I forgot to say – I’m doing a talk at CFI Los Angeles on Sunday, so if you’re in that area and want to come along, now you know. 11 a.m. 4773 Hollywood Boulevard.
I’m going to talk about Reap Paden.
Kidding! Totally kidding.
I might eat some cat food though, as a kind of party trick.
I’m adding the thing. There’s a thing. A description type thing.
Another girls’ school set on fire in Pakistan.
A large number of people, including activists of religious parties, ransacked and set on fire a girls’ school in Lahore and clashed with police following reports that a question paper for a test had contained blasphemous references to the Prophet, police said today.
Reports, please note. Also known as rumors. Reports that something something, so whammo, set fire to a girls’ school.
Residents of Karim Park near Data Darbar began gathering outside the school yesterday morning following reports that its owner, Asim Farooqi, and teacher Arifa had committed blasphemy. [Read more…]
There’s a lot of indignation about Bruce Gorton’s guest post about faitheists. People have been badgering Paul Fidalgo about it on Twitter merely because he linked to it in the Morning Heresy – he linked to it, he didn’t endorse it. James Croft has a long post on it. Vlad Chituc challenged me on it via Twitter, and we ended up having a decent discussion.
The indignation is about the claim that Chris Stedman “holds a degree of the basic unconscious racism that I find common in a lot of these arguments over religion.”
Part of the problem is just that people translated that into “Chris Stedman is a racist.”
Look closely at the two and you’ll see the difference. [Read more…]
Muzaffarabad: A mother and father in Pakistan-administered Kashmir killed their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid after seeing her talking to a young man, police said on Thursday.
By dousing her with acid. Can there be a worse way to die? Being set on fire, perhaps.
And for talking to a man. Parents. Their child. Acid. Talking to a man.
Local police officer Tahir Ayub told AFP the father, Mohammad Zafar, had had suspicions about his daughter Anvu Sha and became enraged when he saw her with a boy outside their home on Monday.
“Zafar beat her up and then poured acid over her with the help of his wife. She was badly burnt but they did not take her to hospital until the next morning, and she died on Wednesday,” Ayub said.
Doctor Mohammad Jahangir of the state run Kotli hospital confirmed the death, saying the girl was brought to hospital in a “very critical condition” with almost 70 per cent burns.
She must have been screaming with agony all night. Apparently they just sat around listening.
Martin Pribble reminds us of the Montreal Massacre. On December 6 1989, a guy called Marc Lépine went into a classroom at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. Katherine Ramsland describes what he did there. [trigger warning]
In French, the young man asked the 10 female students to get up and move across the room. He then told the men to leave. No one moved. A few people laughed, as if this were some kind of joke. That was the worst thing they could have done. He had been humiliated enough in his 25 years. On this day, of all days, he was not going to be treated in that way.
Lifting his rifle, he shot twice into the ceiling. It was no joke.
“You’re all a of bunch of feminists!” the man shouted, his eyes now alight with anger. “And I hate feminists!” [Read more…]
Also –
I kid, I kid.
He drops in here with his totally cool angry atheist avatar and his rapier wit, and he puts me in my place.
I apologize if someone has already made this point–
Ophelia I think I can speak on behalf of at least a whole hell of a lot of people when I ask “When are you going to deflate your head and come down for a landing?” Some of the incredible things I have seen you post lately make me wonder if you have been eating too much cat food or something.
I plan to make “I think I can speak on behalf of at least a whole hell of a lot of people” my new catchphrase.
Thank goodness for Honda, you know, because without it, there wouldn’t be special cars for women only.
A guest post by Bruce Gorton.
A faitheist is essentially an atheist who argues for “politeness”in atheist/ religious discourse, in which the polite path is essentially the atheists shut up.
In the civil rights movement these were the “Uncle Toms” and the exact same crew are present in the gay rights movement right now. Ever hear a woman proclaim how much of a feminist she isn’t? It is the same basic deal. If you watch politics, this is the reason why “bipartisan support” has such an ominous ring to it. [Read more…]
News from Poland. There’s this guy Robert Darski, of the rock group Behemoth. He tore up a bible onstage once. You know what happened next. But he was acquitted! Good.
Poland’s Supreme Court concluded on Monday that a person may be found guilty of offending religious sensibilities even if the defendant had not “directly” intended to do so. [Read more…]
