Damon Poeter at PC mag takes a more rational view than Redditt. (Probably 99% of human beings take a more rational view than Redditt.)

This isn’t very complicated. Posting pictures of people without their knowledge is both an invasion of their privacy and a form of outing them to the Internet. Doing so may be protected speech, but it doesn’t mean it’s good speech, or speech that shouldn’t be shamed from the hilltops as an exercise of one’s own free speech. What’s more, Adrian Chen himself didn’t “do anything illegal” by exposing Michael Brutsch (and yes, Redditors didn’t do anything illegal by blocking Gawker links, etc., etc. — the Ferris Wheel can go round and round, but at some

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Reddit speaks. Reddit says what it’s going to do about stuff like “creepshots.” Nothing, of course.

But Redditt doesn’t admit the nature of the stuff it’s going to do nothing about. Reddit bullshits. Reddit pretends the subject is “distasteful” stuff. That makes Redditt a lying dog.

Social news site Reddit will not censor “distasteful” sections of its website, its chief executive has said.

The site has recently been criticised over sections in which users shared images of, among other things, women photographed without their knowledge.

Yishan Wong told the site’s moderators legal content should not be removed, even if “we find it odious or if we personally condemn it”.

“We stand for free speech… we are not going to ban

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Hilary Mantel won the Booker for the sequel to Wolf Hall. I just got Wolf Hall out of the library a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been reading it, and…

I don’t like it. I not only don’t like it, I also think it’s not very good. I don’t think it’s terrible; I’ve seen far worse; but I don’t think it’s very good. I think it’s padded, the way so much “literary” fiction is padded. I’m increasingly allergic to padded literary fiction.

Plus she has this weird thing where you’re supposed to get that an oddly non-specific “he” in any particular passage is always Cromwell, except the trouble with that is that there are often other “he”s … Read the rest

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Heh heh heh. Jesus has a hermeneuticon. Well of course he does.

Find out what kind at Jesus and Mo.… Read the rest

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Thugs with guns killed a volunteer who was handing out polio vaccine to children under 5 in Baluchistan.

Not much more to say really.

Except this.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

There have been 30 confirmed cases of polio in Pakistan this year according to the government, 22 of them in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Another day, another bad thing done.… Read the rest

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Kunwar Khuldune Shahid writes in Pakistan Today that it’s stupid to blame the Taliban while defending the ideology behind the Taliban.

Let’s stop carving out quasi religions, or defending ideologies that we’ve all grown up blindly following as the truth. Let’s call a spade a spade instead and realize that at the end of the day as much as you might have a cardiac arrest admitting it, the root cause of religious extremism is: religion – especially in its raw crude form, which again is the only ‘authentic’ form.

Every single religion has a violent streak. Every single one of them orders violence and killing in one form or the other for the ‘non-believers’. One can quote verses from every

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There’s a dead rat outside my door. Ew. I’m hoping a crow will come along and take it away. Or a cat. Or a dog. Or a swat team. Or the National Guard. Or the mayor. Or a wolf. Or a raccoon. Or a bald eagle. Or that neighbor with the very loud voice.… Read the rest

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The chances are good that at best Malala will be less than she would have been if those shits hadn’t shot her in the head. Time talked to a brain injury expert.

When will they be able to tell what the long-term damage is?

Months to years. It’s six months to a year before you get a sense of what the long-term damage is. Her recovery and prognosis depend on what the initial neurological deficits are. Young people do much better, prognostically, for recovery. In the early stages there may be a lot of fairly dramatic improvements. The question becomes, What will be the long-term deficits, compared to her baseline? That’s often a much more difficult question that takes time.

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Some grey bloke has a new video about charismatic atheist doodz…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-FSzy3Mbqo

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I want to post a picture of a Mars rock. It has to be a pyramidal rock. Luckily, there is a picture of a pyramidal rock at NASA.

[robotic voice] “Look at this glorious picture of a pyramidal rock on Mars. I am such a geek.”

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Hahahahahahahahahaha… Read the rest

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Drop everything and read this article by Soraya Chemaly on a book about the link between violence against girls and women and military conflict.

If you take one idea away from the year 2012 this should be this:

“The very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity; the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is how well its women are treated. What’s more, democracies with higher levels of violence against women are as insecure and unstable as nondemocracies.”

U.S.? Look at yourself in the mirror. 

There is a direct relationship between the treatment of women in everyday life — in homes, on streets, at schools and

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A bit of housekeeping. Boring, I know, but it’s an outrageous vicious lie and it’s sticking in my head the way corn sticks in your teeth. It’s so outrageous and so vicious that this one time I will even link to the pit. It may be futile or even worse than futile, since Studies Have Shown that correcting a lie enforces the lie rather than correcting it; nevertheless I can’t just let it sit there.

One “Richard Strawkins” (see what I mean about how this works? the lie won’t damage him [I'll assume he really is male] because that’s not his name; it will damage only me) said on October 5,  in a discussion of Dawkins’s foreword to the … Read the rest

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She’s getting specialist treatment.

Although Pakistan had initially insisted she could be treated in her home country, a military statement said that a panel of doctors had recommended she be “shifted abroad to a UK centre which has the capability to provide integrated care to children who have sustained severe injury”.

On arrival at Birmingham Airport, she was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance, travelling at a slow speed because of the nature of her wounds.

The hospital has a recently-opened major trauma centre specialising in both gunshot wounds and head injuries.

Its specialist team has 10 years of experience of treating UK military casualties and Medical Director Dr David Rosser said Malala Yousafzai “could be viewed as

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Al Jazeera has a grim update about Malala, but it’s from an unnamed source who isn’t authorized to talk to the media, so…who knows. The latest on the record news though is better.

Military surgeons conducted three consecutive clinical examinations on Sunday and compiled a report which stated: “Malala’s condition is stable and she is recovering from her injury steadily.”

According to military surgeons at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology, Rawalpindi, Malala respired without a ventilator on Sunday for a few moments after successfully moving her limbs on Saturday.

“It was an amazing development made by her body. Usually patients on ventilators with such a complicated head injury never show such signs … Keeping our fingers crossed to see

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Is that cool or what!

Mind you, my friend the author of Jesus and Mo may not like it much, especially given the feeble quality of the wit. But my monstrous ego is flattered.

 I don’t get any lines though. I just say Peezus Christ at the end every time.

I’m not even in the latest one (number 8). I guess I’m just there for the rhyme. Monstrous ego deflated.

… Read the rest

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