Some of you may have read about the spectacular rage that jewelry designer Jenny Lauren flew into on a plane that resulted in her chasing the poor flight attendant into the first class cabin, screaming obscenities, and assaulting not only her but others who came to her assistance. The niece of Ralph Lauren caused such a ruckus that they had to actually divert the plane, which was on transatlantic flight between Barcelona and New York, and make an emergency landing in Ireland, where she was dutifully arrested and charged. [Read more…]

I have been invited by to speak at third annual Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist Convention to be held in Pittsburgh on August 29-31, 2014 and have accepted. The invitation is quite flexible. The conference has no theme as such and they are giving me the freedom to pitch my own topic, although suggesting that one based on an earlier talk based on my series Why Atheism is Winning may be suitable. [Read more…]

You know when you are at a talk and it turns out that no one has brought a laser pointer or the one that is available is not working? If New York state’s director of homeland security is the speaker, this might be a good time to get the hell out of the room. [Read more…]

Or rather a cold day. My university has decided to close today because of the frigid temperatures that are all across this part of the country. It actually is a bright sunny morning with the kind of clear blue sky that one gets in winter and is quite beautiful, with white snow covering everything and glistening in the morning light. As long as one is indoors looking out, it is gorgeous but deceptive. For anyone outdoors it is brutal. It is the clear skies overnight that allow for heat to radiate away more rapidly, resulting in early morning temperatures of -8^oF and today’s daytime high will only reach 4^oF. [Read more…]

Sometime yesterday, this blog passed the 3,000,000 page views mark. But there are other milestones this month.

On January 10, 2012, I started blogging on FtB, making it almost two years ago today. [Read more…]

I know that it is customary to do so on the first of January but why get stuck with tradition? Besides which, yesterday was rather chaotic at home with my daughter and son-in-law’s flight back to California being cancelled and the replacement one being repeatedly delayed, all due to the bad weather in this part of the country. In addition, we had a plumbing emergency that required a lot of messing around so I decided to give blogging a miss.

So after a frazzled start to the new year, now things are back to (almost) normal, so Baxter the Wonder Dog and I wish all of this blog’s readers all the best for 2014.

What do I wish for in 2014? I hope to see the end of drone murders by the Obama administration, the addition of many people who have access to affordable health insurance, worldwide outrage at the global spying network by the US and UK that lead to real reforms, Edward Snowden finding a permanent home safe from the vindictive and lawless US government, more whistleblowers being inspired by him to reveal government wrongdoing, more principled judges reining in government excesses, a hike in the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour, a rise in the maximum tax rate to somewhere around 75%, elimination of the cap on income taxed for Social Security, defeats of religious extremists and their associated racists, sexist, and homophobic agendas, and a rise in secular thinking all over the globe.

I realize that this is a far more modest list than peace on Earth but I thought that I would try to be at least faintly realistic. There are many more things I wish for but these are enough for the moment.

Me reading the comics while Baxter the Wonder Dog takes a nap by my side.

Blogging will be more sporadic over the holidays as I will be together with my children and their significant others. Now that they are older and living independent lives elsewhere, these times together are few and far between and to be savored. I thought that I would pass on a couple of personal recommendations. Others should feel free to add their own in the comments. [Read more…]

In the recent post on how best to discourage monomaniacs, without banning them, from derailing discussions by posting about their pet peeves that have barely any connection with the original topic, it was suggested that one improvement might be to eliminate nested comments that group sidebar conversations together, so that when one scrolls down, comments do not appear in chronological order. Up to now, this blog has had five levels of nesting.. [Read more…]

A scan of 600,000 customer service calls was studied to see in which states people swore at the operators the most and also those states where people are most polite and use phrases like “please” and “thank you”. [Read more…]