James Watson’s Nobel medal sold for a large sum yesterday. $4.1 million, to be exact, not counting the auction house’s cut.
Dr. Watson, 86, watched the auction open-mouthed from the back of the room with his wife and one of his sons as the bidding, which began at $1.5 million, rose steadily by $100,000 increments, eventually coming down to two phone bidders who pushed the price above $4 million. [Read more…]
It’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ turn.
Two people who say that as children they were sexually abused by a leader in a Hillsboro Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation filed a $10.5 million lawsuit Monday – among the first in Oregon to accuse the religious organization of hiding decades of sexual abuse.
Attorneys for Velicia Alston, 39, and an unnamed man said the Jehovah’s Witnesses leadership continues to cover up sexual abuse against children by leaders. They say it is more than a decade behind other organizations, such as the Catholic Church, that have been forced to address their problems through many years of civil litigation.
An anti-abortion “activist” was found guilty of harassing the head of a Belfast clinic last month.
One of Ireland’s most prominent anti-abortion activists has been found guilty of harassing the head of Belfast’s Marie Stopes clinic.
A judge at the city’s magistrates court warned the Precious Life director Bernadette Smyth that she could face jail for her protests against the former Progressive Unionist party leader Dawn Purvis and the clinic. [Read more…]
Tell us more about Abort67, you ask.
Abort67 is a pro-life protest group in the UK known for using hardline tactics such as holding protests outside of abortion clinics, counselling people going in or out of the clinics, and displaying graphic images of aborted fetuses. Such tactics are considered unusual and extreme in the UK, although they are more common in the US. Abort67 receives financial support from US anti-abortion groups,[1] and the graphic images which they use in protests also come from the US.[2]
Of course it does and of course they do. I hate my country sometimes. It feels very disgraceful to be part of it sometimes – well, make that often.
They have a Facebook page. Content note: graphic images. The comments on the page are not admiring.
There’s a petition urging them to stop trying to intimidate women outside clinics.
Abortion Rights belives that women should be able to access information and abortion services free from intimidation and harassment so that they can make their own decisions on the termination of their pregnancy.
Abort67 appear to be trying to shut down these services by intimidating staff, service users and local residents.
‘We the undersigned support the provision of local abortion services for women across London.
We are appalled by a campaign by anti-abortion extremists – and Abort67 in particular – who are systematically attempting to prevent NHS-funded abortion services being available to local women in Southwark.
We condemn those who protest outside abortion clinics showing graphic images of aborted foetuses, with the intent to intimidate and harass women as they access advice and support about an unplanned pregnancy, or a pregnancy they cannot continue with.
We believe that women should be able to freely access abortion services and their private choices should be respected.
We feel that having banners waved in their faces or being confronted by those who know nothing of their circumstances is harassment.
Healthcare providers should be able to offer women support and care free from intimidation.
One in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. We stand by the women of London who will need that care and the doctors and nurses who provide it.’
That’s Abort67.
Ben Quinn in the Guardian has details of Sunny’s encounter with the protesters and what happened next.
A video in which protesters picketing a London abortion clinic are challenged by a pregnant passerby has gone viral after being posted on YouTube.
The incident, involving protesters from the controversial Abort 67 group, was filmed by the commentator and pro-choice activist Sunny Hundal and had been watched nearly 2m times by Friday afternoon. [Read more…]
Sunny Hundal catches a great challenge to anti-abortion protesters outside a clinic. The video has gone viral.
Rose Eveleth at the Atlantic reports on Twitter’s new moves to improve its practices on harassment. (Rose Eveleth herself got considerable harassment from people enraged at the objections to Matt Taylor’s shirt.)
It’s no secret that Twitter is currently playing host to an uptick in targeted harassment. The site has long provided an easy way for people to lob hostile and threatening messages into someone’s timeline, but things seem to be getting worse, not better. Gamergate targets like Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Breanna Wu have all been inundated with death and rape threats that have forced them to cancel talks and flee their homes. After her father’s death, Zelda Williams—Robin Williams’s daughter—quit the social network after sustained harassment. A recent Pew study found that half of women have been sexually harassed online.
Twitter is doing a couple of tiny tweaks, with possibly more to come.
Twitter says in its blog post that the updates, for most users, will be rolling out in a few weeks. A spokesperson from Twitter declined to comment on the record for this story.
Well it’s all very hush-hush, you see. The Nazis might overhear.
James Croft writes – in a guest post at Friendly Atheist – about atheism and humanism and
He thinks they should be doing more, and that what the humanists are doing is important.
I stress our engagement because it is representative of a long tradition of Humanist passion for social justice — a tradition that is frequently overlooked even by Humanists themselves. While many of us can reel off the names of a few prominent individual activists who have been Humanists, few know that there is a history of organized social justice work that is explicitly Humanist, motivated by Humanist values and supported by Humanist organizations. [Read more…]
The New Republic has abruptly disintegrated, NPR reports.
We have more news today on The New Republic, which on Thursday announced that it was cutting its publication schedule, moving its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to New York and rebranding as a digital media company – decisions that prompted the departure of editor Franklin Foer and longtime literary editor Leon Wieseltier. [Read more…]
The Washington Post has done a big investigation into the Rolling Stone account of a gang-rape at the University of Virginia and has found a lot of discrepancies and holes in the story.
A lawyer for the University of Virginia fraternity whose members were accused of a brutal gang rape said Friday that the organization will release a statement rebutting the claims printed in a Rolling Stone article about the incident. Several of the woman’s close friends and campus sex assault awareness advocates expressed doubt about the published account, and the magazine’s editors also apologized to readers for discrepancies in the story.