Around FtB


Who needs to read any other site? Freethoughtblogs has it all.

  • Digital Cuttlefish has a poem about Texas cheerleaders. Don’t worry, it’s not porny at all!

  • Ophelia Benson finds Simon Singh in trouble again, being threatened with a lawsuit by quacks who don’t like him pointing out the duck-like nature of their voices.

  • Dana Hunter is searching for a notorious car — one that survived the eruption of Mt St Helens.

  • Ian Cromwell dissects gay conversion therapy and discovers something completely obvious about its proponents.

  • Sikivu Hutchinson also puts the smack down on the religious fanatics pushing gay conversion therapy.

  • Maryam Namazie notices that women are mysteriously disappearing from the pages of Ikea catalogs in Saudi Arabia. Turns out it’s a Swedish conspiracy.

  • Richard Carrier is going to Skepticon! So am I!

  • Mano Singham reveals the logo of our American drone program. Are we the baddies? Yes, we are.
    It’s not a joke. That’s really their logo.

  • Taslima Nasrin notes a recent archaeological discovery: Bronze Age women worked as metalsmiths. Must have been before the patriarchy took over.

  • Zinnia Jones makes my brain hurt. You MUST watch the video she posted; it’ll make you feel so good and happy. Then you can read the comments from the Religious Right about it, if you want to be whipsawed into fearing a large chunk of humanity. Or if you’d rather just wallow in despair, skip the heart-warming video and go straight to the Commentator Accountability Project.

Comments

  1. says

    This may be a TL:DR but I’d just like to point out that that logo is for a US Navy drone program. The admirals would LIKE to have armed drones launching off of aircraft carriers a la Top Gun sans Maverick n Iceman but it’s in the experimental stages still. The on-going drone strikes around the world using Predator and Reaper (those names…) unmanned aircraft are currently the strict purview of the USAF and particularly the CIA.
    The drones aren’t even being armed and maintained by USAF personnel in the countries in which they’re based. The ground crews and local pilots (the latter handle take-offs and landings and then hand the drone over to pilots in the US who fly the missions via satellite link) are all Blackwater/Xe type civilian contractors, so the US gov can say “See? The government isn’t operating these drones. Those aren’t OUR soldiers doing any of this.” All this is dealt with in detail in Rachel Maddow’s terrific (and distressing) book DRIFT: THE UNMOORING OF AMERICAN MILITARY POWER.

  2. madscientist says

    “Must have been before the patriarchy took over”

    Not necessarily. The last time I wandered through villages in Asia, it was typical for the women to be doing all the work while the men sat on benches talking, drinking, and scratching their balls. Perhaps those Bronze Age societies had a similar setup. It all depends on which particular patriarchy takes over.