To separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire

The LA Times has been reading the journal of Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez. They found the predictable.

On Abdulazeez’s blog, there were a number of entries dealing with Islam and jihad.

“Every one of them [the Companions of the Prophet Mohammad] fought Jihad for the sake of Allah,” reads one recent post. “Every one of them had to make sacrifices in their lives and some even left all their wealth to make hijrah to Medina.”

Says another recent post: “This life we are living is nothing more than a test of our faith and patience. It was designed to separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire, and to rank amongst them the best of the best and worst of the worst. Don’t let the society we live in deviate you from the task at hand.”

[Read more…]

Another one

Reuters reports:

Four Marines were killed on Thursday by a gunman who opened fire at two military offices in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before being fatally shot in an attack officials called a brazen, brutal act of domestic terrorism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation named the suspect as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, but said it was too early to speculate on a motive for the rampage, which comes at a time when U.S. military and law enforcement authorities are increasingly concerned about the threat posed by “lone wolves” to domestic targets. [Read more…]

The family tree

Since I got Sally Hemings’s relationships with the Jefferson family off by a generation, I thought I might as well look her up and get it straight in my head. From the Monticello site:

Sally Hemings,[1] whose given name was probably Sarah, was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings. According to her son, Madison Hemings, her father was Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law John Wayles. There are no known portraits of her. Sally Hemings became Thomas Jefferson’s property as part of his inheritance from the Wayles estate in 1774 and came with her mother to Monticello by 1776. As a child she was probably a nursemaid to Jefferson’s daughter Mary (slave girls from the age of six or eight were childminders and assistants to head nurses on southern plantations).

Her father was John Wayles, the father of Jefferson’s wife Martha – so she was Martha Wayles Jefferson’s half-sister. She was Jefferson’s half-sister-in-law. She was the aunt of their daughters. She was a close relative…but of course as a slave, she wasn’t treated as a relative. She was treated as a slave.

That’s how plantation life was. Lots of slaves were close relatives of their owners and their owners’ families, but they weren’t treated as relatives.

It’s such a bizarre way to live. Fanny Kemble wrote about it in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation.

“Like I actually had a tail”

This should be something from the Onion but apparently isn’t: Amber Roberts at Vice: Otherkin Are People Too; They Just Identify as Nonhuman.

Well no. If you’re nonhuman then you’re not people too. That’s just definitional, so it’s silly to claim otherwise. People are human.

But that’s not even the silliest part; the silliest part is claiming to “identify as” nonhuman. I can “identify as” Shakespeare if I want to, but I’m not a bit more Shakespeare for having so “identified” than I was before. [Read more…]

By tram to Kew Gardens

I suddenly took it into my head to go to Google images and type in

london transport poster kew

Mine eyes boggled at the result.

I’ve collected a hefty stack of London Transport postcards over the years, but it’s only a fraction of what there are. They did especially fetching ones advertising the joys of Kew Gardens.

Image result for london transport poster kew

Image result for london transport poster kew

Image result for london transport poster kew

Guest post: I don’t remember the motives of the men taking the course being questioned

Originally a comment by latsot on Hey, 13% is practically half.

When I studied computer science in the 80s, there were four women on a course with about 80 people who weren’t women. The women were not, in general, treated with a great deal of respect.

There were a lot of conversations about them among the men, including speculation about why they were on the course in the first place, what they would have to do to pass the course (hard work, skill and intelligence were rarely considered as possibilities), and exactly how certain men expected to help them do that regardless – as far as I could tell – of whether they wanted any help.

I don’t remember the motives of the men taking the course being questioned. [Read more…]

Guest post: Not so much what people think they think as how we collectively act

Originally a comment by AJ Milne on Hey, 13% is practically half.

Having been on the technical side of high tech nearly two decades now, and in some fairly large organizations (you’ve heard of a few of them, certainly), I have to say I find these numbers pretty unsurprising from what I’ve observed.

As to why: I’m no expert, but I think you’ve read it in the news. Suffice to say the environment just isn’t real welcoming for a wide host of reasons, mostly more covert now, as the laws have made overt stuff actionable at HR. Some of my male colleagues especially tend to get their backs up a bit hearing this, but anyone who knows the sociology knows the larger story well enough. And it’s rarely so much about any single person’s attitudes as the collective weight of a lot of things, and not so much what people think they think as how we collectively act. [Read more…]

Did you see anything, anything at all?

As a public service, sharing a Northumbria police appeal for witnesses.

Beach towel stolen

Dated: 16 Jul 2015

Police are appealing for witnesses following the theft of a towel from a North Tyneside beach.

It happened on Sunday, July 12 from 4pm to 5pm at Tynemouth Longsands beach. A dark blue towel with ‘DRYROBE’ written on the front in red and white was stolen.

Anyone with information should contact police on 101, extension 69191, quoting reference number 43728L/15 or ring the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Via Kate Smurthwaite