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An old flame contacted me today out of the blue. She called mostly to complain about her life choices and imply that those life choices were mostly my fault. I allowed her to rant for a bit before I tuned her out, which was a comfortable move for me as I did it through much of our relationship. While I was tuning her out, I reflected on the number of douche bags I deal with on a daily basis. What I discovered was disturbing and liberating. On any given day, I must deal with ten to twelve douches from the time I wake up until I fall into bed hoping not to wake up the next day.

I finally got a chance to see the second video of the Saturday plenary of the Atheist Alliance convention and I was intrigued by something that Matthew Chapman said. He said that atheism will never get traction and become as common or more common than religious belief as long as most people in America need the social supports that are presently only available through churches. He wasn't suggesting that there was some kind of quid pro quo, ie believe and we'll give you food stamps. He was saying that in the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear created by the present deficiencies in the US social safety net, people are more likely to feel the need to turn to churches for solace and to develop community networks that will help them should they need it. Is it perhaps not a coincidence that small-government conservatives and Christian hardliners have found common cause in the Republican party?

My policy of repeating myself once, then writing off the debate as futile, is working out well so far; at least as a time-saving measure. If someone doesn't get it the second time around, they're not going to the ninth.

[mod edit: "I like it" in stumbleupon, posted to del.ic.ious, posted to reddit]

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Blog or Digg our post on Digg which mentions our new video site, the first of its kind.

We (the RRS) have been working with Margaret Downey on the "atheist unity" thing, which includes helping other atheist organizations get exposure. We will be adding many new sites to our network and soon you'll be able to hop from site to site, leave comments, R.S.V.P. for events and participate in projects that embrace the goals and aims of The Rational Response Squad.

And, last week, http://www.MargaretDowney.com was brought online.

Today we learned that Margaret's site has had around 3,000,000 hits. According to Alexa traffic ranking, this is extremely high... almost a million more than Greg Epstein (and dozens of other popular atheist sites) Greg Epstein!.

The IE warning will soon be on all of our sites, although it will be reduced in size... get Firefox with Google Toolbar now!!

Bah, i'm sitting here listening to a person next to me talk about how wikipedia is a reliable source and souldn't be "banned" from science papers in k-12. Whats his argument for this? because wikipedia is often quite correct on some things. If i were less shy i would confront the ignorant person i am talking about. I swear the um ignorance maybe? of some people overwhelms me quite often.

ok i just had to get that off my chest

walang bathala
no god

Some syllables are implied by context, but the text literally reads:

wala bahala
nothing whatever

The native written language of the Filipinos, the Baybayin, is a syllabary that the majority of men, women and children were proficient in. It was used to write receipts, records, and is still used in the writing of poetry by some small tribes to this day. The Spanish Conquistadors were impressed by the literacy rate, and made short work of latinizing the script, and printing prayer sheets for the natives. Magellan, who'd tried to divide and conquer by exploiting existing tribal conflicts, met his end on the archipelago. Legend has it, he was mortally wounded by the spear of Datu Lapu Lapu; and that he retreated to his ship where he bled to death. After three hundred years of Spanish occupation, the Filipinos were able to organize a revolution. While largely successful, the Spanish managed to cede their interest in the islands to the waiting Americans, who at that point had imperial pretensions. The Philippines are predominately Catholic to this day, and many Filipino Americans struggle to find pride in their cultural identity.

A Radar Magazine advertising confirmed with me today that if we can get 15 people to upload videos to youtube as we've asked, they'll supply the extra copies of the mag. The whole process could take a little while. We'll wait until we've awarded all 15 to send them out all at once.

The first two people to submit videos are Gizmo and Formerfollier, two of the hardest working activists out there, thanks guys!

Former Follier:

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism