Why is Molly an Atheist?
Over at Geeks Without God, we’re putting up posts about why we are atheists. Molly wrote a great post and it just went up. Go read it!
In just over a week, we’ll be recording our first podcast! Woot!
Oh man! Did I sign up for all of that?
I’ve been reviewing my CONvergence schedule for 2012 and while I have not quite achieved Melissa Kaercher levels of insanity, I will be participating in 15 different panels and events.
Holy shit.
Here’s the breakdown for those of you who care:
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 6/22
Michigan House Passes a Bill that Says it is OK for Counselors to Discriminate Against Gay People
Here’s the facts: A graduate student in counseling was dismissed from her graduate program when she refused to help a suicidal gay student because (you guessed it) she’s a Christian. She sued (of course) and lost (of course).
Well the Michigan House can’t help her but they can definitely help the next homophobic therapist tell a suicidal patient to find someone else by passing an “antidiscrimination” law that will allow people to discriminate!
Why didn’t they say “hey, if your religious beliefs prevent you from counseling certain people, maybe you shouldn’t become a therapist?”
Suck it up and tell the gay kid he has something to live for. Because he does. According to you, all he has to look forward to when he dies is hell so do the compassionate thing and help him enjoy the 100 years he’s going to be living outside of the lake of fire.
It’s what Jesus would do.
Geeks without God Logo
So we asked our good friend Melissa Kaercher to help us with a logo for the “Geeks Without God” podcast and because she is awesome, she came up with this:
Melissa is also going to be one of our special guests on our inaugural podcast, being recorded at CONvergence, Saturday the 7th of July at 9:30 in the morning. Atrium 3. We’ll be talking about the religious themes in Prometheus.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 6/15
Megachurch Pastor Beats up his Daughter and his Flock Praises him for it
Let me begin by saying that I don’t know if his daugter’s allegations are true. But let’s just assume for a moment that he did, in fact, “put his hands around her throat and…then slammed her to the ground, punched her and beat her with his shoe. ”
How many parents think that is appropriate behavior towards one’s child? Teenagers can be a pain in the ass, I get it.
But choking, throwing to the ground and beating with a shoe?
Here’s what one of his supporters who seems to accept his daughters’ allegations had to say:
101 likes for kids getting their ass beat!!!!! God bless America!
Holy shit people! He was beating the shit out of her before she called the cops! That isn’t discipline. That is abuse.
Prometheist
Herein lie the spoiler filled thoughts on Prometheus from one atheist’s viewpoint.
So..you know…don’t click through if you would rather not read about plot points from the movie. You have been warned.
Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 6/8
Doctor Allegedly Refused Treatment to an HIV Positive Patient
The accusation is that a doctor refused to get an HIV patient his medications because the patient was gay and (I’m paraphrasing) “he deserved it.”
In a culture where preachers are teaching their children to sing songs about how homos are going to hell, this shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise. People are being told that it is OK to treat homosexuals differently on one topic (marriage) and, therefore, they reach the conclusion that they can treat those people differently in all situations.
The people who think that way are horrible people. They would probably still be horrible people if they hadn’t been trained to behave this way toward homosexuals. I think that perhaps we need to re-direct that acrimony towards something more productive. Like hating Wal-Mart. Or Ke$ha.
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 6/1
Missed last week because I was on vacation so here’s a couple weeks’ worth of annoyances.
Disney Changes it’s FastPass System – Sort of
I’m not going to try to explain the whole thing but the basic issue is that Disney has a system wherein you can get a pass that will allow you to go to the front of the line for various popular rides. The catch is that you can’t go on the ride until a particular time. So if you want to go on Space Mountain, you get a fast pass for – say – 10:00 and come back later rather than waiting in a 40 minute line.
Now the fast passes have always given you an hour window. If your pass starts at 10:00, it ends at 11:00. Except it never did. They have been honored all day for as long as the system has been around (over ten years now).
Until now. Now if you have a fast pass that says 10:00 to 11:00, you’d better get there between 10:00 and 11:00. No exceptions.
So great – if I’ve got a lunch reservation at one and the fast pass time available is 1:00 to 2:00, I’m out of luck. This wouldn’t bug me so much if the rules had always been that way. No matter what it says on the pass, though, they have never enforced it. Until now.
It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing.
Why did they do it? I don’t know for sure but I would guess they did it to cut down on the wait in the standby line. I would imagine most people using a fast pass wait well past the posted time on their pass and that serves to back up the standby line more and more as the day progresses. Most people with a 9:45 fast pass don’t show up until much later. I know I didn’t . Also, by having the fast pass expire, not everyone who gets one will end up using it. Overall, it means fewer people going through the fast pass line every hour which means the standby line is probably at least fifteen minutes faster.
That’s great for them. But what about me?
New Thing! Geeks Without God
I’m pretty excited to share some information about a new podcast I’ll be hosting with Molly and Nick Glover called “Geeks Without God.” We’ll be recording our first episode LIVE at CONvergence on Saturday at 9:30 AM.
Yes. 9:30 AM on Saturday. I know. I’m not looking forward to it either.
How Disney Managed to offend me by depicting someone like me on stage – badly
This last week, I’ve been on vacation. We were on the newest ship in the Disney cruise line, the Fantasy. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the ship aside from noting that it is a beautiful ship filled to overflowing with Mickey Mouse. I mean, if Mickey Mouse was a unit of measurement, the ship would bury the needle. At one point, I was convinced that the propellers were designed to kick up a wake that would look like Mickey Mouse. Read More…
Grail Diary 