A New Kind of Book About Atheism

It is time to be gauche and promote a book in which my writing appears. It’s called Atheist Voices of Minnesota, and it just came out, not unlike some of the people who contributed to it.

I won’t tell you how good this book is. That isn’t because I don’t think it’s remarkably good. That’s because I don’t expect you to believe I’m anything but biased. Also because there are plenty of people who aren’t in the book who are willing to gush over it. Jennifer Michael Hecht, Hemant Mehta, Dave Silverman, they all like the book and are happy to tell you about it.

Listen to them. They’re right.

What I will tell you instead is that this is an important book. This I say despite my bias for my own work. Truth be told, it would probably be a more important book if I weren’t in it, or PZ or Greta or Greg or Chris Stedman. Why? Because much of the value of the book comes from hearing from people who aren’t the “normal” faces and voices of atheism.

Continue reading “A New Kind of Book About Atheism”

A New Kind of Book About Atheism
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The Math That Frightens Fundamentalists

Maggie Koerth-Baker is science editor at BoingBoing, author of a must-read book on how energy works…and a former fundamentalist. Having met her and interviewed her, I still had no idea about that last part. However, it came in very handy for a post from her yesterday.

All of this is to say that I usually take a fairly blasé attitude towards the “OMG LOOK WHAT THE FUNDIES TEACH KIDS” sort of expose that pops up occasionally on the Internet. It’s hard to be shocked by stuff that you long ago forgot isn’t general public knowledge. You say A Beka and Bob Jones University Press are still freaked about Communism, take big detours into slavery/KKK apologetics, and claim the Depression was mostly just propaganda? Yeah, they’ll do that. Oh, the Life Science textbook says humans and dinosaurs totally hung out and remains weirdly obsessed with bombardier beetles? What else is new?

Well, for me, this is new:

“Unlike the “modern math” theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute….A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory.” — ABeka.com

Wait? What?

That was my response too. I understand why fundamentalists don’t like evolution. It threatens special creation. I get that they don’t like history. It undermines their Christian nation. I had no idea why they would object to set theory.

Now I know, thanks to Maggie. And you can too.

The Math That Frightens Fundamentalists

Amanda Knief on How to Lobby

Sometimes you meet someone whose work you’re a fan of, and it turns out they’re a fan too. That was how meeting Amanda Knief went at the Midwest Freethought Conference this weekend. There was squee. It was good.

And then Amanda, who is the former Government Relations Manager and lobbyist at the Secular Coalition of America and current Administrative Director and In-House Counsel for American Atheists, gave her talk and blew me away. I’ve been to informative talks before. I’ve been to dense talks before. This one was neutron star dense. I lost some of it in my live-tweeting, and there are still nearly 700 words of good advice below. Read it all. Use some of it.

  • Now up, @mzdameanor to explain how to be a secular lobbyist.
  • “Politically active” does not mean yelling at TV commercials.
  • Local officials are largely part-time. Need lobbyists to educate them on relevant issues.
  • Read your local paper. Read the letters to the editor. Contribute by responding to the wackos with something more intelligent.
  • Use opposition as an opportunity to raise the profile of your groups, events, and issues.
  • If you used to be religious or have religious family, you speak the language of your representatives.
  • Consider how your issues more broadly affect others in your area.
  • We focus on elected officials, but we should not neglect our appointed, regulatory officials. What are they doing?
  • Local and state officials are accessible. Meet with them. Many national officials come out of this group.
  • If atheists go to school board meetings, they can have more control over keeping curriculum secular.
  • Zoning commissions control where (tax-free) churches can be located. You can have influence there.
  • “I’m not going to ask if you’re conservative. It’s okay. We’re all friends here. Asking about libertarians just starts arguments.”
  • We can’t neglect those who disagree with us. We can still have influence there.
  • Sometimes you want to share a personal story. Sometimes you want a show of numbers. Decide what you’re trying to do.
  • Lobbying groups are used to working together. They’re not used to us asking to work with them. Fix that.
  • Depending on where you are, you may meet directly with an official, or you may meet a staffer.
  • Keep track of whom you talked to when for ease of follow-up and tracking how long you’ve been asking for a meeting.
  • Be precise and honest about the issues you want to talk about so you’re matched up with the person who can help you.
  • Be prepared to identify everyone in your group for the meeting and their location. Prepare to be Googled.
  • Be nice to *everyone* you meet with. They’re all important.
  • Do your research. Be prepared to summarize *both* sides of your issue.
  • Research your public officials. Check their voting records. Get their newsletters. Find out where they’re coming from.
  • Prepare materials to meet behind. Give background on your group and your issue. Give it to them only at the end of the meeting.
  • Role play your meeting. Do both good and hostile meetings.
  • Let everyone who wants to have a speaking role. Do not let one person in a group dominate.
  • Dress professionally. Show the people you’re meeting with that you’re taking them and the meeting seriously.
  • Don’t ever assume that the gatekeeper at your meeting is unimportant.
  • Have a personal lobbying business card (name, contact info, issue). Don’t identify your group on it unless it is a lobbying organization.
  • Find something to thank the person you’re meeting for to leave a positive impression. Make a personal connection.
  • Ask for the official’s position. Ask them for the action you want. Include it in the leave-behind materials.
  • If @jteberhard can maintain his composure while meeting obstructive officials, you can too. Don’t end up in handcuffs.
  • If you end up with someone who is hostile, you can ask for another meeting with someone who can help you better.
  • Do *not* talk over your meeting until you’re out of the building and alone. Be discreet.
  • Always follow up with a thank you.
  • Find a matter of common importance to use to introduce yourself to a local official. Meet with them on that first.
  • Always emphasize why your issue is important to your official.
  • Want to meet and network with people who will be making decisions? Work/volunteer on political campaigns.
  • If you ask a question at a political event, identify yourself as an atheist when you do.
  • Have a barbeque with friends as a fundraiser for a local candidate. You’re an instant major contributor.
  • A defeatist attitude has never accomplished anything.
  • States have changed election laws this year. Volunteer to help people sort it out and get out the vote.
  • RT @abiodork: At @mzdameanor stresses importance of political involvement “Feel jaded about politics? Suck it up – start volunteering.”
  • If you make the anti-church argument to a zoning board, focus on the practical issues: economic, traffic, etc.
Amanda Knief on How to Lobby

For the Edge the Best Ones Live On

Lack of a rational health care system in the U.S. leads to fewer people willing to take on jobs without predictable income leads to more people competing for a limited number of established jobs. But that’s another post. This post is about the risks artists take to provide us with what we need from them.

I met Scott Lynch at CONvergence by interrupting one of his meals in the hotel lounge. He was having dinner with friends of mine and…well, they were almost done. Seriously, though, he was quite gracious, both then and at a room party later. So it surprises me not at all that he’s putting his dignity on the line for his friends.

You see, Minnesota authors Emma Bull and Steve Brust are ill. Emma has probable thyroid cancer, and Steve appears to share his family history of heart problems. Both need surgery.

Minnesota isn’t an awful state in which to have a major illness like this if you make little enough money, but as my mother discovered with bad knees and diabetes, that coverage only goes so far. There will be bills not covered. There will be time spent doing anything but writing to keep us entertained.

So Scott is proposing to entertain us for money in the meantime. He wants to help his friends. He knows many of us want to help the writers who entertained and inspired us (and if you’re local to Minnesota or on the con circuit, made us dance). He will make it easier to get his work, he will educate us, and he will act silly for us. All we have to do is give a little.

I would be donating without any incentives. I’ve known Steve and Emma for…er, decades, though not terribly well. Beyond that, they’ve made me laugh and cry and dance and think. They’ve served me well for a long time.

I know we have other fans around here too, which is why I’m posting something on the blog. But if you’ve never heard of Emma and Steve, (first, fix that, then) click through to Scott’s blog. Let the pretty man entertain you and make it very pleasant to do some good.

For the Edge the Best Ones Live On

A Nice Place to Work

My husband was informed at work on Friday that his company had just issued this statement:

August 3, 2012 – Minneapolis, MN – Capella University, a private online university headquartered in Minneapolis, announced today that it stands united in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment that would limit the freedom to marry for committed, same-sex couples in our state. Capella is the first major higher education institution to speak out against the amendment and joins Thomson Reuters and Fortune 500 companies General Mills and St. Jude Medical in opposing this freedom-limiting marriage amendment.

Continue reading “A Nice Place to Work”

A Nice Place to Work

Female Privilege and Scientific Qualifications

It’s always so much fun to see how others see me. A little over a year ago, I had a post published in the Scientific American guest blog called “The Politics of the Null Hypothesis“. It discussed the tendency to default to genetic explanations of differences in IQ and the resistance that is shown to any research findings that demonstrate environmental or transient influences on IQ scores. I also noted in this post how odd this tendency is when all of the direct evidence we have is for environmental or transient influences and the replicated evidence for a genetic influence comes from studies that aren’t well-designed to distinguish between environmental and genetic influences.

As you could probably guess, this post didn’t go over well with everyone. In particular, Bryan Pesta, who has a long history of suggesting I shouldn’t talk about IQ and a brief history of studying racial differences in IQ, took it as another opportunity to tell me I should shut up. He tried to credit me with several statements I hadn’t made, attacked a bunch of irrelevancies, and went with the “How can you question decades of science?!” stance.

That’s become a favorite tactic of Pesta’s since then. “Who are you to question how things are done?” “Ooh, better get that into a peer-review journal right away so you can set the entire scientific world straight!” [I paraphrase.]

Recently, he took this one step further. Continue reading “Female Privilege and Scientific Qualifications”

Female Privilege and Scientific Qualifications

The Long, Slow Build

Pacing is always a concern for storytellers. You don’t want to go too quickly, lest you skip something important. You don’t want to get bogged down in the details, lest your readers yawn and wander off somewhere.

There is an extra concern when you’re talking about real-world events and cannot control the order in which they happened or the spacing of the interesting bits, as in telling stories about science. When your science writer in question is talking about events that happen at–literally–a geologic pace, things get even harder.

Dana Hunter has just finished a series on her Scientific American blog, called “Prelude to a Catastrophe”, that proves she’s up to the task of meeting all these challenges. It helps that she loves her topic, and it helps that we all know that there is an explosion coming. Still, the talent is all Dana’s.

The topic of her series? Continue reading “The Long, Slow Build”

The Long, Slow Build

A Minor Mystery

We have these interesting exit signs in the hallways at work.

Can you spot what makes this odd?

If you don’t see it immediately, focus on the reflection of the back of the sign. Look at the top of the sign itself, where you can see all of the mounting plaque.

Yes, the transparent sign has a reflection of the back that doesn’t match up with what we see on the front.

I tweeted this sign about a week ago and had several people very confused. Josh the SpokesGay accused me of hurting his head. (Sorry, Josh.) A few of us, including my husband, worked it through together.

First off, everyone trusted that I’d presented a fair puzzle. That was helpful. Then we started reverse-engineering the thing.

Continue reading “A Minor Mystery”

A Minor Mystery

Saturday Storytime: Ironheart

There are probably two ways to be a nuclear reactor operator. The first would be to avoid thinking, on a visceral level, about what disaster would mean. The second would be to become comfortable with dark places and consequences. Alec Austin seems to have done the latter.

“Dead men shouldn’t scream,” Marya muttered at Kade from the next cot over, her eyes glittering like funeral jade in the bunker’s dimness. “Or have panic dreams, or sweat. You reek, did you know that?”

“They were cutting me open,” Kade said, drawing a shuddering breath.

When Marya spoke again, her voice was gentler. “You were dead at the time, Kade. Really dead, until they replaced your heart with a necropotence engine. Let the dream go. You have enough nightmares without inventing new ones.”

Kade nodded once, in acquiescence. As Marya rolled over, the impact of a shell landing nearby rattled the bunker, but neither of them deigned to notice it. Welcome to the Front, Kade thought as their lantern oscillated on its hook, making his shadow sway from wall to wall. The Front, where shells fell like rain, and men and Sidhe died like mayflies. The Front, where replacing his heart with an engine of spelled steel that could revive him when he died almost seemed sane and reasonable.

I hate this place, Kade thought, but the thought was worn and tired. Of course he hated it here, amidst the mud and the corpses. Anyone would hate it.

Anyone but your sister, a traitorous part of him whispered, and Kade shuddered and closed his eyes.

Like Marya said, he had enough nightmares already.

Keep reading.

Saturday Storytime: Ironheart

A Week at Jesus Camp

Alex Gabriel is a braver man than I am. Throwaway joke aside, he just finished doing something I couldn’t do myself. He spent a week at a charismatic Christian conversion camp. *shudders*

In my defense, growing up without religion means I didn’t build any filters for a lot of what they say. I never spent any time rationalizing why hating sin doesn’t mean hating me. I didn’t develop any counters for their tactics aside from sheer rejections. Everything about highly religious culture is raw and obvious and personal and grating.

Even after growing up with religion and rejecting it, Alex didn’t have the easiest time of it at camp. These events are designed to break down filters. They are meant to get personal. And the leader of the camp has made it quite clear that he is hostile to at least one of Alex’s particular “sins”.

Alex went anyway. Continue reading “A Week at Jesus Camp”

A Week at Jesus Camp