It was Merlyn’s 3d birthday yesterday. Dave Richards’s Merlyn. He has a birthday portrait.

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

Google says said happy 126th birthday to Erwin Schrödinger.

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From Gnu Atheism on Facebook:

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

A funny little thing about memory a couple of hours ago – a madeleine-equivalent but not to do with taste or smell. I happened on a mammoth yard sale which turned out to be loaded with interesting stuff. An old-fashioned wicker dolls’ carriage was the first thing I spotted, with old-fashioned doll dresses in it, plus a stack of handmade doll bedding in a pretty fabric. A couple of slipper chairs with purple velvet seats, an oddly-shaped floor lamp – and table after table after table full of dishes, costume jewelry, tchotchkes, toys – all sorts, and much nicer than the usual yard sale dreck. Hoarder-like in quantity but not in quality. I settled down to take my time and look at everything, because it was worth looking at.

So I got to a table with a box on it full of costume jewelry on cards, and I picked up a card with a pair of earrings with tiny shells – tiny shallow bowls surrounding a rhinestone – and zoom a memory shot out of the vault, one I’d never retrieved before. I had a kit or set of some kind when I was a child, to make costume jewelry of that kind. It must have had pieces like those tiny shallow bowls. The weird thing is that I don’t really remember the pieces, but looking at those earrings prompted a very real (yet vague) memory. I think you glued them onto things (but what things?), and you could make pins and earrings.

I looked at the rest of the stuff and then went back to the table with the box with the earrings to look at them again, and they had the same effect. It’s a bit eerie.

I’m pretty sure I hadn’t remembered that kit since childhood. It was interesting having it pop up like that – not unlike a popup ad, actually.

I have lots of available memories of toys – toys I can summon easily just by thinking of “toys I had as a child.” A tricycle, a red wagon, a Davy Crockett pistol, a rifle, a cowboy pistol with a holster. A little red table with two benches for dolls. A china tea set. Several dolls. A cardboard playhouse.

Mostly though I played with the outdoors. Trees, bushes, the brook, the fields – they were all my toys.

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

The “Gender Equality in the Secular Movement” Panel from Women in Secularism 2 is online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzb_VFkB6ew

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But she smiled at me. But she didn’t object when I sat next to her. But she flirted back. But she let me kiss her. But she laughed at my joke. But she didn’t say no when I refilled her glass. But she drank the wine. But she let me in when I rang her doorbell.

MIKE “Handy” Hancock MP has a curious attitude to the treatment of women, judging by his lawyers’ efforts to defend him. If a woman lets a man into her home, she consents to his advances, the lawyers are arguing as they try to derail an investigation into the Portsmouth MP’s alleged harassment of a mentally ill constituent.

“In order for Hancock to have access to [her] home she would have had to have let him in,” said his solicitors, Saulet Ashworth. “In other words, she clearly consented to any actions about which she now makes complaint. Indeed, she openly admits that she consented to our client cuddling her. So, even on her version of events, this is a trivial complaint.”

Extraordinary, isn’t it? Letting a friend in the front door equals consent to any sexual actions he might take. In what universe?!

The affair may be rather more than “trivial”. Handy is desperate to stop Portsmouth city council investigating allegations from a constituent, “Annie” (not her real name), which have forced him to resign the Lib Dem whip while he fights the case. She approached Hancock in 2009 over problems with noisy neighbours and respite care for her son. She told the MP she had mental health problems (brought about by childhood sexual abuse). She alleged that Hancock bought her presents – including a teddy bear he called “Mike”.

Annie’s solicitors, the human rights firm Birnberg Peirce, say that Hancock sent her text messages, which she has kept, including: “Please give me a chance you never know my Princess xxx,” and “You are special and sexy to me”.

In a letter to the council, they allege: “It is not a trivial complaint that Hancock attempted to force his tongue into her mouth, that he tried to part her legs with his foot or that he exposed his penis and invited her to masturbate him. Nor is it a trivial complaint that Mr Hancock used his position and status as both an MP and councillor to target, groom and exploit for his own purposes a vulnerable woman.”

How familiar is that – a bigshot man using his position and status to grab sex from a woman.

But she let me in. But she didn’t hit me with a tire iron. But she didn’t stab me with a kitchen knife. But she didn’t set her Rottweiler on me. That totally equals consent, to whatever.

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

Laurie Penny is tired of “Not all men!!” and similar petulant irrelevancies. True, it’s not all men, but that’s not the same thing as not a problem.

You can be the gentlest, sweetest man in the world yet still benefit from sexism. That’s how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because it’s less hassle that way. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turning away or yelling, as a child might, that it’s not your fault. And it isn’t your fault. I’m sure you’re lovely. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to do something about it.

Dealing with sexism – that is, trying to change it – really is a massive hassle. I know why that is, too – it’s because we’re all tangled up together. Women and men live together, work together, ride the bus together, swim in the culture together. Sexism is all over every bit of that stuff. To change it you have to pay attention to fucking everything, and that’s a huge pain in the ass. Nag nag nag – why is this show all about men working together and having a beer together and women are just an occasional dead body? Kvetch kvetch kvetch – why are you telling me to smile when I don’t know you from Adam? Call me a waaaaaaaambulance – I wish people could disagree with Hillary Clinton without calling her a bitch or a cunt.

But many hands make light work, right? If more people did it, the rest of us wouldn’t have to be such nagging kvetching Professional Victims.

Sexism should be uncomfortable. It is painful and enraging to be on the receiving end of misogynist attacks and it is also painful to watch them happen and to know that you’re implicated, even though you never chose to be.

Mmmmmm. No. Not as painful and enraging, at least. She doesn’t say it is, but she seems to imply it with that sentence structure – and I can tell you, it’s not. How do I know? Because attacks on people in groups that don’t include me are not as painful and enraging to me as misogynist attacks on me are. That’s a filthy thing to say, I realize, but it’s the truth. I hate them, but not as viscerally as I hate the ones that are personal.

Saying that “all men are implicated in a culture of sexism” – all men, not just some men –may sound like an accusation. In reality, it’s a challenge. You, individual man, with your individual dreams and desires, did not ask to be born into a world where being a boy gave you social and sexual advantages over girls. You don’t want to live in a world where little girls get raped and then are told they provoked it in a court of law; where women’s work is poorly paid or unpaid; where we are called sluts and whores for demanding simple sexual equality. You did not choose any of this. What you do get to choose, right now, is what happens next.

You can choose, as a man, to help create a fairer world for women – and for men, too. You can choose to challenge misogyny and sexual violence wherever you see them. You can choose to take risks and spend energy supporting women, promoting women, treating the women in your life as true equals. You can choose to stand up and say no and, every day, more men and boys are making that choice.

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

Guest post by Dan Bye, originally a comment on Not prepared for what happened.

Everyone agrees there is “a” problem, and nobody is claiming that philosophy’s problem is the worst of all academic fields. So what’s left is whether philosophy has a *bad* problem.

Massimo points out that there is no evidence that philosophy has a particularly bad problem, and leaves it at that. And it’s also true that the existence of male majorities can be the result of societal pressures (i.e. sexist attitudes in the world at large) rather than sexist hiring practice, which Massimo also leaves there.

What we’ve got here is a lecture about the nature of evidence. Thanks very much. The implication, of course, is that since there is no evidence that philosophy has a particularly bad problem, then nothing special need be done about it except deal with individual cases if they come up and wait umpteen generations for the old men of the academy to die off and be replaced by a few more women.

But Massimo is overlooking something crucial. Saul has been surprised by the feedback she’s got on this. Surprise indicates that the problem is worse than suspected. It means that it’s a hidden, invisible problem. There’s more of it than expected. Where before you might have encountered the odd case over decades, sometimes well handled, sometimes badly, now you have lots of cases coming to light – some of which have never been dealt with.

That ought to be pause for thought. It ought to make some in a position of power think, “hmm, I didn’t expect to see all of this, this needs a bit more attention”.

Confronted with a new set of surprising information, it is not enough to resort to the “no evidence of a particular problem” line. The correct response is “ooh, this is evidence of a surprisingly widespread and hitherto invisible problem, this needs investigating”. In other words, there is enough there that if you don’t have any data then you ought to be getting some data rather than merely pointing out that the data doesn’t exist.

If you’re out having a picnic and someone says “there’s a wasp! I don’t want to sit here!”, then you can say, “I’ll deal with the wasp, but it’s just one wasp, we don’t need to move.” If someone shouts “argh there’s a veritable cloud of wasps come out of nowhere!  we’ve got to move!”, then rather than saying, “there is no evidence that there are more wasps here than anywhere else”, you should be checking whether you’re sitting on a wasp’s nest. Alternatively, insert a better analogy here.

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

The hell with Strong Female Characters.

What what what? What should we want, weak female characters?

No; characters with more than one adjective.

Sophia McDougall explains in the New Statesman.

…the phrase “Strong Female Character” has always set my teeth on edge, and so have many of the characters who have so plainly been written to fit the bill.

I remember watching Shrek with my mother.

“The Princess knew kung-fu! That was nice,” I said. And yet I had a vague sense of unease, a sense that I was saying it because it was what I was supposed to say.

She rolled her eyes. “All the princesses know kung-fu now.”

No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s “feisty,” or “kick-ass” come to that.

The obvious thing to say here is that this is because he’s assumed to be “strong” by default. Part of the patronising promise [premise?] of the Strong Female Character is that she’s anomalous. “Don’t worry!” that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero’s love interest is an SFC. “Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can’t do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face.”

In real life, normal women aren’t weak and boring and unable to do anything worthwhile. It’s in movies and tv that normal women are like that (and anomalous women are always having cat-fights over shoes).

Is Sherlock Holmes strong? It’s not just that the answer is “of course”, it’s that it’s the wrong question.

What happens when one tries to fit other iconic male heroes into an imaginary “Strong Male Character” box?  A few fit reasonably well, but many look cramped and bewildered in there. They’re not used to this kind of confinement, poor things. They’re used to being interesting across more than one axis and in more than two dimensions.

A lot more than one axis and a lot more than two dimensions.

Martin Amis is a good example of this, as I’ve mentioned before. Ever read The Information? It’s brilliant, in some ways, and deeply stupid in others. The protagonist is complicated and detailed as fuck, and the female characters have all the depth of paper dolls.

That kind of thing unnerves me, because Amis apparently doesn’t even really believe women are quite there – and if even guys as clever as he is can be that wrong, what hope is there?

It’s much the same with the blankness and scarcity of most female characters in popular culture. The Smurfette principle – nearly everybody is male (and complicated, interesting, detailed), but there might be one female, who is Fluffy. Or Beautiful. Or Intrepid.

Ok now I’m discouraged.

H/t Stacy.

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

That’s how to make girls eager to go to school – force them to undergo “virginity” tests. Way to go, Indonesia.

From the Guardian:

A plan to make female high school students undergo mandatory virginity tests has been met with outrage from activists, who argue that it discriminates against women and violates their human rights.

Education chief Muhammad Rasyid, of Prabumulih district in south Sumatra put forward the idea, describing it as “an accurate way to protect children from prostitution and free sex”. He said he would use the city budget to begin tests early next year if MPs approved the proposal.

“This is for their own good,” Rasyid said. “Every woman has the right to virginity … we expect students not to commit negative acts.”

Stupid thug. Having a right to one’s own virginity is not the same thing as being forcibly ”tested” for it as a condition of attending school. That in fact is the opposite of a right to one’s own virginity, since the school is in effect raping the students by “testing” them.

And why just girls? Why is it only women who have a “right” to virginity?

The test would require female senior school students aged 16 to 19 to have their hymen examined every year until graduation. Boys, however, would undergo no investigation into whether they had had sex.

The plan has met with some support from local politicians, who said the test would help cut down on “rampant” promiscuity in the district.

It would cut down on “rampant” female education, too.

Local and national MPs, activists, rights groups and even the local Islamic advisory council have all denounced Rasyid’s plan as potentially denying female students the universal right to education, in addition to targeting girls for an act that may not have even been consensual, such as sexual assault.

Good. Let’s hope they prevail.

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

Education is important, right? It’s important to do the early stages of it well, not just the last stages, right?

Teaching is hard work. Teaching in a middle school is crazy hard work. A Facebook friend who just started teaching in a middle school posted an account of his third day, and gave me permission to quote it. It is, frankly, horrifying.

Oh oh. Day3 was worse than Day1. My 3-day experience of teaching has been pretty horrific overall. I estimate my half-life as a teacher, before I have to bail to live, is just a few more days. Jail would be better. (I could read and sleep more.) The amount of work involved is insane – and I’ll have an additional class from next week (and won’t get out of school tomorrow till 9pm, to sleep at 10 to get up at 3). There’s essentially no lesson prep time at all – except the weekend. I have huge admiration for my fellow teachers and care about almost all the students I’ve had, but those important positives are vastly outweighed by the negatives. In spite of all that, I was doing my very best in my second class this morning when I was ‘observed’ by the principal of my school (a man who has yet to respond to any of my first-week greetings when I cross his path). I was pleased that he was seeing one of my better newbie lessons. Soon thereafter I was summoned to his office, told my lesson didn’t conform to the ruling US ed. ‘group activities’ fashion and told that all my lessons must be documented at length (this week presumably during my regular five hours of troubled sleep). Why should I endure all that when I could be comfortable in England growing old with my family?

It’s as if the goal were to drive all teachers out of teaching.

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

Emery Emery, the “Great Penis Debate” guy, the Ardent Atheist, the guy who wrote that stupid piece about how we all just hate sex – Emery Emery has a new wheeze. His new wheeze is a fundraiser to donate to Michael Shermer’s legal fund.

I’M JUST A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY

• My name is Emery Emery and I am launching this fund raising effort for two reasons.

1. As a show of public support for Michael Shermer.

2. To help alleviate the expenses associated with Michael’s effort to defend his name.

• I do not know Michael Shermer personally and he has no idea I am setting up this fund raiser. I will be making sure that all money donated will go directly to his legal team and not to him personally.
• If any funds are raised beyond Mr. Shermer’s legal expenses it will be used to promote skepticism and science.
• The way that money will be donated will be put to a vote of the donors themselves via email.

If you believe what PZ Myers did was wrong, express your disgust by donating to Michael Shermer’s legal fund now.

All of that seems to assume complete confidence, even certainty, that Shermer has never sexually harassed anyone. That’s a lot to be that confident or even certain of, in the circumstances.

Why Should I Donate?

• Don’t sit back and do nothing while Michael Shermer is accused of a heinous crime and do not think it will stop here. PZ Myers and the FtB feminists have set their sights on skepticism and atheism in general. They clearly want to do harm to the institutions.
• A show of support will send the message that we as a community will no longer tolerate illogical attacks on people who do not condone nor support sexual harassment, sexual predation, or rape any more than we support defamation of our community members from anonymous allegations.

“PZ Myers and the FtB feminists” – sounds like a band, don’t it.

We’ve “set [our] sights on skepticism and atheism in general” – what does that mean? We want to shoot and kill skepticism and atheism? No we don’t. We “want to do harm to the institutions” – what does that mean? Nothing, really; it’s gibberish. If he means we want secularist and skeptical organizations to do a much better job of dealing with sexism and sexual harassment, and of including women instead of ignoring them, then yes, we do. But guess what – that’s not “doing harm” to them. On the contrary, it’s making them better.

Granted not everyone will see it that way. In particular, people who have been enjoying their freedom to sexually harass with impunity won’t see it that way. But people who don’t see why atheism and skepticism have to resemble frat parties will, and I think the latter vastly outnumber the former. I think better of atheism and skepticism than Emery Emery does. He thinks they’re all about people like him, and I don’t.

The most disgusting item in Emery Emery’s fundraiser is the last one, the $5000 one.

$5,000+ A Bottomless Glass Of Wine

For $5000 you will receive a night of drinking wine with Emery Emery who will not be drinking but keeping your glass full.

See what he did there? Yeah.

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

Via Sanal Edamaruku, NDTV on the passage of that law in Maharashtra.

The state government today cleared an Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance to replace a Bill that had been approved by the cabinet but had lapsed before it could be taken up in the assembly. The Bill has been pending for eight years.

Among other things, the law seeks to make it punishable for self-styled godmen to prey on people by offering rituals, charms, magical cures and propagating black magic.

Dr Dabholkar had relentlessly campaigned for a law against superstition and black magic in the face of criticism from right-wing groups who had called him “anti-Hindu”.

Sanal also linked to a separate story about a “godman” – one charged with sexual assault on a minor. Funny thing about those “godmen”…

Delhi Police have booked self-styled godman Asaram Babu on charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.

A zero FIR under section 376 was lodged at Kamala Market police station in central Delhi. on Tuesday evening.

The case pertains to the rape of a girl at a hostel in Jodhpur. “We registered the complaint, but the girl said the incident occurred in Rajasthan, so the case will be forwarded to Rajasthan,” a police officer told IANS.

…

The cops are approaching the case cautiously so as not to risk hurting the religious sentiments of a community.

Yes…we get that a lot.

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

The IHEU has compiled reactions to the murder of Narendra Dabholkar.

The Humanist and rationalist community in India has reacted with dignified anger and sadness, remembering an effective and stalwart campaigner, dedicated to the people of Maharashtra but always ready to cooperate across organizational boundaries. He was one of India’s foremost rationalists, working for social justice, against  caste discrimination, and exposing the so-called miracles of exploititive ‘godmen’. His work was well-known, and some aspect of it is widely believed to have motivated his killers.

The law against fraud via superstion was passed.

Dabholkar also lead the campaign for an anti-superstition Bill in Maharashtra state, and in the space of two days since his assassination, the state government has — after eight years of campaigning by activists and prevarication by the authorities — finally pushed through the Bill which Dabholkar worked so hard to see implemented.

The Maharashtra state government enacted an emergency ordinance to ban rituals, superstition and black magic. A bill similar to which Dr Dabholkar had been campaigning for must still be endorsed by the parliament. Previous versions of the Bill had been approved by the cabinet but lapsed before they could be put to a vote, despite being on the list for eight years. The emergency legislation makes it an offence to exploit or defraud people with ‘magical’ rituals, charms and cures.

One of the many statements:

Vidya Bhushan Rawat of the Social Development Foundation told IHEU, “The work carried by him and his organisation is enormous. India and South Asia are not so receptive to free-thinking and we face it regularly in our work… It is a sad day but it can not and should not deter the humanist rationalist activist to work on. India is in danger as religious fascist and Hindu nationalist forces with active support from international and national media, are on the rise. It is a big challenge and we have to fight it. We know much tougher days are ahead. The country is in the grip of hate-mongering people ready to kill people to get their political benefit. We condemn this murder and demand immediate inquiry from the government of Maharastra.”

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

The BBC reports a situation.

Some young HIV patients are giving up their medicine after being told by Pentecostal Church pastors to rely on faith in God instead, doctors warn.

Medical staff told the BBC a minority of pastors in England were endangering young church members by putting them under pressure to stop medication.

It’s a test of faith, you see.

I wonder if those pastors ever test their faith by walking in front of trains.

The doctors and health professionals reported a variety of cases:

• Some said they had dealt with parents who felt under pressure to stop giving their young children their HIV medicine – and some had actually done so

• Others were breastfeeding mothers with HIV who refused the medicine that would stop the virus being passed onto their babies
• Some were young people, making the decision for themselves

The healthcare workers also reported that some patients had been told by their pastors they would be healed by prayer or by drinking blessed water.

That makes me feel indignant. Those pastors shouldn’t be doing that.

Dr Toni Tan, a consultant paediatrician, said some Pentecostal pastors were endangering the lives of sick followers.

“It’s my view that it’s very wrong for faith leaders to actively encourage their congregations to stop taking their medication… it will lead to their deaths.”

Pentecostals and other Christians see healing, like speaking in tongues, as a sign of the presence of God.

They should get over that.

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

Massimo Pigliucci asked yesterday, “Does philosophy have a sexual harassment problem?” He asked it in response to Jennifer Saul’s article in Salon, which was titled “Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem.”

Last week Jennifer Saul, a philosopher at the University of Sheffield, published an article in Salon entitled: “Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem.” While there is much substance and nuance in the body of the article, I sincerely hope that Prof. Saul did not actually choose the title herself (editors often do that sort of thing), because the message it sends is anything but nuanced, and if taken at face value also not particularly constructive.

And that’s what he got from that article? That saying philosophy has a sexual harassment problem is overstating the problem? Rather than that, say, the sexual harassment there is in philosophy is a problem? He is, in short, worrying more about the reputation of philosophy than he is about the women being harassed?

After that he pauses to say that sexual harassment is a bad thing and he doesn’t think it’s been addressed yet.

Saul goes on to point out that since she started a blog devoted to women in philosophy she began receiving an alarming number of anonymous testimonials of sexual harassment in the workplace, with heart wrenching stories concerning undergraduate students, graduate students, and young faculty. These stories are aggravated by the fact that often nothing was done about the incidents in question, sometimes discouragingly pointing to a failure of the people involved, as well as of their institutions, in even understanding that there was a problem. It makes for sober reading for anyone who still doesn’t take this issue seriously.

But none of this amounts to the conclusion stated in the title of Saul’s essay: we simply do not know whether philosophy as a field is particularly vexed by sexual harassment, or whether philosophy is simply a microcosm of the still largely misogynistic society in which we live.

But that isn’t the conclusion stated in the title of Saul’s essay. The title of the essay isn’t “Philosophy has an exceptionally bad sexual harassment problem.” The title just says that philosophy has a problem.

 Indeed, in the body of the article Saul herself clearly states: “When I talk to people about this, I am invariably asked whether sexual harassment is worse in philosophy than in other fields. The short answer is that we don’t really know: it’s very difficult to get good data on something that is drastically underreported and often kept confidential even once reported.” Good, then I hope that Saul protested vehemently with the Salon editor when she saw the title under which her article appeared, because it literally indicts an entire fields of professionals — most of whom do not engage in sexual harassment — with a broad brush that is as offensive as it is unsubstantiated.

No, it doesn’t. Saying there’s a problem doesn’t indict the whole field, much less all the people (whether professional or amateur) who work in the field. There just isn’t any need to be defensive about it.

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

What the hell happened to personal responsibility? Eh? Waah waah waah, they provoked me, make them stop – that’s all we ever hear. Man up, anti-choicers! If someone offers you more wine an abortion clinic to target with violence, you can just say no.

Amanda Marcotte tells us the anti-choicers in Wichita are arguing over this point, now that a new clinic has opened where Dr Tiller’s used to be until an anti-choicer shot him dead in a church.

But now there’s a new clinic in town where Dr. Tiller’s used to be, and irate anti-choice groups are petitioning the city to have it shut down.

Their reasoning is that the clinic, the South Wind Women’s Center, provokes them into harassing the people going in and out of it, and because they understand that they are super annoying people, they would like the provocation taken away. 

Better yet, an intra-fundamentalist controversy has erupted over the question of exactly how provocative the clinic is. One group says that medical workers providing private abortion care are deliberately provoking gun violence and have to be stopped before some hapless responsible gun owner who brings a gun to an abortion clinic ends up in jail because a meanie doctor pushed him to murder. The other groups say that while they fully agree that the clinic is making them harass its workers and patients, it’s a step too far to suggest they’re pushing anyone to shoot at them.

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