The Atheist Blogger

Lets suspend from atheism, religion, and related topics for a few moments. I have an announcement that could possibly change your life.

WATCH TROPIC THUNDER

Seriously, go to the movie theater, download it, I don’t care how you get it. Just go and see this film. It is quite possibly the comedy of the year, perhaps the decade. I kid you not, it is GENIUS!!! Robert Downey Jr. OMFSM!!! Sooooo good!!!

Ok, back to normal now. God sucks, religion is evil. Atheism FTW!

(Just go see the movie)

As I noted in a previous post, The Atheist Spot are currently interviewing atheist bloggers with a variety of questions. The latest interview posted is with none other than myself, so go read it! I’ve never really answered many questions about atheism in relation to England, so hopefully a few people might come up with a few more.

A few days ago, some atheist bloggers started posting the entire Atheist Blogroll (as links) in a single post. I don’t know how it happened or whose idea it was, but I think I can safely say that the person behind it probably thought they were starting some trendy phase. Certainly they were not thinking about the ramifications of linking to over 700 blogs in a single page.

In the end, db0 wrote 6 reasons why you really shouldn’t mess around like this and as far as I can tell, people have stopped.

The damage may have already been done though. My technorati authority dropped massively overnight from 95 to 76, whilst Friendly Atheist went down from around 750 (at my last check) to 669. These are the only two blogs I can say for certain that have dropped. The lack of a technorati authority history page means that researching this is next to impossible.

I can only assume that people who actually have blogs and check their authority regularly will be able to tell if it is going up or down. It may be a legitimate fall I’ve seen, but I honestly can’t see how such large drops could possibly have occured simply overnight. I would guess that it is Technorati rejecting a load of incoming links and in doing so affecting some previous recorded links that contribute to authorities.

Has anyone else seen evidence of this? Has your blog authority gone down suddenly in the last few days? It’s not like I care that much about technorati authority, but it would provide an explanation for the sudden drop.

My previous post about an unknown neighbour with an unencrypted wireless network has provoked some negative comments. People have said I was “stupid” for calling the neighbour an idiot for leaving a network unencrypted. They reasoned that this neighbour might have been very generous, and intentionally left his network open so people could connect and use it.

JamesM said:

Being a generous sole he has decided to setup an open wireless router so others may use the service too.

…

Calling some one an idiot for being generous shows how small minded and stupid you are. Happy to much of others but too intellectually tight fisted to return the favor.

The work of a small and selfish mind. Maybe next time you will see an open network and think, hay, what if the world were like this? What if I shared my connection and encouraged others to do the same?

Hittman said:

It’s always dangerous to assume you know someone else’s motivation. My first thought, reading this post, was that he decided to be generous. And you decided to insult him for it. YOUR ridiculous beliefs, about him, are based on nothing but assumption.

At this point I should make it clear that I never even mentioned or “assumed” anything about the motivation of my neighbour in the article. I assumed nothing, my commentators assumed he was generous. Now lets look at the facts.

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John Barrowman, the popular Scottish-American actor from Doctor Who, Torchwood, and various TV Quiz shows has tried to figure out why he is gay. The BBC filmed a documentary about his journey back to America where he visits various scientific institutes trying to prove that homosexuality is something you are born with, not a lifestyle choice.

Barrowmans journey, which is available on the BBC iplayer (non-UK residents may have to use a proxy to view it) first goes to Chicagos Northwestern University, where he went through a Penile plethysmograph, and also a FMRI. Both tests conclusively came up with a “gay” verdict.

He then visited his parents to question them about his growing up and whether there was any influence in his childhood that could have caused his homosexuality. Ranging from playing with dolls to having a best friend who was a girl, to dressing up in a bikini for a fancy dress competition, Johns childhood was anything but normal for a boy.

However, John travels back to Chicago to meet an expert in early childhood behaviour. The expert looks at various videos of children from their childhood, and compares their actions with their sexual orientation today. One film is of a young girl playing with a toy truck, smashing it off a table, and generally breaking things. Another shows a boy who has dressed up and is dancing. Both children grew up and are openly homosexual today. The studies show that 75% of boys who exhibit female behaviour traits whilst very young tend to be homosexual.

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