How different?

Chris Stedman asks at Religion News what misconceptions people have about atheists. There are lots of them, he notes, and that’s probably because most people don’t know many atheists, or don’t realize they do.

But when people meet atheists, they have an opportunity to revise their ideas about who we are and what we believe.

In that spirit, the Yale Humanist Community is cosponsoring an “Ask an Atheist” panel with Hartford Faith & Values—Connecticut’s nonsectarian, nonprofit religion news website and an affiliate of Religion News Service—this Monday, April 7 as the kickoff event for our first ever Humanism at Yale Week.

Great idea. He gets the other panelists to give some misconceptions, then he adds one. [Read more…]

Time warp

Is it 2009 again? Salon has run yet another 2009ish article ranting about HitchensHarrisDawkins and their misunderstanding of the science-religion debate. Oy.

Sana Saeed, the author, lets us know that she spent her childhood loving science and also loving religion. Then she lets us know she was the same way as a teenager.

It never once occurred to me during those years, and later, that there could be any sort of a conflict between my faith and science; to me both were part of the same things: This universe and my existence within it. [Read more…]

Trees and landslides

You know the Oso landslide? The collapse of a rain-sodden slope that buried a lot of houses, vehicles, animals, and people in a small town north of Seattle two weeks ago?

It’s been reported heavily in the local media, but as a natural disaster and human tragedy, not as something that had been predicted and warned about for decades. Well guess what – it was predicted and warned about decades ago.

Rain is the fuel for landslides in wet western Washington. The tall trees of the Evergreen State help hold the ground together, not just with their roots, but also by soaking up rain before it goes deep underground. That’s why the state essentially prohibits clearing of forests in places where groundwater can pool beneath a landslide zone. [Read more…]

Kapitalist Kollege

The Nation takes a look at one of the more egregious scams in the scam-ridden US: for-profit colleges that flourish because of the egregious scam of our college loan “system.”

More than half of the students who enroll in for-profit colleges—many of them veterans, single mothers, and other low- and middle-income people aiming for jobs like medical technician, diesel mechanic or software coder—drop out within about four months. Many of these colleges have been caught using deceptive advertising and misleading prospective students about program costs and job placement rates. Although the for-profits promise that their programs are affordable, the real cost can be nearly double that of Harvard or Stanford. [Read more…]

More haha rape jokes haha

Because we just never get tired of them, right?

Here’s another instance of rape culture to add to the ever-lengthening list: French so-called “comedian” Rémi Gaillard’s latest video, Free Sex.

In the prank, Gaillard stands a few feet away from unsuspecting women and, using the camera’s trick of perspective, makes it look like they’re having sex. He simulates sex with a woman tying her shoelace on the sidewalk, another reading on a park lawn and a third rifling through her handbag in a grocery store aisle. [Read more…]

Minutt for minutt

Ok now I know what I’ll be watching on my laptop in small increments for the next six months or so…

Norway’s public tv station NRK did a week long real-time program that was a trip on its famous Hertigruten ferry from Bergen to Kirkenes, a trip that takes six days and passes some of the most skull-crushingly beautiful scenery on the planet – possibly the most: National Geographic has called the fjords the top Thing To See in the world. I have a huge crush on the fjords, just so you know.

One of my local PBS stations ran an hour-long extract from that show last night, so now I want to see all six days, and god damn if NRK doesn’t have it right there for the watching. Thank you NRK.

The ferry – the Nordnorge – takes a side trip to Geiranger Fjord. There’s also Troll Fjord.

The show is 134 hours and 42 minutes.

Clergy aren’t obliged to tell magistrates

A week ago the Italian Bishops’ Conference published guidance saying that they don’t have to report suspected sexual abuse of children to the police.

Fair enough. They agreed it among themselves, so it’s none of anyone else’s business, right? That’s democracy.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference said the guidelines published Friday reflected suggestions from the Vatican’s office that handles sex abuse investigations.

Victims have long denounced how bishops systematically covered up abuse by shuffling pedophile priests around while keeping prosecutors in the dark. Only in 2010 did the Vatican instruct bishops to report abuse to police — but only where required by law. [Read more…]

Improper use of social media

A word of advice for schoolteachers: don’t ever seek a job in Cincinnati Catholic Archdiocese schools. You’d have to sign a contract that makes you their slave.

The Archdiocese has a new contract for teachers, one that’s twice the size of previous contracts, to accommodate the many things it tells you not to do.

The contract for the 2014-15 school year explicitly orders teachers to refrain “from any conduct or lifestyle which would reflect discredit on or cause scandal to the school or be in contradiction to Catholic doctrine or morals.” It goes so far as to ban public support of the practices. [Read more…]