What are you doing right?

Here’s a question for UK readers, and anyone else with an informed opinion (or just plain information) – why is the abortion issue so huge here and non-existent there?

I want to know so that whatever it is that you’re doing, we can do it too.

You don’t seem to have anything like an equivalent of the USCCB. You don’t seem to have monster bishops running everything. You have Anglican bishops meddling with things, I know that, but they’re mere mouse squeaks in comparison. What’s the deal with your Catholic bishops? Why are they so quiet?

Why aren’t there abortion protesters and “counselors” outside all NHS facilities that perform abortions? Why aren’t people always yammering about it? Why is it such a non-issue?

A tendency to have “philosophical idols”

 

Rebecca Schuman at Slate on academics who treat their graduate students as a sex pool.

Some things in academia never change. Even in an age when the feminists apparently control everything, it seems that the practice of older (usually male) scholars sleeping with much younger (usually female) graduate students is alive and … well, I wouldn’t say “well.” With two such relationships making recent news in the discipline of philosophy alone, for some of the older generation of male professors (again, mostly male), the grad students are still a dating pool—and vice versa. This is not just icky—it is highly damaging to the profession.

Philosophy! Again! What is it with these guys? [Read more…]

Guest post: The allergy to science starts earlier than university

Orignally a comment by jesse on Back to reporter school.

Working journalist here.

I’ll say this kind of stuff is needed because, as quixote noted, the issue is really that a lot of communications people don’t do science in their coursework, except for the minimum.

More to the point, the allergy to science starts earlier than university, usually, and comes from the fact that in the US the requirements for high school historically went: 4 years of English, 3 history, 2 math and 2 science as the minimum to graduate. This has changed a bit, but it reflects some rather old-fashioned needs. (It used to be that a lot of engineering-related stuff got covered in shop, before those classes turned into dumping grounds). Most communications majors weren’t interested in science to begin with. [Read more…]

“Disparagement of males is commonplace in today’s culture”

Oh look, sly dishonest interpretation from James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, in an article on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s ad responding to the Hobby Lobby ruling in the New York Times. (That’s too many things. It’s too confusing. The FFRF ad was in the Times. It was responding to the Hobby Lobby ruling. Writing is hard.)

…the FFRF’s rhetorical approach does not seem finely tuned for the purpose of winning political allies. The ad is more in the spirit of James Blaine than James Madison. It begins with a quote from birth-control (and eugenics) crusader Margaret Sanger, then, in large capital letters, declares: “Dogma Should Not Trump Our Civil Liberties. All-Male, All-Roman Catholic Majority on Supreme Court Puts Religious Wrongs Over Women’s Rights.”

Disparagement of males is commonplace in today’s culture, but anti-Catholic bigotry still has a bad odor. It must be said, however, that the FFRF ad is not the first, or even the worst, example of it in the context of the ObamaCare mandate.

[Read more…]

Back to reporter school

One piece of good news, amid the gathering shadows of looming Supreme Court justices:

BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air ‘marginal views’.

Yessssss. Should have been done long ago.

The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues. [Read more…]

Supreme pants on fire

Well, at least I have confirmation that I wasn’t exaggerating yesterday when I said Alito lied in the Hobby Lobby ruling. Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West at Slate say the same thing. They say it with considerable heat and energy.

…moments before they adjourned for their summer recess, the justices proved they can act quite quickly and recklessly when it comes to violating the terms of a controversial opinion they handed down only days earlier. It’s as if the loaner car the court gave us in the Hobby Lobby ruling broke down mere blocks from the shop.

 

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a “substantial burden” on the religious freedoms of closely-held corporations for the government to require them to provide contraception as part of their employee health care plans. The court didn’t say that the government could never require a company to do something that violated its religious beliefs, but rather that the government had to use the “least restrictive alternative.” That means that if there is a slightly less burdensome way to implement the law, it needs to be used. To prove that the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate was not the “least restrictive alternative,” the court pointed to a workaround in the law for nonprofits: If there are religious objections to a medical treatment, third parties will provide coverage to the employees.

Yet in an unsigned emergency order granted Thursday evening, the very same court said that this very same workaround it had just praised was also unconstitutional, that this workaround also burdened the religious freedom of religious employers. Overnight, the cure has become the disease. Having explicitly promised that Hobby Lobby would go no further than Hobby Lobby, the court went back on its word, then skipped town for the summer.

[Read more…]

All of the speakers

The speakers, left to right, up to down:

Tawfique Chowdhury

Bilal Philips

Yasir Qadhi

Abdur Raheem Green

Sajid Umar

Waleed Basyouni

Alaa Elsayed

Yahya Ibrahim

Abdul Nasir Jangda

Omar Suleiman

Bilal Ismail

Yusha Evans

Hamza Tzortzis

Navaid Aziz

Daood Butt

Abdur-Raheem McCarthy

Shady Alsuleiman

Fatih Seferagic

Mohammed Zayara

Mulsim Belal

speaker-1
BBps
speaker-2
Bilal Philips
speaker-3
Yasir Qadhi
speaker-4
Abdur Raheem Green
speaker-5
Sajid Umar
speaker-6
Waleed Basyouni
speaker-2
Alaa Elsayed
sajid_o
Yahya Ibrahim
tariq_a
Abdul Nasir Jangda
abrudaheem_m
Omar Suleiman
navid
Bilal Ismail
speaker-2
Yusha Evans
sajid_o
Hamza Tzortzis
tariq_a
Navaid Aziz
abrudaheem_m
Daood Butt
navid
Abdur-Raheem McCarthy
speaker-2
Shady Alsuleiman
sajid_o
Fatih Seferagic
tariq_a
Mohammed Zeyara
abrudaheem_m

Night of Power

Another fun event for your participatory pleasure: the Night of Power Conference.

The Night of Power Conference – The first-ever global online video conference organised by Mercy Mission, to be held on the 27th Night of Ramadan 1435 A.H. (2014).

The Event shall be streamed LIVE, featuring over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures, for 36 consecutive hours! The theme of the Conference, ‘Spiritual Journey with the Qur’an’ aims to revive the Ummah through knowledge and action.

Behold the over 20 world-renowned Islamic figures. [click to embiggen to get the full effect]

nightUm…