restrictions good for the goose, but the gander is free

Pooflingers Anonymous: You Gotta be F#%$ing Kidding Me:

Given the obsession many religious groups seem to have with perceived modesty standards in clothing, it's no surprise that there would be a website dedicated to just that.

[...summary including the site's referencing of John Calvin as a source...]

Oh no! Give somebody a bit of personal freedom and they might run with it! The horror! The basic gist of the paragraph is that if women are allowed to frolic about bare-headed, they might want to uncover over things... which might lead to some horrible things like bare ankles and *gasp* cleavage.

The justification the author uses for wanting to keep women covered about the head is - surprise - a Bible verse:

1 Corinthians 11: 5 & 6
"But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered."

That's right, ladies: if you want your tresses displayed to the world, you might as well shave your head. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to one day find an article extolling the virtues of the burqa on this site, given the fawning comments on the head covering post.

My main issue here is that, like most such sites, they don't seem to ever extend the same restrictions or scrutiny toward the men. Nowhere on the site will you find an article explaining why it's immodest and will lead to horrid social decline if men shave their faces or wear blended cloth, though both are found in the same book used to justify the head-covering rule for women. Sadly, it seems that fundamentalist religions in particular are all about telling the women what they can and cannot do whilst giving the men a mostly free pass. Also sad and frightening is that this sort of approach also seems to highly correlate with the thinking that a woman's mode of dress is somehow responsible for the actions of the men around her. These are often the sorts of men who, upon hearing that a woman has been sexually assaulted, will ask first what she was wearing. Fuck that. How about "what the hell was he thinking and what can we do about it?"

i watched on the today show (an open fitness post)

and was shocked at how bad some restaurant's foods can be, even the ones you think might be healthy.

one example, Outback's salmon dinner w/ baked potato is actually far worse than the 8oz prime rib (mind you, with broccoli and baked sweet potato).

tgif's salads are mostly over 900 cal each thanks to the fried meats and excess dressings or sugars.

the loaded chili-cheese burger + fries at chili's has as much sodium at 14 large McDonalds fries.

ick.

missing the point - reconciling science with religion

Adam Frank, a prof @ Rochester, has been writing some articles for his blog @ Discover, trying to get the science side to recognize the "living" feeling, the "sense of the sacred" that comes from religion (where-as the atheists of the science side have an explanation for that which he seems to have decided to ignore), but for all of that, I think he's totally off-base and will not reach the audience that actually needs to be reached here, and I wrote this in reply:

The Sullen and the Silly: Beyond the Science v. Religion Debate, Part II | Reality Base | Discover Magazine:

I still see you as totally missing the point about those who want their religion to trump science. I almost think you’ve never read The Wedge Document (much less Dr. Forrest’s analysis of it).

The attack on science by the literalists is for POLITICAL gain. By diminishing science’s role in knowledge, they can substitute their version of things and use that to “unite” their followers into a larger political union and eventually take over the country through changing the laws.

They act to deny, misrepresent, and misappropriate science just as they do history (”Christian nation”, “Madison supported church involvement in politics”, “Washington was Christian”, “Jefferson went to church”, and many other lies as codified by the historical distortions of David Barton and friends).

Trying to reconcile science and religion is useless to these people because they have already committed to the idea that science is the enemy of their POLICIES, therefore it is the enemy of their religion.

You’ll never get science to support the policies these forces want, and therefore you can never get science to “fit” with their religion.

Never.

So I REALLY think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Moderates who can accept science and religion together already have. The handful that don’t know the political motivations of the science denialists will need to be taught the source of their denial - that the denialists want political control over their lives.

Who really challenged science to better itself?

JFK challenged scientists to take us to the Moon.

President Bush challenged scientists to take us to Mars, funded only by a 15 dollar gift card to the Discovery Store.

-- Steven Colbert

echoing the 25

which I just posted on Facebook. ( cut for size )