God's America: weep for it. WEEP I SAY.

I’m pretty inured by now to blatant religious proselytization, bad acting, campy premises, and contrived patriotism, what with Mock the Movie and all, but this video almost made me gag, it was simply so syrupy.

Yes. Because a DOUBLE X porno watched with friends, or being intoxicated in public, is the END OF AMERICA. There is no hyperbole there. Just by doing things that are enjoyable to you and do no damage to others, you will destroy the very fabric of your country, setting flags ablaze nationwide. Just a second, I’m going to go pour myself a drink so I can end America. I guess that makes me a foreign terrorist, being that I’m a Canadian citizen and having a beer, amirite?

Hat tip to Christian Nightmares.

Unrelated note: Blogging about news events et cetera will be on pause for a bit, as tomorrow I’ll be flying out to DC. Remember that one big conference that’s happening there this weekend? You know, Women In Secularism 2? Well, you should, because you helped send me there. And in return, I’ll be live-blogging the living crap outta it, along with Miri Mogilevski of Brute Reason, and Kate Donovan, co-blogger at… um… everywhere. Seriously. Including over at Ashley Miller’s.

Look for the posts starting tomorrow.

God's America: weep for it. WEEP I SAY.
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How do you value things that are freely obtained?

Amanda Palmer talks about how she’s monetized her art in a non-traditional manner, and how much success she has had and how much money she has made despite giving her music away for free.

Her husband had some words about piracy that dovetail beautifully with Amanda’s philosophy. They got me to thinking — how much do we really value the things that we get without paying for them?
Continue reading “How do you value things that are freely obtained?”

How do you value things that are freely obtained?

Help send me to Women In Secularism? *GOAL REACHED!*

Update: Made it! Any further donations will go to helping someone else get there, likely through the Surly Grants program. Cheers!

I hate fundraising for things other than charities. I hate that I do not make enough money that I could pay my own way to these events. But I’m going to swallow my pride and hold out my hat, because I really want to be at WIS this year, given their fantastic lineup.

Continue reading “Help send me to Women In Secularism? *GOAL REACHED!*”

Help send me to Women In Secularism? *GOAL REACHED!*

Gamers For Godlessness 24 Hour Gameathonapalooza!

Starring JT Eberhard and Jason Thibeault, with special guests throughout the show. Join us in raising money for Camp Quest and Women In Secularism. Pledge money, dare us to do video-gamey stunts, and watch us beat the snot out of each other in various classic games! The gaming starts at 12 Noon EST. GET OVER HERE.

We made it 21 hrs and 35 mins before we had to pack it in, and generous viewers donated a total of $1335 which means, after the $300 we’ve allotted to defray our one-time startup costs to get this show on the road, and after Paypal has taken their cut, we’re left with $980.41 to split between Camp Quest and Women In Secularism. But that’s an ugly number, so the widget will remain up for the time being in case any kind souls would like to bump us up to something more reasonable. And if you need incentive, the entire archive of the night is available at my twitch.tv page. That’s plenty of entertainment to merit your further donations.

Thank you all for participating! I’m going to go crash hard now.

Gamers For Godlessness title card
Title card by Glendon Mellow, The Flying Trilobite

Watch live video from lousycanuck on www.twitch.tv

Gamers For Godlessness 24 Hour Gameathonapalooza!

Gamers For Godlessness gameathonapalooza: Challenge us. I dare you.

I’ve got a few blog posts stewing in my brainpan at the moment, but between work and prep for the 24 hour gameathon on Saturday, I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and actually write any of it.

But the gameathon — The First Annual Gamers For Godlessness 24 Hour Gameathonapalooza Starring JT (Eberhard) and J(ason) T(hibeault) With Special Guests — is shaping up to be epic. The live stream will be posted as an embedded twitch.tv stream and chat room right here at this very blog.

With Russell Glasser’s help, and with assists by Aliasalpha, John Lenard and Craig Robertson (cheers, gents!), we managed to get three player MAME working with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles In Time. It took a lot of fiddling, but we’ve managed to work out the kinks and we should be ready to go for Saturday. Meaning me, JT Eberhard, Russell Glasser and Debbie Goddard are definitely going to play four-player Ninja Turtles.

Ninja Turtles screenshot

Russell’s already excited. I know for sure he’ll be there. Though, I have a few people who expressed interest who hasn’t actually gotten back to me with a definitive time yet. I hate leaving scheduling to the last second, so I’m about to go bother them by email now.

JT has suggested that we do gaming stunts and dares for pledges — making the amount you, the viewers, pledge dependent on such things as how many levels we can beat in Contra with only three lives, how fast we can get through Megaman 2 Flash Man’s stage (hell with that! I say Quick Man! Those laser beams are horrendous!), et cetera.

And I think we’re going to cap the gaming at about the N64. Any newer than that, and we’re not really doing the name “classic” justice.

So, what do you want to see us do in exchange for your pledges? And remember, after the first $300 to cover our overhead, half of our pledges will go to Women In Secularism, and half to Camp Quest.
Continue reading “Gamers For Godlessness gameathonapalooza: Challenge us. I dare you.”

Gamers For Godlessness gameathonapalooza: Challenge us. I dare you.

Gamers For Godlessness gameathon – Date (and name) set!

Ladies and gentlemen, JT Eberhard and I are finally set to do our long-planned 24-hour gameathon for charity!

We’ll be playing random NES, SNES and Genesis games over netplay, and broadcasting via Twitch.tv so you can watch JT kick my ever-loving ass at Street Fighter over and over again. And we’ve got a ton of guests lined up to chat about gaming, atheism, skepticism, or whatever the hell else seems like a good idea at the time, and if Random Number Generator willing, joining in on the gaming proper.

The whole point of the exercise — well, aside from hanging out and playing awesome video games — is raising funds to give half to Camp Quest and half to the Women In Secularism conference.

The gameathon will take place on December 1st, starting at 12 noon EST. This is the same weekend as Eschaton so we’ll be competing a little bit for Twitter traffic, but we’ll be sure to plan a bit better next year. And there will be a next year, oh yes.

Oh, the name, you ask? Well, Gamers For Godlessness is of course just the short version. The full name is:

The Gamers For Godlessness 24 Hour Gameathonapalooza Starring JT (Eberhard) and J(ason)T(hibeault), With Special Guests!

Tell me that’s not fried gold.

I don’t want to tip our hand too much with regard to what games we’re playing, or what guests we have lined up, but I can tell you that filling up 24 hours with content will not be any kind of problem whatsoever. In fact, I’m sort of having problems fitting everyone in who wants to join.

And the best part is, the entire broadcast will be available after the fact, if you missed it live.

More details soon. Mark your damn calendars! Saturday, December 1st, 12 noon to 12 noon EST!

Gamers For Godlessness gameathon – Date (and name) set!

Not to get your hopes up…

… but JT Eberhart and I were chatting recently about the possibility of staging a 24hr classic video gaming marathon via UStream or similar, to raise funds for some good causes. The two of us, playing video games and shooting the shit about religion and skepticism and the various topics intersecting with for TWENTY FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT (minus food and bathroom breaks), all while soliciting your donations. We’d be splitting the proceeds between Camp Quest and sending students to Women In Secularism 2.

I don’t have a date, though we’re going to try for Hallowe’en-ish (or probably a weekend thereabouts).

I don’t have a list of games, though we do have a few good ideas, including TMNT: The Arcade Game, River City Ransom, Bubble Bobble, and Kirby Superstar – The Great Cave Offensive.

I have exactly one confirmed-lock guest for an hour of chat time, and three people I’d like to ask.

What do you folks think?

Not to get your hopes up…

The further hyper-skepticism stalling our conversation

Last year, when the bugs crawling out from under the rock that had been overturned several months prior by Rebecca Watson continued unabated, and pretty much everyone was shocked that that many creepie-crawlies resided in our vaunted skeptical community, I wrote a series of posts on the whole ordeal called The Problem with Privilege. One of those posts dealt with the rampant and repeated demands for evidence regarding the incident that Rebecca had called creepy — as though recounting a story and saying “guys, don’t do that, it’s creepy” was some kind of misandrist clarion call, which must be rebuffed lest it result in fewer pick-up artists getting their dicks wet.

So these trolls, being part of the skeptical community (apparently), used our strengths against us by attacking the claim on its merits, since the claim “I was tipsy in an elevator at 4am and a guy followed me in and asked me to his room” doesn’t meet the high standards of evidence we use in the skeptical community when it comes to extraordinary claims. Never mind that it was a perfectly ordinary claim about someone’s experience with a slightly-offputting person that did not result in any physical harm. Specifically, I characterized this compulsion as hyper-skepticism, along the same lines as 9/11 truthers, birthers, and other conspiracy theorists.

We’re now seeing the exact same tactic being used again in the wake of a conflagration that Jen McCreight accidentally set off when she casually mentioned at the Women In Secularism CFI conference that female speakers occasionally warn one another of potentially creepy male speakers.
Continue reading “The further hyper-skepticism stalling our conversation”

The further hyper-skepticism stalling our conversation