Last night, my housemates and I threw a by-the-seat-of-our-pants Seder. It’s the first one I’ve ever been to (assuming watching Shari Lewis’s on TV didn’t count). And plenty of it was un-orthodox (small o) starting with what we had standing in for a lamb shank on the Seder plate. Our Seder party was about evenly split between Christians and Jews, and the Christians tended to be more theistic than some of the Jews, which prompted the following (paraphrased) exchange between... Read more
People who commented on this post last week might want to be careful what they wish for. I’m going to keep an eye out for blogposts where I can highlight a pull-quote and have something positive to add, but I figured I could practice by blogging through a book that I agree with quite a bit. (I already enjoyed doing this with Granny Weatherwax from Discworld). So here comes a series of posts (probably one a week) on a... Read more
When I first started this blog, I was casting about for a few types of post I could repeat every week in order to get on a regular schedule. The one that felt the most natural was a feature I named “Weatherwax Wednesdays” where I used a quote from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, usually involving the character Granny Weatherwax, as a jumping off point to talk about moral philosophy. Introducing Weatherwax Wednesday — Who is Granny Weatherwax, and why do I... Read more
Before Lent began, I committed to two behavior changes: one to curb a vice, the other to cultivate a virtue. In brief: I stopped taking advantage of the free food opportunities near my office in the hopes that I could stop feeling like I was taking advantage of people and feeling pleasure in pride in getting one over on someone I tried to overhaul the way I donated to charity in order to be more responsive to the people around... Read more
The weekend of March 24th 2012, a disputed number of thousands of people gathered in DC for the Reason Rally — a pro-secular extravaganza on the National Mall. Many of us stuck around through the weekend to attend the American Atheists National Conference. The posts collected below were inspired by events at one or both of these events. Now You See Me, Now I… What? — Ok, technically A Week (the come out as atheist on facebook week) occurred before the Reason... Read more
At the Easter Vigil Mass last night, the candidates for confirmation made the following profession of faith: I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God. Which is admirably concise, but left me more curious about commas than the Second Amendement. Are they saying they believe that [all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims] is [revealed by God]. Or are they simply stating that they believe and... Read more
The most surreal part of attending the Reason Rally and the American Atheists conference happened during a conversation with a fellow attendee when he told me I might know him better by his pseudonym. It turned out that he was a commenter who had gone after me pretty aggressively as an accommodationist during my stint guestblogging at Daylight Atheism. It’s hard, when interacting online, to imagine your interlocutors as real people (and in this case, even the efforts I had... Read more
Since it’s been two weeks since the event, I’m collapsing some of my other experiences at the Reason Rally into a few brief thoughts: What do we want? ______ When do we want it? Now! The Reason Rally, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t have a public policy ask. We weren’t gathered in DC to demand anything from Congress or the President. So I had some of the same mixed feelings that I had about A Week. For the... Read more
— 1 — Easter is coming, and I’ve had a link stored up for a long time that I’ve been practically bursting to share with you all. io9 has a nice explanation of the physics of this trick. Once you fill a hollow egg with hydrogen gas and wave a match over the top: It burns like a very ineffective gas lamp for a while, showing little flame, while the hydrogen leaks out the top. The egg, for a while,... Read more
As I explained last year, Maundy Thursday is the day I feel least comfortable attending Mass: I don’t like to be beholden to anyone. I don’t like accepting a favor from someone I have no way of repaying or being indebted to someone I don’t know and may not like. I frustrated my boyfriend for more than half a year by never taking food from the post-Mass receptions the campus church hosted. In my mind, the food was for people... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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