Some people who drive expensive cars are so worried about their cars being dinged by the opening of doors of cars parked next to them that they park straddling two spaces. This is a serious violation of parking etiquette that can enrage people. I myself, though not prone to get upset over trivial things, also find myself highly irritated when I see someone do that, even though I know it is small in the great scheme of things. But like most of us, I do nothing except secretly despise such people. [Read more…]

Via Xeni Jardin, here is the story of Pascale Honore, an Australian woman who became a paraplegic after an accident. She has a love for the ocean and wanted to surf and that now seemed out of her reach. But with sheer dogged determination, the help of her friend, and a roll of duct tape, she not only surfed but also went scuba diving.

I dislike flying because of the sheer unpleasant of the whole experience but I am not scared of flying. It is one of the safest modes of transportation. But we sometimes forget, in this age of autopilots where human pilots seem almost superfluous, how necessary they are and how skilled the pilots must be in order to deal with unexpected situations. [Read more…]

The free online conference organized by most of the Freethought bloggers starts today and runs through Saturday.

PZ Myers explains where to find what and the best way to participate.

Here is the final schedule with links.

Many of the bloggers on the FtB network have organized a free online conference to be held July 19-21. It is called FtBConscience: Atheism with a conscience and is expected to be an annual event. This year will focus on social justice, technology, and the future of the freethought movement.

You can see the full schedule here. The organizers have put together a wide array of speakers (73 in all) and a range of topics that should appeal to almost anyone.

So you have achieved your dream of making a ton of money and have been accepted to membership in an exclusive country club. But you still feel dissatisfied because you do not stand out from your fellow members as being obviously more wealthy than they, since all of you drive the same expensive cars, wear the same expensive clothes, and use the same expensive golf clubs. [Read more…]

I hardly ever text people and very rarely do I receive any text messages myself so I am not aware of the conventions of that world. But I am aware that texting can be very convenient in certain situations, while at the same time sometimes requires decoding to get at what the sender is actually saying. [Read more…]

The phenomenon of ‘sockpuppetry’, the creation of alternate characters by an individual to create the impression of greater support for that person or that person’s point of view than is actually the case, is something that I have written about before. (See here, here, and here.) [Read more…]

For some reason, I find certain phrases particular jarring. Three that immediately come to mind are:

“In any way, shape, or form”

“The last time I checked”

“Make no mistake about it” [Read more…]

I noticed yesterday a sharp spike in the statistics of those who came to this blog, about ten times the normal daily traffic. I initially idly wondered if the counter had developed a glitch but I then received a Facebook posting from a former student that said that one of my posts had made the front page of Reddit, which explained it. The post in question was this one. [Read more…]