I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.
Around FtB
- The “Coming Out Atheist” Donation Recipient for February 2014: Black Atheists of America–“As people know who have read advance copies of my upcoming book, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, I’ve pledged to donate 10% of my income from the book to atheist organizations, charities, and projects.”
- Fraudster skeptic Brian Dunning’s shell game–“Dunning’s legacy, his skeptical podcast Skeptoid, has long been known to be a cash cow as well — with its own advertisements, and a kitsch store with huge markups on t-shirts and mugs and the likes. However, now that Dunning has pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing, Skeptoid’s fate is in question.”
- Another inglorious medal for religion as Boko Haram invades secondary school hostel, Kills 43 students in the name of Allah–“On February 25, 2014 the world woke up to the news that Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group in Nigeria, once again invaded a secondary school hostel, this time the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state and killed 43 students.”
- Taking Liberties: A Book We Need Right Now–“So you may have noticed lately that the right-wing ratfuckers in state governments are busy trying to roll us back to the Dark Ages.”
- By indirections find directions out–“More of Ben Radford’s…indirectness, from the comments on that public Facebook post.”
- A Question for Free Market Proponents–“I finally finished reading Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (I’d talked about it earlier in this post on rhino hunting auctions). Since reading it, I’ve been pondering a question, which I wish Sandel had posed to his opponents during this LSE debate.”
- Guest Post – An Introduction by Ben Baz Aziz–“It would be my pleasure to start writing and blogging in English after being so exclusive to Arabic audience. My name is Ben Baz Aziz.”
- Absolutes vs. Plastic–“I think the difference between me and David isn’t that I’m some deeply, intrinsically egalitarian liberal with no biases at all, but that when the world rises up and breaks the model of it in your head, some of us are tickled by the experience and are happy to revise our models.”
- Atheists Support L.A. Pastor Facing “Tribunal” for LGBT Advocacy–“On Sunday morning I went to a church service for the first time in decades.”
- Opening College Doors To Cults?–“Marshall Poe, writing in The Atlantic, suggests that Colleges Should Teach Religion to Their Students. You see, teachers and administrators are in loco parentis, and some of us are far more loco than parentis.”
The Wider Web
- “I hate my fat”: On Body Acceptance, Or Not–“The other day I mentioned that I hate my fat, which probably left a bunch of the body acceptance folks a little twitchy. Today seems like a good day to unpack that statement a little bit.”
- Blood and Donuts… er… Coffee and Angry Mobs–“In other news, the internet is angry. Well, that’s not news, is it? Thing is, it’s angry at the wrong people, and frankly causing more harm.”
- The Fifth Circuit turns its back on a huge forensics scandal in Mississippi–“Flaggs was convicted in large part because of the testimony of Steven Hayne, a medical examiner who for about two decades was able to monopolize the autopsy business inMississippi. This story should really be one of the bigger criminal justice scandals in recent U.S. history.”
- Skeptic and Atheist Do Better Challenge–“Over the years I have self-identified as an atheist and as a skeptic. But lately, I look around these communities and I don’t see much that reflects who I am or how I feel about the world.”
- Operation Flawless: A Confessional Recap–“I want to thank every single person who contributed even a single selfie. You are all amazing. You are all beautiful. And it is your faces that helped me keep going.”
- An Oscars-Inspired Dinner–“My friend Laura Hepburn Engert planned a nine-course meal to help her celebrate the awards show, with one course inspired by each Best Picture nominee.”
- Explaining Death to Kids, Atheist-Style–“There is something in me that immediately reacts when I hear my kid cry. Not the “I didn’t get my way and now I have to take a shower” cry, but the actual, heartfelt cry.”
- The Space for Little Girls–“What on earth would cause a 10 year old girl with no trauma in her past and a perfectly happy family to want to always be someplace else?”
- Nation’s First Birthing Center/Abortion Clinic Opens in Buffalo. This Is Huge.–“It’s a step forward in the necessary integration of abortion into other forms of OB-GYN care.”
- How Men Learn (Or Don’t) About Menstruation–“One day my friend opened his locker. There, hanging by a string, was one of the most disgusting things he could imagine: a tampon, blood red, dangling from the upper shelf.”
- Auctions: Geek T-shirt Quilt & Pillows, Custom Rose Necklace, Moon Clock–“We are very busy behind the scenes preparing for SkepchickCon, the science track at CONvergence, an annual sci-fi/fantasy con in the Minneapolis area.”
- I have a question–“Why, when we fight these battles, do we so often resort to the same old patriarchal norms? Why do we reserve our greatest spleen for *women* and defend our right to do so?”
- Seanan McGuire’s Angry Mob–“I think angry women get dismissed as hysterical or irrational as a way of rendering their anger illegitimate and something that can be ignored. I also know that when you say something offensive, and someone gets offended, one way to take the high ground back is to accuse them of ‘not wanting dialogue.'”
- Sexism in fandom and Bullying (in which Jonathan Ross calls me a [poor] journalist)–“Lately, thanks to a long and thoughtful thread on Steve Brust’s blog (which you should read), discussions about sexual harassment in fandom, the fake geek girl issues, and so forth – I’ve been thinking a lot about online bullying, gender, power, and the speculative fiction community.”
- Reframing and Punching Down–“I was offline when much of the backlash started earlier this week but once articles in the mainstream media started appearing I found myself getting angrier and angrier.”
- This Is the Real Reason an Atheist Club Isn’t Forming at Pisgah High School–“I thought the story ended after I wrote my last post about it, but there’s so much more to it. And it’s nasty stuff.”
- Faring well on the stage after a rocky road–“After four years of failed attempts at getting into the Minnesota Fringe Festival, Jena Young finally got a spot in last year’s 11-day event. The only problem was that she wasn’t notified until two weeks before she was set to perform.”
- Skepticon’s Lent Fundraiser: We’ll Never Give You Up–“Lent is upon is and people are giving things up left and right. But not us.”