The panel I did at Women in Secularism with Rebecca and Jen and Sikivu is now posted.

In case you look at it, just a note – I’m really not as furious and grim as I look, that’s just the way my face goes. In my head I’m actually as mostly-amused as Rebecca looks (and is).

There’s a report that the women in Pakistan haven’t been killed after all. That would be a relief! Thank you for not killing some women for singing and dancing at a wedding. You are very kind.

Pakistani campaigners say they have made contact with two out of five women previously feared murdered for singing in a wedding video.

Dr Farzana Bari met the two women after travelling with officials to a remote village in north-west Pakistan.

The team did not meet the other three women, but said local elders had given assurances that they were also alive.

Well good. I’m glad there’s one less horror in the stack of horrors.

After several hours climbing, human rights activists – travelling with local officials – say the two women appeared relaxed, and did not show any signs of physical ill-treatment.

“If these two are alive, I believe the others are as well,” campaigner Farzana Bari told the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Islamabad.

Dr Bari said that the other three women were at a more remote location that could not be reached easily.

Good. I hope they flourish.

She said that she believed there had been no death sentence from a tribal council, but there was a real risk to the women because the wedding video had been widely seen.

“There’s a strong tradition in this area of taking the law into your own hands,” she said. “The authorities should keep on monitoring the women. There is still a risk, we cannot relax.”

Best wishes. Fingers crossed.

 

Ed has a great post replying to a hilariously absurd one by John Loftus wondering what the Freethought blogs “mission statement” is. That question is swiftly answered: there ain’t one.

Ed points out a certain confusion.

On the one hand, if several FTBers agree on a subject and each write about it expressing a similar perspective, that’s bad and it’s obviously all orchestrated behind the scenes; on the other hand, when we disagree we’re drowning each other out and undermining atheism in the process.

Don’t I know it. I’ve just seen a little knot of people on Twitter agreeing with each other that FTB thinks as one and is horribly messily anarchic. If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it a million times: someone saying “this one FTB blog said something bad; FTB is bad terrible horrible awful.” Apparently what one FTB blogger says, we all say. We’re One Big Giant Robot, with multiple limbs but only one brain. But also anarchic. Bastards!

Hilarious headline department:

Pope praises Britain’s Queen Elizabeth’s “noble vision” of a Christian monarch

You don’t say!

Well he would, wouldn’t he. She’s praised his “noble vision” of a Christian pontiff, too, for the same kind of reason. They’re colleagues. They both work in the unelected unaccountable head of an absurd hierarchy business. They both draw their illegitimate magical pseudo-authority from a non-existent “god.” They both wear expensive outfits when appearing to worshipful crowds. They both tell people what’s what, based on nothing in particular.

In a message released Wednesday by the Vatican, Benedict said the British monarch has over the past 60 years been an “inspiring example of dedication to duty and a commitment to maintaining the principles of freedom, justice and democracy.”

Oh? What has she done in the way of maintaining the principles of freedom, justice and democracy? I don’t say she’s opposed them, particularly, but what does she do that makes any difference to them? Nothing I can see, except that her performance of monarchy is an implicit rebuke to democracy in the broadest sense.

Ah well, it was just a formula, like a Mother’s Day card.

Another petition for you, via the New Humanist:

We call on the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to withdraw their complaint against Indian Rationalist Sanal Edamaruku

You bet; I certainly call on the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to do that. Seriously? Edamaruku investigated a claim that a little statue of Mary was leaking tears, and he found that it was seepage from sewer water under the statue. That’s not a crime, to put it mildly, and the Catholic archdiocese has no business complaining about it.

Hey Catholic archdiocese of Bombay – I say the guy named Yeshua who was executed by the Romans 20 centuries ago is still dead, because dead people stay dead. Come and get me!

Katha Pollitt reports bad news about the woman in Indiana who is being prosecuted for murder because she attempted suicide when she was 33 weeks pregnant.

The state Supreme Court has refused to review charges of attempted feticide and murder against Bei Bei Shuai. Just before Christmas 2010, Shuai, who was thirty-three weeks pregnant, attempted to kill herself by consuming rat poison after her boyfriend, father of the baby, abruptly announced he was married and abandoned her to return to his family. Rushed to the hospital, she had a Caesarean section, but her newborn daughter died after a few days of life. (Here’s my column on the case.) Despite amicus briefs from eighty respected experts and relevant medical and social organizations—the state of Indiana, for reasons best known to itself, will do its best to send Shuai to prison. Potential sentence: forty-five to sixty-five years. The only good news is that after spending 435 days in jail, Shuai is now out on bail.

Indiana? You’re being disgusting.

Stairs to no end reminded me of something: one of my favorite last-two-minutes of the ’90s tv show Northern Exposure, which had a lot of glorious final two minutes. I’m slow, so it took me awhile to remember that I might be able to find it, and by golly…

Chris the DJ-autodidact-ex-con has spent the episode preparing a surprise winter celebration thing for Cicely, and that celebration thing is the end of the episode. Check it out.