Your various cleverations

A three-year-old observation by John Scalzi, just because I saw it and like it. The failure mode of clever is asshole.

So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone you’ve not communicated with privately before, for whatever reason you might have. And, wanting to stand out from the crowd, you decide to try to be clever about it, because, hey, you are a clever person, and as far as you know, people seem to like that about you. So you write your clever bit and send it off, safe in the knowledge of your cleverosity, and confident that your various cleverations will make the impression you want to make on the intended cleveree. [Read more…]

A kernel

For once, there’s a kernel of truth in something Brendan O’Neill writes (in the Telegraph this time). Only a kernel though.

When did atheists become so teeth-gratingly annoying? Surely non-believers in God weren’t always the colossal pains in the collective backside that they are today? Surely there was a time when you could say to someone “I am an atheist” without them instantly assuming you were a smug, self-righteous loather of dumb hicks given to making pseudo-clever statements like, “Well, Leviticus also frowns upon having unkempt hair, did you know that?” Things are now so bad that I tend to keep my atheism to myself, and instead mumble something about being a very lapsed Catholic if I’m put on the spot, for fear that uttering the A-word will make people think I’m a Dawkins drone with a mammoth superiority complex and a hives-like allergy to nurses wearing crucifixes. [Read more…]

Gideon bibles? Ok then – atheist books too.

American Atheists has sent out a press release.

Cartersville, Georgia—Beginning Wednesday, visitors to Georgia State Parks vacationing in government-owned rental cabins can read atheist books during their stay courtesy of American Atheists. The national non-profit announced that its former President, Ed Buckner, will distribute hundreds of donated copies of atheist literature to the Red Top State Park for placement in cabin bedside drawers, alongside Bibles already placed there, on Wednesday morning.

Additional atheist books will be distributed to A.H. Stephens Historic Park in Crawfordville, Georgia at 2:00 PM EDT on Wednesday afternoon, with more parks to follow later this week. [Read more…]

Anything that can be made to look reasonable

From Richard Webster’s Why Freud Was Wrong:

…although Freud had initially reacted skeptically to Jung’s interest in the occult, he had eventually come to regard this aspect of his work with almost exactly the same credulity he once bestowed on the ideas of Fliess. “In matters of occultism,” he replies, “I have grown humble since the great lesson Ferenczi’s experiences gave me; I promise to believe anything that can be made to look reasonable.” [Read more…]

From around the Twitters

Because it’s a hot afternoon. Also because they kept making me laugh.

@TheTweetOfGod

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But then there’s like two million more after that, so what’s the point?

Laurie Penny @PennyRed

That’s a shame-  the main reason I do politics is so that internet creeps will want to fuck me. [Read more…]

The immense freedom

Marie-Thérèse has a haunting post about summer holidays in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, which was the one escape from the misery of Goldenbridge that most of the children had.

As a child at Goldenbridge industrial “school” during the sixties summertime season, I absolutely adored heading off on the ‘Special’ bus to Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. Bernadette Fahy in her book “Freedom of Angels” referred to St. Joseph’s Holiday Home, that was for Goldenbridge children who had no families to take them out on summer holidays, as a haven. [Read more…]

No, the system does not work

It’s fashionable, this hobby of bullying women. Kelly Diels explores the fashion in Salon.

When Rebecca Meredith took the stage in March at the Glasgow Ancients, an annual university debate tournament, she and her debate partner, Marlena Valles, were prepared for a little heckling. After all, Meredith is ranked the third top university debater in Europe in 2012 and Valles won best speaker in Scotland’s 2013 national championship, so between the two of them they’ve “beaten men in debates hundreds of times” and “can deal with heckles,” writes Meredith in the Huffington Post. But even before the two debaters started speaking, a cadre of men in the audience began to boo, continued to boo throughout the debate, shouted “Shame, woman!” and “analysed their sexual attractiveness.” When a woman judge intervened, reports Lucy Sheriff, the men called the judge “a frigid bitch.” [Read more…]

The death count in Nigeria

At least 44 people were murdered at a mosque in Konduga, a town in Borno state in northeastern Nigeria on Sunday, the BBC reports. Twelve more were murdered in Ngom village, closer to Maiduguri, the state capital.

Guess who.

“We believe the attack was not unconnected with the cooperation residents are giving to security operatives in identifying and arresting Boko Haram members in their midst,” a senior government official told the AFP news agency. [Read more…]