Game of Thrones is a very readable series of books by George R. R. Martin, and has also been filmed as a series by HBO, now into Season 3. The book series is more correctly known as "A Song Of Ice And Fire", but after the HBO series more commonly known as Game of Thrones (GoT). In the fantasy, the land of Westeros has been thoroughly settled for over 5,000 years - a significantly long time, which gives emphasis to the omissions in it I wish to point out. Iron and steel seem to have been in manufacture...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

...

As usual, I am chaotic and random. Having had over a month of severe illness just behind me, I have a huge backlog of work, and part of all that is books I wish to review. These are a mixture of very new and very old books; I make no distinction on that score. They're also what pique my personal interest; I tend to only review books if I find them interesting myself. You might like a look at my "Most Urgent" stack of books to do; here it is, in descriptions and, below those, photos. The descriptions...

On Sept. 7, 2010, Delfina Alvarez Cruz Selgado, a 42-years-old Mayan mother of five, became the target of witch-hunts - some face-to-face, one being police-action prompted against her, and another being online. Delfina originally came from a village, but then lived in the town of Punta Gorda, in the Toledo district, Belize, in a house she had built herself out of scraps scrounged from garbage-dumps around town. Her name wasn't even Delfina Alvarez Selgado, but that is how it was entered in the...

A great deal has been written about the death of Margaret Thatcher, and I don’t intend add much to it. Two people have pretty eloquently summed up the legacy of the ‘Iron Lady’ for me.

Glenda Jackson speaking in the UK Parliament, which you can view below:


Then this, from Billy Bragg’s Facebook page:

...

There has been an all-out civil war raging inside the atheist movement for quite a while. PZ Myers announced in May last year that he would refuse to talk at any conference where Abbie Smith is a speaker. Paula Kirby, a noted figure in the atheism movement, tweeted about Femistasi, then wrote about "Hysterical, bullying overreaction to dissent? Attempting to make it so unpleasant for anyone who dares to oppose them that others are deterred from trying it?" So FreeThoughtBlogs (FTB) blogger Ed Brayton...

Now Michael Nugent (@MickNugent), chair of the advocacy group Atheist Ireland, has undertaken an intense effort at a dialogue process, owing to the all-out Hobbesian war in the secular movement. He made several blog posts, culminating in a call for volunteers for dialogue, and the creation of a new website dedicated to the dialogue process, "Atheist/Skeptic Dialogue".

Michael Nugent asked who would be willing to volunteer for such a dialogue; I and others, including Stephanie Zvan,...

Just a few days ago, EllenBeth Wachs tweeted she resigns as President of Humanists of Florida, then tweeted "I'm wishing I never got involved with the movement. I'd be happier, wealthier and still have a good reputation". I know how she feels. EllenBeth Wachs was the victim of unfriendly friendly-fire, or frenemy-fire if you like. A known feminist and atheist leader, she was castigated as being a misogyny-enabler, etc. etc., for the crime of being somewhat mildly skeptical about whether Adria Richards...

I'm going to do a regular round-up of general worthy assistance requests, this being the first one. Two of the requests, the last ones, are from me personally, the other requests being from others or on behalf of other people.

There is a person who now does proof-reading on a freelance basis, and needs contracts and such work badly. Expert, native German, with a good deal of good general academic and research German as well. Reasonable English, enough for good communication. Contact...

Given the deep schisms obvious in the atheist movement, Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland kindly started a dialogue process, which went in to many unexpected directions. Michael Nugent then started a formal talks process after asking for volunteers, and he set up a dedicated site for this on AtheistSkepticDialogue.com.

There is a great deal to say about this all, and I shall soon start saying it.

However,...

The date for the referendum on Scottish Independence was announced yesterday by Alex Salmond. It is going to be:


Still over a year to go folks. With tongue set (mostly) in cheek, here is a 'rogues gallery' together with occasionally irreverent commentary from yours truly featuring some of the main players among our professional politicians, which I will add to...

"Hey lady, if you want to get your camera ready, I'm going to be cute now" seemed to be what this lemur was thinking as he stretched out to sunbath on a moderately cloudy February day in North Carolina when the sun had broken through the clouds. I obliged him as best I could with my cell phone. We chatted a bit (ok, I chatted, he looked cute) and I got a few good photos. This is a male ringtail lemur.

...

Al Stefanelli is someone I do not know well at all. I never heard of him at all till the huge teacup-storms caused by the FTB/atheism+ emo narcissists started happening. But Al Stefanelli (@Stefanelli) is quite ill, and on his way out, slowly but surely. He's winding down his social-media presence because of increasing illness and disability, and the end is pretty obvious and nearish. He's got Parkison's, diabetes and more, but it's COPD doing him in right now.

I mention him here...

Never and I, the co-admins of the Hangout board, are visitng Denver, Colorado, for the first time, travelling from Germany in my case, and from Ohio in Never's case. Also for the very first time, we got to meet Deacon Doubtmonger (John), a member of the Hangout board, and his wife Mary, who live in Denver, in the evening of Thursday, 14 February 2013. I've known John for at least 10 years by now over the board, but this is the very first time of actual meeting. His wife, Mary, has just had an operation...

On Thursday, 14 February 2013, I and Never went to visit ShadowFox (Lee), one of the newest members of the Heathen Hangout bulletin-board. Never of course is an American who lives in Ohio, and is co-admin of the Hangout and Hub, and I am an Australian who lives nowadays in Germany, and admin/owner of the two boards, the Hangout and the Hub. Lee, whose username on the boards is ShadowFox, and who is also a member of the unrelated FRDB board, lives in Denver, Colorado, is 77 years old, and has just...

I finally got to meet Reed Esau (@reedes), someone I've known a little over Twitter for a fair while, but never met before. He's extremely active in the skepticism movement, and has been known to comment on the atheism movement at times. He's a very nice bloke. You can find him on Twitter here, you can find his blog here. We - that is Reed, Never (co-admin of the Hub and Hangout, who lives in Ohio but has joined forces with me for this trip to meet up board members and others in Colorado) and...

For the day.










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Comments are welcome! Please keep in mind if you are not registered that comments posted here to this blog post may take a while to appear - up to 16 hours after you post them, since they go onto a moderation queue and have to be individually approved, in order to stop spammers. The answer to the so-called "Random Question" is always "human", with no quote marks.

We Heathens - members of the Hangout, not the Hub this time - had a great meet-up on Tuesday, 12 February 2013, in Denver, Colorado. The Hangout is the other board I admin, in team with my co-admin Never. I of course am an Australian who nowadays lives in Germany; Never is an American who lives in Ohio with her family. On meet-ups with board members like this we try to join forces so we can be both there. This time round we've managed to do Pageland, South Carolina, and Denver, Colorado. This is...

Barbara Drescher (@badrescher) has made a rather important post on her blog about the nature of skepticism, and associated issues. Here is a link to that post. She includes a good deal of links in her post, but it would also be good to read up on Harriet Hall's recent post, and on what Paula Kirby (@PaulaSKirby) and Sara Mayhew (@SaraMayhew) have to say too. There is also an older post from Barbara Drescher on the subject. More on all this - skepticism etc. - later. Never confuse wishful thinking...

I blogged last on the value of productive disagreement, inspired by a tweet from professor of classics Mary Beard (@wmarybeard). Here is a link to that post of mine, and now comes the part about when disagreement becomes unproductive, something rather relevant to the skepticism and atheism blogospheres today, not only to the worlds of science-communication (#scicomm), history and philosophy.

One major problem is academic bloodsports - the fact that quite a few academics really like...