My housemate, Alexander, relyricized the union standard “The Ballad of Joe Hill” as a slam on Pepco, the energy company that’s leaving us to languish in the dark. DCist has picked it up, and has put out a call for local bands to submit covers. The full lyrics are at the link, but there’s a preview below. And I promise to update you if any musicians answer the call. I dreamed I saw Pepco last night Driving down my street.... Read more
I hope you’re all already familiar with Dresden Codak’s Dungeons and Discourse and Advanced Dungeons and Discourse, which basically make philosophy jokes in a DnD setting. (These two comics are the source of the above image). It turns out that Scott, the guy whose post I was recommending in “The (Epistemic) Floor is Made of Lava,” wrote up a plot and songs for a philosophy based DnD campaign. It reminds me strongly of The Phantom Tollbooth. That means his players are... Read more
Whelp, it looks like you won’t be seeing that much of me over the course of the week. You know it’s bad when you’re upset that the power company dealt with the live wire lying across your street. It may have been a hazard, but it was supplying me with sweet, sweet, electricity. The cell towers in my neighborhood have been hit pretty bad by the storm, too, so I can’t even keep up with Google Reader and comments with... Read more
Over in the Pagan Channel here at Patheos, I found an interesting religious liberty case. Literata Hurley is a Wiccan priestess, and she is trying to get the state of Virginia to allow her to officiate at weddings. Unlike a lot of states, who let pretty much anyone get ‘ordained’ online through the Universal Life Church, Virginia has standards for what it really means to be a religious leader. Not particularly well defined standards, mind you, but, y’know, standards. I... Read more
I’ve been triaging email as well as comments, but when someone contacts me for a Q&A and the first three questions are Q: Jen Fulwiler (another atheist-to-Catholic convert) recently pointed out that we Catholics are fond of giving atheists books on the faith. What do you think of this approach? and Q: Are there any books that you would recommend sharing with loved ones who are atheists? and Q. How big of a role did books play in your own... Read more
— 1 — Yesterday, the big controversy on the blog was Tau Day, not the Supreme Court ruling. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I spent the day glued to SCOTUSblog, and, when I got home, I had to celebrate. So I made broccoli parmesan fritters, using the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Fellow Patheos blogger Eve recently posted her own variation on this recipe, but I kept it simple (except for doubling the garlic). This was my second... Read more
He’s a writer at FreeThought Blogs and has been engaging pretty respectfully (without sacrificing aggression!) with me and my ideas (as gleaned from posts and comments). I particularly appreciated the post he did excoriating my some of my atheist friends for claiming atheists can’t be moral realists. That’s a fight I tried to start in the atheist blogosphere when I was one, and I’m glad he’s carrying the banner. Now, he’s got a new post up, with the amusing title... Read more
All week, I’ve been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. But, ultimately, truth is more important than partisanship, so, come what may, I want to wish you all a very happy Tau Day! As you may remember from math class, pi is approximately 3.14159 and, every year, on March 14th, math geeks tend to celebrate. Pi is what you get when you divide a circle’s circumference (the... Read more
One frequent question I got about my conversion was, “Uh, don’t you disagree with the Catholic Church on a lot of things? Aren’t you bisexual? And a bit of a statist when it come to public health? And various other things? What are you going to do about that?” I won’t paper over those inconsistencies and call them insignificant, but I don’t feel like I need to either resolve them instantly or pretend they don’t trouble me. One reason the... Read more
Remember that study contrasting outcomes for children of gay parents with children in other kinds of families? We discussed a couple methodological concerns here already, but I want to give them credit where it’s due. The New Family Structures Survey put together a very nice interactive visualization for their data. And, even more credit, their sample sizes and demographic breakdowns are available right on the first page of the visualization. People have complained about how few children in the survey... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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