Is anyone else getting these?

A long white envelope with no return address, postmarked San Francisco. Inside, a folded piece of paper that looks like this:

That’s all.

I’ve received four of these so far, some at work and some at home. My wife has been sent one.

I wish to complain.

This is the most rinky-tink, cheap, pointless evangelical campaign yet. Come on, whoever you are, put some goddamned effort into it. Throw a Chick tract in the envelope. Pound a keyboard for a while and produce a little screed with your religious views that you photocopy and stuff into the envelopes. Personalize it a little; scribble your initials in the corner. Toss in a cheesy poem you copied off a greeting card in the evangelical bookstore. Do something — man, you couldn’t even bother to send a whole sheet of 8½ x 11 paper, you could only send me a quarter slice.

And no, I don’t believe for a minute that this was a personal message from Jesus Christ. If it was, though, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn he’s living in San Francisco. Probably in the Castro. And loving the fact that he’s escaped those assholes promoting his religion by hiding in the last place they’d look for him.

Why I am an atheist – anonymous

Because religions are just stories.

And bad stories at that. I was brought up as a Buddhist, and the canon was full of old, tired tropes. Reincarnation, supernatural powers, heaven and hell, the whole gamut. The story of other religions are no different. The heroes just have different powers and the miracles come in many varieties. To be honest, I fell for the Buddhist stories until I entered university, and this fact still embarrasses me to this day.

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Anderson Cooper: Gay.

I’m sure the gay element here (I’ve heard rumors that there are a few of you) are happy with the news that Anderson Cooper has come out of the closet.

I’m here to detumesce you (not that your appreciation of the man was anything but intellectual). He’s also tossing god-bottery around.

In my opinion, the ability to love another person is one of God’s greatest gifts, and I thank God every day for enabling me to give and share love with the people in my life.

Sorry. But it’s still a brave bit of news. He wasn’t going to cuddle with you anyway.

Charles Stross is doing an IAmA

I do so dearly love Stross’s books, and now he’s writing about writing on Reddit. I rather like his writing protocol.

I write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off — I wrote my first half million words in my teens on a manual typewriter (had to trade it for a new one due to keys snapping from metal fatigue) so I am not a pen or typewriter fetishist.

I write almost entlirely on Macs, because: Windows gives me hives. (I first ran into Windows as of Win 2.11/386, back in the eighties. It did not leave a good taste. I then became a happy UNIX bunny. Mac OSX is the last UNIX workstation class OS standing. So I’ve learned to put up with its other foibles.)

I have no set writing routine other than: plant bum in chair in front of keyboard/on sofa under laptop, and start going. Oh, and I drink tea pretty much continuously at a rate of around 1 imperial pint/hour, which sort of enforces screen/keyboard breaks.

Whoa, that sounds like my approach. I’m also sitting here with a cup of tea that I rise up regularly to refill, and also to, errm, release the Kraken. He must be a smart man.

No more mangled wee-wees!

Mano Singham has discovered a good analysis of the claim that circumcision has health benefits. I agree with it entirely, because I looked at those same papers and came to the same conclusion a year ago! So they must be right.

The analysis points out a few new things I hadn’t noticed, in addition to the bad experimental design and the inflated statistics: the results were confounded by the fact that the newly circumcised individuals also got additional counseling about safe sex, and were restricted in their sexual practices by their surgical wounds. It’s bad research coming to impractical and unrealistic conclusions, and they suggest that there are better answers than promoting this shaky idea that circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS.

Rather than wasting resources on circumcision, which is less effective, more expensive, and more invasive, focusing on iatrogenic sources and secondary prevention should be the priority, since it provides the most impact for the resources expended.

Exactly — the defense of circumcision is ludicrous, it’s an unnecessary cosmetic surgery promoted entirely for historically religious reasons, and it’s time to stop.