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Fanboy Does ‘Wrath of the Titans’

Wrath of the Titans: Whoo-boy, a serious action movie, with some beautiful special effects.

Fortunately, the Titans production team threw a bit less at us in the way of breathtaking visual intricacy — such as that of the too-frenetic Transformer movies, which I sometimes had a hard time following and lost interest in as a result.

Good stuff:

Special Effects. Being me, I HAD to like the flying horse, but there were some other effects that were even better. Continue reading “Fanboy Does ‘Wrath of the Titans’”

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Murderous Purple Panda Terrifies Terrified Children

Sorry, can’t help but laugh at this. ABC News reports on an incident at Pennsylvania’s Center in the Woods preschool.

“Mr. McFeely” (the name alone made me laugh; sounds more like a Catholic preschool character), apparently a delivery man on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, introduces the kids to special guest Purple Panda. As the costumed character enters the room, Panda-monium breaks out: The kids scream and run.

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Doing My Part: Cory Brunson

[ This is a response to Doing My Part for the Godless Future . If you’d like to submit one of your own — what you’re doing to help the world, or just yourself, get free of religion — email me via the link in that post. ]

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I do a lot of the familiar stuff at the personal level: I sit at Ask An Atheist tables, i write letters to the editor, i regularly post religious commentary on Facebook. I cross out “In God We Trust” on dollar bills and write in “E pluribus unum”. These things matter. but they feel reactive, and marginal, like online comments on an op-ed.

Here’s something i wish more people would do: Continue reading “Doing My Part: Cory Brunson”

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Doing My Part: Stephanie

[ This is a response to Doing My Part for the Godless Future. If you’d like to submit one of your own — what you’re doing to help the world, or just yourself, get free of religion — email me via the link in that post. ]

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I’m 25 years old and I’ve been calling myself an atheist officially since I was about 19. I stopped believing in God before that, but the word atheist was scary at first – so final. It’s understandable to me why people are afraid of atheism. I was at first, in my early teens when I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong and why everyone had told me God was real when more and more evidence was piling up in my head to the contrary. I feel like religious people clutch their religion to their chests like a child with security blanket. The blanket is all ratty and worn out and dirty. So an adult goes to them and says, Continue reading “Doing My Part: Stephanie”

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Doing My Part for the Godless Future

Read Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway, before you read this.

In this followup post, I’d like to ask readers what we’re all doing to make that better-time-to-be happen.

I hope to raise consciousness among the people who read this …

First, that fellow readers are taking various actions in their own lives. In other words, that you and I, ordinary people, CAN do things that make a difference.

Second, that each of us really NEEDS to be doing something to make  a difference. Continue reading “Doing My Part for the Godless Future”

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Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway

As I’ve said here in the past, I still get emails from old friends in Texas. Some of those people have gotten so goddy over the years that we seem to have nothing at all in common anymore.

Every time I get one of these things, it’s like waking up in a cold cabin with the fire gone out. I remember how warm it used to be, and some part of me hopes there’s still an ember in the coals. Thinks that if I go back to Texas someday and feed it new fuel, the flame of our friendship will burn again. Continue reading “Dear Friends, Bloody on the Highway”

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Top Five Regrets of the Dying

This Guardian article must have been written by a nasty atheist, because there’s no mention of all those people who must have said “I wish I’d spent more time in church.”

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

If you don’t want to read the short article, the Top Five Regrets are: Continue reading “Top Five Regrets of the Dying”

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Rewinding Religion, Recreating Science

Any serious writer could tell you: Not everything you write ends up on a page somewhere. Some of the stuff just isn’t good enough. Some of it is good enough, but not germane to the piece you’re currently writing. And some of it is good enough but … just doesn’t fit anywhere.

This is a piece of a piece that never made it into my book. It’s sort of a double reject — the chapter in which it appeared was edited out of the book, but even before that decision was made, this bit was edited out of that chapter. Still, it struck me as worth saving. So, here: Continue reading “Rewinding Religion, Recreating Science”

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Babies. Lemons.

Ah, if only we had this instinctive reaction the first time we were spoonfed the family religion …

Also: I still have this same sort of reaction when I bite into a lemon.