Urgent: Friend’s car stolen in Seattle

I know I have a lot of readers in Seattle, so I want to ask you guys for help. A dear friend of mine had their car stolen in the last 24 hours. For reasons I won’t get into for privacy’s sake, they believe it was moved somewhere and possibly made to look abandoned. If you could keep your eye open for the car, it would be much appreciated.

  • 1998 White Subaru Impreza, wagon
  • Bumper stickers include Human Rights Campaig blue and yellow equal sign symbol, Burning man 2005 sticker, Mote Marine Aquarium sticker
  • Last seen in Fremont, possibly still in Fremont or nearby in Wallingford/Ballard/Greenlake, could be farther away

1998-subaru-impreza-d568d

Photo is of the general make and model of the car, not the exact car.

Police have already been contacted, but basically they can’t really do anything until it turns up in a towing lot or someone spots in on the street. So if you see a car matching this description, please email me at blaghagblog (at) gmail (dot) com so my friend can go check and see if it’s the one.

I get email

I haven’t really been blogging for months, but weird emails still find their way to my inbox.

Dear Private, Registration:

I work for [Annoying Business] and we have discovered that a company we hired to help promote our website have used a variety of techniques to secure links to our site. These links were placed purely for SEO purposes, with the intention of manipulating search rankings.

It appears that there may be links like this that have been placed on your site.

The presence of these links is harmful to our site’s good standing with search engines, and unfortunately, retaining them may also be potentially harmful to your own website’s reputation.

We would ask that you please remove any links on your site that link to [Annoying Business].

 

You clutter my site with annoying spam and now you want me to waste time cleaning it up so you look better?

hey jen

me too liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted feminist atheist .
and desperate to find a girl friend like that.
if u r single and wanna mingle , ping me back.. or refer me any other girl.
i havent read any of your posts nor i have time to read ur stuff.. unless ofcourse u wanna be my frnd..
What.

The practical reason why atheists should care about diversity

I’ve long argued why increasing diversity if the right thing to do for ethical reasons – hey, we shouldn’t be unintentionally excluding people based on their race or ethnicity, right? But as those arguments don’t seem to work for some atheists, let’s turn to the numbers:

Within three decades, there will no longer be a majority racial or ethnic group in the Unites States according to new Census Bureau projections released this week. Among the other findings: the country is growing slower than expected.
Michael Cooper reports on the first set of projections issued by the Census Bureau based on the 2010 Census results. “The next half century marks key points in continuing trends — the U.S. will become a plurality nation, where the non-Hispanic white population remains the largest single group, but no group is in the majority,” the bureau’s acting director, Thomas L. Mesenbourg, said in a statement.

When I’m 55, I’ll be looking at a country that looks less and less like pasty ol’ me. And that’s fine! But this should give atheist activists pause. Our groups and organizations are already disproportionately white – I can usually count the number of black people attending a major conference on one hand. Our base of white folks is slowly dwindling, while the predominantly Catholic Hispanics and Christian African Americans are growing. Now we’re a minority within a majority, but we’re going to be shrinking even more.

Please, no racist fear-mongering that whites and/or atheists need to go pop out more babies. There’s a more reasonable and more ethical (whoops, ethics again!) solution. If we can make atheism relevant to racial minorities now, that will result in fewer children being raised in religious households down the line. It’s easier to get people on board now and watch the ripple effect, than wait thirty years and say “Hey, we’ve been ignoring you all this time, but you totally want to join now, right?!” And this doesn’t mean just standing around going “Well, we’re not actively discouraging minorities!” while discussing the History of European Freethinkers for the 39873th time. We need to address relevant issues like skepticism applied to drug laws and incarceration rates, or replicating religious community without the religion, or…well, maybe we should just listen to what they have to say without taking it personally.

Seattle just became a little more awesome

I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t wake up to a cloud of pot smoke and glitter snuggling the city, but I’m still pretty happy about the laws. Both gay marriage and marijuana become legal in Washington state today. No longer will people be barred from marrying the people they love because of the outdated religious views of others, and no longer will people (disproportionately minorities) be fined and jailed because they want to take a drug less harmful than alcohol while eating cheetos and watching Lord of the Rings (suggests a police spokesperson, haha).

Progress has been made for both liberalism and rationality today. Though I can’t yet claim that I live in the most liberal state until our ultra-regressive tax laws are fixed. Wait…does that mean I’m living in the most libertarian state? Aaaaaahhhhh!!!!

Oh well. Still beats living in Indiana.