Brian Engler has a bunch of photos from the WiS conference at Facebook, and I want to share one I particularly like. I might share others, too – I have Brian’s permission.
I give you Jamila Bey and Debbie Goddard, courtesy of Brian D. Engler:
Why women need freedom from religion, item #3,985,431.
A Sudanese judge, Sami Ibrahim Shabo sentenced to death by stoning a young woman accused of committing adultery.
Intisar Sharif Abdalla, believed to be between 15 and 17 years of age (although prison authorities claim she is 20) was sentenced to death in accordance with Article 146 of the Sudanese criminal law albeit without legal representation.
The judgment was made on May 13, 2012 after just one hearing and came after an “admission of guilt” plea following torture and brutal beatings by Sharif’s brother who instigated the case. Her co-accused however remains un-convicted and walks freely. [Read more…]
60 Minutes had a segment on the death industry and oversight of cemeteries last night. Guess who was the official voice of the consumer who told Anderson Cooper (Anderson Cooper!!) what’s what.
Our friend Josh Slocum, that’s who.
Anderson said the industry says these unfortunate incidents in which bodies get dug up and thrown out so that people can re-sell their plots are just a few bad apples. “Oh nonsense,” says Josh very briskly indeed.
I wanted to embed it but it doesn’t work the way YouTube does so I don’t know how to do it. Click the link.
I’ve just learned that Leo Igwe is going to be at TAM this year.
Well so am I. I get to meet Leo!!
I’m jealous of myself right now.
Paul Fidalgo reports on the conference for The Morning Heresy. (He’s another one of those people – like Rebecca – who are just consistently very funny. He did a tweet that cracked me up – approximately: “I could do a ‘this is what an atheist looks like’ ad but no one would be surprised.”)
Now that was a conference!
This was no egg-headed snoozer, this was no reiteration of why we like Darwin so much (not that there’s anything wrong with those). The Women in Secularism conference was as fantastic, fulfilling, and enlightening an event as we could ever have hoped.
I think that too. Also.
Susan Jacoby did the first talk. I didn’t liveblog that one because the panel I was on was next and I didn’t want to cross wires, if you see what I mean. I’m not good at multitasking. (Neither is anyone else. People think they are, but they’re wrong. Studies show this. People are confused because they can physically multitask, but they do the tasks badly. The fact that it’s physically possible to hold a book in front of your eyes while talking on the phone doesn’t mean you can read a book and talk on the phone at the same time. But that’s by the way.) I’m a plodder. I need to concentrate. I could listen to Jacoby’s talk without crossing wires, but liveblogging it too seemed a wire too many. Or maybe I was just being lazy.
Anyway: she said among other things that it has happened that when someone asks “why no women in atheism?” some men will cheerfully reply that it’s because women are too stupid.
Well, you know, that is what it is at bottom: that people think that. Too stupid and too Nice, which is perhaps the product of being too stupid.
That’s what I talked about for my opening remarks for the panel. The perception of women, and the fact that in some ways a certain kind of feminism – difference feminism – has enforced it rather than undermining it. We are seen as too stupid and too Nice (or, in an exciting twist, too bitchy) for pretty much everything. We must be, or we wouldn’t be so conspicuously missing from popular culture, and we wouldn’t be so staggeringly vapid when not missing.
This is not something it’s easy to change. I know this, because I know feminists have been trying to change it since at least 1970, and in some ways it’s worse than it was then.
Younger generation – your task is plain. Get to it. Thank you.
Ways to be not a good polite considerate air traveler.
Take advantage of your aisle seat to extend your leg all the way out into the aisle and then wave your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails up and down up and down up and down.
Take advantage of your aisle seat to cross your right leg over your left knee so that your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails is almost in the lap of the politely restrained atheist woman in the other aisle seat, and then keep inching it closer and closer.
Put your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails on your knee and clean it out between the toes, carefully dropping whatever you find onto the aisle floor.
Put your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails back into its sandal for awhile and stick it out into the aisle in order to stamp it heavily at irregular intervals.
Seize your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails and weave your fingers into the toes as if you were holding hands with your own foot.
Do all these things without ceasing for 5 hours on a completely full flight.
I am in receipt of a message from the researchers at Rothamstead via Sile Lane (Sense About Science). It’s urgent and it matters so I’ll just post the whole thing.
Dear Petition Signatory
A forwarded note from the GM wheat research team at Rothamsted:
Dear Signatory
Thank you very much indeed for all your support on this petition and kind emails since our appeal.
We have the bad news that yesterday an individual broke into the experimental site and caused substantial damage. However, the overall integrity of the experiment has not yet been compromised. This is even more reason why we are extremely worried that the Take the Flour Back group is continuing with plans for direct action to destroy our GM wheat experiment entirely next Sunday. It has now issued logistical instructions for doing this and a ‘legal briefing’ for activists.
The group says it wants to destroy the crop because of a ‘contamination’ risk through cross-pollination with other wheat in fields a long way away. Their reason for pulling it up on 27 May was that “wheat is wind-pollinated” and that this was the last weekend before pollination is likely to occur. They did not seem to realise when they booked this date that wheat is in fact self-pollinating, and that therefore almost no pollen leaves the plant, let alone the field. We have informed them of this misunderstanding, but to no avail. They have also refused our offer to debate the issues in public in front of an audience, saying they do not have the “capacity” to field a speaker.
In the thousands of signatories on the petition against destroying our research, there are many diverse voices, including farmers, environmentalists, people local to Rothamsted, researchers in other fields, writers, musicians and all walks of life. We know many of you want to do something to help, and may feel angry and powerless about this latest vandalism. However, in discussions with the authorities, we cannot have our supporters counter-protesting on the day as it would provoke the kind of conflict that we have been trying to avoid. The only way forward is through communication and verbal engagement.
Take the Flour Back don’t need to hear angry invective, but as a last ditch attempt at getting them to call off their action, we think they should understand why so many people oppose destroying the research. The only way we know of reaching them is at info@taketheflourback.org. Although they may not reply, they will be taking note of the strong support that we have received.
Best regards
Toby Bruce (Scientist specialising in plant-insect interactions, Team Leader)
Gia Aradottir (Insect Biology, Postdoc )
Huw Jones (Wheat Transformation, Coinvestigator)
Lesley Smart (Field Entomology)
Janet Martin (Field Entomology)
Johnathan Napier (Plant Science, Coinvestigator)
John Pickett (Chemical Ecology, Principal Investigator)
The pushback has started. Well you knew it would.
Catherine Dunphy has an article on the Women in Secularism conference at RDF – an original, not a link. There are sneery how dare you comments from some usual suspects (like Geoffrey Falk, for instance, who has been shouting at me for years for glaring faults like having no tits). It’s all so reflexive, you know? “How dare you say there’s sexism in the atheist movement, you shrill strident hysterical ugly bitch with no tits?!!”
Oh fuck. Plane broken, of course. Delay of hour and fifteen minutes. I’ll get in WAY LATE at night.
No, now it’s an hour and a half.
Blargh.
I shouldn’t be posting this. It’s a tweet at most. Very self-indulgent.
But blargh.
Update. Well that was a quick reversal of fortune. They changed their minds and decided to give us a different plane, instead, at a different gate, so suddenly instead of being in a smelly faux-leather chair surrounded by smelly people with a view of smelly people (no offense – we’re all smelly) I’m in one of those airport rocking chairs (what a great idea!) facing a huge bank of windows with a view of the office towers of Charlotte and planes taking off, and people sparse and at a much pleasanter distance. Gosh.
Who knew Charlotte had office towers? To be perfectly honest I don’t even know where Charlotte is, despite having spent some time in NC a mere couple of decades ago. It’s…middleish, I think. It’s fer sher not in the mountains (which are beautiful, by the way), nor is it on the coast…so that leaves middleish.
Charlotte airport. Yes right, flying due south is just the way to get from DC to Seattle – sigh.
I’m processing it all. It was terrific fun.
Rebecca’s great. Don’t let anybody tell you different. She’s funny as hell – that’s not a big surprise, but it’s not something she can do only when facing a webcam or at a podium or on Twitter…wait…that’s too many only ins…Ok it’s something she can do in all the places.
Jamila’s like that too.
Lauren Becker is a genius at keeping things on time without being even a little bit obnoxious. Melody thought of the whole thing. Ron, as he said, approved it.
Boarding. Ah me. Six hours of fun.
Catch you tomorrow.