Some non-believers exchange gifts during the holidays; some don’t. If you’re one of the former, consider shopping at Amazon.com through us. You’ll get the same great prices and you’ll help toss a little change to AmericanFreethought.com. Just click on the banner and you’re on your way…
If you live in the United Kingdom, you can use our Amazon.co.uk link here:
The American Freethought Podcast celebrates its first anniversary today. Whee! Yay! Yippee!!! Thirty-four episodes, a dozen interviews, one ill-considered rollerderby incident and innumerable libertarian rants later - and the public still hasn’t risen up with pitchforks and torches to give us our just desserts. We’ve performed live at a sci-fi convention, waged a War on Christmas, sacrificed Yellow Peeps at the Altar of PMS, and generally pissed off the Baptists. So it hasn’t been all bad.
Many thanks to our growing listenership and our cadre of regular commenters. Thanks to the wives for their love and longsuffering support. (Awww…) And thanks, David, for keeping me on my game!
In this crazy win-some-lose-some political season, no other issue has had a more mixed result than gay rights. Now a Florida judge has ruled the statewide ban on adoption by gay couples is unconstitutional. Wrap your head around this one: it’s now unconstitutional to gay-marry in Florida but constitutional to gay-adopt.
Interview with Mel Lipman (approx. 42 minutes into the show), president of the American Humanist Association (and, incidentally, the father of Lori Lipman Brown, lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for American, whom we talked to in podcast #23). We talk to Mel about the AHA’s holiday ad campaign, which puts the message “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake!” on buses in Washington, DC.
On November 21, 1953, evidence was released that the Piltdown Man skull was a hoax. Zoologists and palaeontologists concluded that the jaw bone was that of an ape and the skull of a human. German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich exposed the hoax in 1923 and it took thirty years for the scientific community to confirm with his findings.
Nationwide rag USA Today reviews Playing Gods, the role-playing game created by Skeptical Inquirer managing editor Ben Radford. The article is mostly accurate (although the reporter refers to Atlanta-based Dragon*Con, where Playing Gods debuted last fall, as “DragonCom”).
I stumbled across this interesting gallery of photos (one dating back to 1870!) from Telegraph.co.uk and don’t forget Part II). Am I a hopeless skeptic if I say I find none of these pictures convincing?
Should we do more traditional “skeptic” stuff here? I tend to concentrate on the socio-politico-religious stuff, and not just ’cause it’s important. But there’s lots of crazy stuff out there that cries out for the skeptic treatment. The recent “I Found Bigfoot” bullshit here in Georgia this last summer came and went before you could say “cryptozoology”. But Bigfoot has legs (pardon the pun) in other parts of the country. Case in point: Vanity Fair blog contributor Eric Spitznagel has an insightful and hilarious account of his time amongst the cryptoids. Enjoy!
When it comes to weeknight news commentary, MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann is my pick. Olbermann is well-dressed, well-spoken, well-informed, smart, funny and passionate about his work. Plus he’s up against Bill O’Reilly so he needs all the viewers he can get. Anyway, check out his impassioned response to California voters who passed Proposition 8 (banning gay marriage via amendment to the state constitution):
Gotta love those “thou shalt forgive seventy times seven” Christian types. Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks brawled at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That’s right, men of the cloth chose to bust knuckles at the very place they think Jesus was buried (nevermind it’s just a tourist trap with not a shred of proof that it had anything to do with Jesus). Anyway, here’s a link to the news article (the bit about the ladder is the funniest part).
