essentialsaltes: (diversity)
Subtitle: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

It tells the story of a Quaker student at Brown who spends a semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 2007. OK, yes, it's a bit of a stunt, but at least it's an interesting one, and Roose definitely throws himself into the role, a lot more so than, say, Jason Rosenhouse in Among the Creationists. Roose enrolls at Liberty and presents himself as a Christian (At Liberty, "Christian" is synonymous with 'born again Christian') and (awkwardly) fakes up a recent conversion story to explain his presence (and why he has so little knowledge that he would flunk Sunday school for six year olds).

In short he comes to, generally, like the students and staff at Liberty, and a little Stockholm Syndrome sets in I think, and he finds himself simultaneously defending them, and disapproving of their (fairly common) homophobia and the one-sidedness of some portions of the 'education'. He even comes to have some appreciation for Jerry Falwell. And in "you can't make this shit up", he scores a one-on-one interview with Falwell for the school newspaper, gets praised for it by Falwell himself in convocation (I mean, what's not to praise, it was a puff-piece in the Liberty newspaper; the hard-hitting exposé uncovered the fact that Falwell had a peach Snapple every day at 3pm, which he slammed down in 6 seconds). A few days later, Falwell's dead, and this Quaker mole has published the last print interview Falwell ever gave, which comes to have a life of its own as it is reprinted in the memorial for the funeral.

I have once again abused the highlight feature of the Kindle...

if you click here, I'll reward you with Larry Flynt's parody ad featuring Falwell that led to a Supreme Court case )
essentialsaltes: (atheist teacher)
Great article on the history of Elevatorgate and other episodes of misogyny and the war about misogyny in the atheism/skepticism movement - on Buzzfeed of all places. [See also my earlier journal entry]

In related news, I'd also like to point out, for the local Southern Californians, that there is an art exhibit opening up at the Center for Inquiry Hollywood tomorrow night (Sep 13).

A Woman's Room Online:

"A Woman’s Room Online is an installation art exhibit created by Amy Davis Roth in conjunction with The Los Angeles Women’s Atheist and Agnostic Group (LAWAAG) and hosted at CFI-Los Angeles.

This installation consists of thousands of real sexist and threatening messages sent to only a handful of women who work in online arenas. The viewer enters a small freestanding room, an office space that has been completely transformed and plastered with messages, a paper-trail of hate, sent electronically to the contributors starting in July of 2011 until today."
essentialsaltes: (poseidon)
The Penelopiad is sort of a retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey from Penelope's perspective. Of course, since Penelope takes no part in the Trojan War or Odysseus' wanderings, there is more emphasis on Penelope's childhood, marriage to Odysseus, and her adventures with the suitors as they look to displace the absent Odysseus. The chapters mostly alternate from Penelope's telling of her own story, and a Greek chorus composed of the 12 serving maids, who are hanged for their naughtiness after Odysseus' return and the slaughter of the suitors. Evidently Atwood was struck by their unkind fate when she first read the Odyssey:

Euryclea left the cloister to tell the women, and make them come to Ulysses; in the meantime he called Telemachus, the stockman, and the swineherd. "Begin," said he, "to remove the dead, and make the women help you. Then, get sponges and clean water to swill down the tables and seats. When you have thoroughly cleansed the whole cloisters, take the women into the space between the domed room and the wall of the outer court, and run them through with your swords till they are quite dead, and have forgotten all about love and the way in which they used to lie in secret with the suitors."

On this the women came down in a body, weeping and wailing bitterly. First they carried the dead bodies out, and propped them up against one another in the gatehouse. Ulysses ordered them about and made them do their work quickly, so they had to carry the bodies out. When they had done this, they cleaned all the tables and seats with sponges and water, while Telemachus and the two others shovelled up the blood and dirt from the ground, and the women carried it all away and put it out of doors. Then when they had made the whole place quite clean and orderly, they took the women out and hemmed them in the narrow space between the wall of the domed room and that of the yard, so that they could not get away: and Telemachus said to the other two, "I shall not let these women die a clean death, for they were insolent to me and my mother, and used to sleep with the suitors."

So saying he made a ship's cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the domed room, and secured it all around the building, at a good height, lest any of the women's feet should touch the ground; and as thrushes or doves beat against a net that has been set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest, and a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their heads in nooses one after the other and die most miserably. Their feet moved convulsively for a while, but not for very long.


Penelope reveals that all was not what it seemed, and the chorus has its own story to tell. The chorus sections are written in different styles -- poem, song, play, anthropological treatise, videotaped court proceeding...

It's a pretty short read, and I found it delightful from end to end. It's a great writer unleashing a jeu d'esprit based on old (but still vital) myths.

I'm not sure why this even needs mentioning, but just because it's a retelling from the female point of view, doesn't mean that it's a man-hating feminazi manifesto (okay except maybe that one bit, which is arguably satire).
essentialsaltes: (Whiskey Tango but no Foxtrot)
The full subtitle is: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

The book tells the story of Thomas Day, an 18th century Rousseau-fanatic and abolitionist, focusing on his experiment to obtain a foundling and train her up to be a suitable wife. This idea came after several failed marriage proposals ("He would later describe Margaret as 'a toad, which I would not injure, but cannot help beholding with abhorrence.'"

Rousseau had written a novel outlining a radical unschooling idea (it also inspired Montessori) that a friend of Day's had adopted for his son. The kid turned into a brat. This didn't stop Day from trying his own hand at perfecting a suitable wife.

Day actually acquired two foundlings under the false pretense that he was getting domestic servants for a friend. While the girls did cook and clean, they also received educations of a sort. In addition to philosophy and science, they were also subjected to physical privation to toughen them up, with mixed results.

"'His experiments had not the success he wished and expected,' Anna Seward would later write. 'Her spirit could not be armed against the dread of pain, and the appearance of danger. . . . When he dropped melted sealing-wax upon her arms she did not endure it heroically, nor when he fired pistols at her petticoats, which she believed to be charged with balls, could she help starting aside, or suppress her screams.'"

While Day appears to have been scrupulous about not taking advantage of the girls (except for that melted wax fixation...) the whole thing would have scandalized the nation... except that Day was mega-wealthy and connected, and could do as he pleased, more or less. Perhaps(?) one sign of this scrupulousness is that he never told the girls of the real goal of his experiment (though several friends were well aware of it).

One girl was dismissed (with a nice pension) when Day finally decided which of the two he thought would be suitable. To make a long-but-fasinating story short, when Day finally got around to explaining the experiment to Sabrina, she freaked and refused him. He gave her a nice settlement as well, and she ultimately married a mutual acquaintance, and lived a fairly long life, working in a school after the death of her husband.

Some more tasty quotes, jotted down from my Kindle notes:

And the classicist Elizabeth Carter was so revered as a linguist that Samuel Johnson believed her Greek translations were superior to those of any male scholar, although he was quick to point out that she could also make a pudding.

He soon teamed up with Sir Francis Blake Delaval, a gambler, drunkard and libertine notorious for his wild antics, whose idea of a good time included contests to ride horses up a grand marble staircase and party games to bite the heads off sparrows suspended on strings in a macabre version of bobbing for apples.

In one painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, he portrayed girls and boys watching a demonstration of a bird, a white cockatoo, being deprived of air in a vacuum flask with a mixture of fascination and horror.

[Speaking of the founder of the foundling hospital]: "But most shocking of all, as he walked to London and back each day, was the sight of abandoned babies “sometimes alive, sometimes dead, and sometimes dying,” dumped on rubbish heaps by the side of the road.

[Entries from the Foundling Hospital records] - One child was described as “a Mear Skirlinton Covered with Rags with a hole in the Roofe of the Mouth,” while another was simply “The most miserable object Ever Received.” Mortality rates leapt from an already tragic 45 percent to more than 70 percent...

According to the unwritten code of conduct that constrained Georgian society like a corset it was strictly taboo for a respectable woman to be left alone with a man under any circumstances unless they were formally engaged; and even then a chaperone was usually mandatory. Even exchanging letters between a single man and a single woman was frowned upon. The entire plot of Fanny Burney’s novel, Evelina, hinges upon the heroine’s horror at her (mistaken) belief that her hero asks her to collude in a private correspondence.

[Day was also an ardent abolitionist] - Published as an anonymous pamphlet at the end of June 1773, The Dying Negro related the true story of a slave who had escaped the previous month from the London house of his master, a certain Captain Ordington, and been baptized in order to marry a fellow servant, an English maid, with whom he had fallen in love. Marriage to an Englishwoman would automatically have made the African a free man. But before the couple had time to say their vows, the slave was seized on the London streets and taken on board the captain’s ship moored in the Thames and bound for the West Indies. Desperate to avoid being sent back to a life of bondage, the slave shot himself in the head with a pistol.

Discussing the vexed question of independence with American friends in rowdy debates in Middle Temple Hall or the smoky taverns nearby, Day announced that he could not support the Americans’cries for liberty while they denied that same right to thousands of slaves.

“The Dutch ladies are, to my taste, not a little disagreeable,” he solemnly informed his mother. “They are so intolerably nasty and gluttonous, stuffing themselves all day with bread and butter and tea, then retiring to discharge their superfluities at the little house, without any decency, or even taking the trouble to shut the door.”
essentialsaltes: (jasmine)
Satirical Rant on Corsets

“Messrs. Editors:—The air we ladies have to breathe up here in Vermont circulates all round the world and is breathed by all the filthy creatures on the face of the earth, by rhinoceroses, cows, elephants, tigers, woodchucks, hens, skunks, minks, grasshoppers, mice, raccoons, and all kinds of bugs, spiders, fleas and lice, lions, tobacco-smokers, catamounts, eagles, crows, rum-drinkers, turkey buzzards, tobacco-chewers, hogs, snakes, toads, lizzards, and millions of other nasty animals, birds, insects and serpents; and we ladies are obliged to breathe it over after them, ough! bah!

Now we want, and must have, some contrivance that will effectually keep this foul, disgusting stuff out of our lungs. We have tried the three kinds of corsets which you noticed in your paper the last year; but when we do the best with them that we can, about a teacupful of this nasty air will rush into our lungs in spite of these miserable contrivances. If these corsets are worth anything to keep this disgusting air out of a body, and we have not put them on right, please come immediately yourself or send the inventors to show us how. If they are a humbug I hope their inventors will be tarred and feathered and rode on a rail. —Susie Pinkins”
essentialsaltes: (Mr. Gruff)
This post has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's particularly good, informative, or insightful.

[livejournal.com profile] jimhines' cartoon has been flying around recently:


While this was about science fiction cons, it applies perfectly well to atheist/skeptic/secular cons. That community has had some recent high-profile incidents, and some longer simmering arguments. I've been mostly watching from the sidelines; not because I don't care, but because I haven't been directly involved. I haven't been to any of these conventions. I don't really know the people involved, and certainly have no knowledge of the actual incidents. So I didn't think I had much to add other than a huge chance of foot-in-mouth disease.

essentialsaltes more than likely puts his foot in his mouth somewhere in here )
essentialsaltes: (Shoot)
Jury acquits escort shooter

Gilbert's actions were justified, [his defense] argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property: the $150 he paid [the escort]. It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back, they said.

The escort "died about seven months after she was shot in the neck and paralyzed."

Quoth the killer: “I've been in a [entirely metaphorical] mental prison the past four years of my life. I have nightmares. If I see guns on TV where people are getting killed, I change the channel.”

Boo-fucking-hoo.
essentialsaltes: (essentialsaltes)
Colleague and friend of Dr. Tiller works to reopen his Wichita abortion clinic:
“We can’t let fear rule our lives,” Ms. Burkhart said, her cowboy boots clopping loudly as she walked through the clinic.
essentialsaltes: (notpraying mantis)
Society Without God presents the results of Zuckerman's yearlong stay in Denmark, interviewing Danes (and a few Swedes, and a couple miscellaneous) about their religious beliefs and the religious culture of Scandinavia. Although Zuckerman is a trained sociologist, he's also a secular person himself, and admits here and there that he has an axe to grind. Nevertheless, the result provides some great straight-from-the-horse's-mouth information on a culture that is overwhelmingly secular, and ranks highly on any number of socioeconomic factors that contribute to happiness and stability.

He spends some time discussing why the Scandinavian countries have turned out so secular. I think the most convincing to me is the idea that these societies take care of their people so well, that this stability and support obviates not only material needs, but spiritual ones as well. Another more interesting idea that gets explored a little bit is the idea that the Scandinavians were just never very religious in the first place. With Christianity being largely imposed from above for political reasons by kings or arbitration, one can wonder about the depth and sincerity of belief in the countries, even after 1000 years.

In any event, belief in one or more gods is a minority position. However, many of his subjects profess a belief in 'something'. And it's also clear that many of the subjects just don't want to talk about it. Possibly they are 'hiding' the unpopular view that they actually believe in god. Or possibly it's just that their culture seems to be very reticent to talk about religous matters. I think one subject said it would be much easier to talk about sex with his grandparents than gods. Here's another example:
"Q - If I were to ask you, “Do you believe in God?"—and I‘m not going to say what that means, just that question—how would you respond?
A - It’s none of your business. [laughter] No, I would be polite, but I would kind of want to talk about something else."

It's also interesting that, although belief in gods or an afterlife is very rare, Danes typically still consider themselves Christian, and I think about 80% of them belong to the national church (which collects taxes from them). Zuckerman makes a very apposite analogy with modern American Judaism. Many American Jews are very secular, but nevertheless carry out the various rituals. Many have bar (and bat) mitzvahs, despite a lack of actual belief; the Danes are similarly Confirmed in the church.

But it is so interesting to see what 'being Christian' means to them:
"From Annelise, a 47-year-old manager at a telecommunications company: Being an okay person, being nice to people, not hurting anyone, helping when help is needed, that sort of thing. But nothing spectacular, you know. Just being nice."
"From Anika, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mom: Being Christian means to look out for the poor and the challenged in our society . . . to feel compassion, to be able to think of other people than yourself . . . to look out for the weak, the poor . . . to not discriminate . . . but to think that everybody has the same value."

There's precious little mention of Jesus, or sins, or redemption.

There's a lengthy, but not very insightful, interview with a believer in Asatru.

But the most interesting interview is with a guy who at first identified as a Christian and a (somewhat tepid) believer in God. Then he was interviewed again after having lived in the US for several months...
"And that puzzled me because I thought the United States would be more like Denmark—believing in, you know, rationality."
"And I was just like, what is Hillary Clinton praying?! I don’t know. It’s just scary—that even the Democrats are so religious. So if I was to live here I would have a problem voting for a president, because I don’t want a religious leader."

Ultimately, the experience of bumping into American-style Christianity destroyed his belief in God:
"Yeah, because when I came here I believed in God and I was Christian—but in a Danish way. So there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense, but—you know—sure, I thought God was up there and he helped us, he tried to make a book and we tried to behave according to the book, and you know, humans make errors so maybe the book isn’t 100 percent correct, but you can kind of do it. But when I came here and saw all the people being so—explicit—like Jesus died and he was the Son of God and he was born by a virgin. And I added it all up and said, okay if I need to say I‘m a Christian, then I need to believe in all this stuff. Because there’s so much that you have to buy into in order to be Christian. And I didn’t buy into it. I don’t believe it."

And what will he tell the people back home?

"I think I would say to them, maybe you don’t believe me, but the American society is—all politics and media discussions—is based on that everybody is very devoted Christians. Meaning that you cannot hold an office, you cannot be a president, you cannot be whatever, if you don’t publicly say that you believe in God and all of your sentences end with God bless America or whatever. That we, as Danes, have to be very, very careful with joining the United States when they want us to go to war or they want us to join them in whatever endeavors they want us to join with them, because the religious fanatics in the United States have a very, very high influence on what’s going to happen in the United States, and I don’t think Danes know that. I think that if Danes knew that, they would be very—I don’t think they would be afraid—but I think they would say, “No, no, we don’t want to be a part of that.” And I don’t think they know. But I‘m going to tell them."
essentialsaltes: (Patriotic)
You know who else had a binder full of women...

(for those with no time to spare for some fucking culture.)
essentialsaltes: (jasmine)
The good news is that story about Egypt passing, or wanting to pass, a law allowing men to have sex with their dead wives is baloney.

The other good news is that female genital mutilation has been illegal in Egypt since 2008.

The other other good news is that rates of FGM are falling in Egypt.

The not so good news is that the rate started at more than 90%. Among girls aged 10-14, the rate in 2010 was 66% and among girls 15-17, it's 75% [n.d.]. It's not the kind of thing that stops overnight, so let's hope the trend continues.
essentialsaltes: (jasmine)
Hark! A Vagrant wins again. Do yourself a favor, click on the link down below for 'satirical cartoon'.
essentialsaltes: (Diversity)


Dr. Pookie posted it to Lowe's FB page, but it got baleted within seconds. At the same time, pretty awful comments survived... a bit longer before getting deleted, possibly due to Dr. Pookie and others pointing at them. But still, paging back through the 'debate', you can find things like "Lots of Koranimals on here tonight! WOW..."

It's amazing that all of this is due to a lone asshole "with a poorly made Web site". And apparently he's lied about many other advertisers pulling ads, and the companies are having to release statements denying they've dropped ads:

Green Mountain Coffee has sent out a twitter @GreenMtnCoffee: We didn’t modify our advertising. We do not discriminate and welcome different opinions with mutual respect.

Campbell Soup: “We certainly support diversity and inclusion,” he added, “and we market to everybody here in the United States, including Dearborn, Michigan.”

Sears: "Sears Holdings is proud to serve a diverse customer base which represents a true cross-section of America.”


ETA: Oh! Oh! A chance to use my newest icon.
essentialsaltes: (jasmine)
I know feminism has become a dirty word, so there may not be many among the Republicans to get offended, but it was still odd to see Mary Matalin on GMA discounting the Cain mutiny:

"I’m not condoning harassment, and I don’t want to get these ridiculous emails – but we did go thru this period of this grievance industry for feminists who want to be offended find a way to be offended."

I'm sure the radical feminists' heads blew apart at 'but'. Mine made it to 'grievance industry'.

Anyway, I think if Cain has to walk back his most recent and emphatic denial the way he walked back some of the circumstances of the earlier NRA personnel matters, his gander is cooked.


Apropos of nothing, when I picture [livejournal.com profile] ladyeuthanasia at work, I imagine Lily Tomlin's fantasy from 9 to 5.

Allowed

Oct. 26th, 2011 01:06 pm
essentialsaltes: (islam)
A while ago, I bloviated about how forbidden is not the opposite of mandatory. The magic word of freedom is 'allowed'.

Hearing the news from Tunisia following their election, I'm cautiously hopeful that the winning party has the right idea. The party spokesman said:

“individual freedoms and human rights are enshrined principles” and that atheists and homosexuals are a reality in Tunisia and “have a right to exist.”
...
Chaibi also denied that his party intends to make the wearing of the veil for women compulsory. “The veil is part of belief, a religious symbol, and as such has no value if it is taken from freedom
...
“We will not force anyone to drink or not drink"

Tunisia’s neighbour, Libya, adopted Islamic Sharia law on Sunday as the basis of all the new regime’s laws.

Hmm... buzzkill.
essentialsaltes: (Nowtheysmell)
The Sun provides a thoughtful, in-depth review of the new film "The Ledge," which "centres on a difference of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist that escalates into a deadly battle of wills."

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