In no particular order:

• Just like in Russia, several bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church have been exposed as being agents for the communist regime.
• The Women’s ice hockey tournament at the Youth Olympic Games is over. Considering that only two of the five competing teams were even in the top division, it was obvious from the beginning that it would be a Swedish coronation.
• You can’t make this up. Frothy mixture’s fundraising site is called “Conservatives Unite Moneybomb“. Here’s a hint: check out what the first letters of those words spell.
  • And as was mentioned in a comment at Political Irony, if you look at the white words, they spell something else too.
• SOPA and PIPA are pretty much dead (for the time being and hopefully forever). Good riddance to them.
• And yet more evidence of what a despicable, horrible person Rick Santorum is.
• The Obama administration has maintained its mandate that health insurance cover contraception.
• How the religious right wrong causes abortions. Of course, this is not really that much of a surprise.
• More on the GOP’s increasingly anti–science stand.
• Missing fossils collected by Charles Darwin have been rediscovered in London.

Today is NARAL Pro–Choice America’s annual Blog for Choice Day. This year’s question is “What will I do to help elect pro–choice candidates in 2012″?

Well, strictly speaking, since I’m Canadian I can’t vote in any US election. If there happens to be a by–election here, I’d easily vote for the pro–choice candidate, even though it likely wouldn’t make much of a difference (I live in a safe Conservative seat). The only influence I really have on the US election is indirect, via convincing others to vote in favour of reproductive freedom.

My best option would be to continue doing what I am already doing. Arguing in favour of reproductive rights, such as by showing why it is moral, why the faux–life movement is not really anti–abortion, and so on. It is hard to convince someone as closed–minded as an anti–choicer. After all, they generally really are fighting a war on women. The best way would be to convince those who have been misled into supporting abstinence ignorance–only sex education, pharmacy refusal clauses, and so on. I hope those are simply not as vocal as the misogynists, and are instead a quiet sheep–like majority. But the real misogynists are by far the most vocal. Update: To clarify and provide more info, the point is to show that the politicians who make the biggest issue about abortion are the ones most likely to be causing abortions due to those people’s opposition to reproductive freedom. Convincing those who aren’t against sex education, birth control, and so on is the point, although it is still far better to convince those people to become pro–choice and I will of course attempt that.

My biggest fear is somehow not doing enough. Allowing reproductive rights to be eroded around the edges (this covers more than just abortion) to be rendered so that it still nominally exists while being made impossible to utilize is, in practical terms, no different from not having that right in the first place.

Last week there was a sudden spree of posts about premarital sex. They have inspired me to write my own post concerning the same topic.

First of all, premarital sex is extremely common and it has been for an extremely long time. “Extremely long time” does not mean since the mythical 1950s, but rather since before then. Indeed, premarital sex has been the normative behaviour for much of the past eighty years. In the 1930s, 70% of men and women had premarital sex (cite). Similarly, today 95% of Americans have had premarital sex (cite). And the 1950s are of a mythical view. In her book The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz refutes the idea that the 1950s were some sort of pure “family values” period. Back then a majority of people still had premarital sex. Indeed, she sums it up succinctly: “The 1960s generation did not invent premarital and out–of–wedlock sex.”

Clearly then, the religious right’s wrong’s promotion of abstinence ignorance–only sex (mis)education is not only an attack on women and an attack on public health, but is also an attack on reality.

A few of the posts in the recent spree mentioned supposed “negative consequences” of premarital sex. As I will show, those supposed “negative consequences” ought to be considered irrelevant and furthermore, the things tied to opposition to premarital sex have sinister and bad effects.

More discussion is after the jump.

My most recent sports prognostication was mostly wrong, but in this case I am glad to be wrong, as Canada has won the 2012 IIHF World Women’s U18 Championship. We beat the United States 3–0 in the final. This is Canada’s second championship. The United States won silver. Sweden won bronze for the third time.

The final rankings are as follows:

1. Canada
2. United States
3. Sweden
4. Germany
5. Finland
6. Czech Republic
7. Russia
8. Switzerland – relegated to Division I for 2013.

In accordance with IIHF regulations for seeding, the likely groups for the next tournament are:

Pool A	Pool B
Canada	United States
Germany	Sweden
Finland	Czech Republic
Hungary	Russia

 

The location of the next tournament will be announced later this year.

Happy New Year, everybody.

The IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship began today. It’s being held in Zlin and Prerov the Czech Republic.

I don’t think there will be much of a change from last year’s tournament. The group winners will be the usual suspects— Canada and the United States. They will steamroller the opposition and will face each other in the final for the fifth consecutive time. I think that Switzerland and Russia will finish last in the groups and hence face each other in the best–of–three relegation round. The remaining countries will advance to the quarterfinals.

There was a best–of–three exhibition series between Canada and the United States. Canada won 2–1. Since there is no particular correlation between winning that series and winning the final, I still think that the US will win this tournament again. The bronze medal and positions 4–6 are potentially in play for the other quarterfinalists. Even though people in their own country express wonderment at the idea that women play hockey, much less have a women’s team, I believe that Russia won’t be relegated again.

Since there will be one–sided games, please be aware that such also happened at a higher–profile also taking place now (This is a poor scheduling decision by the IIHF). Unless you took the same view of blowouts in the higher–profile tournament, please don’t call for mercy rules or laying back here. Don’t engage in sexist double standards.

Prediction of final rankings:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Finland
4. Sweden
5. Germany
6. Czech Republic
7. Russia
8. Switzerland – relegated to Division I for 2013

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone.

Today, a national association of brick–and–mortar and online retails declared victory in the War on Christmas. A press release was issued to mark the occasion:

Today is a great day in the history of capitalism, business, and the United States. Retailers decades long effort to redefine Christmas have been successful. What once was a religious holiday has successfully transformed into a commercialized and consumerized glorified shopping spree. And no wingnut can really complain, as Christmas was the bastardized descendant of the Roman festival of Saturnalia and various winter solstice observances. A careful reading of the Bible reveals evidence that implies that Jesus was probably born in late summer or early autumn. Therefore, our victory in the War on Christmas in no way is an attack on any religion.

The press release gave special thanks one group:

We would like to give special thanks to our moles in the National Association of Perennially Pissed off Wingnuts for distracting them from our real objective. Everyone knows that the phrase “Happy Holidays” merely began as a shortening of “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” However, our agents, by reminding wingnuts that the phrase “Happy Holidays” could also apply to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and other winter holidays, and by making wingnuts think it was a politically correct attack on Christianity, allowed us to distract our enemies with an irrelevant diversion, therefore allowing us to focus on our real objective.

Over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars there is a long comment thread about the Worst Song Ever Made.

Now, there is much music I don’t like. I don’t like country, and don’t really care for opera, which you would probably find surprising if you knew which songs in school band I liked the best. With a few exceptions, I really, really dislike rap and hip–hop.

The songs I listed at Dispatches, plus some additions (in no particular order and not an exhaustive list):

• “Drift Away” by Uncle Kracker: This is cover, but I’ve never heard any other version, so I can’t comment on them. However, it would be hard to be worse than this version.
• “Big Yellow Taxi”, especially the Counting Crows f. Vanessa Carlton version: I know I’ll probably be attacked for picking this one, but I won’t back down. Does a cover of an awful song qualify as being one of the worst covers or not?
• “Who Will Save Your Soul” by Jewel: Isn’t it amazing that the author of one of the best love songs ever also wrote this appalling drivel?
• “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes: I used to really like this song. It made me think of someone climbing a mountain, with the climax of this song coming on as soon as they reach their destination. Since then, this song has gone downhill with me.
• “I Want Your Sex” by George Michael: The title says enough about this.
• “Dirrty” by Christina Aguilera: Pure, unadulterated gimmickry.

Besides the above, I really can’t stand Mariah Carey’s recent (post–Daydream) stuff. Her old school music is like a million, million times better than her newer songs. The old and the new Mariah Carey might as well be different people. I miss the old Mariah Carey.

At the Dispatches thread, “Foster Disbelief” mentioned “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette. Now, I have a copy of Jagged Little Pill, and while not the best song on the album (that award is a toss–up between “All I Really Want” and “Head Over Feet”), it is nowhere near the worst song. And to quibble, a song you expect to be ironic, but isn’t, clearly is the opposite of what you expect;)

As for the best popular music–type songs (some of my picks), those are after the jump.

As all rational people could reasonably foresee, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the sections of the Criminal Code of Canada that outlaw polygamy. The pith and substance of the ruling is that even though laws against polygamy infringe on the religious freedom of Mormon fundamentalists, it is a justified restriction based on a Section 1 tes

Cartoon by Barry Deutsch

Such a decision is the correct one. If polygamy were to be legalized now, almost certainly the only ones who would take advantage of the legalization would be Mormon or Muslim fundamentalists. Considering that severe negative consequences arise from the existence if these relationships, (such as how Mormon fundamentalists rape women, abuse girls, and expel “surplus boys”) it is perfectly justifiable to keep polygamy illegal.

Considering that many bigots and opponents of marriage equality explicitly argued (the fallacy of the slippery slope) that same–sex marriage would lead to polygamy, this decision proves them wrong. In other words, so much for the slippery slope.

Hopefully, this case will set a precedent regarding the harmful effects of religion on others. Frankly, women’s rights (and others) ought to take precedence over freedom of religion. Amongst the people this ought to apply to are fundamentalist Muslims, Mormon fundamentalists, the Patriarchy/Quiverfull movement, and ultra–Orthodox Jews. First of all, religion is a choice, while gender isn’t. Even if adults voluntarily chose to enter these religions, their children didn’t, and unlike them I don’t think children should suffer just because they had the misfortune of being born to nutcase parents. Furthermore, no one is preventing these people from converting to denominations that are not so blatantly misogynistic. No one is ever forced to be a gynophobic misogynist. Freedom of religion shouldn’t be the “freedom” to oppress women, especially those who aren’t part of it.

Cartoon attribution/legal stuff: Barry Deutsch / CC BY 3.0