There’s a big argument going on right now in the internet skeptic community, which can basically be boiled down to “Atheism vs. Agnosticism.” I don’t have very many readers, of course, and I am not going to influence this debate by writing here, but I’m gonna tell ya what I think anyway ( Read more... )

In biblical times, when someone was sentenced to death, the entire community got together to do it. It was considered a civic duty that the people take a hand in the administration of justice, in kind of the same way we have jury duty today. It was important that the whole community took responsibility. We don’t do that anymore. We sentence ( Read more... )

So a week or so ago I was cruising YouTube, which I always enjoy, and came across a video by a user named Oallos1 (“o allos” is Greek for “the other,” so we’ll call him “The Other One” or “TOO”) called Famous Atheists Last Words Before Dying. There’s an apostrophe missing, and the poster could probably have left out the words “Before Dying,” since ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago Mama bought me a book for Bogey Day. It was a new novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, written by someone who isn’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It wasn’t bad, but some liberties were taken with the character. The largest was actually the central motivator of the plot: Holmes had had an affair with a woman who featured in one of ( Read more... )

I was at Richard Dawkins’ YouTube channel last night. I happened to notice in the comments that someone of the Catholic persuasion had posted a short comment on the page. It read, “I just have one question for all you atheists: what’s the meaning of life ( Read more... )

π isn’t mentioned in the Bible at all. The reason for this is simple: the Jews had never heard of it. At the time the Old Testament was written several greater civilizations knew what π was, but the Jews hadn’t discovered it yet. In fact, reading the Bible proves that they didn’t know about π, because the dimensions of circles are ( Read more... )

Was thinking on the way home from work, the sort of thoughts that you just don’t have without a bit of whiskey in ya, and a cold, clear night to wander through. And I thought this particular thing, which is probably not original to me (history is full of smarter folks than I) but I wanted to share it with you guys. Come along with me on this and ( Read more... )

I think this is the best thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube. I absolutely love it. Many thanks to Jackie for sending it to me.

Click to view

Best use of Auto-Tune ever. Transcript of the lyrics ( Read more... )

Lemme start by saying that I strongly dislike Mark Sanford. I think he’s a demagogue, an opportunist who is happy to sacrifice the welfare of the people of his state (particularly schoolchildren) to his own ambition. I find him extraordinarily cynical and willing to use specious reasoning and historical revisionism to get his way. In short, he ( Read more... )

I have never been able to sit comfortably on either side of the debate over hate crimes legislation. This is one of those issues, and there are many, where both sides seem to have credible arguments, and both are so convincing that I cannot make up my mind ( Read more... )