When Carrie met Rocket

Amy did an interview of Carrie Poppy about Women in Secularism. There are a lot of pictures taken by Amy so you can see with your own eyes how horribly bullied Carrie is being by the dreaded FTBullies who of course include the Skepchicks and also Rocket. Rocket is being super mean and Carrie is just crushed.

Have you been influenced by any women in the secular or skeptic communities? If so, who and why were they influential?

I don’t agree with everything anyone says (you know, because I’m a human with a unique brain that’s not exactly like anyone else’s brain), but I’ve at various times been moved by Eugenie Scott’s courageous and exhausting work fighting anti-science in the classroom, Sharon Hill’s tireless skeptical gumshoe work, Sadie Crabtree’s amazing talk at TAM9 wherein she spoke on effective skeptical outreach, Rebecca Watson’s humor and insight, Claire Knowlton’s disarmingly honest and challenging work on Selfish Blogger (where she calls on people to give up as much money and time as they can to those in need, on humanist grounds) and you, Amy Davis Roth, who once said to me “the only reason to get into skepticism is to help people.” Hear hear.

There are also countless women involved locally who work, often thanklessly, out of the spotlight, and are always inspirations. Some examples I see every day are Stacy Kennedy, Wendy Hughes, Taylor Proctor, Alice Pine, Louise Monaco, and on and on.

Stacy and Alice! I have been influenced by them too likewise.

Read it all and check out Rocket being a bully.

Exploding gifts from god

Dr Jen Gunter tells us about ectopic pregnancies and Catholic medical “ethics.”

A pregnancy has trophoblastic tissue, which is aggressive, like cancer, because the walls of the uterus are thick. The walls of the fallopian tube, on the other hand, are thin. Alert readers can tell where this is going.

These mini Ms. Pacman-like trophoblasts chew up the relatively flimsy fallopian tube tissue, damage blood vessels, and catastrophic bleeding ensues. The pregnancy can literally blow a hole in the side of the fallopian tube. [Read more…]

Busted

Hey, those Florida Humanists feeding the homeless? There are parts of Florida that frown on that kind of thing. And by “frown on” I mean “criminalize.” Orlando for example.

Over the past week, twelve members of food activist group Food Not Bombs have been arrested in Orlando for giving free food to groups of homeless people in a downtown park. They were acting in defiance of a controversial city ordinance that mandates permits for groups distributing food to large groups in parks within two miles of City Hall. Each group is allowed only two permits per park per year; Food Not Bombs has already exceeded their limit. They set up their meatless buffet in Lake Eola knowing that they would likely be arrested as a result.

Goddam class warriors.

Florida Humanists help the hungry

From the Humanists of Florida:

Lakeland, Florida

Humanists Help the Hungry

Today, on Giving Tuesday, the Humanists of Florida Association (HFA) is proud to announce its new initiative: Humanists Helping the Hungry. The HFA is seeking donations to support Secular Humanists throughout Florida who are in financial need. This fund will go towards providing the basics, especially food, to those who need it most.Donations are tax deductible.   We will be providing gift cards from local supermarkets for those that qualify for the program.  Applications are available in the link below.

Please consider giving $100, or about the cost of what your family would spend on a nice dinner. It is a most humanistic way to say “thank you” for your own well-being. [Read more…]

Anyone else reckon?

Now that’s really funny. The things people dream up!

Anyone else reckon @CarriePoppyYES resigned from #JREF because of the abuse from #FTBullies?

Right?

What abuse? And if there were any abuse, why would it prompt Carrie to resign from JREF? It would be like resigning from your job at NASA because someone tailgated you on the Evergreen Point bridge. It would be like quitting a job at The Mayo Clinic because the counter person got your order mixed up at an Albuquerque McDonalds. It would be random, dude.

It’s like the #FTBullies hijacking all over again. Let’s just blame #FTBullies for everything – the weather, food we don’t like, bad movies, traffic, Rush Limbaugh, everything.

Also – seriously – Carrie hasn’t had any “abuse” from Freethought bloggers. Really.

 

Petrified to go to school

In October Archbishop William Lori explained how good the church had been about the whole thing and how nicely it co-operated with the police and how all right everything was really so everybody please dig deep and put a lot of money in the plate.

The archdiocese conducted its own investigation to identify other possible victims and was in regular contact with the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s office, sharing information that it learned during the course of its investigation. Merzbacher was convicted in June 1995 and sentenced to four life terms plus 10 years. Plaintiffs filed civil claims against Merzbacher, the Catholic Community School, and the archdiocese in 1994. Those claims were dismissed by the courts. [Read more…]

That’s an order?

Speaking of the…oddities of the Catholic church, there’s one order in Australia in which 70% of the bros are suspected of child abuse. Seventy percent.

Up to 200 victims have sought compensation from the St John of God order  after alleging they had been abused in special schools and homes run by the  brothers in NSW, Victoria and New Zealand.

Last week a Melbourne inquiry into child abuse heard allegations that  Brothers had drugged and pack-raped boys at their operations in Victoria.

Claims were also made that two boys had allegedly been beaten so badly they  were thought to have died but their deaths had not been reported to  authorities.

And Fairfax Media has obtained documents revealing that in the 1960s and  1970s dozens of boys were brutally assaulted at Kendall Grange, the order’s school for mentally and physically impaired boys at Morisset on the NSW central  coast.

Michelle Mulvihill is a psychologist who was employed by the order to meet victims.

Dr Mulvihill, who is based in Sydney, worked with the order for nine years  from 1998, sitting in on meetings involving negotiators from the order and 150  victims in NSW, Victoria and New Zealand.

But she says she quit the job in 2007, fearing that suspected paedophile  Brothers still wielded too much power in the order and were interfering with  victims’ compensation and treatment.

On Sunday she described the order as hosting Brothers who were responsible  for “the worst examples of child abuse I have ever heard of” and said of the 40  to 50 Brothers who had been in the order around the time she was involved, about  75 per cent had been the subject of allegations.

Another scene out of nightmares.

H/t Ian MacDougall.

 

 

How the Catholic church understands transparency

The jaw drops.

The Catholic-school teacher had a pre-teen student pinned to the ground in his Baltimore classroom, the girl’s blouse open and her chest exposed when the doorknob suddenly turned and the school principal — a nun — burst in.

The screaming girl thought she was about to be rescued, according to court records that describe the scene at the Catholic Community Middle School in Locust Point. [Read more…]