Episode 33 is up!

The 33rd episode of Pascal's Bettors podcast has just been uploaded, and this time there's a special godless guest interview with the new Director of Development at American Atheists, AJ Johnson. Plus we have some interesting news items, discussions, and a short (but interesting) ethics corner. Give it a listen! Remember that you can download or play from the website here, or subscribe to us on iTunes.

Mr. Deity's Opposition

My how the Deity has grown ... grown to be despised.  See how Lucy Fair Angel gets sucked into the narrative as the bad "guy" - it even has references to all the skeptical brouhaha about sexism that has been going on recently!

Theodicy*

From wiki: 

Theodicy is a theological or philosophical study which attempts to justify God's (largely in the monotheistic or Abrahamic sense) intrinsic (or foundational) nature of omni-benevolence (all loving), omniscience (all knowing) and omnipotence (all powerful), despite the existence of evil which, in the view of some, would otherwise stand to refute one or more of these qualities or God's existence altogether.

SMBC posted this fantastic illustration of how most people are satisfied with these justification attempts and suggests why a more reality-based alternative to belief in god just doesn't fly with most people:

New podcast episode up!

The latest episode of our podcast is up!  Give us a listen and tell us what you think.  Also, if you have some interesting news stories to submit, or ideas for segments, drop us a line.

The PhD Movie

Brought to you by Jorge Cham, creator and illustrator of Piled Higher and Deeper.


PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo.


Looking forward to seeing this ... something's got to vindicate my decision to continue the grad student life as a postdoc ....

In God We Teach

A video documentary is finally being put together about the Kearny, NJ case where a high school student exposed his history teaching for overtly evangelizing during class time to his students.  The student, Matthew LaClair, recorded his teacher, David Paszkiewicz, in the act of pushing creationism and religion in the middle of instruction time.  The ACLU has helped Matthew file a suit - standing up for his rights has resulted in harassment from students and teachers, as well as a death threat.

Here's a preview of the upcoming documentary:

What feels better?

I love my mom.  In part because I already show great promise of growing up to be like her.  Even though she has a Droid and not an iPhone, autocorrect has been as cruel to her as it has been to me, though she's less adept at correcting bad autocorrect mistakes before sending out the final text.  That moment before you figure out that autocorrect is to blame for the very disturbing feeling that your mom just gave you is quite funny, but only after the fact.  I give you, yesterday's autocorrect slip up of the day:

In case you can't figure it out, I'm pretty sure that she meant, "Good...makes me feel better."  Once she realized the mistake she informed me that she actually did not type "nakedness feel better" and then promptly admitted that it was still true though.

My Street!

I know that most places have a "Cook Street" somewhere ... my hometown has one too.  But it still excites me to see a Cook Street in San Francisco!

We like to move it, move it ... on MUNI

The month of May has whizzed right by me, but not without a lot of fun-filled days and nights.  My family actually came out to visit me (Mom, Dad, Sister and her boyfriend) for Dad's 60th birthday bash!  It was outrageously fun- we toured all over San Francisco and a little outside the city too.

In the city we went to the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point, the Exploratorium and Palace of Fine Arts, Tartine, Dolores Park, the Castro, Duboce Park, Alamo square, Golden Gate Park, the DeYoung Art Museum, Ocean Beach, Chinatown, Ferry Plaza, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, the marina, Alcatraz, and much more.  Outside the city we made it to Berkeley, the Marin Headlands, Sausalito, Muir Woods, and Sonoma.  All of this in just under one week!  We were pretty busy.

While the family was visiting, they became acquainted with our public transit system here called MUNI.  Before their visit, I prepared by getting enough electronic commute cards, called Clipper cards:

Once the family arrived, they each received a card to get around in the city.  It essentially costs $2 for two hours of riding on MUNI in the city, a pretty good deal if you strategize your trip well.  I also didn't want them to lose track of *their* Clipper card, so I labelled the back of each one with a biology word that would stand out to them and that they could associate with their card in particular:

If someone ever stole it, there would be an easily identifiable marking too - handy especially considering that my credit card account is linked to those cards!

Do you know what each of those words means?

STORM: By Tim Minchin

For everyone who knows me but has never understood how or why I feel the way I currently do about life, science, religion, politics, philosophy ... watch this.  This animated short is based on a performance by the talented comedian, musician, and skeptic Tim Minchin.  His poem is phenomenal and the illustrations are right on point.  Sit back, relax, and think for a change: