The UC Davis police chief has been placed on leave after the pepper spraying of students on Friday.
On Sunday, the university said that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an investigation into Friday’s incident. In videos that were widely distributed over the Internet, two police officers in riot gear were seen dousing about a dozen protesters with pepper spray as they sat on a sidewalk with their arms entwined.
Yup. That’s what happened.
A new thing for Christianists to worry about.
Girls wanting to become Guides, Brownies or Rainbows currently promise to “love” God when signing up to the 101-year-old organisation.
However, the association is considering reviewing the wording of its affirmation for new members, to remove religious references.
The NSS says the story is bogus, but taking it as true for the moment…What of it? Why should children have to promise to love “God” in order to join a group that does fun things? Why should even children who do in fact love “God” have to do that? Why should even children of “devout” parents have to do that? Why have a requirement of that kind at all? It seems surplus to requirements. It seems intrusive and bossy. [Read more…]
It’s a hard job obliterating women from the landscape. People have been trying for centuries but it’s like weevils or mildew…there’s always a bit you miss and then before you know it – the big chomping jaws come through the wall and eat you.
The Saudis are struggling with this problem now, and they’ve decided there’s no help for it, they’re just going to have to cover up the eyes too. Otherwise – munch munch.
Saudi women with sexy or “tempting” eyes may be forced to
cover them up, according to a spokesperson for the Committee for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the news site Bikyamasr
reports. [Read more…]
Simon Singh finds Charles Windsor less than reasonable on the subject of alternative “medicine.”
The heir to the throne will not accept that treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractic therapy do not work in the vast majority of cases, according to Simon Singh. [Read more…]
Via Dana’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “There is a Crucial Difference Between Being Contentious and Being a Misogynistic Asshole,” we read Anne Jefferson’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “You got a sexist story, but when you published it, you gave it your stamp of approval and became sexist too.”
Dear Nature,
“Womanspace” by Ed Rybicki is the most appalling thing I have ever read in a scientific journal. When I read the Futures (science fiction) piece you published on 29 September 2011, about how the hero and a man friend were unable to cope with a simple errand and how that led them to discover the existence of parallel universe inhabited by women that naturally endowed women with their domestic prowess, but which women were too dumb to observe until the great men of science made their discovery, I checked to make make sure I was still on nature.com. To my dismay, I was. [Read more…]
And another thing. What does this remind you of?
The rise of the Haredim has been disastrous for the country’s economy, according to Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel.
Gorenberg writes that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is becoming ever more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labour.
”By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy.
Quiverfull, and the homeschool movement. The democratic US state is fostering a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy – or secularism or human rights.
How do you know when the theocrats are winning? Women start to disappear, and at the same time, the ones who haven’t disappeared yet are subject to spittle-flecked hatred…including those who are six years old.
Oh look, we’re back on this corner again. Some drearily unthinking guy writes a patronizing “funny” article story about women for Nature, people say how drearily unthinking it is, and everybody says “oh lighten up, ladies.” It’s just a joke, huh huh huh. Jokes never do any harm, any fule kno that.
In a pig’s eye, says Christie Wilcox at SciAm blogs.
Reinforcing negative gender stereotypes is anything but harmless.
It was Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson who, in 1995, first coined the term stereotype threat. It refers to how the knowledge of a prejudicial stereotype can lead to enough anxiety that a person actually ends up confirming the image. Since that landmark paper, more than 300 studies have found evidence for the pervasive negative effects of societal stereotypes. [Read more…]
Keith Ward wrote a short piece for Comment is Free, a couple of weeks ago, saying something about religion and science and claims and facts. (I put it loosely that way because Ward oscillates between terms a lot, so it’s not easy to specify exactly what he’s claiming. The title of the piece is “Religion answers the factual questions science neglects,” which is an ok summary, but it’s not necessarily written by Ward.) Ward’s piece was in response to Julian Baggini’s piece on whether science and religion are compatible.
Jerry Coyne wrote a piece responding to Ward’s. Jim Houston wrote a piece at Talking Philosophy responding to Coyne’s, with a response directly from Ward.
All straight? Shoes buckled? Knives put away in the basket? Off we go. [Read more…]
And we’ll never never never leave you again.
Not if we can help it anyway.
