It’s true, what several commenters said in response to the nightmare Deeni-doll – the Amish do have nightmare faceless dolls.
They’re rag dolls, soft and squashy for small children who like to squash things. They’re like Raggedy Anne and Andy, except…Anne and Andy have faces.
Having a taboo on human faces seems to me a wretched idea. Aversion to eye contact is a disability, not something to instill in people on purpose.
Greg Laden is also outraged by Greenpeace’s vandalism of the Nazca site.
Greenpeace activists entered a restricted area in Peru, where the Nazca lines are located. They drove into the area, and walked around there, and laid out banners. The banners were then photographed from the air (from a drone, as I understand it) to produce a message supporting renewable something. I’m guessing energy. The message was not clear. Nor was the link between their big yellow banners and the sacred and ancient Nazca lines. [Read more…]
Frank Foley,a Lecturer in the War Studies Department at King’s College London, explains some things about torture for the BBC.
As they came to terms with the shock of 9/11, people at the highest levels of the US government wanted to mete out a ferocious response to al-Qaeda suspects.
But let it not be said that they wanted to torture – of course not. We’re the good guys, so we don’t torture. We do something else, that’s unpleasant, but it’s not what fits under the word “torture.” Hell no. [Read more…]
I saw this horror via Tehmina Kazi on Facebook. A faceless “Deeni doll” is now on the shelves.
A new faceless doll, produced in accordance with Islamic law, has been launched in Britain.
The ‘Deeni Doll’, which is adorned with a traditional hijab headdress, has no nose, mouth, or eyes, in order to comply with Islamic rulings regarding the depictions of facial features.
A doll with no face – it’s hard to imagine anything more creepy. The picture is certainly a nightmare.
Zachary Goldfarb at the Washington Post reports on how the insiders told Warren to act like an insider. She had dinner with Larry Summers back in 2009, when she was the chair of that panel panel investigating the government’s response to the financial trainwreck.
Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. … He teed it up this way: I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule. They don’t criticize other insiders. [Read more…]
Another poke in the eye for those wicked people who can’t manage to bend the knee to a god.
Thousands of couples planning non-religious humanist weddings could have their hopes dashed after a row between the Tories and Liberal Democrats saw Number 10 veto proposals to give such marriages legal status.
The Lib Dems want people who are agnostic, atheist or simply do not want a religious ceremony to be able to have a secular wedding, outside of a register office. Couples could tailor their own ceremonies, and select venues that are not licensed for civil weddings.
Right now at a cafe in Sydney.
The story says the people in the window are staff. Not even privileged rich coffee-sippers, but young people who staff the cafe.*
Picture: Courtesy of Channel 7. Source: Supplied [Read more…]
God Dick Cheney is an embarrassment. He was on tv this morning saying how fabulous torture is and how he regrets nothing.
The former vice president showed little remorse for the dozens of prisoners who were found to have been wrongfully detained, for the man who died in the program, or for people like Khaled El-Masri — a German citizen who was shipped off to Afghanistan and sodomized in a case of mistaken identity.
“I’d do it again in a minute,” said Cheney. [Read more…]
Here’s an interesting issue.
From the context where I found it, I gather it’s one of those right-wing moral panics about creeping PC run amok creepingly amidst us, but setting that aside, it’s still an interesting issue. The issue is something like: can an exam question about a very fraught current event or series of events be so emotionally loaded that it either shouldn’t be on the exam or should have a trigger warning?
Eugene Volokh writes it up for the Washington Post.
Several readers have asked me about the controversy at UCLA Law School related to this exam question in a First Amendment Law class: [Read more…]
I’ve been remembering the tinctures – the tiny little tinctures that Prince Charles used to sell for £10 the 50 ml bottle. He doesn’t sell them any more because the regulators told him to stop pretending they had medicinal value.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint over the online advertising, for a range of organic products, including Duchy Herbals Echina-Relief Tincture and Duchy Herbals Hyperi-Lift Tincture saying the product had no “scientifically proven benefits for treating colds and low moods”. [Read more…]
