You should! Ophelia Benson is already in it, and I just got the latest issue, which boldly announces in a banner across the top, “NEW COLUMNIST: PZ MYERS”, so I’m entirely self-serving when I say you should send them money.
It really is going to be a regular thing — I just sent off column #2 this past weekend. I think I get to eventually post the columns here, but only after a long lag to avoid undercutting the magazine. Which is silly, though: if you’ve ever seen Free Inquiry, you know it regularly features a large collection of interesting writers — Wendy Kaminer, Susan Jacoby, Christopher Hitchens, a whole bevy of that ilk — and you ought to be getting it to savor the whole magazine.
Because of budgetary constraints, I have to chose between renewing my Free Inquiry OR my Skeptical Inquirer. Is it safe to assume your vote is for the former, then? ;)
SI hasn’t asked me to write a column for them. Which is clearly the higher quality magazine?
I’ve been subscribed to both FI and SI for 5 plus years waiting to see which magazine finally found the the light and begged you, PZ, to become a columnist. But, did they pair your page with Katrina Voss in order to give you a chance at readership?
I’m so gullible. Now I have a one year subscription.
You missed out Or the kitty gets it.
Sigh.
Too poor.
I’ll sneak peeks at the bookstore.
I subscribe to both FI and SI — as well as Skeptic, The Humanist, Secular World, Church and State, and Freethought Today — plus a bunch of atheist/skeptic/humanist/science newsletters of one kind or the other. I “only” save the first three, however — and have been saving them for years and years.
Uh oh. I am starting to rethink the wisdom of that — especially since so many articles are now available online, should I want to re-read them. Which I used to do regularly, but now only rarely. I discovered websites and blogs. Information overload.
But yes, Free Inquiry is definitely one of the best ones. Next time I see Flynn I will gush appropriately over the addition of Benson and Myers.
Aquaria – I can send them along to you, if you like. I tend to keep them, for reasons that have absolutely no reason in them. Don’t need them and am willing to share!
SI is a good magazine, but they’ve always had a “no knocks against religion” (well, major religions – Scientology seems fair game) policy. I’m not surprised they haven’t invited PZ.
Happily I am already a subscriber to both. Congratulations PZ.
I’ve been a subscriber for years — which is why I haven’t bothered with a “why am I an atheist” essay because, I mean, well duhhh.
SI is a good magazine, but they’ve always had a “no knocks against religion” (well, major religions – Scientology seems fair game) policy.
Yeah, that’s why I let my subscription lapse. They’re not True Skeptics(tm)…
I subscribed for several years, but left when one article was unscientific bullshit, others couldn’t be distinguished from Sokal, and my complaint letters were ignored. I hope it’s back on track.
OT, how do some people manage to get interesting personal images? I don’t see a way with Yahoo.
OT, how do some people manage to get interesting personal images? I don’t see a way with Yahoo.
WordPress – if you have a wordpress account you can set your thumbnail and it’ll accept it over here.
culchpile, do it through gravatar.com and then it will work in lots of places all over the web whenever you use the associated email address.
In one of the first issues of Free Inquiry I read when I got my subscription back circa 1981, a Rabbi who was a FI columnist made the argument (in a letter) that the Old Testament miracle stories had been seen by the Israelites who wouldn’t have accepted them as Scripture if they weren’t true. And if you don’t believe that these miracles happened, you believe that Jews are liars. You either believe in the miracles or you are an anti-Semite. There was no written response to that.
During the Bosnian War in the 1990s more than one Free Inquiry columnist attacked Americans and NATO as being anti-Serbian, said that the evidence for atrocities had been faked, and argued that the Bosnians deserved whatever they got. I think they published a letter or two in opposition.
It was around then that I finally got tired of FI’s pro-atheism articles as they were mostly rather juvenile, and gave up my subscription. Perhaps it’s better today.
I still subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer, though.
Free Inquiry ain’t free?
(Misnomer!)
Sastra #7
culchpile #13
What was the article and what was the objection?
Right, like that R. Joseph Hoffmann, who you quote in a mopre recent post. Interesting indeed.
He also like polls!
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=hoffmann_27_1
Thanks, Marcus Ranum and Alathea H. Claw. I’ve been annoyed for a while by the non-overlapping sets of acceptable verification companies at the news and blog sites I frequent. I’d prefer to have a consistent nom de guerre and image.
I am quite certain that Hoffmann no longer writes for Free Inquiry. I can’t imagine that CSH has anything to do with him anymore. I will confirm this tomorrow.
#22: Melody, He may not have written for the magazine recently, but R. Joseph Hoffmann is still listed as the chair of the Center for Inquiry’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) and is the editor of the newly launched CSER Review.
So he’s still seems firmly associated with the magazine’s organization.
I’m not even sure CSER still exists. CSH hasn’t updated that list in years. He is not associated with CFI, CSH, or any of our other organizations. I have confirmed that he does not and will not write for Free Inquiry. The relationship has been completely severed.
Hoffmann has been trashing us for some time on his blog. He even got offended by our slogan “Axial tilt is the reason for the season” and wrote a lovely blog about it. He’s really reaching far. This man wants to be relevant and he is no longer so. We shouldn’t give him the attention he doesn’t deserve.
I have confirmed CSER no longer exists and requested that anything on the site pertaining to CSER be removed. Our site is so big that I can’t find it myself, but assume someone else will.
UPDATE: CSER is extinct on centerforinquiry.net. There is still a CSER item on the pulldown Web Network menu, but it leads to a 404 page. Not even a Google search turns up a live CFI CSER page. As far as we can tell, you are looking at a page of Hoffmann’s making or a cached or archived CFI page somehow.