The first to admit

Hey, looka this: the Guardian reports on Jennifer Cody Epstein’s letter.

[I]n a move praised by The Satanic Verses novelist Salman Rushdie, who has thrown his weight behind PEN and Charlie Hebdo since the start of the controversy, Epstein has asked for her name to be removed from the petition.

“The 1st protester to admit she was completely wrong,” tweeted Rushdie on Sunday. “Respect to Jennifer Cody Epstein for doing the honourable thing & admitting she made a mistake about #CharlieHebdo. Will others follow her?”

It’s true, he did.

He shared it on Facebook, too.

The Guardian again (Alison Flood is the reporter):

In a letter to her fellow signatories published in full by the writer Ophelia Benson on Free Thought Blogs, Epstein wrote that she was “misinformed and (quite frankly) wrong” when she made her decision to add her name to the list.

Flood quotes extensively from the letter, which is good – that’s why I was given permission to publish it: to get the word out. Salman helped with that!

H/t Mr Fancy Pants

Guest post: Corporations stealing public domain music to copyright it

Originally a comment by Jafafa Hots on IS cannot destroy these.

They may not be able to destroy public domain art, but US corporations are sure trying.

I have put up YouTube videos backed with public domain music. Every one has had a copyright claim filed against it despite the music being pre-1923, all of it acquired by me from public domain archives. One had three separate entities attempt to claim ownership of it.

I currently have one appeal under review, has been for a couple of weeks, where a company is claiming the rights to a song, “I Didn’t Raise My Son to be a Soldier,” recorded by the Peerless Quartet in 1914 – over 100 years ago. This is routine. These companies literally are downloading public domain works, adding them to their catalogs and claiming ownership, knowing that most people won’t dispute it.

Respecting the respected academics

More on that all-male panel about women in comics, because it’s so absurd / grotesque / annoying. Jin Zhao reports:

“This is happening at #DCC2015. Let’s see how this ALL MALE panel about women in comics goes #noneofthismakesanysense,” an attendee, Christy, tweeted.

As the panel proceeded, she tweeted that the all male panel gave a “lecture” on early female characters in comics “in relation to men.” At some point, one of the panelist said “because girls get bored with comics easily,” she tweeted.

Comics are more of a guy thing. [Read more…]

Hiding in plain sight

How do you get more women in _______? Where are all the women in ________? I dunno, let’s discuss it. Let’s discuss it on a panel at a convention.

The past few years have seen a lot of discussion (and a lot of misogynist backlash) about improving women’s experience of “geek” spaces such as video gaming, sci-fi conventions, and comics. So it was especially puzzling to see that Denver ComicCon, one of the biggest comic conventions in the country, convened a panel called Women in Comics that had no actual women sitting onstage.

Let’s discuss that on a panel at a convention! One with no women on it! [Read more…]

How difficult and expensive it is to be a certain kind of pretty

A friend drew this Comment is Free piece by Meredith Talusan to my attention.

When I heard that Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new name, her upcoming Vanity Fair cover and a new Twitter account, I went online to welcome her. Then I noticed a trend on my Twitter feed: people – including feminists, people of color, queers and transgender folk – commenting on how beautiful she looks. While I welcome all the positive affirmation of Caitlyn Jenner’s gender identity, it’s important to not forget how the forces of economic privilege and beauty standards affect most trans women. And, though all women are subject to conventional beauty standards, the ability and even necessity to adhere to them is rife with even more tension for trans women.

Of course it is. So wouldn’t it be nice to do our best to erode that necessity? To keep trying to nudge the world into realizing and accepting that not all women are gorgeous, and that gorgeous is not all any woman is? [Read more…]

Bouquets for CFI

Ed has a post on what’s been going on with Taslima lately and who did what to help and what should happen in the future.

I am very happy to announce that Taslima Nasrin, whose life was threatened by the same people behind the brutal murder of at least three Bangladeshi bloggers in recent months, is now safely in the United States and out of harm’s way. I want to share with you how this happened because a lot of people need to be thanked and it provides a great example of humanists coming together to help someone in need.

On May 5th, the night before I was leading a civics/lobby day for CFI Michigan, I got an email from Taslima that included a link to this news report from India about the direct threat made on her life by the same people who murdered Avijit Roy and two other atheist bloggers in Bangladesh. She had been living in India, a few hundred miles from where those murders took place.

When I got this email, I was on my way to Lansing to meet with Michael De Dora, head of CFI’s Office of Public Policy, who was helping lead the lobby day. Michael and I had talked a few times in the past year or so about the need for some sort of program that would help get atheists who are at great risk, primarily in Muslim countries, to the West where they could be safe. We both agreed that it would be best if one of the big atheist/humanist groups would do it.

So they combined forces, and gave their thumbs a damn good workout, and got things going. [Read more…]

Guest post: Better still if you brought yours back from the Holy Land

Originally a comment by Charles Freeman on The Shroud of Turin continues to sell tickets.

The article has given rise to a lot of interest and outside the authenticists’ websites very positive. For those who read the original to the end, you will see I never argue that the Shroud was a fake. There were hundreds of thousands of painted linens around in the medieval period and they were widely used in churches, especially during Lent when opulent altars and statues were traditionally covered up. [Read more…]