Archive for July, 2012

When my friend Norman dared to suggest that a skeptical philosophy should include the ability to challenge our own beliefs, he was quickly buried under a landslide of “how dare you” reactionary opinion.

Moral outrage as a substitute for rational argument. Where have we seen that before? So, I’ve taken the liberty of reframing said post into a most fitting surrounding.

You have to wonder, at what point while Ophelia Benson was reading a story about a live kitten someone had encased in concrete up to the front legs, did she stop thinking about what a despicable act it was, and start thinking “I could use this for my own purposes.”

All I ever wanted to do was run a local free thinking group and stage lively though provoking events. It was a simple dream. Because of this, I don’t tend to read all the skeptics blogs. Fair play to you if you do, a lot of them are good, it’s just that I would rather go out and do something positive.

I compromised my principles along the way. Throughout my leadership at Leeds Atheist Society we operated a policy of positive discrimination to get more women involved in the society. All well and good put there is no such thing as positive discrimination, it’s just discrimination, and “positive” normally means that the flip side, and there is always a flip side, is directed at the majority, so it’s OK to discriminate. In fact, by our third year, six of the nine committee members were female.

I even launched a pro abortion campaign with the society, in conjunction with the then-not-even constituted feminist society, and ensured women were represented on the board of trustees of my charity and that women spoke at my conferences.

But none of this was enough to keep the wolves from the door. When Leeds Skeptics booked a speaker that we originally hoped would provide an empowering talk for women, discussing research suggesting gender stereotype threat wasn’t holding them back, we soon came in the firing line. Not a “hey, I’ve done some more research about this speaker, here it is, maybe you should reconsider”, but a you clearly hate women and want to “punch them in the mouth”. As Trystan Swale points out, I clearly deserve the stake.

Given all the discussions surrounding it however, I couldn’t help but to be dragged into what turns out to have been an on-going debate for several months regarding feminism and skepticism. It seems to be mostly making a mountain out of a mole hill – very serious issues but the resolution seems to be a) put a harassment policy in place and b) don’t bad mouth TAM, and everybody would be happy again. But go read about it for yourself, I haven’t read all the blog posts and I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.

However, now that I have been dragged into some of it, ended up reading one of the most controversial pieces of the whole debates – Paula Kirby’s open letter, Sisterhood of the Oppressed. It turns out to be an excellent read. Lest I not be called fair, you can read the rebuttals and background too.

In it, Paula suggests that a positive attitude of empowering women, it is a much more powerful too than constantly playing the victim card. This is exactly what feminism should be about in the modern day, and indeed, it is the fact that some branches of feminism don’t adopt this attitude that causes such a rift between equal rights campaigners and some of the feminist movement.

While everyone will have their own points of view on the issues raised, I think that Paula should be commended for having the courage to put topics into the public sphere for discussion.

P.S. It is issues similar these that Ken McLaughlin deals with in his new book “Surviving Identity: Vulnerabity and the Psychology of Recognition”, of which he will be discussing at the next meeting of Leeds Salon on Monday. An event I would highly recommend attending for anyone in the Leeds area.

John Rentoul recently published an article on The Independent’s website, pointing to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that the recession had actually reduced income inequality.

Key findings in the report highlight that the turn of the decade marked the biggest drop in income inequality since 1962 based upon the Gini coefficient (one of the many ways you can measure income inequality). Contrary to popular belief, it is actually the wealth that have seen the biggest percentage slashed off their income, at least according to the report.

If it is the case, then while income fails are never a good thing, it is positive that we are moving towards a more equal society – of course there is no guarantee such a trend will remain when economic times are brighter.

It was a big we had been waiting for, for 15 months.

Why? Because I bought tickets in March last year, for a July gig. Normal enough. But a few months later, Blink cancelled their tour saying they needed another year to finish their album. So here we were a year later, finally on our way to see them.

As a bonus, You Me At Six had been replaced by All-American Rejects, who’s lead singer may or may not have been heavily intoxicated while performing. Blink-182 themselves were excellent and only played five of the twenty odd songs they did from their new album. Stick with the classics, that’s what we’re all there for 😀 .

Plus, they seemed very happy to be here. “We come for your women. And your Nando’s,” commented Tom DeLonge.

Following the recent launch of our first Swedish language site, Worfolk 18 is pleased to announce the launch of its first Finnish language site too – Alastomat Kotirouvat.

Reading this on Facebook? Why not click the like and share buttons, and share it onto your own wall to get even more people involved.

Anyway, I’ve previously written quite a bit on Facebook and Twitter about Kiva.

It’s a microloans charity – people in the third world ask for loans, usually around $1,000 to help them work their way out of poverty. We then come along, donate $25 each and between us raise the money for the loan, and it’s given to the person in the 3rd world. They then improve their business, take another step to working their way out of poverty and then pay us back. We can then lend the same money to somebody else!

It’s a superb idea and one that I am proud to say I have been donating to for several years.

But here is why you should get involved now. They’re currently offering free money to people who sign up – thanks to an anonymous donor, the first $25 loan you make to someone in the third world doesn’t even come out of your pocket!

Not just that but you can sign in with your Facebook details (though you don’t have to, if you would rather register separately) – so it only takes a couple of minutes to make a $25 donation to help someone in the third world without it costing you a penny.

Given that then, I don’t see any excuse for anyone not to get involved. Seriously, just follow this link. Do it! Do it now! I literally don’t see any reason why anyone reading this shouldn’t get involved.

P.S. You can also access the site directly at kiva.org. However, if you follow one of the links above, it will record a referral for me. I don’t get anything out of that beyond the warm feeling inside that I’ve helped spread Kiva a little further, but that is still nice to have.

P.P.S. You can also allocate your donation towards a community team – these are just groups you can join, like a Facebook Group. The biggest and best is the atheists, agnostics and non-religious, but you might also want to consider the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Even CWF has a team.

For my second speech at Leeds City Toastmasters, the “Organize Your Speech” project, I spoke about drug decriminalisation.

It is something I have blogged about several times before because there really is no case for arguing that our current drug legislation is either helpful or sensible. I was a bit worried the talk wasn’t really coming together while preparing it, but I must have done something right as I ended up winning best speech of the meeting.

Edit: Five days after I had given this talk, the IDPC published their new report, “The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic”, so if the topic interests you, you may want to have a read. There is also a good blog post about it by Richard Branson.

For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Rob Lyons, deputy editor of Spiked and author of Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder, joined us to discuss his book.

I had invited Rob up after seeing him give a similar talk at Leeds Salon and have previously blogged about it. It’s an excellent book and I highly recommend giving it a read – grab yourself a copy from Amazon.

For the June Wendy House we had planned a mascarade ball for Michelle’s return. However, it turned out she didn’t get in to Leeds until way after it would have ended so it turned out to be some far more relaxed drinks before Wendy House. Not that that isn’t the start of a very enjoyable evening.

We finally made it into Wendy House just before midnight at which Fonze began partying the night away.

However, within 15 minutes of getting in the door, we were heading back out again to meet Michelle. Also Michelle is back! Hurray! Although by the time this actually gets published she will have actually gone again, but it was fun while it lasted.

It’s great news to see the Supreme Court have upheld Obama’s healthcare reform, which puts the US a step closer to providing a proper universal healthcare system. Now if they could just introduce social welfare, a living minimum wage, workers rights, reduce the amount of gun crime and religious adherence and give their citizens back their civil rights and repeal the Patriot Act, they can finally be classified as a developed nation.

While you’re enjoying that humour, here is what Yahoo Answers said.