The Atheist Blogger

Found this cartoon online, and it sums up everything about this election:

Finally.

Well done to Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States of America.

For those who are interested, I’m tweeting the BBC election coverage. If you have a Twitter client, why not join in and talk? :D

Just in a few minutes ago: BBC has called Kay Hagan’s win over Elizabeth Dole, so well done on ousting one Christian bigot for another (although slightly less intense) Christian bigot. Ah well, we can’t win everything!

Edit: “Tweeting” not “Twitting” according to ChickenGirl. I blame it being 2am and me having no sleep in 24 hours.

We are approaching the end of another year, and those who regularly read the atheist blogosphere can hardly say it wasn’t a busy one! We’ve had propaganda films to fight off, scandals involving crackers, and plenty of anti-atheist bigotry to deal with. The question still remains though:

How much of it can you remember?

The “Big Fat Atheist Quiz Of The Year” will test how much people have been paying attention in regards to the blogosphere and the news. It will consist of an undecided number of multiple choice questions, presented in an online format on 31st December 2008.

Of course due to the nature of the quiz and people’s dishonesty, there won’t be any prizes, but it should be a fun thing to do. People can certainly brag about their scores (whether real or not).

The questions will be compiled over the next 2 months, and this is where I need some help. Obviously I can come up with a load of questions for the quiz, but if anyone can think of some good ones, please submit them using this online form.

Name / email is only neccessary in case I need to contact you. The “Source” should be a link to a webpage that contains the story relating to the question. For example, if you write a question about the PZ Myers “expelled from expelled” controversy, a link to the blog post by PZ Myers might be a good idea :D

The 3 false answers are entirely optional for you to fill in, but they would help me out a bit later on. If you do include false answers, remember make them a bit challenging!

…and naturally, please submit as many questions as you can!

Human error will always be the bane of technology, and the more people who look at something, the more errors will be found. This is certainly shown to be true when you compare something like Windows to Linux (the latter being more stable and secure because of all the people who can look at the code). Another example cropped up in Wales the other day:

Lost in translation...

For those who don’t live in the UK, Welsh road signs are put in both English and Welsh since both are official languages of the country, and us English-born chaps are too arrogant to learn Welsh. The English in the sign above is perfectly readable. Unfortunately the Welsh reads:

I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.

Apparently the English people who make the signs needed a translation and emailed what was needed to their Swansea council colleagues. The “out of office” auto-response replied, and they assumed this was the translation they needed.

Of course, there are two people at fault here. Firstly there are the people who make Welsh road signs and yet don’t have anyone who speaks Welsh on their team, or anyone to confirm the translation. Secondly, the person who thinks that out of office auto-responses should only be in Welsh, when they know full well that people are emailing them for translations.

It’s common sense really…*sigh*.

Whenever a documentary is made of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), it always focuses on the church members, and hardly ever on people who have left the church. This is probably because those who did leave don’t want to talk about their experiences, but a journalist by the name of Trevor Melanson was astonished to discover that his taxi driver was none other than Nate Phelps, the son of Fred Phelps, and brother to Shirley Phelps-Roper.

An interview took place afterwards, and many things were revealed about how children are brought up in the Phelps household, which included regular beatings.

The mattock, a close cousin of the pickaxe, is used to dig through tough, earthy surfaces—it loosens soil, breaks rock, and tears through knotted grass. Its handle is a three-foot wooden shaft, twice the density of a baseball bat and its dual-sided iron head is comprised of a chisel and a pick. It was Pastor Fred Phelps’s weapon of choice when beating his children according to his son, Nate Phelps.

“The Bible says ‘spare the rod, spoil the child,’” explained Nate, “and he would be screaming that out as he was beating us.” One Christmas night, Pastor Phelps hit Nate over 200 times with a mattock’s handle, swinging it like a baseball player.

Nate left the household when he was 18, before returning 3 years later, and then leaving again when it became too much. What is uplifting about this story is how even those brought up in such harsh conditions can come to the side of rationality.

Nate agrees with prominent atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins, who has said that religion can be “real child abuse.”

…

“The threat of eternal Hell is an extreme example of mental abuse,” Dawkins says on his website, “just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” asserted Nate. “In so many different ways we have abused children with religion over the centuries.”

…

“I do declare myself an atheist now,” affirmed Nate, “although I’m willing to admit that there’s stuff in life that I’m not real clear on yet.”

Although Nate still lives with anxiety caused by his childhood suffering, he has a strong positive outlook for the future, saying “I just want peace. I want to not wake up fearful every morning”.

The full story can be read here, as well as the comments (the first is by Shirley Phelps-Roper and is a laugh). In other WBC news, it seems a non-existent being hates Barack Obama: