Yes Malala may be doing better, but gurlz still must not be allowed to go to school in Pakistan. Everyone knows the whorey little sluts only want to go to school so that they can fuck all the boys there. Bitches.
Another school was blown up today, bringing the total for the year to 18. [Read more…]
A doctor tells us about Malala’s progress in a video.
She’s communicating freely, though she can’t talk until the tracheostomy tube is removed, probably in a few days.
She thanks everybody for the messages.
Janet Stemwedel has a sharp and to the point post on sexism among scientists, The point of calling out bad behavior.
There’s a blog discussion of a particular guy and his particular sexism, with lashings of sexism-denial Bingo. Free speech! Whassa big deal?! Give the guy a chance to grow!
It’s almost like people have something invested in denying the existence of gender bias among scientists, the phenomenon of a chilly climate in scientific professions, or even the possibility that Dario Maestripieri’s Facebook post was maybe not the first observable piece of sexism a working scientist put out there for the world to see. [Read more…]
She’s awake, and she has stood up. She’s making good progress. She might make a full recovery.
The hospital held a news conference and said the teenager is aware of her surroundings and making good progress.
Malala, CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reported on “CBS This Morning,” has some memory as to what happened, and remembers she was in Pakistan on a school bus one moment, and then, in the next, woke up in a foreign country. One of the first things she asked when she came out of her medically-induced coma Tuesday, D’Agata reported, was what country she was in.
…
At this early stage, in terms of neurological damage, doctors are say[ing] they hop[e] she will make a full recovery. She’s not out of the woods, they say, but she’s close to the edge of the woods.
That is good news.
As many of you probably already know, Greta is in a situation where some financial support would relieve her of some extra worry that she doesn’t need. Passing on that message would help her too, including if you can’t help financially. Kind words also help. So do suggestions of stuff to watch or read while recuperating.
If you can’t or don’t want to donate money, but you still want to help, other helpful things would be:
Help spread the word about this fundraiser: on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, your own blog, any other reasonable means that you have access to.
Buy my book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and/or encourage other people to buy it and publicize it.
Give me suggestions for books and DVDs to keep me occupied during my recovery. I’m looking for books, movies, and TV shows that are engaging and entertaining, but not heavy or serious, and that don’t take too much brainpower to follow.
Send kind words. They help, more than I can say.
Buttons to donate, again, here.
I just had a lively few minutes of being spammed by Be Scofield on Twitter. He’s written another article, and wants people to read it. Telling me it was about Atheism+ and interfaith didn’t do the trick, so then he told me he’d mentioned me in it so I might want to read it. Transparent, but effective – ohhhhhhhhhh all right, I’ll go see how you’ve dissed me this time. Fortunately it took only a few seconds to read, and I just said meh (in effect). Disappointing, so he tried telling PZ that he needed to stop doing what he was doing for the good of the whatever. Then he said he wasn’t telling us what to do. Good fun. I looked at his feed; he spammed the article to lots of people – Jessica Ahlquist for one. What’s Jessica done to deserve that?! Nothing.
Back to serious biz. Turkey has put yet another valuable person on trial for “insulting Islam.” How? Climbing to the top of a minaret and shouting “Islam sucks!!” through the loudspeaker? No. Tweeting. [Read more…]
How useful, how apropos, how…right. An online article at the New Yorker on the wrongness of the idea that harassment is part of our glorious heritage of free speech.
It starts with Amanda Todd.
Todd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds the tossing off of a stray insult. [Read more…]
Almost as if in reply to the “liberal bullies” article, some US publishers say that words matter.
Despite promises to reform their textbooks, the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and incitement. Seven current and former heads of major publishing houses address the critical importance of words.
The critical importance of words? But aren’t we always being told that words don’t matter? That we “radfems” are just batshit crazy, making all this fuss about mere “werdz” because it’s only fists and sticks that make any difference. [Read more…]
The pro-misogyny (yes, misogyny) crowd is passing around an article on “liberal bullying.” Of course they are. The people who stalk a few bloggers day in and day out for a year and a half are “brave heroes” and freedom fighters; the people they stalk relentlessly are liberal bullies.
Still, there’s something to it, at least if the descriptions are accurate.
Increasingly, I’ve started recognizing this kind of behavior for what it is: privilege-checking as a form of internet sport. [Read more…]
Here’s an interesting new development. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has expanded its definition of “misogyny” in response to Gillard’s speech on the subject last week.
The dictionary currently defines misogyny as “hatred of women”, but will now add a second definition to include “entrenched prejudice against women”, suggesting Abbott discriminated against women with his sexist views. [Read more…]