The following is a guest post by Amy Watkins, a poet, artist and host of the weekly poetry podcast Red Lion Square. She writes about atheism and parenting at OffBeatMama.com.
The following is a guest post by Amy Watkins, a poet, artist and host of the weekly poetry podcast Red Lion Square. She writes about atheism and parenting at OffBeatMama.com.
You all should know who the fabulous Greta Christina is by now. And now she’s become even more fabulous by writing a book!
I was originally going to wait for the print version since I don’t have an ebook reader, but I couldn’t stand the wait. So I downloaded the Kindle App for my iPhone, prepared to squint at my screen during my flights to and from the Reason Rally. Then I made the mistake of starting to read it early… and I plowed through the whole thing in a day. I couldn’t put it down.
But it’s not surprising. Greta has always had the special power to calmly and pointedly explain even the most rage inducing or complicated topics. I often find myself reading her posts on a topic I’ve talked about, thinking “I wish I would have said it that way!”
And this book is no different. As someone who has been reading Greta’s blog for 6 years and has been an atheist activist for 5, most of the stories and arguments weren’t new to me. But they were put so eloquently that I still gobbled them up, and stored them away in my brain for future debates. Especially the various hilarious quotes involving peanut butter, hair dyers, drowning in chocolate, and parrots.
So in short: buy it now. You won’t be disappointed.
With the Reason Rally predicted to get 30,000 to 50,000 visitors, you probably won’t run into me randomly. But here’s where you can find me on Friday and Saturday, in case you want to say hello!
On Friday, March 23 I will be going to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. If you want to join me and let me be your unofficial genetics/evolution geeky tour guide, meet me outside of the main entrance at 2:30pm. This is assuming I don’t have any major flight delays – make sure to check my twitter feed for updates.
I also do not have any plans for dinner on Friday night. If you would like to join me for dinner near L’Enfant Plaza around 8pm, leave an RSVP in the comments. I need to know how many people are interested in order to pick a dinner location. I will update this post and tweet the final location by Friday morning.
EDIT: I have a reservation at 8pm under “Jennifer” for a big group in the dining room of:
Jenny’s Asian Fusion
1000 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024
(202) 554-2202
Please bring cash because they won’t do individual bills. And I’m not buying, haha. They have a full bar and are open until 11pm.
On Saturday during the Rally, you can find me at the Secular Student Alliance table in the sponsor tent from 1pm to 3pm and then 4pm to 6pm. Note there are two different tents next to each other that will each have an SSA table – so if I’m not at one, I’m at the other.
Finally I’ll be at the FtB/Friendly Atheist afterparty here. Well, maybe. Only the first 150 get in and I have to help the SSA take down their tables, so I may not even get into my own event. But I will try my hardest, even if it just results in me sadly peering into the window as you all point and laugh.
Who’s excited?!?!?!
I spoke at the Center for Inquiry: Indiana last night in Indianapolis about The Indiana Theocracy. And they already have the talk online! So efficient. Check it out:
Remember, I’m giving the same talk tonight at Purdue Calumet in Hammond, and on Thursday at Purdue in West Lafayette. So don’t watch it if you’re going to either of those, haha
It’s 5:30am, I’m boarding a flight in 10 minutes, and I’m typing this on my phone, so I’ll be brief:
Bullshit.
Why?
I also can’t speak for the Rally as a whole, but I can speak from my personal experience. I’m on the board of the Reason Rally as the representative for the Secular Student Alliance. I’ve put hours and hours of volunteer work into making sure this event will be as fun and successful as possible. Did you read that? As possible.
And right now, it’s impossible to find the “perfect” atheist politician. Some of the celebrities are going to have said stupid or sexist bullshit. But the Reason Rally is about getting secular people who have never heard about the atheist movement to know it exists and to get involved. If we crossed off every name that ever said something wrong, we’d have no draw or media appeal.
So, am I jumping for joy that Penn Jillette, Bill Maher, and Lawrence Krauss are speaking? No. But you know what I’m going to do? Go use the bathroom during their talk.
You know what does make me jump for joy? The Parks Department estimates 30,000 to 50,000 people will attend the Reason Rally. Yes, you read that figure right. That’s tens of thousands of people who have never heard of an atheist movement or organization that will now know we exist. And that’s what this event is about. It’s not a science lecture, and it’s not an attempt to convert people to atheism. It’s making our numbers larger and motivating our existing members so our movement grows stronger. So that in the future we will have skeptical atheist politicians, and will have celebrities that don’t make us occasionally cringe.
I’m going to be running a couple of guest posts this week while I’m traveling for my speaking tour (you’re coming, right?). Since I’m away from Pixel, my usual source of cute kitten photos, you get a guest kitty. I’m staying with fellow SSA board member Brendan Murphy, and here he is with his adorable cat Europa:
This is my view as I edit slides for my presentation:
After Greta’s full out kitten cuteness assault and this, Crommunist is surely weeping somewhere.
I know you’re all a bunch of godless heathens who have their Sunday mornings wide open, so you should tune into Atheist Talk tomorrow! I’ll be on with fellow Freethought Bloggers Greg Laden, Stephanie Zvan, and Brianne Bilyeu:
Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to radio@mnatheists.org during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.
The topic is blogging – does it make a difference, or is it just a giant internet circle jerk? It will be especially interesting because I’m going drinking tonight, and the show starts at what will feel like 7am my time. I might be extra loopy and caffeinated.
The Pope, trying to show how in touch the Catholic Church is with everyday people, has had his own cologne created:
Italian celebrity perfume-maker Silvana Casoli, has created her most heavenly scent yet for a very special client, Pope Benedict XVI.
Known for creating a number of perfumes that can be used by both men and women with names like Chocolat Bambola (Chocolate doll) and Vanilla Bourbon, Casoli has designed unique fragrances for famous personalities like Madonna and Sting.
Speaking to Rome’s daily paper, Il Messaggero, Casoli said that the name of the pope’s specially-commissioned scent is top secret and she is not allowed to divulge all its ingredients. She did, however, reveal that she was inspired by the pope’s love of “nature” and used a blend of fragrances from lime-wood, verbena and grass.
What name would you suggest? And what’s your guess for the ingredients? Tears of little boys, or of AIDS ridden Africans? I can’t decide.
I’m kind of loving this research published in the latest issue of Science, titled “Sexual Deprivation Increases Ethanol Intake in Drosophila.” Science NOW has a good general summary of the paper:
Offer a male fruit fly a choice between food soaked in alcohol and its nonalcoholic equivalent, and his decision will depend on whether he’s mated recently or been rejected by a female. Flies that have been given the cold shoulder are more likely to go for the booze, researchers have found. It’s the first discovery, in fruit flies, of a social interaction that influences future behavior.
Read the rest here.
I have a new, horrible obsession – the History Channel’s show Ancient Aliens.
On Saturday I found myself drinking with a group of my boyfriend Sean’s friends, when one of them announced that we must play an Ancient Aliens drinking game. I had no idea what the show was, but became intrigued when they started discussing the rules of when to take a drink:
Me: Who’s Giorgio?
Them: Oh, you’ll know who Giorgio is soon enough.
This is Giorgio, by the way:
…That’s all I’m going to say.
They decided to reduce the list so we would wouldn’t get alcohol poisoning. But I found myself following my own rule of “drink whenever someone says something that blatantly defies logic or is a total non sequitur.” Which meant I was pretty much constantly drinking for an hour and a half. Especially when you’re jumping from pyramids, dragon drawings, Tesla coils, and the Bible all being proof of aliens (just to name a few).
For those of you who’ve never seen the show…I’m not quite sure how to summarize it. The footage looks professionally done since it’s on the History Channel, and some of the shots of the ancient artifacts are cool to see. But if I had to summarize the major theme, it would either be “Brown people never could have done <insert amazing feat here> because they were too lazy and/or stupid, therefore aliens had to help them.” I think my favorite mindblowing moment was when Giorgio explained that:
Oh, Giorgio. How I wish point #2 was true.
Something about the show hooked me in its terribleness. My emotional reaction was actually very similar to the time when I visited the Creation Museum. Yes, I was mad at how they were twisting science, using terrible logic, and spreading blatant lies. But the absurdity of it all was oddly amusing. By the end you find yourself playing along, like you’re watching a fantasy novel… and not something people actually believe.
Also, being heavily inebriated helps.
So Sean and I plowed forward to episode two, since the first two seasons are conveniently available on Netflix. Our “game” was to guess what sort of bizzaro conspiracy theory the show would provide to explain a phenomena they were hyping before the show made the reveal. Sean was a little too excited when he correctly guessed the “Humans and aliens had sex and interbred” plotline. To which I replied, “But they’re an alien. Humans can’t even breed with chimps. Humans would have to actually be aliens seeded here or something for interbreeding to be possible.”
And then that’s exactly what the show said, and I nearly peed my pants laughing.
But the real kicker came when the show brought up the human genome. Sean and I both study genomics and evolution, so we exchanged a wary look. I’ll let you see it for yourself. The clip begins at 7:34 in the first video, and continues until 3:03 in the next.
In case you can’t watch the video or had trouble following that pristine argument, let me summarize:
And now, for a quick debunking:
In poking around the internet about this show, I discovered that Giorgio had a twitter account, which included this gem:
Lizard people? Total nonsense. Aliens? Of course, duhhhhh.
Oh, History Channel. How the mighty have fallen. I remember when I was little and I’d watch you with my history-buff dad, and learn all sorts of cool things about Egypt and Rome and WWII. But now I watch you to point and laugh.