Originally a comment by Seth on Like the lights being turned off.

Recently I spoke with a friend of mine who happens to be a Muslim woman; she does not wear hijab, though every few years she struggles with the urge to cover her hair, because some part of her feels it’s essential to her religion. But she told me something curious about some of the ‘cultural’ reasons for wearing the niqab, which arguably predate the invention of Islam; basically, some Muslim women take to the full-body veil because they feel they are ‘too beautiful’ to go through their daily lives without sexual harassment from all of the men around them. [Read more…]

In the argument about whether dogs are likely to leave some of their dinner for a stray cat who might come into the house later to eat it (let alone whether the dog knows the cat is pregnant and is feeding her because she’s pregnant…), someone linked to this interesting research that seems to show that rats can do altruism.

In the new study, Mason, Bartal and University of Chicago colleague Jean Decetyplaced pairs of rats in Plexiglass pens. One rat was trapped in a cage in the middle of the pen, whereas the other rat was free to run around. Most free rats circled their imprisoned peer, gnawing at the cage and sticking their paws, noses and whiskers through any openings. After a week of trial and error, 23 of the 30 rats in the experiment learned to open the cage and free their peers by head-butting the cage door or leaning their full weight against the door until it tipped over. [Read more…]

This story is hugely popular on Facebook, and it’s a sweet story, but it seems extremely implausible to me. But I seem to be alone in that. I’m curious what you savagely skeptical people think.

My mother’s friend adopted this lovely dog after he was abandoned by his previous family. His name is Shaun.

Shaun had always been very good at eating all his food. Every last bit that was, he ate it.

One day he started leaving a little bit behind. He wouldn’t eat everything, no matter what. He always left a little behind.

Every morning when my mother’s friend checked Shaun’s bowl, the food was gone. That was very strange, because Shaun always spent the night by her side.

One night she decided to investigate the food situation. She waited quietly by the food bowl and then, in the middle of the night, a cat came through the window and ate the remaining food. [Read more…]

Creeping Refusal to Serve for Bad Invidious Reasons strikes again – a notary at a New Jersey bank yesterday refused to notarize some documents for Amanda Knief and Dave Silverman for, the notary said, “personal reasons.”

Via American Atheists:

BREAKING: An important message from American Atheists Managing Director, Amanda Knief:

—-

I was just refused service — because I am an atheist. It was embarrassing, humiliating, and pissed me off.

A notary at a local bank, where I have gone more than a dozen times to have work documents signed, asked me to explain what we were having notarized. The documents were charitable organizations registrations for American Atheists in several states. So I told her what AA is about. She looked down, then looked at me and [American Atheists President] Dave Silverman and said she couldn’t sign the documents because of “personal reasons” and went to find another notary who was eating his lunch to come do the authentications.  [Read more…]

More to chew on – Mehdi Hasan talks to Mona Eltahawy in front of an audience in Oxford.

A few pull quotes from Mona:

I’ve been a feminist since I was 19.

Moving to Saudi Arabia as a young girl was like the lights being turned off.

I consider the niqab an erasure of women.

Oh looky here, what do you know…From an article titled Scabs: Academics and Others Who Write for Free by Yasmin Nair.

I want to return to a thread I introduced in that earlier piece with much greater force: That those who write for free or very little simply because they can afford to are scabs.  This would include not just academics with tenured or tenure-track positions, but adjuncts, professionals (like paid activists and organisers), as well as, really, just about anyone who writes for places like Guernica, The Huffington Post,open Democracy.net, and The Rumpus (and this is a very, very tiny list).*

…

Guernica and openDemocracy are both 501(c)3s. Where, in the case of the former, does that money go if they’re not paying for writers like Tariq Ali, and guest editors like Clair Messud? Their labour is provided gratis, as a symbol of their entrance into the upper echelons of the writing world.

OpenDemocracy’s funders include The Open Society, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Apparently, not one of these highly reputable funders thinks it’s a problem that a publishing organisation asks for money but can’t be bothered to even pay the writers without whom it simply would not exist.   [Read more…]

Watching that Newsnight segment again. One thing Maajid says in his film:

The media rightly sought to hear from the Muslim voice. But that voice tended to be male, middle-aged, and mostly conservative. [Read more…]

Hemant Mehta – the “friendly” atheist – has a post about a creationist complaining about not getting equal time with Cosmos. Mehta is scornful.

Of course, Faulkner has this crazy idea that Creationism and evolution are deserving of equal time even though only evolution is backed up by the evidence… and considering how little time is allocated to legitimate science programming these days, we should be seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson making the argument for equal time, not a Creationist.

Tell you what: I’m sure Cosmos will give you equal time on the show as soon as pastors start giving equal time to atheists in church. That makes just as much sense as whatever Faulkner said.

Or as soon as atheist bloggers start giving equal time to pseudo-secularists who campaign against abortion rights? While refusing to give equal time to atheists who defend abortion rights?

With friends like these…

Ah good, there’s a longer version on YouTube.

This time, they actually show the cartoon. The one they made a big show of refusing to show in January, thus drawing even more opprobrium (and threats) down on Maajid.

Update: 5 minutes in he talks to Maryam.