Butterflies and Wheels
Gnu atheism, women's rights, internationalism, universalism, and gossip
The Law Society is not going to withdraw its practice note on what it takes to be the correct interpretation of “Sharia succession rules.” The Lawyers’ Secular Society has a response.
The LSS had written a detailed open letter to the Law Society on 24 April 2014 with very specific questions (here). Two weeks later, on 8 May 2014, the Law Society eventually responded to that letter (here) but it failed to answer almost all of the LSS’s questions, with no explanation for this refusal. [Read more…]
Boko Haram put out a video yesterday showing some of the kidnapped enslaved schoolgirls (and perhaps some other girls) wearing hijab and long robes, chanting a bit of the Koran. Relatives and friends have identified some of them from the video.
The 27-minute footage was shown to some people in Chibok – the town where the girls were kidnapped – on Monday evening. [Read more…]
Religious privilege? What do you mean? I don’t see any religious privilege.
Oh, you mean this?
A Harvard club’s plans to stage a satanic “black Mass” were abruptly cancelled Monday after drawing fire from the Archdiocese of Boston and condemnation from the president of the Ivy League school. [Read more…]
Ezra Resnick writes a Letter to a successful white male.
Congratulations! You’re a successful white male. Or, as you might prefer to put it, you’re a successful person who just happens to be a white male — why would anyone think your gender and race have anything to do with your success? That’s textbook sexism and racism. You worked hard to get where you are. You never asked for special treatment, nor do you recall ever receiving any.
There was discrimination in the past, sure, but that’s all over now. It ended one afternoon in…let’s see…1977 was it? That sounds right. [Read more…]
Amanda Marcotte has bad news for the fans of the pope: he’s not as cuddly as some have been claiming.
I get the enthusiasm for “cool” Pope Francis, I really do. The idea that there could be a pope who is not clinging to a harshly medieval point of view but ready to move into the modern world is so appealing that of course we’re going to grasp onto any evidence, no matter how tenuous, that suggests that Pope Francis might be the one.
Meh. One – it’s just not possible, so attempting to grasp at evidence is pointless. The Catholic church is the Catholic church, not something else; it’s not possible to rise to the top positions by not clinging to a harshly medieval point of view. The harshly medieval point of view is what the church is for. [Read more…]
Ally Fogg on the other hand has an interesting (as opposed to familiar and deadly-boring) post on the meanings and resonances of “cunt” in the UK, with an emphasis on the class aspect.
In my last blog, I noted in passing that I am prone to using very offensive language, including the word ‘cunt.’ I think it was coincidence, but around the same time Ophelia blogged on that very topic, and inadvertently created a perfect case study of the phenomenon I was discussing.
It was entirely coincidence; I hadn’t seen Ally’s post when I wrote mine. I wrote mine because of the inspiration of Ricky Gervais’s Facebook post.
As PZ noted in a follow-up called ‘How to drive a Brit crazy’, anyone objecting to the use of that word is likely to reap a torrent of comments saying “it’s a perfectly acceptable word; everyone says it in England.”
I’ll return to the question of whether ‘everyone says it in England’ in a minute, but first let me observe that what PZ describes is a classic example of the “you shouldn’t be offended by that” fallacy. [Read more…]
From a comment by latsot on Gervais “will continue to use offensive words like cunt, atheism & Derek”
@m0fa
I’m British too and like many other Brits I’m sick to death of your droning argument that we don’t consider “cunt” to be a gendered insult. I can speculate about a possible reason you think – or at least say – this: the insult “cunt” seems almost interchangeable with other insults, some also gendered (such as “dick”), and others not.
Unfortunately, there’s only one tiny flaw with that argument: it is bullshit. [Read more…]
Hey look – live streaming from the International Space Station.
Pale blue dot close up; your house from very far away.
One of those “please share” items so I’m sharing it because wo.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said it best: “Turn that frown upside down oil-soaked neighbourhood, you can get a job cleaning it up if you just have the right attitude. We’ll make it worth your while. That is seriously what Kinder Morgan is arguing to the freaking Canadian government about why they should be allowed to triple the capacity of their pipeline.”
