Quick Hitts

I deal with Christmas differently than most atheists.
I celebrate it. I put up lights and a tree and give gifts and say “Merry Christmas” and mean it. I’ve played Santa Claus on several occasions, with the full costume, enjoyed it, and will probably do it again.
Devout Christians rail against how secular the holiday [...]

I’ve subscribed to Wired for years. At a buck an issue, it makes for good bathroom reading. If it goes up to a buck and a quarter, though, I’ll let my subscription lapse.
You can study good design by A) studying good design and learning from it and B) studying really bad design and [...]

I’m working on a project that needs some into, outro, and background music. I’d like to use music that sounds like music from the late 80’s: Bands like Ah Ha, Supertramp, The Eurymithics and maybe a hair band or two. Since this will be distributed as a podcast, it has to have a [...]

The Republican Part is in shambles. They are now a minority in congress, and more importantly, they’re regarded as far-right fundamentalists by many Americans. They’ve allowed the fundies to take over the party, and the results have been disastrous.
They’ve abandoned their core principles. They claim to be the party of small government, [...]

I swear I’m not going out looking for stories about cops shooting dogs. They’ve just become so common that I stumble across them every couple of weeks in the course of casual surfing.
This time it was in Pittsburgh. A sheriff’s deputy, looking to serve papers on someone, went into the wrong backyard, where [...]

The 1969 Woodstock Festival was the defining moment of my generation. Nearly a half million people attended, and twelve million of them will eagerly tell you about being there.
I’m wondering if the inauguration of Obama will be this generation’s defining moment. How many hundreds of thousands of people will be crowding the capital [...]

It’s over.  Finally!  I enjoy the theater of politics (and am fully aware that it is nothing but theater) but this was like watching Warhol’s movie “Empire” (a single eight hour shot of the Empire State building) without taking a pee break.
The Good
In every election there is fraud, chicanery and a bit of honest [...]

More than a half century ago Emma Goldman said “If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.”
Now we’re all being encouraged to vote vote vote, rock the vote, get out the vote, make your heard, push for change, to blah blah blah blah blah…
I used to think people who didn’t vote had no right to [...]

My company just laid off about 20% of their workforce, and I was one of the causalities. Now I get to go job hunting in an economy that’s sinking faster than Palin’s image as a folksy soccer mom. Oh joy.
This is the reality of working in IT. For every IT worker [...]

I don’t care how lonesome I get.  I can’t imagine ever, ever using this Canadian dating service.

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Here’s a list of things atheists didn’t do over the past month or so.
An Atheist did not set fire to his 11 year old niece for wearing lipstick. She has burns over 90% of her body and is not expected to survive.
No atheist decreed it was OK to kill the owners of Satellite TV [...]

I’ve always loved explosions. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve blowing things up, sometimes with commercial fireworks, sometimes with homemade fireworks, sometimes just by misusing common devices and/or chemicals. (Back then, there were real chemicals in chemistry sets.) If you’re a male you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Back when I [...]

New York City Mayor, Uber-nanny and full time scumbag Mike Bloomburg stood by term limits - until they would have affected him.
He put hundreds of venues and thousands of employees out of business with a smoking ban. Then he went after restaurant menus. But two terms hasn’t been long enough enough to [...]

I’m not even looking for these stories.  They’re so common I’ve been stumbling across them without effort. 
Via Windypundent here’s yet another story of a Thug in Blue shooting a dog for no reason.  The dog runs up to him, which is what dogs do when a stranger comes on his property, but doesn’t look [...]

The great Documentary Animal House taught us that “Fat Drunk and Stupid is no way to go through life.” But removing “drunk” from the equation doesn’t result in an noticeable improvement:

There’s a new episode of the Quick Hitts Podcast available for your listening pleasure.  Get it while it’s hot and fresh. 
It’s titled - Bullies Always Win, because, well, they just do.  We see it around us every day - Banking Bullies, Stock Broker Bullies, Insurance Bullies, Lawyer Bullies and especially Government Bullies.  They may [...]

Lately I’ve been doing spectacularly lousy at poker.  My bankroll was down to 20% of what I started with.  I was paying $2.00 Sit-n-Gos, and I was losing them more often than not.  I was getting disgusted and bored and tired of the whole thing.
Full Tilt announced Matrix Tournaments, which give you four sit-n-gos for [...]

There’s an e-mail floating around warning people to vote on the correct day. Since a huge turnout is expected, it says, Republican’s should vote on Tuesday and Democrats and Independents should vote on Wednesday.
I’m guessing there are fuming lefties who see this as part of a vast conspiracy to screw people out of their [...]

John McCain helped pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a gift to the RIAA at the expense of his constituents.  He wasn’t alone - the act passed unanimously. 
Now he’s getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor.  YouTube has been yanking his videos as soon as someone makes a copyright complaint, as required by [...]