How fucking stupid is this? From the Charleston Gazette:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The rape of a 16-year-old girl by two football players in eastern Ohio– a case brought to light by social media — is being used by a federal prosecutor to educate athletes in West Virginia about being responsible when texting and making posts on the Internet.

Excuse me? Being responsible when texting and making posts on the Internet? How about being responsible when not raping someone?! [Read more…]

A new Dan Cardamon. Each new one is more brilliant than the last. This one is very brilliant.

Well now that I’ve been told about the three Christs of Ypsilanti, I have to take a look at them.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (1964) is a book-length psychiatriccase study by Milton Rokeach, concerning his experiment on a group of three paranoid schizophrenic patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital^[1] in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The book details the interactions of the three patients, Clyde Benson, Joseph Cassel, and Leon Gabor, who each believed himself to be Jesus Christ.

Ah the eyes widen, the spine straightens, the attention zooms in. The possibilities are obvious, and abundant. [Read more…]

Since when do judges tell people what they can name their babies?

The issue, at least as Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew saw it, was that the child’s name was “Messiah,” a moniker Ballew believes should be reserved only for Jesus Christ. Here’s local NBC affiliate station WBIR-TV with more of the judge’s logic:

       “The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Judge Ballew said.

Bad Obama administration. Don’t do that. Bad, bad, bad.

The Obama administration has taken sides in a significant new test case on the separation between church and state, urging the Supreme Court to allow prayers at the beginning of government meetings. The administration lays out its arguments in a newly filed amicus brief in Town of Greece v. Galloway, a case that questions whether the prayer practices at town council meetings of a small town in upstate New York violate the First Amendment. The case could drastically expand the types of legislative prayer practices considered constitutional. [Read more…]

Taslima has a beautiful (indignant and compassionate) post about the poverty of Bangladesh’s transportation system and the consequent dangers of travel on major holidays…like Eid. She illustrates with many poignant pictures.

Allah sent Muhammad buraq, the winged horse,  so that Muhammad, the prophet  could travel to heaven. He went to heaven on buraq and met Moses, Jesus, a few more bearded guys  and finally Allah the almighty.

Now look at  the condition of Bangladesh today.  They don’t have enough vehicles to travel. Millions of people are travelling to  home to celebrate Eid, the biggest Muslim religious festival with their family and friends tomorrow. They are desperate to get some space on the public transports. Train roofs and doors are crowded with people.  Boats will sink. Many people would die. Allah should have sent Buraqs the winged horses to take  these poor people home safely and quickly so that they can  celebrate eid that Allah asked them to celebrate.

But that’s not what happened, so instead they sit on the roofs of trains. Nothing at all dangerous about that…

Tom Foss takes a look at Tim Farley’s long-delayed response to objections to his very long post about the Block Bot. Wait. That’s so meta it’s confusing.

Tim Farley did a long post about the block bot.

People had criticisms of it. I was one of those people. Tom was another. Tim Farley made many objections to the criticisms, none of which addressed the actual criticisms that were made. It was frustrating and irritating, especially since Farley’s objections included rebukes for addressing a small part of the post instead of the whole of it. Now he has addressed the criticisms, and Tom has addressed his response. It’s part of a video hangout, which is a very odd way to address written criticisms of a written piece. I haven’t watched it, because frankly I don’t like watching videos. But Tom has. [Read more…]

Robin Ince took part in an Intelligence Square debate yesterday, on the motion ““The world needs religion, just leave God out of it.” He and Peter Atkins were against, Selina O’Grady and Douglas Murray were for. He posted his opening statement and summing up.

Enough statistics, I want to speak of my personal experience, of the people who do good, care about their community, and want to build something better, but do it without religion.

(here I had a long list including…)

I think of the work of the human rights lawyer who spends his life campaigning for people across the world who he feels have been wrongly punished, including incredible work in Guantanamo Bay. He is a godless human trying to help many who have religious beliefs, sometimes it has been little more than their religious beliefs that have led to their incarceration. [Read more…]

Jerry Coyne posted about Dawkins and the Tweets this morning. I had a column to write for the Freethinker yesterday and I decided to write about Dawkins and the Tweets. I sent it yesterday, proofed it this morning.

The subject isn’t as trivial as it might sound to a visitor from Mars. (Ok not Mars. We can’t use Mars that way any more, not now that we’re rummaging around up out there ourselves, making ourselves at home, taking snapshots. Ok Neptune. A visitor from Neptune.) There’s something interesting about the way Twitter can act as a kind of Id for some people, and about Dawkins’s failure or refusal to see that it’s not a good idea to use it that way. [Read more…]