My son just had his current grades sent home, and he's doing amazing as always.  He's got straight A's with the exception of one B.  The B is in science.  When I heard the grades, I smiled, told him how proud I was, and how he was doing great.  But then I told him how it's a bit ironic that science was my favorite subject, it's my best subject, and if he were to excel in one specific course I'd love it if it were science. 

As I was sitting there contemplating how I could convey to him how science is used in essentially everything we do, and in almost every action we make, he says "I don't think I'm gonna use science when I grow up."  Aside from my heart sinking, I realized his lack of fundamental understanding as to how science is applied and it's common use.   So I spent the last 30 minutes giving him fun examples of how he constantly uses science.  For example he presses the power button on a computer to turn it on, rather than tap the sides of the computer with a stick.  When he plays his Lord of the Rings game he uses weapons on certain enemies he deems appropriate based on past experiences.  He doesn't use weapons that he has knowledge will fail and expect a positive result.  We went through a ton of fun examples on practical usage of science, and he gets it, but I'd like to build some interest as opposed to just "getting it." 

As you may already be aware, recently the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention websites were the target of a significant DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which began on Monday 19 October.

This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS ('Divine' Denial of Service).

The prayer minute will be at exactly 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) and 9am (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday 8 November 2009.

The prayer can be about anything you want (but say it as frequently as possible in the minute we have assigned to ensure DDOS is achieved) or to whomever god you want. Its mostly directed at the Christian god so as to ensure we don't get too many return to senders from other gods.

Join the facebook group here.

I must've heard the words "an atheist can do no good" hundreds of times in the last few years.  It must be so hard to imagine how atheists can do good without the upstanding moral code imparted to us in the Bible or the Quran.  Sure I wouldn't sell my daughter into slavery, or kill a man simply for being gay, but I can do other good things instead. 

I'm proud to donate clothes to Goodwill and give money to charity.  But I take a bigger sense of pride in atheist volunteers which was created to unite and showcase acts of goodness by the men in black who apparently can do no good.  Well the door to that argument is being shut more and more everyday as atheists aren't as scared as they once were to show their face (we have religion to thank for our original fear).  We used to do acts of kindness simply because we liked doing acts of kindness.  But after being accused so often of being no-do-gooders some of us decided to show off what we've been doing all our lives while letting others know we don't believe in a god.  We believe good deeds are the work of men.  If good deeds are the works of god, well certainly bad deeds are as well.

The site is zippier now than it was earlier today and for the last few months.  Oh and I'm still back.

Hey folks, if you have facebook you might want to check my profile over the last few days.  I've spoken about Kelly and I breaking up for good about 3 weeks ago, and have recently started a dialogue addressing any rumors that people might have been convinced of over the last few years.  Generally when a claim was ridiculous I would ignore it as I deemed it as too stupid to respond to, however Rook persuaded me via phone tonight to answer my friends on any rumors that they were curious about.  I started the conversation on facebook because I wanted to see what actual fan/friends want to know about as opposed to the enemy types who just want to ruffle feathers.  A few questions were in fact asked, and I was rather thorough.  If the conversation continues well there, I'll likely post the relevant rumor answers on this site soon.

Here's the thread: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?&new_box_added_id=2448182852#/note.php?note_id=170805010311&ref=mf

If you want to find me on facebook, look up "Brian Sapient" and send me a friend request.  If you are new to facebook or you have to wait for me to accept your friend request you can make a post below with your facebook name, if I recognize you from this site, I'll approve you.

I don't have the joke yet.

An atheist, evangelist, born-again, and youth pastor enter a bar...  [YOU FINISH IT]

This weekend I'll be spending some time with an evangelist, born-again, and a youth pastor.  We'll likely not be discussing religion, although it could come up.  The situation seems like a joke I've heard before, or at least wish I had.  Is there a joke out there that could be edited slightly to fit the bios of the men?  Can you come up with a joke for it?  If your joke doesn't work in a bar, feel free to change the location.  

Hit me with your funny.