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Indian 'witch' tied to tree, beaten by mob
http://edition.cnn.com/ 2008/ WORLD/ asiapcf/ 03/ 28/ india.beating/ index.html?eref=ed...
An Indian woman accused of being a witch was tied to a tree and beaten by a mob, with television footage of the incident aired in India on Friday.
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Look Who Also Probably Fucked Eliot Spitzer, Guys! [News Roundup]
http://jezebel.com/373701/look-who-also-probably-fucked-elio...Oh what a surprise! Eliot Spitzer probably fucked the biggest whore in Washington, who may even have actually worked as a whore that whole time she was whoring. [Wonkette] The Alan Keyes of Muslims! [WSJ] Mark McKinnon is still planning on leaving the
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The hidden dangers of pseudoscience
http://www.masala-skeptic.com/2008/04/hidden-dangers-of-pseu...Last week, a woman in india was tied to a tree and beaten by a mob for being a witch. When this headline first came up on my blackberry, I thought 'oh great, another story about ignorance causing people to claim some poor woman is a witch.' But when I read it in detail, the story has more to it. The woman was actually claiming to be a faith healer and was selling her services as such. She was paid by a man to help his wife: Ram Ayodhya, who could face up to seven years in prison for his role in the attack, told police he was justified in beating the woman, Tiwari said. Ayodhya said he paid her to use magic and prayer to improve his wife's health. When his wife's condition deteriorated, Ayodhya accused her of performing black magic and weighing the same as a duck, Tiwari said, and a crowd soon gathered and tied her to the tree. This is one reason why Sylvia Browne's book "Bringing My Teachings and Love to India" isn't written yet. Now, I am certainly not condoning this man's behavior, or the behavior of the crowd in resorting to violence. But I think this story demonstrates the hidden dangers of pseudoscience. By making claims that don't actually have any foundation, you can get into some serious trouble if you can't produce what you claim you can. And if you claim to do woo crap like faith healing, it's tough to scoff when the howling mob (literally in this case) accuses you of doing DIFFERENT woo crap like black magic and witchcraft. Maybe she should have claimed that there was a more powerful wizard somewhere LIKE MAYBE YOU SIR RIGHT THERE who was casting the bad juju and she was actually fighting to keep her alive as long as she could. It's not like that would sound too crazy for these people to swallow. Take heart, though, there are folks trying to fight the good fight in India. As I mentioned in a previous post, the India Rationalist Association challenged one of the top tantriks in India to demonstrate his power on live TV. He failed and now the show is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube - Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. Enjoy!
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The hidden dangers of pseudoscience
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1199Last week, a woman in india was tied to a tree and beaten by a mob for being a witch. When this headline first came up on my blackberry, I thought ‘oh great, another story about ignorance causing people to claim some poor woman is a witch.’ But when I read it in detail, the story has more to it. The woman was actually claiming to be a faith healer and was selling her services as such. She was paid by a man to help his wife: Ram Ayodhya, who could face up to seven years in prison for his role in the attack, told police he was justified in beating the woman, Tiwari said. Ayodhya said he paid her to use magic and prayer to improve his wife’s health. When his wife’s condition deteriorated, Ayodhya accused her of performing black magic and weighing the same as a duck, Tiwari said, and a crowd soon gathered and tied her to the tree. This is one reason why Sylvia Browne’s book “Bringing My Teachings and Love to India” isn’t written yet. Now, I am certainly not condoning this man’s behavior, or the behavior of the crowd in resorting to violence. But I think this story demonstrates the hidden dangers of pseudoscience. By making claims that don’t actually have any foundation, you can get into some serious trouble if you can’t produce what you claim you can. And if you claim to do woo crap like faith healing, it’s tough to scoff when the howling mob (literally in this case) accuses you of doing DIFFERENT woo crap like black magic and witchcraft. Maybe she should have claimed that there was a more powerful wizard somewhere LIKE MAYBE YOU SIR RIGHT THERE who was casting the bad juju and she was actually fighting to keep her alive as long as she could. It’s not like that would sound too crazy for these people to swallow. Take heart, though, there are folks trying to fight the good fight in India. As I mentioned in a previous post, the India Rationalist Association challenged one of the top tantriks in India to demonstrate his power on live TV. He failed and now the show is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube - Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3. Enjoy!
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This Weeks Reader March 30, 2008
http://talesofordinarygirl.blogspot.com/2008/03/this-weeks-r...Atheism American Atheists in the Mini-apple Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, kicked things off with a rousing and impassioned speech on political action, mainly addressing the fact that secular voters do represent a major voting block which should not be allowed to be ignored by politicians. She called for solidarity and strength, urging atheists to remain engaged rather than giving up, especially in the face of flagrant constitutional violations, and to resist caving to our frustrations. Comedy Zombie Jesus Day What we see, through Zombie Jesus, is perhaps the worst thing a zombie can do, and that's found a religion. Now this may seem to have nothing to do with zombies desiring to eat your brains, but in fact is quite an ingenious scheme to devour the brains of countless millions, and having them voluntarily, often happily, offer their brains for sacrifice. Yes, that Jesus Zombie is a clever bastard. Every day it feeds on brains. Games Microsoft punishes Gamerscore cheaters with public branding With the battle for high scores comes a high probability of cheating. When it comes to buffing one's Gamerscore on the Xbox 360, though, Microsoft has drawn a line in the sand. Microsoft's Major Nelson has documented the punishment for players caught cheating and it's surprisingly public. Following a recent round of "serious offender" identification, the company has come forth with a set of documented penalties. Second Life lawsuit over purloined naughty bits settled The not-nearly-as-sordid-as-you-might-think story goes like this. 19-year-old Robert Leatherwood allegedly stole scripts written by Florida-based Eros, LLC that gave people's avatars lifelike naughty bits and enabled them to engage in kinky, virtual sex. He then resold them without permission, which sparked a lawsuit from Eros founder Kevin Alderman over copyright violations last July. That was apparently when Leatherwood decided to stop selling the scripts, according to the Associated Press, and was likely part of the reason Eros decided to settle. WoW bot maker sued after home visit from Vivendi attorney However, Donnelly's bot is particularly powerful. While many popular bots, such as the infamous Fishing bot from Final Fantasy XI or the crafting macro-botting of Star Wars Galaxies, are limited to a single task, Glider can automate the majority of the game. "Glider works a lot like a regular player. It looks at your health, mana, energy, etc. It moves the mouse around and pushes keys on the keyboard," the software's web site explains. "You tell it about your character, where you want to kill things, and what to kill. Then it kills for you, automatically. You can do something else, like eat dinner or go to a movie, and when you return, you'll have a lot more experience and loot." Rockstar and Amazon bring digital music distribution to GTA4 Citing the success of downloadable music sales as implemented in Rock Band as an inspiration, but boasting the ability to take songs outside of the game, Amazon and Rockstar are looking for similar results from players of Grand Theft Auto 4. "Music has long played an integral part of the game playing experience," said Ronn Werre, executive vice president of EMI Music's Sales, Licensing and Synchronization unit, in a statement. "We think giving players the ability to identify and buy their favorite tracks from Grand Theft Auto IV's popular radio stations is a great new music discovery tool for fans and an innovative new revenue stream for artists." Government Grandma, grandpa get owned by Illinois' failed gaming law The way the legal fees were paid has been an ongoing concern. In May of 2007 we discovered that the governor raided funds throughout state government to pay for the litigation. Some of the areas money was taken from included the public health department, the state's welfare agency, and economic development department. If you had cash, you gave your funds to pay for the failed legislation, whether or not the department had anything at all to do with the law itself. International Indian 'witch' tied to tree, beaten by mob "I was appalled at what I saw because people should be more socially responsible than to do this," Tiwari said. Life-Stories North Platte, Nebraska, to Salt Lake City, Utah Taking I-80 through Nebraska is not very exiting. Nebraska is rather flat, the road is rather straight, the scenery is mile after mile of irrigation rigs and the occasional old-fashioned windmill-powered well pump with a few cows standing around. Wyoming offers little improvement at first, but as you head west you begin to see more hills which roll higher and higher until the snow-streaked mountains come into view. By the time you reach Western Wyoming, every bend in the road, every vantage point over every hill is more awe-inspiring than the last. Following a thin ribbon of highway down into one valley, then up and out gives one an understanding of the phrase "wide-open spaces". I considered taking some pictures, but realized that my camera's lens would only flatten the image into a narrow slice of depth-less frame that could not possibly convey the awesomeness of the sight. It was a partly-cloudy day, cold, and large patches of snow were still on the ground. In some places massive snow drifts had become isolated and were slowly disappearing allong fences or in gullies. The whole world as far as I could see was blue and white sky, brown and green scruff, covered with large patches of white, mottled like a cow's hide. In the mid-afternoon sun, the high cirrus clouds and the lower, heavier clouds in the distance helped cast a cool, bluish-white glow on the entire landscape. It looked cold. Philosophy Three Objections to Objectivism This sounds very compassionate of her - until you remember that Ayn Rand believes that the free market is, by definition, infallible (see last point). In Objectivist philosophy, if you succeed it's because you deserve to succeed, and if you're poor it's because you deserve to be poor. Combined with Rand's repeated expressions of fierce disdain for "parasites" and "looters" and "moochers", it seems hard to escape the conclusion that a consistent Objectivist would never give any money or other assistance to others. After all, if they were deserving of your help, they wouldn't need it; they'd have already achieved success and security on their own through hard work and persistence. To an Objectivist, the way you prove you're worthy of help is by proving you don't need help. And the reason Rand was so upset about the starving citizens of the USSR wasn't because they were starving; it was because they were starving under the wrong ideology. In an Objectivist society, people might still starve, but we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that they must have deserved it. Politics Reason: The Gold Standard of Politics (A Girl Can Dream) What bothered me as I watched the speech live, streaming over cnn.com, was not the emotional presentation and delivery (which I believe is genuine—I have no reason to believe otherwise); it was not the nearly perfect linguistic structure or perfectly situated word choice. No. It’s that in the 21st century, Obama still embraces a dogma (i.e, Christianity) and the physical representation of that dogma (i.e., Wright) that propagate nonsensical beliefs, superstitious drivel, blatant gobbledygook, and vacuous platitudes. These purposely distort information; they produce disinformation. They are exploitative and downright wrong. Religion Can a Christian accept natural selection as true? I think that nobody is purely rational, not even cephalodesque Elder Deities that eat creationists at movie premieres. So I am unable to say that my theist friends are compartmentalising their beliefs any more than, say, I do when I contemplate quantum mechanics and hold to a classical view of causation at the macro level. But there is a problem with Providence, taken literally. If God wants so many organisms to die horribly, or refuses to act to resolve it (Fall or no Fall) then He is not a providential deity. So maybe Providence has some other meaning. Not for me to say. Good luck to those trying to come to an accommodation. I merely point out that formally NS is not a special problem for theists - reality is. You’re Welcome Everyday during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we would shout over the table at each other about evolution. Goodness, it was loads of fun in retrospect, but I don’t think any creationist has raised my blood pressure so much since James. We would pick apart the arguments that were infecting his mind, pick them apart, but he would stubbornly change to something else like the start of the universe. It seemed entirely hopeless. Praying parents' other 3 kids removed Madeline Neumann, 11, died Sunday the Weston home of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes as her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, prayed for her to get better. Her mother said she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die. Science Any way you slice it - I'm OLD But – now that Orrorin (said to be about 6 million years old) has been tagged as an “upright walker”, where does that leave the hypothesis? As the video makes clear, bipedalism would likely have come at the cost of considerable time. Are we talking about 7 million years (or more) since the split? I think it’s possible we will be hearing this in coming years. Saturn and Titan from Cassini Spoil-Proofing Elections When Ralph Nader recently announced he was entering the 2008 presidential race, many Democrats groaned. It was his fault, they say, that George Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000. But Nader retorted that the Democratic Party has only itself to blame for the loss in 2000. Mathematicians offer a different perspective. The problem, they say, doesn't lie with Nader or with the Democrats. It lies with our voting system. Across the Universe How far can you see? Even the faintest stars visible to the eye are merely hundreds or thousands of light-years distant, all well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Of course, if you know where to look you can also spot the Andromeda Galaxy as a pale, fuzzy cloud, around 2.5 million light-years away. But staring toward the northern constellation Bootes on March 19th, even without binoculars or telescope you still could have witnessed a faint, brief, flash of light from a gamma-ray burst. The source of that burst has been discovered to lie over halfway across the Universe at a distance of about 7.5 billion light-years. Now holding the distinction of the most distant object that could be seen by the unaided eye and the intrinsically brightest object ever detected, the cosmic explosion is estimated to have been over 2.5 million times more luminous than the brightest known supernova. The monster burst was identified and located by the orbiting Swift satellite, enabling rapid distance measurements and follow-up observations by large ground-based telescopes. The fading afterglow of the gamma-ray burster, cataloged as GRB080319B, is shown in these two panels in X-rays (left) and ultraviolet light (right). Sexism Steelers explain Wilson's release, Rooney clarifies statements "I know many are asking the question of [why] we released Wilson and Harrison we kept," Rooney said. "The circumstances -- I know of the incidents, they are completely different. In fact, when I say we don't condone these things, we don't, but we do have to look at the circumstances that are involved with other players and things like that, so they're not all the same." In Harrison's case, Rooney said the player was trying to take his son to be baptized. "What Jimmy Harrison was doing and how the incident occurred, what he was trying to do was really well worth it," Rooney said of Harrison's initial intent with his son. "He was doing something that was good, wanted to take his son to get baptized where he lived and things like that. She said she didn't want to do it." Sociology From Crib to Cubicle, A Familiar Voice -- Our Own -- Reassures Carli Entin, an associate magazine editor, loves talking to herself whether it's "appearing" as a panelist on "Meet the Press," narrating her imaginary cooking show ("replace some of the water with coffee for a tastier cupcake"), or blogging. At work, even when a colleague told her she stopped listening, that didn't stop Ms. Entin's side of the conversation or the fun she had engaging in it. Besides, her self-chatter can be efficient. "By acting out the conversation," she says, "I no longer need to have it."
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india goes salem all over their asses
http://apocalyptickiwi.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/india-goes-s...by lestro so I don’t know if you heard, but apparently the other day over in India they found a woman they believe to be a, uh, well, a witch: Tiwary said Devi claimed to be a faith healer and was treating a mentally ill woman in the village. When the woman attempted to commit suicide, Devi was attacked by angry villagers, Tiwary said. Everyone knows the way to tell if someone is a witch is if they’ll burn, like wood. and wood floats. and what else floats? Bread! Apples! Very small rocks! Mud! Churches! And a duck, of course. But it seems they do things a bit differently in India: He said Devi was tied to a tree with rope and repeatedly beaten. Her hair was then cut off and she was paraded through the village, Tiwary said. A video of the attack was aired Friday by New Delhi Television. You catch that last bit? CNN goes deeper on that: Nishant Tiwari, a police official in northeastern India, said a journalist who filmed the beating called him Thursday to report the incident, which took place in the village of Dumaria in central eastern Bihar state. He arrived to find the woman tied to a tree, her hair partially cut and her complexion ruddy from being slapped. She had no serious injuries… Tiwari said he was disturbed by the fact that a journalist filmed the incident before contacting authorities. Yeah, no shit. But it does raise an interesting question about the role of journalism as observer and documenter. Journalists are not a part of the story, their job is to report what is happening. We all have our roles. Thankfully, she is ok. But the truth here seems to be not that she’s a witch, but that they attacked her because she wasn’t a witch: Ayodhya said he paid her to use magic and prayer to improve his wife’s health. They attacked her because her magic failed, not because she was a witch. Which raises more questions than it answers, really. Also, Hillary Clinton reportedly sent a winged monkey to get her the woman’s shoes.
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Indian Madness - The Dark Side of Spirituality.
http://roiword.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/indian-madness-the-d...India was always a land for the spiritually and superstitiously inclined. That is all fine and well when we think about Buddha and Gandhi. But like everywhere else, such thinking can have dangerous consequences. Recently, a witch in India was filmed being beaten while she was tied to a tree. The story: A man hires a woman with spiritual powers to magically cure his ailing wife. When his wife conditions turns worse, he blames the woman for putting a curse on his wife. In a fit of rage, he chains the woman to a tree, gathers a mob, and proceeds to beat and abuse the woman. Here is a vid of the incident - Warning, this video is graphic and disturbing. Disturbing as this video is, such behavior is text book example of what psychologist and sociologist call displacement and scape-goating. The man could not fight the invincible power of his wife’s sickness, so he displaces his frustration on the poor woman who tried to help. He blamed her for something that was clearly out of her (or his) control. By attacking her he was able to feel less powerless (and perhaps less guilty). Likewise, the group took up the opportunity to take out their trouble and frustration on a stranger who became the symbol of their lowly condition. By doing so, the sociologist tell us, the group managed to redirect and allay their collective fears and anxieties onto an “other”, a scapegoat. Such events are sadly not all together uncommon in certain parts of the world. But the winds of change are blowing, even in India. A friend of mine recently sent me an article about a TV show in India which featured a live confrontation between a famous tantrik “holy man” and self-proclaimed rationalist Anal Edamaruku. They came together to discuss “Tantrik power versus Science”, and to opine on wither or not people can have magical powers. When the tantrik man claimed that he had the power to kill and harm others with magic spells, Anal challenged him to prove it by trying to kill him. The tantrik man agreed, and for the next few hours he tried to kill Anal with his spells. While the events garnered large ratings, at the end no one died, and Anal was pronounced the winner of the encounter. The rationalist’s victory may seem to us amusing and silly, but in a society that still experiences pockets of witch-persecution it is nothing to wiggle your nose at. It is a small but important triumph of rationality over superstition. The irony, of course, is that if the millions of people who watched the show were to take the message to heart, the witches and magicians in India would be deprived of their occupation. But if you look at the face of the woman above as she is being beaten and humiliated, loss of job seems to me to be a price she would be willing to pay.
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Aussie Builds His Own Stonehenge
http://paganwiccan.about.com/b/2008/03/29/aussie-builds-his-...permalink | comments (0) Indian Woman Tied, Beaten for Witchcraft In an absolutely awful story out of the eastern state of Bihar, India, a woman was tied to a tree and beatenby a mob after being accused of practicing witchcraft. The incident was captured on film by a reporter, who then called the police. Officials arrived and found the woman still tied to the tree. Part of her hair had been cut off in the attack. Six people were arrested, including Ram Ayodhya, who says he had paid the woman for her services as a witch. He says he hired her to pray and offer healing to his ailing wife. When his wife took a turn for the worse, he accused the woman of practicing black magic. It is believed that the victim will testify in court. You know, this is horrible on so many levels. First, that a reporter would stand there and film it in the first place, and then call the police later on, which just makes me ill. Second, that this seems to happen fairly regularly. A Washington Post report back in 2005 mentions that it's not uncommon for a woman in a tribal area to be accused of witchcraft just so someone can grab her land or property, or take revenge for spurned sexual advances. Sociologists say that these accusations are used as justification for perpretrating violent acts against women. Bihar is one of two Indian states that have outlawed witch-hunting, but that apparently didn't stop last week's mob violence.
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links for 2008-03-29
http://thomasroche.com/2008/03/29/links-for-2008-03-29/Traveler says she was forced to remove nipple ring A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. (tags: civilrights nipples travel politics) Travey Ullman Loves Being Ugly Tracey Ullman prefers pathetic. “I don’t want to be the pretty girl. I just want to dress up and look terrible on TV.” (tags: comedy television) Voice recording may be world’s oldest At first listen, the grainy high-pitched warble doesn’t sound like much, but scientists say the French recording from 1860 is the oldest known recorded human voice. (tags: steampunk tech history music) Indian ‘witch’ tied to tree, beaten by mob An Indian woman accused of being a witch was tied to a tree and beaten by a mob, with television footage of the incident aired in India on Friday. (tags: poltics asia southasia india) Asperger’s: My life as an Earthbound alien Recently, at 48 years of age, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. For most of my life, I knew that I was “other,” not quite like everyone else. (tags: aspergers autism science medicine) Collapse of an Ice Shelf The Wilkins Ice Shelf began its collapse on February 28th when an iceberg larger than 25 square miles broke away from the shelf. (tags: environment) The Goods: Work at Home | Popular Science Don’t worry if you hear a little voice telling you what to do. It could be this digital calendar, which has a built-in video camera and voice recorder for creating multimedia reminders. (tags: tech) http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-03/how-can-i-back-my-cellphone-contacts Our geek finds out the hard way that it’s often easier said than done. (tags: tech) http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-03/ice-cream-will-make-you-healthier Nanotechnology in food could be the cure-all we’ve been searching for. But is it safe? (tags: tech food)
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Letter to the HillBloggers
Letter to the HillBloggers by BooMan Thu May 8th, 2008 at 08:54:55 PM EST Dear Jeralyn, Armando (Big Tent Democrat), Jerome Armstrong, Taylor Marsh, I'm confused about something.
