The USA election is upon us all, there is no escape no matter where you live. Fortunatley here in Australia Chris and Craig are following the final days of the American Election. If you haven’t been listening to the Race Race, do yourself a favour and tune in to JJJ 5pm weekdays, or else download the podcasts.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Ahh, this is the life
Sitting on the balcony, glass of Rose, some snacks, listening to Ministry of Sound Chillout Sessions Vol 10, catching up on reading all the blogs in my RSS feed. So if you are 1of the 50 blogs I try and keep up with consider yourself read today.
Went for a 5km fun run this morning with funds raised going towards the Breast Cancer Institute for research (over $85,000 raised from the 3,380 runners/walkers, plus AVON donated $500,000). I’ve never seen so much pink in my life.
It’s been a beautiful warm sunny day, but it’s now starting to cloud over, I guess a storm is on the way.
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Atheist Bus Campaign
The British Humanist Society launched a campaign to raise money for the Atheist Bus Campaign. The campaign aimed to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital (London) for four weeks with the slogan:
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
So far they have raised over 100,000 pounds! It looks like a lot of those donations are 5 or 10 pounds so that’s quite a few people getting involved. Great to see.
Even the Just Giving site which is hosting the fund raising is amazed how fast the donations came flooding in.
I meant to post this a few days ago after reading about it on The Atheist Blogger‘s site, so Hat Tip to Adrian.
Yikes 2 posts in 1 day 😆
Filed under atheist
Our Famiy Tree
Catalyst had an interesting segment this week titled The Ultimate Mammal Family Tree, you can watch the video, read the transcript and download the family tree diagram. Worth watching, I think it’s quite a unique way to represent the evolution of the species, when you see the time scale represented like this it’s not hard to see how it happened.
Note to Thump Thump Eyes: I’m still working on that post I promised, truly.
Filed under Charles Darwin, evolution
teh aliens are coming
run for the hills teh aliens are coming!
According to several news reports
A video has been released that claims to show aliens and their spacecraft with one UFO researcher calling it the “most important images of a UFO ever filmed”.
The video was shot over several months by a night guard in Turkey. You can read more about this story and watch the video here or here .
As a lot of the comments on the news.com.au site have said, why are these videos always so blurry? If the guy knew they’d keep coming back why didn’t he get the local news crew to film it with him? Or why not get a tripod and buy/borrow a camera that could get really good footage of the UFO?
“Experts” say it’s not faked, but I’m still skeptical, how about you? Are aliens visiting earth?
Is this doll evil?
What does this doll really say? 
According to some the doll says “Islam is the light” and “Satan is king”. At Urban Legends David Emery thinks the doll might not be saying anything intelligible at all, as he says “it could be in the ear of the beholder”.
I must admit I can’t pick out the “Satan is king”, though on the youtube video you can sort of make it out, especially after the guy tells you where it is. However the “Islam is the light” is fairly clear (well, at least the “is the light” section).
See for your self, is this doll spouting religious comments?
Check out the youtube video, or listen to this mp3 from Mattel,
then have a read of David Emery’s take on the matter, including links to previous evil talking dolls including the Teletubby dolls saying “Faggot, faggot, bite my butt”?
If you want to read more, type this into google: “islam is the light” + doll
Carnival of the Godless # 102
Mission Impossible
A Division by Zero is hosting the latest Carnival of the Godless, DB0 has woven the entries into a story based on the premise “what would the God of Atheism think about the impossibility of religion?”
I had intended to post a submission to this carnival, but life keeps getting in the way of my blogging.
A funny quote from the TV show “Midsomer Murders – Talking to the Dead”
(said by the religious minister about the guy that talks to the dead):
I’m a man of God, there’s no place for superstition in my religion
LOL
Filed under atheism, atheist, Carnival of the Godless
Government funds Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Image by Getty Images
via Daylife
For the first time ever the NSW Government is assisting in funding the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras! I heard this piece of news on Friday then promptly forgot about it, fortunately a new reader, Jimmy, reminded me about the funding of the Catholic World Youth Day, which reminded me about this piece of news.
As many of you know both the State and Federal Governments funded the Catholic World Youth Day to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. So why shouldn’t the government fund the Mardi Gras? As the new NSW Premier said about the Mardi Gras:
It’s become an international showcase of Sydney’s inclusiveness, creativity and diversity, and a celebration shared by the wider community.
Unlike the CWYD which, even though they tried to convince us otherwise, was really only of interest to a small minority of Catholics.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is one of the biggest events of it’s kind in the world. The Mardi Gras has had some of the largest audiences of any event in Australia and as Events NSW Chief Executive Geoff Parmenter says:
“It has been estimated that the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras generates more than $30 million of direct economic benefit for NSW each year, and it has become an international showcase of Sydney’s diversity.”
So what has taken so long for the government to finally chip in a few dollars? When I heard this news, one of the first things I wondered was; what impact did all the negative feedback from the general populace about CWYD have on the decision to fund the Mardi Gras. I wasn’t the only person at the time making comparisons to the two events and questioning why one got government funds and the other didn’t.
The two letters to the newspaper I sent (neither of which got published) outlined the concerns I had at the time and the total inaccuracies being spouted by the Catholic Apologetics. You can read those on my Letters to the Editor post.
However, there are still a few people who don’t agree with me, and the many others, who think the government should financially assist the Mardi Gras. The Daily Telegraph has a couple of articles and blogs with criticisms of the funding. There is also a poll on the Daily Telegraph article, which has over 500 comments!, which is currently running at over 70% in favour of the funding.
In some respects I agree with some of the comments, that why should the government (i.e.. us taxpayers) help fund what is currently a reasonably financially successful event. The bottom line is, why not? Why should the government not assist the Mardi Gras but assist the vastly more wealthy Catholic church? Government funds all sorts of things that you or I might not agree on, but at least they have to be fair when it comes to handing out money.
So I’m going to do a Pharyngula and ask all my readers to skew the poll (side bar, about half way down) and vote Yes.
One last thing, whilst finishing writing this I’m half listening to Compass, which is on in the background in the next room. Something about a bunch of deluded twits from some wacked out religious collage in America that helps breed lobbyists intent on “reclaiming America for Christ.”. Scary, scary, scary; American atheists get out now while there’s still a chance! I’ve got a spare room if anyone’s interested. :lol:
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Technorati Tags: Catholic,World Youth Day,Mardi Gras,Gay,Lesbian,Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras,Sydney,NSW,Government funding
Filed under atheism, atheist, Catholic, Catholic WYD, gay and lesbian, government funding, homophobia, Mardi Gras, NSW, Sydney
Free Speech? Not if you say anything against Islam.
Pat Condell’s recent video was banned from YouTube because some Muslim didn’t like what he said. Watch the video for yourself and see if you think there’s anything wrong with it.
Knowing wordpress’ problem with embed the video link above might not work. In that case go to Pat’s website or Sean’s, where I first heard about this.
Seems like every atheist blogger on the net is talking about this, so I thought I’d join the bandwagon.
Filed under atheism, censorship, freedom of speech, islam, Muslim, Pat Condell
Paganism to be taught in school?
Why not, every other religion is, at least pagans don’t believe in an authoritarian deity. The United Pagan Church of Australia (UPCoA) wants to teach paganism in government schools in New South Wales (NSW). As the UPCoA state on their website:
In New South Wales, government schools are required to provide religious education of two types:
- General Religious Education (GRE); and
- Special Religious Education (SRE).
The UPCoA believe that they should be allowed to have the option for their children to receive Pagan based SRE. The UPCoA are currently putting a submission to government “to initiate the process of obtaining Ministerial endorsement to provide SRE.”
One of the interesting things on the UPCoA Pagan SRE in schools page, was the link to the NSW DoEaT page: Groups approved to provide Special Religious Education in NSW Government Schools. Wow, that’s a lot of different religions!
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