Take my apartment complex, please …

I’m in Austin these days and I got a little, teeny, tiny studio apartment. It’s claustrophobic small, but that’s all I need thanks to the insane hours required to survive on my horrific Great Recession pay rate. Things were fine for the first year. But a few months ago the complex was sold to a company based out of California called Greystar. My experience since ranks right up there with an unmedicated root canal. [Read more…]

Question: How will western religion ultimately deal with gay rights?

The time is rapidly approaching when opposition to LGBT rights will be judged the same way slavery and Jim Crowe are seen in most parts of the US today. But many faiths, especially Islam and Catholicism, have staked out arguably immovable, hard-line positions backed by centuries of tradition endorsed by authoritarian hierarchies at every level. It’s not just a modern trend, opposition to same-sex relations stretches back millennia, to the very origin of the underlying deities. How can they roll all that back, assuming they wanted to?

Think of the Vatican: Could Catholics — or for that matter conservative evangelicals or Muslims — simply conjure up a new theology embracing gay rights and downplay the past? Or are they trapped by their own theological and cultural inertia? It seems to me they’re damn if they do and damned if they don’t. They either risk civil war in their own ranks now, or they risk going the way of isolated whack-job Klannish cults in the near future.

WI Gov Scott Walker is stone cold busted

No one really believed the excuse WI Gov Scott Walker dredged up when trying to take away workers’ rights. But the wingnut band played on. Now a video has surfaced showing Walker briefing a billionaire contributor on his scheme to destroy workers’ rights, divide and conquer, starting with public sector unions for civil servants like teachers, firefighters, paramedics, and police. The clip comes at the worst possible time for Walker, he faces a statewide recall election in early June. Walker responded to the video today: [Read more…]

JP Morgan takes a dump, analysts worry it could trickle down

This is the kind of thing that makes me think about buying long term put options. The masters of the universe and their fearless leaders have stumbled again and the primary culprit is allegedly one trader in one class of derivatives who racked up at least $2 billion in losses. No one can say for sure if it’s just an isolated hiccup on the way to recovery or the start of another giant Wall Street heist: [Read more…]

Let’s try it this way: a president says they’re atheist, hypothetically

I’m sorry for being a jerk in comments before. Let’s try this: A president who was in the past tepidly agnostic comes out and says he’s thought about it, and now he’s an atheist. And in a doomed to fail preemptive qualifier, I know this is not the same thing. Let’s go ahead stipulate it’s not the same thing.

So, if that happened, should we as atheists react with “It’s too late or not enough” and be angry, should it not affect our view and other issues be more important, or would we think this a positive change, or something else not shown here?  Should we reward that, not care either way, or be angry about it? Which of those reactions would help atheism in general and which might not? I personally would lean toward rewarding it but other issues would still matter too. Your turn: Go!