I am going to piss off some people I respect here, but I think PZ's conduct is reprehensible.

OK, let's enjoy ourselves with this one.

A tipsy meandering about Obama at a friendly venue.

The rant of one citizen.

Blue Gal the Great and I over at Crablaw are promoting the Take Back the Blog 2008 effort this year.  The PROBLEM is that Blue Gal and I are BOTH inconveniences by our respective home sales and relocations that are happening - you &(*#&$ing guessed it - NEXT WEEKEND when the event is to take place.

In short, we need some (s)heroes, some feminist black-belt bloggers to step up and PROMOTE the heck out of this event. We need YOU to help.  Please help.  If you call yourself a feminist, please do what a feminist would do: step up in the name of justice for women.  

If secular humanists drew and erected icons, who would be on their iconostasis?

Many of us hear autism discussed in the third person.  "My neighbor has an autistic kid," "I read about so-and-so", "my nephew's autistic."  While that's fine, it seems we might do well to listen to autistic people themselves, rather than their enlightened or condescending family members, friends, or corporate-funded "advocacy" groups.

So here are a few voices you may not have heard.

A lot of Kossacks will have occasion - for a rally, an academic degree, a conference or visiting friends - to visit Washington, DC.  I certainly hope that if you visit, you have a good time and that you use Metro whenever possible to get around.  The system, while not perfect, is excellent.  However, not everyone who uses Metro thinks it through, knows its peculiarities or limits or, frankly, ever thought to give a damn about it.  Commuters who need their paycheck think about it a LOT.

This is designed to help you a) get where you are going quickly and b) not foul up the commutes of people who work insane hours to feed their children, often commuting by three or more vehicles each way.  

My commute is 50 miles and my work day is 10 hours on the clock; that's 14.5 hours daily.  In my house of four, I am the sole paycheck.  If it appears that I have a nasty attitude about people who disrespect the system or wreck its efficiency with their misuse of the service, it's because two disabled children await me at the end of the day, and if you don't jam my tightly-scheduled commute or my job clock, I can both earn all of my pay and kiss my kids goodnight.  I am not unusual; the Metro has 250,000 "me's" on it daily.

Have a safe trip.

When we face the likelihood of at least a semi-brokered convention, there will come a point at which one candidate, through surrogates, will ask another, "What will it take to make you concede the most important thing in your life for the past two years, maybe your entire life?"  What range of possible answers exists for that question?

The starred word above is "Jokes."  A circle joke is a joke told amidst others in a circle of joke-tellers, in which all of the listeners stare at each other, half-embarrassed to be there but they find they just cannot leave it alone.  Circle-jokers get competitive about something that was never meant to be competitive in the first place.  Sad.  You'd think if they just found the right person, they could all have good, non-competitive humor in private....

This is a re-publish - on the request of a prior non-sockpuppet commenter - of a diary that I published at perhaps a bad time two weeks ago.  The topic is sexual violence, predation, harassment and intimidation of women both online and in so-called real life.  If you know about either the Take Back the Night Marches, OR last year's Take Back the Blog 2007 event, OR would like to learn more, read on.

I promise you a candidate-free diary, if you promise to read about this issue.  You know you deserve a non-candidate diary and that you want a non-candidate diary.  

Deal?  Deal.  Thanks, and keep reading about some NON-candidate good news on an important issue.  If you think that people could use a break from candidate diary monotony, please consider recommending this diary.  My name is Bruce Godfrey, and I wrote with this message, to hell with "approving" it.

One soggy blogger's take on a wet night in Maryland

I support Barack Obama and am superficially pleased that Hillary Clinton will be (reportedly) trying to move more of her effort for Tuesday's "Potomac Primary" across the river into Virginia and leaving Maryland alone.  But I also have some concerns.

Senators Jamie Raskin and Richard Madaleno have introduced into the Maryland Senate the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, as have a number of delegates (SB 290/HB 351).  This bill would codify what is already settled constitutional law: the right of a religious institution not to participate in any marriage or other religious ceremony; equally importantly, it will reverse the Maryland statutes barring the marriage of same-sex couples and allow them to marry under the same terms as opposite-sex couples.

This will be a tough sell, but here's how you can help - NOW.

A call to arms in support of decency, autonomy and justice.  PLEASE NOTE AND ALERT: may be a severe TRIGGER EVENT for multiple forms of PTSD for assault survivors or others.

A brief peek into one secularist's alma mater, an ass-kicking that never happened and the moral hazards of sexual obsession.

The 12/12 edition of our continuing examination of news and events from a secular perspective.

A few recent examples point out how far we who advocate secular viewpoints have to go.