Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Cracked is the Internet champion of the crack-you-up listicle and their latest one caught my eye. It’s titled 5 Seemingly Insignificant Things That Make People Like You. Number 2 on the list: Hide Your Atheism, Even from Other Atheists Author P. Chung correctly (and hilariously) writes about the academic research behind that bit of depressing advice, particularly the studies by Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia. Back in 2011, Gervais and his team showed that prejudice against atheists has us scoring lower in the trust department than rapists; and that most people, if they’d employ atheists at all, would place them in low-trust positions, like waiter, rather than in high-trust ones, like childcare provider. (Makes you wonder whether those folks have never heard of the tens of thousands of child sex abuse cases that occurred — and occur — in both Protestant and Catholic churches.) Still, Cracked’s conclusion won’t get us very far, and I’d prefer that none of us felt compelled to “hide our atheism.” Chung’s advice reminded me of this cartoon: Read more
The relatives of an elderly Israeli woman have filed a $750,000 lawsuit against the Hadassim Nursing Home in Bnei Brak. The family alleges that the nurses refused to call a doctor when the 85-year-old’s condition worsened. The nursing home’s employees are said to have told the family that calling a doctor would desecrate the Sabbath. Read more
Earlier this week, we learned details about a 10-year-old Afghani girl, Spozhmai Ghafar, whose older Taliban brother had allegedly outfitted her with a suicide vest and instructed her to blow up a police checkpoint. She refused and is now in protective custody. (The Taliban denies the charge.) Now comes the story of another child, a 14- or 15-year-old in Pakistan named Aitzaz Hassan, who did die in a bomb attack — and who is thought to have saved many other children’s lives by doing so. Read more
A few days ago, the BBC published a news article about the conviction of Colleen LaRose, a.k.a. Jihad Jane, for her plot to murder the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. The writer of that piece roundly declared that despite the plot, and despite the $100,000 reward placed on Mr. Vilks’ head by Islamic militants, Vilks “was never attacked.” Given the two known — and widely reported — attacks on the man, the BBC was wrong, as I wrote here. I e-mailed the editorial staff and asked for a correction and an explanation. So far, no reply. But sometime in the past 36 hours, someone at the BBC quietly scrapped the lie or the error (absent an explanation, we can’t know what it was), and replaced it with the more accurate “But the murder plot went nowhere.” Before: Read more
The Washington Post, via the Pew Research Center, presents an interesting chart. But watch that question: (The actual wording in the study is: “Which one of these women is dressed most appropriately for public places?” Maybe these results aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. After all, “appropriate” is a pretty ambiguous word, because it can refer to something that’s demanded by one’s social environment, or it can mean “that which an individual considers suitable and proper for herself.” Read more
