I have no time and no energy for blogging just at the moment. So, for your entertainment, I present baby penguins:
And feeding time:
Month: January 2012
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What Is an Ally?
I’m seeing some talk about who is and who isn’t an ally. Some of it is good. Some of it is…not. This is slightly modified from what was published here.
Once again, I see the latest in a very long line of posts I’ve seen that demonstrate that we in the blogosphere very rarely seem to understand what an ally is.
I’m not really sure how it happened. Allies in the culture wars aren’t appreciably different than military or political allies, but somehow, the meaning of the word has changed online. We’ve gone from “In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them” to the assumption that the act of alliance comes with specific obligations and that people are “bad allies” or not allies at all if particular things are done or left undone.
This isn’t true, of course. Continue reading “What Is an Ally?”
D.J. Grothe on the Feminist and Atheist Blogospheres
In the discussion of my post suggesting D.J. Grothe has a bad habit of walking into arguments and taking a side without fulling understanding the implications (which he assures me he doesn’t), he signed off with the following:
This will be my last post on this topic. I’ll go back to believing what I have believed for a while now about some of these atheist blogs, now yours included: that fomenting movement controversy often seems to be prized over honest and sincere argument, that some folks are too quick to vilify and engage in destructive in-group/out-group thinking, that these online communities are exclusive rather than inclusive, and that unfortunately as a whole, the feminist and atheist blogospheres often operate quite separately from and counter the growing skeptical movement working to combat unreason and harmful pseudoscience in society.
Now, there are a few things to be noted about this statement. Continue reading “D.J. Grothe on the Feminist and Atheist Blogospheres”
Negotiables
I haven’t had much to say on the Mallorie Nasrallah letter. I think this three-line comment has been the sum of my reaction. I realized that’s because I’ve said it all before, with the focus being compliments instead of sexual advances. This was originally posted here.
Having been mostly away from the internet for the last couple of weeks, I’m late to the party as usual, but I still think there’s something that needs to be said about the reception that Sheril of The Intersection received at Discover Blogs. Well, not so much about the reception itself. Sheril said just about everything that needed to be said about that. Scicurious’s take on the incident is well worth reading, as well, as is DrugMonkey’s commentary on why this should and does matter to men too.
So after all that, and everything else that’s been said, what’s left to talk about? Maybe the fact that every single time a discussion like this occurs, someone wants to know when compliments are appropriate. Sure, the temptation is there to dismiss the questions as distractions from the discussion at hand, but it is a real question for many people. Some of those comments are honest cris de coeur. And the conflicting responses, plus the occasional “never outside a relationship” aren’t helpful.
The real answer is both blindingly simple and incredibly difficult in practice: it’s negotiable.
Saturday Storytime: Fire and Ice
Laura Bradley Rede writes beautifully of desire and responsibility and complications. Her new young adult novel, Darkride, is about all those things and getting very good reviews. It also happens to be on sale at the moment. This short story is about a very different set of complication.
“No liaisons with mortals. The Queen hasn’t changed her mind. But…” He hesitates. “But I hoped that you might have changed yours. Sabine, there is enough Faery blood in your veins that you could survive the Change. If you chose to embrace it, to claim your magic–”
“And give up my humanity. Yes, I know. And I’ve thought about it. I really have. I barely think of anything else.”
“And?”
I can hardly stand to extinguish the spark of hope in his eyes. “And I’m still not ready. I mean, life here sucks sometimes, but to give it up, to pass through the Veil completely and become something else, to watch my mom and my friends get old and die… It’s different for you. Faery is your world, and you can visit this one whenever you want. But once I pass through the Veil I can never come back to this world. And Faery isn’t my home.”
“It could be.” His voice is quiet. “Faery can be a beautiful place.”
Beautiful. And terrible. Hawth knows that as well as I do—better, really. I shake my head sadly. “I can’t.”
His face is full of pain. “If that is how you really feel.”
Is it? I’ve made the decision a thousand times over in my head, but now, looking at him, I find myself wavering. That’s certainly how I felt back in New York, when I had so much human life to lose: my friends, my aunts and cousins, my photography, even school. But my mom took me away from all that when she took me away from Hawthorn. Now I wonder if her plan has backfired. Trying to save my human life, has she screwed over everything that made it worth living?
But there is still her. Angry as I am at her, I love my mom. Could I leave her alone completely? This isn’t leaving for college or even running away from home. There would be no coming back.
Hawth sees the answer in my eyes. His own gaze drops to the icy floor. “Then I will have to be the one to change.”
Malice
She was just there one day when we walked out the door, sleek and friendly. We stopped to pet her briefly and went on our way.
She was there again in a day or two, then again after that, less sleek and dirtier every time. Still always friendly. We put out food when she showed up, but pettings were her first priority. So we pet her. Then we washed our hands.
It was when she showed up with the oil spot on her back, I think, that we took her in. There was a spare bedroom at that point where she could be quarantined until we could get her to the vet. After the gray kitten a few months before who turned out to have feline leukemia, we were careful about getting too attached, and very careful of our two other cats.
The bath was a necessity. She stank, and the oil had to go away before it got all over everything. I’ve never seen a cat enjoy a bath before, but she seemed grateful she didn’t have to clean it all up.
The vet’s visit was expensive. Spaying a pregnant cat, even if she hasn’t been pregnant long, is an expensive thing. “By the way,” the vet said, “what you have is a lynx-point Siamese.” Siamese. First heat. Well, that explained why she was now a stray. That and a certain amount of random cruelty from idiots who couldn’t handle noise.
She was clear on the feline leukemia, and there had been plenty of sniffing and pawing under the door to the spare bedroom, so it was time to introduce the cats. She went straight for the Mysticism, the older cat, the moment she saw her. That’s when she got her first name: Malice. Continue reading “Malice”
Atheists Talk: Thomas Riskas on "Deconstructing Mormonism"
If you think you’ve learned all you need to know about Mormonism from South Park episodes and the broadway musical, Book of Mormon, you must join us this Sunday! Atheists Talk will be interviewing author, lecturer, and secular humanist, Thomas Riskas about his book Deconstructing Mormonism: An Analysis and Assessment of the Mormon Faith, which is introduced in the forward by philosopher and professor Kai Nelson.
Thomas Riskas converted to Mormonism as a young man and spent 20 years in the Church. He rose up through the ranks of leadership, acting an Elder, Seventy and High Priest. He was a missionary, a mission leader and mission president for seven years. He had a family and raised his children in the Church. Years later he came to believe that the claims made by Mormonism – and by all religions with similar belief systems – are not only untrue, but an empty nonreality. In Deconstructing Mormonism, Mr. Riskas examines in detail the Mormon concepts of God, the “Plan of Salvation”, and faith in God and Christ, and then breaks down these ideas by illuminating the contradictions in Mormon faith and examining the psychosocial effects of the faith on its believers.
Related Links:
Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.
About Those Pageviews
D.J. Grothe keeps mentioning pageviews in this discussion and suggesting they have some sort of causal effect on unnecessary dramatics and controversy. It’s not a new charge, of course. This is the internet, the land of the hyperactive meme. So let’s take a look at the idea, shall we?
There are three parts to this. Continue reading “About Those Pageviews”
Dammit, DJ
Note: Minor tweaks have been made to this post for clarity.
I’ve been working on this post for quite a while, thinking it ought to be as close to perfect as I can make it. Perfect is unattainable. So, since I mentioned this here without naming names (bad form), I’ll take a page from Debbie Goddard’s playbook and some heart from the fact that Ms. Magazine just tweeted one of my posts, jump in, and finish the thing.
I first noticed the problem in DJ Grothe’s behavior in April, when Rebecca Watson posted about Lawrence Krauss defending his friend who had pled guilty to sex with 30 underage prostitutes, some as young as 13, and invoking his authority as a scientist to do so. Grothe popped up in the comments to defend Krauss:
Radford's Pink Problem
What possessed Ben Radford to “debunk” a four-year-old is beyond me. What possessed him to do so outisde his expertise without reading up on any of the decades of research into the development and enforcement of gender roles in young children, relying instead on arguments from his personal incredulity, is a question for the ages. What possessed him to double-down on some of his absurd claims after Rebecca Watson exposed their vacuity is–you know what? I don’t care. It simply pisses me off. As a skeptic.
One of Bradford’s original arguments was that maybe aisles of toys aimed at girls were pink because dolls were pink and little girls like playing with dolls. Rebecca pointed out that dolls are not, in fact, pink. As an aside, she noted that this argument was also exclusionary, since not all dolls have pink skin.
Any guesses on which part Radford treated as the argument?