GetUp's statement on Assange

From here:

Dear President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

We, as Australians, condemn calls for violence, including assassination, against Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, or for him to be labeled a terrorist, enemy combatant or be treated outside the ordinary course of justice in any way.

As Thomas Jefferson said, "information is the currency of democracy." Publishing leaked information in collaboration with major news outlets, as Wikileaks and Mr. Assange have done, is not a terrorist act.

Australia and the United States are the strongest of allies. Our soldiers serve side by side and we’ve experienced, and condemned, the consequences of terrorism together. To label Wikileaks a terrorist organisation is an insult to those Australians and Americans who have lost their lives to acts of terrorism and to terrorist forces.

If Wikileaks or their staff have broken international or national laws, let that case be heard in a just and fair court of law. At the moment, no such charges have been brought.

We are writing as Australians to say what our Government should have: all Australian citizens deserve to be free from persecution, threats of violence and detention without charge, especially from our friend and ally, the United States.

We call upon you to stand up for our shared democratic principles of the presumption of innocence and freedom of information.

"Silicon Valley billionaire backs futuristic philanthropy" - by Brandon Bailey

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel worries that people aren't thinking big enough about the future.

So he's convening an unusual philanthropic summit tonight at which he will introduce other wealthy tech figures to nonprofit groups exploring such futuristic -- some might say "far out" -- ideas as artificial intelligence, the use of "rejuvenation biotechnologies" to extend human life, and the creation of free-floating communities on the high seas.

"We're living in a world where people are incredibly biased toward the incremental," said Thiel, explaining that he wants to challenge his peers to pursue more "radical breakthroughs" in their philanthropy by supporting nonprofit exploration of technological innovations that carry at least the promise of major advances for the human condition.

"Obviously there are a lot of questions about the impact of these things," he added. "If you have radical life extension, that could obviously lead to repercussions for society. But I think that's a problem we want to have."

The 43-year-old financier and philanthropist, who made a fortune as co-founder of PayPal and an early backer of Facebook, will make his pitch to more than 200 well-heeled entrepreneurs and techies during an invitation-only dinner at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Read on in the Mercury News (I wonder what came out of this)

"Is the future bisexual" - by Veronica Pamoukaghlian

Last week, I heard a girl on the radio, who was talking about how she would have no problem doing a threesome with another girl, if her boyfriend desired it. The girl’s carefree attitude, revealing to hundreds of thousands of strangers that she was open to a bisexual experience reminded me of a certain 2005 study from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics I had recently come across, which showed an increased percentage of girls who had had a homosexual experience compared to a similar study from 10 years earlier.

The implication would be that bisexuality might be losing the stigma that still pervades homosexuality and especially male homosexuality. If we look at popular media, there are clearly many more bisexual characters being portrayed in mainstream media today than a few decades ago. Groundbreaking films in that sense have included Basic Instinct, with its portrayal of a powerful bisexual female played by Sharon Stone, and Henry & June, which presented the complex relationships between writer Henry Miller, his wife and that icon of female sexual liberation — French writer Anais Nin. Popular TV series of the 21st century have also started commonly incorporating bisexual characters; with House as a prime example.

Full by article Veronica Pamoukaghlian here.

Clay Shirky on Wikileaks and Assange

This expresses a lot of my thoughts and feelings, so just go and have a look and see what you think.

New round of debate on Mooney, "Tom Johnson", etc.

For those who haven't seen it ... over at Phil Plait's place.

H/T Ophelia Benson.

Kitteh contest

Jerry Coyne has announced, so I'll follow suit, that the results of the kitteh contest have been decided. Your celebrity judges - Ophelia Benson, Miranda Celeste Hale, et moi - have reported, and the results will be announced this coming weekend over at Why Evolution Is True.

Currently reading: Atheism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Kerry Walters

This isn't a bad little book, but it's annoying the way it goes on so much with the false moral equivalence between religious fundamentalists and New Atheists. This is lazy, unfair, and (by now) boring.

There are also other occasional oddities among what is mainly solid discussion. One is this claim (bear in mind that we're talking here about a new book, with a 2010 publication date): "In fact, it's become a convention among the New Atheists to refer to unbelievers as 'brights,' with the accompanying implication that believers are dim(-)witted."

This is simply false. There is no such convention. Admittedly, a couple of folks tried on this idea of "brights" as a positive-sounding name for non-believers, though those people were not Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. The idea never really took off and it is just false to say that it's a convention adopted in New Atheist circles. I can assure Walters that you can hang round in Gnu circles as much as you like without encountering any such "convention". In fact, you'll be very unlikely to encounter the usage at all.

This sort of outright misinformation, doubtless unintended, gives the impression of an author whose finger is just not on the pulse.

Some cold water on life extension for mice

Kyle Munkittrick says: "Mice engineered to lack telomerase aged prematurely. When given telomerase treatments, the mice rejuvenated to age-appropriate health without adverse side-effects. That’s it. That’s the extend of the discovery."

Rogue boots

This picture is for especially for Jerry Coyne - I thought of him immediately when I came across it. Never mind the dialogue or Hank McCoy in the background; check out the boots that Rogue is wearing.

On saying no to the burqa

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Sergio Redagalli, the artist who created the image to the left, is currently under attack for alleged breach of anti-discrimination law.

Again and again, we see these sorts of attacks on freedom of speech and expression where it involves criticism or just plain rejection of religious or cultural practices. It's way past time to push back and defend the important freedom to speak out against these things if we disapprove of them.

As far as I'm concerned, the important issue is whether or not the burqa should be banned, not whether or not people should be legally entitled to express their opposition to it. For essentially Millian reasons, I don't favour a sweeping ban on wearing of burqas in public places (I'll be saying a fair bit more about the pros and cons in The Book). However, this garment is something unpleasant that we should tolerate, not something that we should approve of or welcome. It's certainly not something so precious that it must never be criticised or exposed to expressions of hostility.

And once again we see "Islamophobia" used as a stick to try to deny people freedom of speech. It's appalling, though not unexpected.