Originally a comment by PZ Myers on That was before the money went into it.
It’s been this way since I was in high school.
Our football coach was a psychopath. [Read more…]
From almost a year ago, November 2013 – associations of private schools in Pakistan banned Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography.
Ironically, educational officials in Pakistan (who work in the very segment of society that Malala wants to improve) have prohibited her memoirs from classrooms across the country. (Tens of millions of Pakistani children attend fee-based private schools since public schools are in such poor shape).
Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, told Associated Press that Malala’s book will not be available in any libraries at its 40,000 affiliated schools. He also asked the government to ban it from all school curricula. “Everything about Malala is now becoming clear,” Javedani said. “To me, she is representing the West, not us.”
Kashif Mirza, the chairman of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation (which represents more than 152,000 institutions across the country), has also banned the book from all schools under his group’s jurisdiction. “The federation thought we should review the book, and having reviewed it we came to the decision that the book was not suitable for our children, particularly not our students,” said Mirza. “Pakistan is an ideological country. That ideology is based on Islam…. In this book are many comments that are contrary to our ideology.”
This is someone who oversees schools. Apparently his ideology approves of shooting girls like Malala in the head for being determined to go to school.
Not everyone in Pakistan supports the ban. “The decision to ban the book is the result of a deliberate smear campaign run against Malala and the book by right-wing commentators,” said Bina Shah, novelist and education campaigner based in Karachi, according to Pakistani media. “There has been complete confusion about the book, sown very deliberately in the minds of adults because of this right-wing talk.”
Thus blighting the future for who knows how many millions of girls in Pakistan.
This is one big reason I don’t like Sam Harris. It always has been (since he became someone to like or not like, that is). I went to his blog to look for his post on liberals and Islam, and in the process of looking (which I haven’t completed yet because I paused to say this) I read the first sentence of the first post.
From time to time one discovers a person so good at his job that it is almost impossible to imagine him doing anything else.
It’s just odd, and stubbornly clueless, that even now, even after a big disagreement with a lot of feminists about the way he talks about women, he does that. I think most intellectual types have learned not to do that by now, and it sticks out that Harris hasn’t. The End of Faith was like that on every damn page, and after awhile I couldn’t stand it any more.
(There’s a bit of extra humor in the fact that he did manage to say “a person” instead of “a man”…but just couldn’t manage the follow-through.)
The New York Times has a whole lot more on the Sayreville football team and the “bullying and harassment” that got the season shut down. Seven players are accused of “hazing of a sexual nature.” It also has more on the pathetic football-worship in Sayreville and the way it motivates grown-ass adults to minimize the hazing.
The charges were announced by Andrew C. Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, in a joint statement with Chief John Zebrowski of the Sayreville Police Department. [Read more…]
Originally a comment by Blanche Quizno on But football is a necessity of life.
My 6’4″ son went out for football last year and, when he realized how much time it would require, he voted for his studies instead and quit the team. A half a dozen other young men then quit the team – it’s like they didn’t realize they COULD quit or something. In fact, one of his friends, who had just the week before talked of hoping to be team captain that year, quit a few days after my son did. That really shocked me – “football player” had been a huge part of his apparent identity/persona. I remember him telling me that, at the end of a tackle, if someone from the other team were slow in getting up, he’d gladly stomp his hand as hard as he could with his cleats. This kid is a devout Christian hoping for a career in youth ministry, BTW. When he was talking about quitting the team, he said that football brought out the worst in him, aggression-wise. I reminded him of the hand-stomping comment. He agreed that was the sort of mindset this “game” created, and that he’d realized he didn’t want to be that guy – he wanted to “love on” people instead.
So tweeted Brianna Wu, along with a series of explicitly threatening tweets she received, and
The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe.
Warning: explicit sexualized violence.
Can we take this seriously now?
Another item for the annals of “people take football way too seriously.”
A town that found encouragement in its winning high school football team after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy was left to absorb another blow Tuesday after school officials canceled the season over allegations of bullying, intimidation and harassment among players.
Daniel Anderson at the Lawyers’ Secular Society draws on Kant for thoughts on the Law Society’s Sharia guidance. In his essay on enlightenment, Kant wrote that enlightenment is having the courage to use your own understanding, instead of being so cowardly and lazy that you leave it to others to understand for you.
Kant goes on to further state that the failure to think for ourselves, as human beings, will lead to the rights of fellow human beings to be trampled upon. [Read more…]
Hero. Remember her name: Nalin Afrin. General commander of Kurdish forces defending city of #Kobane against ISIL scourge.
Talk about “fetal personhood”…
This spring, Alabama Republicans passed an extreme new law that would force minors who want to have an abortion without a parent’s permission to undergo a grueling court trial—and it would give judges the right to appoint a lawyer for the fetus. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to block the law, prompting national headlines. [Read more…]