Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 6/28
Pakistani Actress Gets Acid Thrown on Her Face
Now why did this happen? It happened because the Taliban in Pakistan are doing this to a lot of women. Their religiously motivated hatred of women is so deep, it is driving them to assault women simply because they are asking for an education.
I don’t dislike Islam any more than I dislike other organized religion but this is a fine example of what bothers about most of them. On the one hand, they talk about how their treatment of women shows such a high level of respect.
On the other hand. That is bullshit.
You don’t throw acid on someone because you respect them. You throw acid on someone because you want to punish them for existing.
I’m just trying to find out on which page of the Koran you can find this picture. I’m sure it’s near the picture of a woman. Ha ha! No it isn’t. No false idols, remember??
The Taliban practice a warped version of Islam. That is true. Religion is so easily warped already and that is what bothers me. Any religion that suggests women must cover themselves to avoid tempting men (as all the Abrahamic religions do) has created something that can be warped in the most sinister ways.
And yeah, I think I’ll call throwing acid on someone “sinister.”
Geeks Without God Talks about Nuclear War
As we’ve progressed through our first year recording Geeks Without God, we’ve seen a lot of changes in how we schedule our episodes. Early on, we did a geeky boner episode every month. We didn’t do it because we were lazy but we wanted to make sure that we never forgot about the “Geeks” part in “Geeks Without God.” However, when you do podcasts about stuff like your favorite convention, A fundamentalist Board Game, and Dr. Who, you find that you are covering the “Geeks” pretty well.
But still, it is a lot of fun to just sit down and geek out for a while. This week’s podcast is one of those.
Geekery is a lot broader than movies or comics or TV shows, though. We talked about stuff like running a half marathon, playing games on a 3DS and, of course, National Parks.
Also note: we have a little blurb for Camp Quest Minnesota at the end of the podcast. They still have openings for their Summer Camp!
Shit that Pissed Me off This Week – 5/24
Florida Teenager Faces Felony Charges for Being a Lesbian
Actually, she isn’t facing felony charges for being a lesbian. She’s facing felony charges for statutory rape because she was having a consensual relationship with a girl who was 14. When she was 17, that was (at least according to the articles I’ve read), legal.
But she turned 18. And her girlfriends’ parents immediately had her arrested.
Update: Apparently it wasn’t legal when she was 17 because if you are under 16, you can’t have consensual sex with anyone in the State of Florida. It would seem they waited until she was 18 so she could be charged as an adult. Classy.
And the county prosecutor is going for it. Because the law is all about protecting the innocent and that fourteen year old was clearly being corrupted by her girlfriend the second she turned 18. There is, apparently, no nuance in statutory rape laws that takes the age of the offender into account. ‘Cuz an eighteen year old may be older than a fourteen year old but she is just as much of a child.
Oh sure, you can hold her hand now. But you’d better let it go before you turn eighteen!
If she had been a boy, I’ll bet this would not have happened.
Hey, you folks who are against same-sex marriage and who still think that you aren’t bigots – don’t you think getting an eighteen year old girl expelled from school and possibly putting her in prison because she’s a lesbian seems just a little bit bigoted?
Update: There is a lot more nuance to this case. I checked my sources before I posted it but bias is always a risk. I’m still annoyed by any situation that could have a child (and yes – an eighteen year old is still a child) sent to jail for fifteen years because of sexual curiousity. If there is one thing that scares the piss out of us in this country, it is human sexuality.
New Vilification Tennis Podcast
We got a little bit behind on podcasting for Vilification Tennis during the festival season but this weekend I managed to get some folks together to record a new episode.
I managed to get Mark Lazarchic and Bob Alberti to start arguing politics. Unfortunately, I had to cut them off after about ten minutes but I think the podcast is worth listening to just for that. There’s also a lot of talk about a lesbian in Hong Kong because that’s the kind of podcast we do.
We also get really in-depth talking about the Renaissance Festival, including a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I think it turned out to be a good episode in spite of the worst home game rounds ever.
Grail Diary 