to their port of origin,” which is Toronto.

Very good.

The flight south comes as two families were scheduled to appear in a Chatham-Kent, Ont., court today to learn the result of their appeal of an earlier court judgment that demanded the children be returned to Quebec and placed in foster care.

Stephen Doig of Chatham-Kent Children’s Services said his agency has alerted sister agencies with offices along the Canada-U.S. border after the families in southern Ontario could not be found at their homes.

So that will be the seven cop cars our commenter’s neighbor saw.

Last month, an Ontario judge upheld a Quebec ruling ordering 13 children in the Lev Tahor sect to be surrendered to child welfare authorities. After being denied an appeal by a Quebec court, the group issued a request for appeal to an Ontario court.

This came after the Quebec and Ontario provincial police forces raided the Lev Tahor homes in Chatham.

Quebec’s Youth Protection Services alleged in court that children living in the sect were medicated with melatonin to control their behaviour, couldn’t do basic math and were married off as young as 14.

Protect those youths.

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