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”).
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).
Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama! The possible ramifications of an Obama presidency will be shaking out for weeks and months to come, but freethinkers are particularly interested in the effect it will have on separation of church and state, the integrity of government-funded science, gay rights, women’s rights, etc. We’ll also take a look at various election results from across the country.
Well, now. It looks like when now-President-Elect Barack Obama said, referring to certain voters, ”…it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…” that it wasn’t a gaffe, but rather prophecy. His pending presidency is causing a run on the gunshops in certain areas. So far there hasn’t been a run on churches, so I guess we can tell where these folks will turn if push comes to shove.
That was fairly painless. Awoke at 6:00AM, walked out of the house at 6:30 to the polling place a mile away. Got in line at 6:45 with about 200 people in front of me. At 7:00 sharp the line began inching forward and by 8:00 I was ushered to a voting station. By 8:10 I was on my way home. (To my chagrin, I noticed a LOT of state and local incumbents running unopposed, so I wrote myself in to “challenge” the incumbent Republican for our Georgia House of Representatives seat. I’m sure they’ll get a laugh out of that one.)
Well, now. Finally Finally FINALLY Campaign 2008 is at an end. It’s all over but the voting. We hope. It doesn’t appear, at this point, that there’ll be any significant shenanigans or electoral squeakers. And the end result seems like a foregone conclusion: all that remains is to see how much Senator Obama wins by. Anyway, I’ll be off to vote first thing in the morning (hoping to be in line when the polls open at 7:00AM). If anything interesting happens I’ll post something here.
And if you haven’t voted (yet), don’t slack off. Get out there and be counted!
Check out this clip from yesterday’s CNN. Some quick background: North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole (R) has been making a lot of hay out of the fact that Democratic challenger Kay Hagan attended a fundraiser organized by the Godless Americans PAC. (more…)
May I recommend the Atlanta Science Tavern? If you live in metro Atlanta, that is (if you don’t, do a little googling and you might find a science tavern active in your city). The AST is coordinated by the soft-spoken (and very tall) Josh Gough, and offers a great opportunity to hear accomplished researchers speak on subjects like astronomy, geology, biology, etc. in a friendly pub environment. How can you resist the Three “-ations”?: Education, Conversation, and Libation (there’s also Gustation, Mastication and Digestitation, but hey). The get-togethers usually attract around 25 attendees.
Comedian/pundit Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary Religulous topped $6.7M at the end of its second weekend of release, expanding from 502 screens to 568. (For those keeping score, Ben Stein’s creationist apologetic Expelled earned $7.7M in eight weeks on over 1,000 screens.)
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In this episode we throw in a potpourri of items in the news or random events we think our subscribers will find interesting, plus we discuss some interesting listener feedback.