Laurie Penny takes a look at the familiar subject of hipster sexism, this time in the person of Russell Brand.

Brand is playing the court jester, and speaking limited truth to overwhelming power in one of the few remaining ways that won’t get you immediately arrested right now – from an enormous stage made of media money, liberally thickened with knob jokes, with a getaway sportscar full of half-naked popstars parked out back and one tongue firmly in his cheek.

But what about the women?

I know, I know that asking that female people be treated as fully human and equally deserving of liberation makes me an iron-knickered feminist killjoy and probably a closet liberal, but in that case there are rather a lot of us, and we’re angrier than you can possibly imagine at being told our job in the revolution is to look beautiful and encourage the men to do great works. Brand is hardly the only leftist man to boast a track record of objectification and of playing cheap misogyny for laughs. He gets away with it, according to most sources, because he’s a charming scoundrel, but when he speaks in that disarming, self-depracating way about his history of slutshaming his former conquests on live radio, we are invited to love and forgive him for it because that’s just what a rockstar does.

And it’s even worse when you’re ancient enough to know that this particular dispute has been going on since the late 60s. How depressing is that?

I don’t believe that just because Brand is clearly a casual and occasionally vicious sexist, nobody should listen to anything he has to say. But I do agree with Natasha Lennard, who wrote that “this is no time to forgo feminism in the celebration of that which we truly don’t need – another god, or another master.” The question, then, is this: how do we reconcile the fact that people need stirring up with the fact that the people doing the stirring so often fall down when it comes to treating women and girls like human beings?

We think of different, and better, ways of stirring things up.

It comes up whenever women and girls and their allies are asked to swallow our discomfort and fear for the sake of a brighter tomorrow that somehow never comes, putting our own concerns aside to make things easier for everyone else like good girls are supposed to. It comes up whenever a passionate political group falls apart because of inability to deal properly with male violence against women. Whenever some idiot commentator bawls you out for writing about feminism and therefore ‘retreating’ into ‘identity politics’ and thereby distracting attention from ‘the real struggle’.

But what is this ‘real struggle’, if it requires women and girls to suffer structural oppression in silence? What is this ‘real struggle’ that hands the mic over and over again to powerful, charismatic white men? Can we actually have a revolution that relegates women to the back of the room, that turns vicious when the discussion turns to sexual violence and social equality? What kind of fucking freedom are we fighting for? And whither that elusive, sporadically useful figure, the brocialist?

More than four fucking decades, we’ve been asking that. I seriously hope Laurie Penny won’t still be having to ask it more than four decades from now.

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

Bill Cooke is the Director of Transnational Programs at the Center for Inquiry.

On the fertile high country in central Kenya, in the shadow of the Nandi Hills, is the Ogwodo Primary School. Five or so buildings, two of them built by the parents out of mud and cow dung. All quite large and bare, with forty or more children to each room, sitting on hard pews and working at long benchtops. Here is where a sizable group of orphans are getting their schooling thanks to the Center for Inquiry, the humanist think-tank based in Amherst, New York.

There are many orphans in Kenya, most the result of their parents having died from HIV/AIDs, being too poor to afford medication, or learning of their disease too late. The churches bear a huge responsibility for the unnecessarily high death toll. Their primitive attitudes toward contraception and their encouragement of superstitions and misinformation about what HIV/AIDs is and how it is caught is a scandal to all civilized people. In the face of this ongoing catastrophe, George Ongere of CFI–Kenya has set up the Humanist Orphans program.

School fees keep many of the poorest children away from school in Kenya, as does the cost of uniforms. Most schools in Kenya insist on a uniform. It’s a way of weeding out those parents who are not serious about their children’s education. But, with no parents to look out for their interests, most orphans miss out on school altogether, and have no future to look forward to.

So George Ongere has gathered together this group of orphans in his home district, overseen their placement in the homes of relatives or neighbors, and ensured their school fees and uniforms are paid for from his already-overstretched CFI stipend. It was deeply moving to see these young people being given a chance at life. The needs of the orphans are still legion. But some sort of start has been made.

Addendum: If you want to donate to support this work, donate to CFI and earmark it for the International Program.

George Ongere is on Facebook.

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

Yemisi Ilesanmi is having an argument with some God-invoking homophobes on her Facebook wall, and using graphics and cartoons to illustrate some of her points. Good clean fun.

And there’s her book…

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

You know how there’s something of a tension in feminism between different attitudes to “femininity”? To put it crudely, one view is that it’s just a set of (implicit) rules that keep women feeble and silly, while the opposite view is that disparaging femininity is patriarchal because it just amounts to seeing anything female as worthy of disparagement.

What about that? I tend toward the first view, but I also suspect that means I’m an unreconstructed dinosaur beached on the second wave and incapable of learning better.

But, I think the words (and what they express) are stupid, both of them – masculine as well as feminine. They’re advertising language, for one thing – have this masculine cologne at $3700 the ounce, don’t you love these feminine shoes in which you can break your ankle so easily.

But I probably dislike the word “feminine” more. Well what does it mean? It doesn’t mean strong (in any sense) or independent or adventurous or brilliant. What does it mean? (It’s a silly word, for a silly idea.) Dainty, delicate, pretty, fluffy. Conforming to gender norms if you’re a woman, a disgrace if you’re a man.

I get the point, that disliking what the word names is too much like disliking the female, but I don’t really believe it. I guess that’s because to me it’s always meant a trap.

Maybe rather than worrying about how to think about “femininity” we should just ditch the whole concept as too stupid to bother with.

Or, we could Google and find that Life Site News has opinions on the subject.

ROME, March 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On March 11^th, a few days before the papal election, one of the Catholic world’s most eminent philosophers, Alice Von Hildebrand, celebrated her 90^thbirthday. Von Hildebrand taught philosophy at a private, secular college in the US for 37 years, but is today perhaps best known as one of the leading proponents of the “New Feminism” that was brought to the fore under the papacy of John Paul II.

New Feminism, promotes the concept of the natural biological and complementarity of men and women, and opposes the “gender” ideology – along with abortion, contraception and sterilisation – of Second and Third Wave academic feminism. It is this type of feminism that von Hildebrand identified in an extensive 2003 interview as “the worst attack on femininity that has ever taken place in the history of the world”.

Well there you go. If the papacy likes it, I don’t have to.

Secularist feminism, still very much in ascendancy in politics and academia, advocates competition between the sexes for jobs and social advancement, looks upon motherhood as an obstacle to self-fulfillment and insists as a central tenet, on legalised abortion and artificial contraception to allow women to compete in the marketplace with men. And crucially for the new pope, it identifies the Catholic Church and the papacy as among its greatest enemies. Before the crowds had left the Piazza on Wednesday night, the world’s media were already carrying demands from the proponents of the feminist-inspired Sexual Revolution that the new pope overturn the Catholic prohibitions against abortion, birth control and homosexual activity.

Dang, the author of this piece – Hilary White – sure has a hard time with commas. But my point is, this is who thinks “femininity” is a real thing, and important.

In the last 40 years, there has been much talk among Catholics of creating a new “Christian feminism” that would assert the equal dignity of man and woman while maintaining the existence of differences between the sexes and upholding the sanctity of life and marriage. Perhaps among the greatest contributors to this discussion has been Alice von Hildebrand, whose books include, The Privilege of Being a Woman (2002), Man and Woman: A Divine Invention (2010).

In the 2003 interview with Zenit, von Hildebrand described academic, Marxist-based feminism as a kind of “trap” producing little more than misery. She said that the unintended consequence of feminist thought was to convince women that it was bad to be women.

The “amazing thing” about feminism, she said, was that “instead of making women more profoundly aware of the beauty and dignity of their role as wives as mothers, and of the spiritual power that they can exercise over their husbands, convinced them that they, too, had to adopt a secularist mentality”. This mentality, that she describes as “utilitarian” holds that human value is derived only from work and external accomplishment.

Ah yes the beauty and dignity of their role as wives as mothers, and of not having the freedom to choose anything else, in addition or instead. That’s “femininity” – being happy to be secondary and dependent.

Women “let themselves become convinced that femininity meant weakness. They started to look down upon virtues – such as patience, selflessness, self-giving, tenderness – and aimed at becoming like men in all things,” von Hildebrand said. This, she said, sparked the “war” between the sexes that we are all still suffering from today.

“Those who fell into the traps of feminism,” she continued, “became blind to the fact that men and women, though equal in ontological dignity, were made different by God’s choice: Male and female he made them. Different and complementary.”

And yet! There is Alice Von Hildebrand, doing something other than being a wife and mother…writing books telling other women to settle down to being wives and mothers.

Asked how women can claim the benefits of their natural inclinations, von Hildebrand said that while from a “naturalistic point of view,” men are “more creative, more inventive and more productive” as engineers, architects, philosophers and theologians, from God’s point of view all these works are “dust and ashes compared to every act of virtue”.

Women, she said, are not called to be “productive” in this material way, but every woman, whether married or unmarried, is “called upon to be a biological, psychological or spiritual mother.”

“She knows intuitively that to give, to nurture, to care for others, to suffer with and for them – for maternity implies suffering – is infinitely more valuable in God’s sight than to conquer nations and fly to the moon.”

It is to the lives and examples of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the woman saints that modern women can turn for guidance. These, she said, “teach us that an awareness and acceptance of one’s weakness, coupled with a boundless confidence in God’s love and power, grant these privileged souls a strength that is so great because it is supernatural.”

Fuck all that. Ima watch football and smoke cigars and throw sandwich crusts on the floor.

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

No reason. Just because.

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

The Bishops continue their tireless efforts to impose their viciously obscurantist godbothering views on all of us. They report it proudly on their episcopal website, because they think they are morally better than the rest of us. They are so wrong about that.

The chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities wrote to members of the House of Representatives to support the “Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” (H.R. 3279), to address one part of the abortion-related problem in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The House of Representatives ought not to be beholden to the US CCB. It ought to be entirely independent of them.

In his Nov. 1 letter, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, wrote: “Under the ACA, unless state law requires otherwise, each insurer may choose whether to include elective abortions in the health plans it offers on a state health exchange. If the insurer does cover such abortions, the overall health plan may still receive federal tax subsidies; and every enrollee — regardless of age, sex, or conscientious objection – must make a separate payment solely to cover other enrollees’ abortions. This violates the policies governing all other federal health programs. In no other program may federal funds subsidize any part of a health plan that covers such abortions; and nowhere else does the federal government forbid insurers to allow an ‘opt-out’ from such coverage on conscience grounds.”

Because it’s not necessary to forbid it, because it’s not an issue, because it’s only women’s reproductive services that are treated as a special case demanding bishops’ meddling and obstacle-creating.

Citing a 2009 poll, Cardinal O’Malley said most Americans, particularly most women, do not want abortion coverage in their health plans.

Cardinal O’Malley is an expert on what women want? I don’t think so.

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

Chris Clarke wrote a wonderful little bit of ethological observation as a Facebook status.

Today I watched a raven with a Cheeto being carefully stalked by two California gulls looking for a way to snatch the treat away. The raven hid the Cheeto under a leaf as the gulls watched. The gulls seemingly concluded that the Cheeto was gone and wandered off.

As people pointed out in comments, this neatly shows that gulls don’t have object permanence while ravens do have theory of mind.

(I look forward to an avalanche of Cheeto ads in my future…)

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

Some of you are in Spain, and thus probably know other people in Spain, and others of you not in Spain might still know people in Spain. Maybe you know someone who can offer Michael Dickinson a spare room or a flat empty during vacation or similar.

Here’s what Torcant Torcant told me:

Do you remember Michael Dickinson, the British collage artist that lives in Turkey? I remember you blogging about him in 2009 – I know it’s been a long time.

Back in 2009:

1. He was sued for insulting Turkish PM with a jail sentence prospect 2. The court acquitted him 3. The case went to the high court and the high court overturned the case 4. He was re-tried and found guilty but the jail sentence was suspended with the condition that he shouldn’t commit the same “crime” again
About 10 days ago, he was arrested for some anti-government protest he made in public, stayed in a hellish immigrants prison for 10 days, then he was deported. Moreover was banned to re-enter Turkey for 5 years.
He was offered a choice between Britain or Spain. He chose Spain and he was loaded in a plane to Barcelona. He is now staying in a cheap hostel in Barcelona with a backpack that holds whatever is left of all his belongings, just 200 Euros and no source of income.
He badly needs help. He can be contacted at michaelyabanji@gmail.com

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

Becca Aaronson reports that at least nine abortion facilities in Texas – a quarter of the Texas total – have stopped providing abortion services.

I keep telling people this and they (some of them) don’t believe me. Yes abortion isn’t yet 100% illegal again, yet, but it is more and more difficult to get one in more and more of the country.

From Aaronson’s story in the Texas Tribune:

After the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision Thursday to lift an injunction on new abortion regulations in Texas, at least nine abortion facilities — about a quarter of the state’s abortion providers — have discontinued abortion services in light of the new law.

The court’s decision is “having an immediate impact starting today, and what that impact is depends on each woman and where she lives,” said Sarah Wheat, vice president for community affairs for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. Planned Parenthood has discontinued abortion services at four Texas locations: Fort Worth, Austin, Waco and Lubbock. Wheat said staff members began calling patients to cancel appointments Thursday evening soon after the appellate ruling came down.

“Depending on that patient and what her circumstances are, we’re either referring her to another health center in that same community or telling her which cities she’ll have to travel to,” Wheat said.

Victory for the “don’t let the bitches weasel out of it” crowd.

The appellate court’s decision overrules U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel’s ruling that a provision in House Bill 2 that requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital imposed an undue burden on women seeking the procedure. Additionally, Yeakel ruled that it would be unconstitutional for the state to require physicians to follow federal standards for drug-induced abortions if a physician determined it would be safer for the woman to use a common evidence-based protocol.

“The law is in effect and facilities are required to comply effective immediately,” Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services, said in an email. “The new requirements will be part of our review criteria when inspecting facilities.”

Abortion opponents and several state leaders are praising the appellate court’s ruling.

Of course they are. More women held hostage to their reproductive machinery.

“While the Supreme Court prohibits state legislatures from banning most abortions, states should have the right to protect women from dangerous abortion procedures,” Joe Pojman, the executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, said in a statement. He said the provisions would increase patient safety and lauded the appellate court for allowing them to take effect.

The appellate court’s decision “affirms our right to protect both the unborn and the health of the women of Texas,” Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement. “We will continue doing everything we can to protect a culture of life in our state.”

By which he means, everything we can to prevent women from having control over their own lives.

“It is a sad and dark day for women in Texas,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and chief executive officer of Whole Woman’s Health, said in a statement. She said Whole Woman’s Health is stopping abortion services at three of its five locations — in Fort Worth, San Antonio and McAllen — because those locations do not have a physician with hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the facility. Whole Woman’s Health facilities in Beaumont and Austin will continue to provide abortion services.

Well that’s ok, it’s not as if there are large distances to travel in Texas.

Oh wait.

The only other abortion provider in the Rio Grande Valley, Reproductive Services in Harlingen, is also discontinuing abortion services, because its physician does not have hospital admitting privileges. That means the closest abortion facility to the Rio Grande Valley is now in Corpus Christi, which is more than 100 miles away from McAllen and Harlingen.

A separate Reproductive Services clinic in El Paso has also stopped providing abortion services. While there is an abortion facility in nearby New Mexico, the closest Texas abortion facilities to El Paso are in San Antonio and Dallas, which are more than 500 miles away. With abortion facilities in Midland and San Angelo recently shuttering, and with the Planned Parenthood clinic in Lubbock discontinuing abortion services, there are vast stretches of West Texas and the Panhandle without a nearby abortion provider.

Bastards.

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

Another thing about the two sheds – I’ve mentioned this before, I think, so apologies if you’re bored with it – is that even if we can’t know there is no god, we can know other relevant things, such as, that no one has managed to convince us (“us” being atheists) that god exists.

You could say that you don’t really know that because maybe way down deep somewhere you are a little bit convinced. But I don’t think so: being convinced is entangled with being aware of being convinced – being aware of the conviction is part of the conviction. It seems nonsensical to claim you can be convinced of something without being aware of it.

I know that no one has convinced me that god exists. Maybe that knowing is the “good enough” kind of knowing we use for things like knowing we prefer raspberries to cotton candy, or maybe it’s stronger than that, but at any rate “agnostic” doesn’t seem like the right word for it. I wouldn’t just spread my hands and shrug my shoulders and look blank if someone asked me if I’d been successfully convinced that there is a god. I would say no, definitely not; I find the whole idea conspicuously implausible.

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

Cara Santa Maria gave a talk at the CFI Summit which I enjoyed a lot. She talked about having tattoos and piercings and always making sure to have the arm tattoo visible when she does public stuff, because she wants young people (and people in general) to realize that scientists can look like her and like them.

She also talked about becoming an atheist at 14, having been raised Mormon, and how difficult that was. Her parents were divorced; her father (but not her mother) was very strictly Mormon; her father told her it was his duty to force her to continue going to church until she was 18. So a gulf opened up between them that lasted for years. It’s powerful, moving stuff.

But I disagreed with some of what she said about religion and atheism.

One item was that she calls herself an agnostic atheist, because after all she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if there’s a god or not. I think she argued that nobody knows, that we should all call ourselves agnostic atheists or theists, that we can’t know. I don’t remember exactly, but that was the point of what she was saying – that it’s unknowable in both directions.

Yes but. It’s true as far as it goes but it’s not all there is to say. Knowing isn’t the only issue. If you say more of what there is to say, the picture becomes less evenly split between the two – knowing there’s a god, knowing there’s not a god, versus not knowing there’s a god, not knowing there’s not a god. There’s less symmetry if you ask about mental states short of knowing.

Atheism has better reasons to decline to believe there is a god than theism has to believe there is a god.

The two are not even close to symmetrical in that way. What good reasons are there to believe there is a god? Any?

I mean epistemically good reasons. I can of course think of emotionally or psychologically or socially good reasons, but reasons of that kind can be very much in tension with epistemically good reasons.

Another item was naturalism and supernaturalism. She made the familiar claim – science can investigate nature, it has the tools to do that, but science can’t investigate the supernatural, it doesn’t have the tools to do that.

But then she didn’t go on to ask the obvious, glaring, you-have-to-ask-it question: what does have the tools to investigate the supernatural? What tools would those be? Who has them? Where are they?

Framing the familiar claim in the familiar way implies that in fact there are such tools, it’s just that science doesn’t have them, in the sense that they don’t belong to science. I want to know what those tools are.

Suppose you have a tool shed labeled Naturalism. It holds a lot of things – empiricism, testing, falsification, replication, peer review, statistics, instruments, logic, mathematics. Then you have a tool shed labeled Supernaturalism. What’s in that shed? Name me one thing.

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

Tickets for QED 2014 are now on sale. If being in Manchester the weekend of the 12-13 April next year is at all feasible for you and you have £99 I strongly recommend going.

The people who run it are terrific and they do a brilliant job, and there are terrific people attending as well. (I met Rhys Morgan there, also his father Dr Paul of that ilk, also Alex Gabriel, also Maureen Brian, also Author of Jesus and Mo, to name only a few.)

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

Originally the second part of a comment by Salty Current on Shock-horror: research fails to find Big Danger in GMO crops

[Quoting "The Beautiful Void" @ 14]

Regarding the fact that Monsanto et al are for-profit companies: Of course they are. Farms themselves are for-profit companies, and often ones with dismal environmental records. Medicines are made by for-profit companies too; so are clothes, so are cars, so are computers. We live in a world where most of the things we encounter every day were made by for-profit companies. Where I live, in London, my very drinking water is supplied by a for-profit.

If your position is that all for-profit is inherently deplorable, then while I might disagree, I can’t fault your consistency. However, to say that it’s fine for someone to make a profit on the electricity you use but not on the food you eat? That’s a meaningless distinction and a dishonest argument.

This is mistaken in at least two important aspects. First, people can certainly believe with consistency that some products and services are OK to leave in the hands of private for-profit companies while seeing others as public functions. For example, many people think education (at least elementary and secondary) and fire departments are public goods, but don’t object to cars being made by private corporations. There are many aspects of an “industry” that are relevant to whether or to what extent people accept private control – the use of natural “resources,” the importance to well-being and health, the threat of monopolizing political power due to control of a resource or function, the threat of political propaganda, and so on. Surely you can recognize that there’s a relevant difference between health care and, say, pens?

I’m an anarchist, so I reject private, for-profit control and support self-governance in economic life in the same way as – and inextricably linked to – the way I do in political life. I also see the various areas as being so interconnected that the privatization of one affects many others. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the greatest problems and dangers as being related to goods that most directly affect health and well-being, environmental destruction, and political power. These include health care, food and agriculture, water and other natural “resources,” the media and communications, and education.

That these vital goods and functions are increasingly in the hands of corporations is not written in the stars. It’s a recent development, a perverse and destructive situation created through laws and often through violent dispossession. It can change, and will have to. I don’t understand what your argument is when you say “Regarding the fact that Monsanto et al are for-profit companies: Of course they are,” or whether that’s even supposed to be an argument. You seem to be implying that whatever arrangements exist are natural and inevitable and beyond question, or that there are no alternatives. But that’s not so.

You mentioned medicine, which is the area about which I have the most knowledge. Again, the corporate control of medicine is a very recent development. Here’s some of what the corporate drugmakers do:

• Corrupt the research process in any number of ways • Control the dissemination of scientific research by suppressing or selectively releasing results • Corrupt journal publishing • Corrupt doctors, medical education, and the field of medical ethics, turning health professionals into salespeople and corporate propagandists • Lie about scientific results (including to government agencies), including about harms to human health and effects on children • Encourage the (often off-label) use of drugs on vulnerable populations • Corrupt government agencies to do their bidding • Impose secrecy and fight efforts to make research/data publicly available • Shape IP and other laws (national laws and international treaties) in their favor • Use these laws, and deceit, in the service of biopiracy • Patent living entities and body parts • Attempt to dilute or eliminate protections for research subjects • Use vulnerable populations of humans (and nonhuman animals) harmfully in research and fight legal compensation efforts • Control the work of university researchers and threaten them when they rebel • Corrupt the mission of universities by twisting it to corporate ends • Co-opt publicly-funded research for their own profit • Corrupt media coverage of health and medicine • Invent diseases and disorders that don’t exist and spend billions in campaigns to convince people that they do • Shape the priorities of research to focus not on the greatest needs but on the most profitable areas • Shape the priorities of health care away from public health measures and towards drug use • Fight to criminalize investigative journalism and the exposure of their practices, and seek to silence and criminalize public protest • Spend billions to extend their patents as long as possible (including through “me-too” and “me-again” drugs) and make access difficult for drugs on which they hold a patent

That’s just a small sample. Some books that provide information: Harriet Washington’s Deadly Monopolies, Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and Bad Pharma, Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, Irving Kirsch’s The Emperor’s New Drugs, Joanna Moncrieff’s The Bitterest Pills, various works by Marcia Angell and Alison Bass, Sonia Shah’s The Body Hunters, Jennifer Washburn’s University, Inc., and many others.

There are also books and films about the corporatization of agriculture (Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved, for example) and water (Blue Gold, for example) and the general film The Corporation. Both Blue Gold and The Corporation can be watched for free on YouTube.

As I said, the corporatization of these areas isn’t an inevitable fact of life. It’s come about recently through the efforts of powerful people and organizations, at a tremendous cost. Part of that cost has been in lost opportunities. There are real alternatives, and the existing system is not only seen as bizarre and unacceptable to many people today but would be unimaginable to the vast majority of humans who’ve lived. Medicine and public health can and should be understood as public goods, subject to democratic control and built around real needs rather than sales, profits, shareholder values, and corporate power.

* I’m not going to talk about eating animals here, and I don’t recall what the report says about it, though it needs to stop not only out of moral consideration for the animals (reason enough) but also because a sustainable food system virtually requires it.

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

Carrie Poppy has a public post on Facebook that elicited a lot of very funny and apposite comments. I’ll share some of the best.

First the post (which started life as a tweet) (should I do that thing where your tweets go to Facebook?) (no, probably not, because I wouldn’t do it right):

Me: I don’t feel safe in that alley, because people got stabbed there. Them: HAVE YOU COMPARED IT TO EVERY OTHER ALLEY? You’re overreacting.

Then some of the best comments. Without authors, in case they prefer it that way. Except Carrie.

If there’s one thing the skeptical community taught me, it’s that one person’s lack of an experience can be accurately extrapolated out to all others.

Carrie Poppy: Right, just like how, if one person took homeopathy and had a good experience, that means it works. Right? I read that on my dick.

Particularly people of completely different genders, age groups, ethnic backgrounds, histories, level of mainstream attractiveness, prominence, and personal friendships with prominent people. Every experience is universal.

Listen, guys, I have never ONCE been mugged in an alley. I think that really says something about the people who claim they were.

I mean, even if you did get stabbed, I mean, have you tried all the stabbings? Because really, there are mild stabbings that I don’t even understand why people complain about compared to some of the real brutal stuff.

Carrie Poppy: Also, a great point. I am learning a lot.

Did you tell the stabber “no?”

Carrie: I know it’s really unfair of me not to publicly tell the story of my brutal stabbing, by the way. Reliving it does sound fun.

The best part of deciding to tell others about your stabbing is that, even if there were 6 witnesses to it including the owner of the alley, people will still call you a liar and whore and say you deserve far worse.

Was it a “legitimate” stabbing?

Look, there’s legal ramifications to getting yourself stabbed in alleys — or even TALKING about the possibility of being stabbed. Words have consequences. LEGAL consequences. WON’T YOU CONSIDER THE STABBER’S FEELINGS IN ALL OF THIS.

And you could please relive your sabbing over and over again *in detail* for every single person who isn’t convinced of stabbings in alleys. I’d say, five or six hundred times should do the trick. We won’t ask the stabber, of course. He’s been through enough already.

Here’s the thing. I don’t understand why you don’t just tell these stabbers to stop stabbing! You have to stand up for yourself!

Look, are you sure you didn’t ask to be stabbed and then later regret the decision?

And no offense or anything, but… do you really think YOU’RE the type someone would want to stab? I’m not trying to hurt your feelings or anything, but you just don’t strike me as a typical stabbing victim…

Ok that’s all I have patience for, obviously you need to go there and read the whole thread.

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

Never trust people approaching you in the street with a petition! They could be testing you.

A Londoner who suffered female genital mutilation has warned that political correctness is hampering the fight to stamp it out after asking people to sign a fake petition in its favour.

Leyla Hussein, 32, said many were scared to speak out against FGM because they were worried about criticising another culture.

She decided to conduct an experiment to see “how crazy political correctness has become” but was left in tears by the end.

Approaching shoppers with the petition supporting FGM, she told them she wanted to protect her  “culture, traditions and rights”.

In only 30 minutes 19 people signed it with some saying they believed FGM was wrong but because it was part of Ms Hussein’s culture they would add their names. Only one person refused to sign.

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

Let’s do a comparative study, or rather, let’s compare a couple of things. The American Humanist Association has a ten commandments, and I made up a ten commandments a few weeks ago, so it might be interesting to see if they have much in common. I naturally assume they have a good deal in common – a lot more in common with each other than either has with the Old Testament version.

The Humanist version:

1) Thou shalt strive to promote the greater good of humanity before all selfish desires.
2) Thou shalt be curious, for asking questions is the only way to find answers.

3) Harm to your fellow human is harm to humanity. Therefore, thou shalt not kill, rape, rob, or otherwise victimize anyone.

4) Thou shall treat all humans as equals, regardless of race, gender, age, creed, identity, orientation, physical ability, or status.

5) Thou shalt use reason as your guide. Science, knowledge, observation, and rational analysis are the best ways to determine any course of action.

6) Thou shalt not force your beliefs onto others, nor insist that yours be the only and correct way to live happily.

7) If thou dost govern, thou shalt govern with reason, not with superstition. Religion should have no place in any government which represents all people and beliefs.

8) Thou shalt act for the betterment of your fellow humans, and be, whenever possible, altruistic in your deeds.

9) Thou shalt be good to the Earth and its bounties, for without it, humankind is lost.

10) Thou shalt impart thy knowledge and wisdom gained in your lifetime to the next generation, so that with each passing century, humanity will grow wiser and more humane.

My version:

1. Don’t be cruel.
2. Love justice.
3. Embrace equality.
4. Practice compassion.
5. Be generous.
6. Do what you can to make the world better.
7. Aim for truth.
8. Think carefully.
9. Share what you learn with others.
10. Amuse.

Their 1 is my 5 and 6.

Their 2 I don’t have, and that’s an oversight – I do think curiosity is hugely important and worth inculcating and preaching.

Their 3 is my 1 and 4.

Their 4 is my 3.

Their 5 is my 7 and 8, although it’s also not. There’s an important difference, which I’ll elaborate below.

Their 6 I don’t exactly have, although you could say it’s implied by some of the others – 2 and 6, basically.

The same goes for their 7.

Their 8 is my 6.

Their 9 is included in my 6.

Their 10 is my 9, almost exactly.

They don’t have my 10. I think that’s an oversight. It may seem frivolous or trivial at first blush but I don’t think it is; that’s why I included it.

Now about their 5. It’s wrong.

5) Thou shalt use reason as your guide. Science, knowledge, observation, and rational analysis are the best ways to determine any course of action.

No, they aren’t. Not always, and not exclusively. 5 leaves out emotion, and that’s dead wrong. (And surprising, from humanists of all people!) Leaving out emotion doesn’t get you cleaner, more “rational” decisions, it gets you no decisions at all. People with brain damage in the emotions can’t make decisions because they don’t care either way.

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

Pentecostal churches in Africa do a lot of harm. The president of Cameroon is attempting to do something about that.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has ordered the closure of nearly 100 Christian churches in key cities, citing criminal practices organized by Pentecostal pastors that threaten the security of the West African nation.

But Pentecostal pastors said the move is evidence of Biya’s insecurity about the churches’ criticism of the government.

Biya is using the military to permanently shut down all Pentecostal church denominations in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, and the North West Regional capital, Bamenda, which have the largest Christian populations in Cameroon.

To an American, steeped in the culture of freedom of [including from] religion, that seems like a very risky move, and even ethically dubious. But then again it’s Pentecostal churches that stir up witch panics against children and other vulnerable people…

More than 50 churches have now been closed, with the government targeting nearly 100 in eight other regions.

“We will get rid of all the so-called Christian Pentecostal pastors who misuse the name of Jesus Christ to fake miracles and kill citizens in their churches. They have outstretched their liberty,” Mbu Anthony Lang, a government official in Bamenda, told CNN Wednesday.

Nearly 500 Pentecostal churches operate in Cameroon, but fewer than 50 are legal, he added.

On Sunday, a 9-year-old Christian girl collapsed and died during a prayer session in Winners’ Chapel, a Pentecostal church in Bamenda. The girl’s mother, Mih Theresa, told CNN Wednesday that the pastor intended to cast out the numerous demons that were in control of her daughter’s life.

“I want the government to stop these pastors who use mysterious powers to pull Christians and kill then for more powers. All my children have ran away from the Catholic Church in search for miracles, signs and wonders,” she told CNN while holding back tears.

Argh, what to do. “Religious freedom” shields horrors like that, so what is the best thing to do? I frankly don’t know.

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

GMO-phobes please note:

Massive Review Reveals Consensus on GMO Safety

“The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops.”

That’s the conclusion from a team of Italian scientists, who just completed a thorough systematic review of the scientific research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in the past decade. Their work is published in the journal Critical Review of Biotechnology.

But but but the genes of GM crops will spread to wild plants, other crops, and microorganisms.

The review affirmed that this can indeed occur.

“The formation of hybrids between GE crops and wild relatives is possible and documented,” Nicolia said.

There is a caveat, however. According to Nicolia, this sort of thing happens naturally all the time with normal crops. Local plant genotypes get replaced. Wild plant populations mutate and become resistant to herbicides. Soil bacteria can niftily uptake genes. But this isn’t necessarily harmful. It’s just evolution.

Well yes but evolution is god’s nature’s way of doing it and GMO is ARTIFICIAL.

Opponents of GM crops are in the news. In Washington, they’re pushing to label all GM products. Nationwide, they’re viewing GMO OMG, a new documentary damning genetic modification. On the Internet, they’re cheering a just-released report announcing that non-GMO food sales will total $178 billion this year, and are predicted to rise substantially by 2017.

Sadly, much of their discourse is devoid of scientific evidence, leaving a vacuum that gets filled with emotionally persuasive anecdotes, accusations of corporate corruption, and often erroneous information. It remains to be seen whether or not there will be room for the evidence contained in this exhaustive review.

You have to start somewhere.

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

Was there a rumor that the slime pit had gotten not so bad? Or did I imagine it? Anyway it’s not not so bad, that I can see. I normally don’t look at it, but it showed up in the stats again (as it does so often) and I was vaguely curious to see if they were raging at me for posting about the CFI Summit because whrblxqfxx. No, they’re raging at me for being so (physically, aesthetically, sexually) disgusting.

• Re: Bleeding from the Bunghole

by katamari Damassi » Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:44 pm  •  [Post 18619]

Cunning Punt wrote:Suddenly I want to fuck Service Dog.

Only because society has indoctrinated you that SD is sexy and that Ophie(par exemple) is not. Damn society!

by welch » Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:51 pm  •  [Post 18620]

katamari Damassi wrote:

Cunning Punt wrote:Suddenly I want to fuck Service Dog.

Only because society has indoctrinated you that SD is sexy and that Ophie(par exemple) is not. Damn society!

There is no method, neither in reality, nor the most fantastic imaginings of fiction, by which Ophie could become someone I’d be willing to stick it in, or frankly, even wish to think of in that manner. Given the choice between that and death by suffocation in a pit of spiders, I’d willingly commit my soul to countless numbers of the most foul creature to ever be part of Arachnida.
She dreams of a world in which her ugliness is only skin-deep.

Two and a half years later and John Welch (@bynkii on Twitter) is still at it. It’s bizarre. Why is my disgustingness relevant, and what’s it relevant to? It’s not as if I go around acting or talking as if I think I’m gorgeous and sexy. Why make a big point of how physically repellent I am? What’s it for? Just because on the internets you can get away with it? Who knows. I never understand it. I never will.

I once, as a child, shared with my mother my low opinion of an elderly guy’s necktie at a country auction. She hissed at me to be quiet – “he heard you.” I darted a look at his face and (the way I remember it at least) he did look mortified. I can’t begin to describe how horrible I felt – how I wished I could undo it, how I wished I hadn’t made him feel like that. I’ll never understand people who think it’s fun.

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