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  • Toby Nails Mitt Romney

    Me and my boy Toby, three years old, in the car on our way to daycare this morning: Toby: Daddy, what does Mitt Romney look like? Me: Well, he’s tall, has a big head, gray hair neatly combed, he always wears a suit, and he’s white. Toby: That’s why he is mad.

  • After the Attack, the Work

    I’m not sure if this was a “secret,” if I intentionally haven’t written about this because it was too personal, or what. Well. The thing is, since I was beaten to a bloody pulp by a couple of thugs outside my home Metro stop back in DC over two years ago, I’d been in therapy…

  • Tittering at Tombs

    So this guy seems like he was in a hurry to shuffle off this mortal coil: Whereas these folks seem like they took their sweet time: I bet this guy knew exactly where he was headed: But as the man says, only the good die… I know. But they made me titter.

  • Hillary and the Continuum

    Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast: The presidency was once described by some historians as a prize, won in one election by this team, in another by that team. The metaphor suggests that elections are discrete and separate from one another and that the stakes aren’t much greater than those encountered on a game show.…

  • Charlie Crist’s Metamorphosis, in Four Feelings

    Charlie Crist, former Republican, former Florida governor, former victim of Marco Rubio's dreaminess, has entered his latest metamorphic stage, formally registering as a Democrat — at a White House Christmas party no less! I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. And since this is my blog, I'll elaborate on them in painful detail.…

  • My Own Conspiracy Theory about the Disability Treaty

    Everyone with even a shred of humanity is livid with the Republican Party today, because yesterday they voted down the U.N. treaty that would have urged other nations to adopt the kinds of reforms and accomodations for disabled persons that we in the U.S. have adopted under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But I suspect…

  • Google Death-Drones to Murder Rhino Poachers From the Skies! Wait.

    First, I saw the headline. Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers Badass! Now this is what technology is for! Look out, rhino-killers! Time to taste electronic death from above! Then I read the actual article. First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. Son of a bitch!…

  • Drink Me

    Though I am going to be very deliberate about keeping my work and FtB activities separate, I would be remiss if I did not plug the fact that you can buy coffee mugs emblazoned with the logo of my CFI blog, The Morning Heresy, for the somewhat-reasonable price of $16. I don’t make anything off…

  • Cry-Me-a-River Tweet of the Century

    Thus: I am amazed at the hatred, filth, sacrilege, anger, condescension, ignorance, triviality, & flippancy heaped upon @pontifex on #askpontifex — John Mercer (@jfmercer) December 4, 2012 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Yeah, you know, the Pope has enabled and covered up the rape and assault of countless children, but guys, let’s not be so mean to him on…

  • Freethought Blogs, Unscrewed

    Hey, you know what's neat? Freethought Blogs now hosts me, Hank Fox, and Stephen “DarkSyde” Andrew, and we three have something kind of cool in common. We are all former contributors or denizens of the primoridal atheist blog Unscrewing the Inscrutable, founded by the mad genius Brent Rasmussen. Brent was doing godless blogging when our…

  • How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the E-book

    I have trouble understanding the panic that much of the culture seems to be experiencing over the rise of e-books at the expense of their dead-tree predecessors. I understand that there are charms and benefits that are unique to the physical codex, and there are few who appreciate those more than I do. But there…

  • A Song for Eustreptospondylus

    You know what dinosaur has a musical sounding name? Eustreptospondylus. Just say it out loud. I mean, if you can. It's pronounced “you strepped a SPON dull us,” which, coincidentally, is also how you say “My hovercraft is full of eels” in Hungarian. My boy Toby, who just turned 3 last week, is obsessed with…

  • A Guy Walks into a Blog…

    Greetings, folks! I’m Paul, the one referred to in the nice banner up there. I’d been putting a lot of thought into what I might say in my first post here at Freethought Blogs, and then I put in too much, and now I have precious little to say. But let’s be honest — it’s…

  • Best Newspaper Correction in the Universe

    From the New York Times on the declining birthrate of stars: An earlier version of this article misstated the sound made by a black hole in the galaxy NGC 1275. It is that of a B flat 57 octaves below middle C, not 27.

  • Not qualified to answer a question like that

    Many mysteries remain about the origins of the universe; how rapidly it has expanded, and how all the atomic parts fit together. There is a lot left to learn. But not about whether or not the universe was created in seven days. It wasn’t. Rubio is wrong—it is not a dispute for theologians. It is…