Brian Dalton has a follow-up to his “how to say no to more wine” video.

It’s obnoxious. For some reason he makes a big issue of the fact that the “no more wine thank you, I’m good; see how easy that was?” segment was about this one bit of PZ’s post and not about the other bit. Well I knew that but it doesn’t amaze me that other people didn’t, and anyway, I don’t see why he makes a big issue of it since he didn’t spell that out in the original video. If you do a parable and people don’t figure out exactly what the reference is, it’s conceivable that that’s your doing and not theirs. It’s obnoxious to get belligerent about it.

And then there’s the fact that six seconds in he casually refers to “Slandergate,” as if that were a real name.

And then there’s the text on the screen at the end.

P.S. All claims require evidence, whether they are extraordinary or not. And a claim, in and of itself, is not, by definition, evidence.

Oh, please.

In the first place, what does that even mean? What does it mean for a claim to require evidence? He must mean something like “all claims, to be reasonably believed, require evidence.” But that’s not what he said. Claims don’t require anything.

In the second place, a claim is evidence that a claim has been made.

In the third place, lots of claims can be reasonably believed without evidence. Countless everyday claims can be perfectly reasonably accepted and believed and acted on without evidence, and yes that is partly because they’re so ordinary. If a friend says she’s thirsty it’s perfectly reasonable to believe her unless you have some reason not to. Belief is the default with ordinary claims like that. Dalton doesn’t mean “all claims” at all. He probably means something like all contested claims, or all controversial claims – but then he should have said that. He shouldn’t have made such a big smug obnoxious deal of setting us all straight on the matter and then done a sloppy job of it.

So – meh.

It’s the turn of “Ardent Atheist” Emery Emery to try to peddle the line that all this talk of sexual harassment is actually a campaign to stop everyone having sex. It’s a campaign to shut down pleasure and fun and joy and good things altogether.

The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape. The problem with this tactic is that it obfuscates actual acts of sexual predation while criminalizing very healthy sex-positive human interaction.

No actually we have not. Not at all. We’ve been attempting (as have many others – we sure as hell don’t deserve all the credit for this) to define sexual harassment as sexual harassment. Flirting is mutual; harassment is unilateral. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to sexual intercourse and rape. [Read more…]

Maryam Namazie writes:

PROTECT NAHLA MAHMOUD

Following her interview on Channel 4 on Sharia law, Islamists have threatened Sudanese secular campaigner and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) Co-Spokesperson Nahla Mahmoud with death, calling her a ‘Kafira’ and ‘Murtada’ who has offended Islam and brought “fitnah”. The threats have been reported to the police who have advised that nothing can be done about the particular threats made by Salah al Bandar who has until recently been a Lib Dem Councillor. The police have even urged Nahla not to “anger” him further.

Hundreds of individuals and groups have already signed on to an open letter calling for the authorities to take action. You (and/or your organisation) can read more about the specific threats made and sign the open letter here. [Read more…]

Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast – I totally know the Buffalo Beast, they interviewed me once, like a million years ago – Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast, I say, had a little chat with Michael Shermer.

A friend warns, don’t read it aloud to someone who’s driving a car. That clearly implies also don’t read it while drinking, eating, lighting a match, balancing on a high wire, cutting your toenails, sitting with a cat on your lap, holding a baby, soldering a pipe, crossing a street, swimming.

It starts this way:

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER is known as an editor, a skeptic, a TED talker, a thinker. Others see him as “that intellectual lightweight who loves Ayn Rand and didn’t ‘understand’ global warming until unconscionably recently.”

And then it goes on. Read the list of things not to be doing while reading it before you read it. But do read it. Read it all.

Yesterday I told you about that stupid Facebook page Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. Today Rebecca presents some new information about one of the people behind that page. First, there was a message…

A few days ago, I received this email via the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe contact form:

From: Cecil Fuson

Email: Viciousvestments@gmail.com

Location: Raleigh, NC

Category: Question for the Show

Subject: quote request

Message: Good day, my name is Cecil Fuson. Together with Brandi Olson and a member of the Atheist news group (A news) we run a small Facebook group that is called Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. [Read more…]

John Scalzi quoted an informant who emailed him about ElevatorGATE and harassment via Twitter and Storify yesterday. (The quoting was with permission.)

A Twitter and Storify user who goes by the handle “@elevatorGATE” is a well-known cyberstalker of women via social media. His latest method of doing this is to compile thousands of pieces on Storify, often including every single tweet sent by his chosen targets, and then publish them, which notifies the women in question that he had published yet another piece archiving their every word. After repeated complaints and requests for help, Storify temporarily deactivated the notification feature on his account, which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

In a conversation yesterday with Xavier Damman, the Storify CEO suggested that the women @elevatorGATE is targeting turn off all notifications from Storify, which essentially suggests that they withdraw from the medium if they don’t like being stalked, and which also wouldn’t solve the problem of this user archiving everything these women say. [Read more…]

Oh and did you know Alex Gabriel has joined Freethought Blogs? He has.

This is very good news.

Of course, it’s sad for him that FTB is in imminent danger of collapse – well people do keep telling us that, so it must be true – but he’s young, I’m sure he’ll bounce right back when it happens.

A beautiful Jesus and Mo yesterday.

I love the “women still dodgy” bit, also the fact that it’s in the Guardian.

Oh I think I get it – what DJ Grothe meant by saying he thinks “unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity.”

He means if we get our way, and sexual harassment at atheist/skeptic conferences becomes unfashionable (aka “politically incorrect”), then there will be less sex at those conferences. There will be less total sex. Our goal, if achieved, would lead to less sex. That equals sex negativity.

Yes, if you define it that way, he’s right. The kind of sex where a dudebro plies a woman with alcohol until she becomes too out of it to consider whether or not she wants to have sex with him and just has it – that kind of sex there would be less of.

So, yes, if you’re thinking about sex purely from the angle of “I want as much of it as possible, under whatever conditions, in whatever circumstances, whatever the other person actually thinks about it” then anything that gets in the way of that goal is going to appear to be sex-negative.

But that’s a slaveowner’s way of thinking about sex.

And for today’s installment of thinly-veiled loathing – Stephanie quotes DJ Grothe on Facebook.

It’s rank.

There is an impressive distemper these days on the internets.

Many smart, good people that I know personally seem to fear this “call-out culture” online that is going on right now in many communities online. Folks are immobilized by a moral scare or panic that they think they are watching unfold presently. As for me, I think it all seems increasingly like some surreal science fiction imagining of some bizarre future dystopia. And so, I say:

Consensual sex — between any mature adult male or female etc. — is a human good. It is something that should be prized and promoted (would there be world peace if people just had more and better sex, ha?).

But instead I think unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity. [Read more…]