#SSJCon: Humanism and Hip Hop

This is part of my coverage of the Secular Social Justice Conference this past January in Houston. I raised money to get me to the conference to report out because conferences like these cover topics that are rarely talked about in the movement. I also raised money to get Josiah Mannion to the conference to take photos. You can see his full conference photoset. If you appreciate the work we do, we’re also raising money cover a portion of our costs to do the same for the Women in Secularism conference in September. You’ll find a donation button at the end of this post.

After opening remarks, which I’ll cover in a post summarizing the experience of attending the conference, we split off into two sessions. Josiah took pictures in the “Humanism and Hip Hop” session, because you can’t keep him away from that. I covered “Feminism(s) of Color” for much the same reason.

Humanism and Hip Hop
Monica Miller, Lehigh University
Jason Jeffries, Rice Univ.
Xan Wright, HBN
Moderator: Tony Pinn

This was a well-attended session but most of the tweeters were in the other session. I watched the panel and added my reflections/encapsulations here to the tweets of the people in the room. Hopefully they’ll whet your appetite to watch the whole thing. You’ll find the full video of the panel at the bottom of this post. You may need to watch it more than once, because I’ve never seen anyone talking about humanist hip hop in a way that was anything less than richly dense with information and overturned assumptions. Continue reading “#SSJCon: Humanism and Hip Hop”

#SSJCon: Humanism and Hip Hop
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#SSJCon: Feminism(s) of Color and the Secular Movement

This is part of my coverage of the Secular Social Justice Conference this past January in Houston. I raised money to get me to the conference to report out because conferences like these cover topics that are rarely talked about in the movement. I also raised money to get Josiah Mannion to the conference to take photos. You can see his full conference photoset. If you appreciate the work we do, we’re also raising money cover a portion of our costs to do the same for the Women in Secularism conference in September. You’ll find a donation button at the end of this post.

After opening remarks, which I’ll cover in a post summarizing the experience of attending the conference, we split off into two sessions. Josiah took pictures in the “Humanism and Hip Hop” session, because you can’t keep him away from that. I covered “Feminism(s) of Color” for much the same reason.

Feminism(s) of Color and the Secular Movement
Deanna Adams
Maggie Ardiente, AHA
Heina Dadabhoy, Freethought Blogs
AJ Word, Secular Sistahs
Moderator: Sikivu Hutchinson\

This session was a great one to start the conference with because it demonstrated so many of its strengths. For a movement that prides itself on challenging ingrained ideas, what we actually see is a lot of people getting shouted down the moment they say something that makes others uncomfortable. This wasn’t a comfortable panel. It included several ideas that will make people mad. It’s interesting that it takes a conference like this to allow those ideas to be aired and heard and considered.

I included my tweets and the tweets of several others to give you a sense of what people were reacting to and how. Hopefully they’ll whet your appetite to watch the whole thing. You’ll find the full video of the panel at the bottom of this post. Continue reading “#SSJCon: Feminism(s) of Color and the Secular Movement”

#SSJCon: Feminism(s) of Color and the Secular Movement

“Kelly McCullough on Building Religion through Stories” on The Humanist Hour

This week, I sat down with my friend Kelly to have a discussion we’ve held off having for a few years now about approaching religion as a storyteller who doesn’t believe.

Kelly McCullough is a fantasy and science fiction author with twelve novels under his belt to date. Despite being raised outside religion, his work often focuses on what it means to exist in a world where gods are real. In his WebMage series, McCullough’s protagonist is the descendant of one of the Greek Fates. His Fallen Blade series follows what happens when the goddess of justice is killed by the other gods in her pantheon.

This week, Kelly McCullough talks to Stephanie Zvan about why he explores the themes of religion in his books. He also talks about having accidentally created a religion outside his writing and how he managed to become one of those nearly mythical atheist politicians in the U.S.

You can listen to the podcast here.

“Kelly McCullough on Building Religion through Stories” on The Humanist Hour

Help Me Report on Women in Secularism

I’m looking for people who want to make it easier for me to report what happens at this year’s Women in Secularism conference in Washington, D.C. in September. If that’s all you need to hear, this donation button is for you. Otherwise, read on.




I’ve asked your help for this sort of thing before. Late last year, I asked for your help to get to and cover the Secular Social Justice conference in Houston.

I’m not really in a position to offer individual rewards to donors, but if you make it possible for me to go, you can follow along as I and my phone and my trusty backup battery tweet the conference. For those not on Twitter, I’ll also produce session reports here based around those tweets and others from attendees, plus comments on ideas that were too complex to be compressed.

I also asked for your help to get Josiah Mannion there to take pictures. Continue reading “Help Me Report on Women in Secularism”

Help Me Report on Women in Secularism

Everything Is Horrid and Still I Hope and Work

The Democratic National Convention happened recently, of course. Even if you don’t live in the U.S., it was nearly impossible to miss this or to miss seeing how utterly different it ws from the Republican National Convention the week before.

Photo of a branch of bleeding hearts with filter applied to enhance reds and yellows.
Crop of “My Red Bleeding Hearts” by Diane Beckwith-Zink Photography, CC BY 2.0

One of the major differences was that the speeches brought joy and hope to most of those watching. I won’t say there were no positive emotions engendered by the RNC, but they were the exception. Fear, anger, jealousy, and hatred were the order of the day. The DNC? Many people had forgotten they could cry healing tears over politics. They remembered watching the convention in Philadelphia.

I also won’t say there were no negative emotions inspired by the DNC. Obviously, some people were in mourning for the political dreams they had tied up in Bernie Sanders. Some people were in despair because they believed the primary election was stolen from them. (It wasn’t.) Some people were frustrated as their positions and priorities weren’t completely shared.

Some people, though, were angry and scared that Hillary Clinton won’t solve problems that are life and death to them. For them, the convention meant screaming and crying and watching others celebrate as they did. And when they saw celebrations, when they saw tears of joy, they wondered whether anyone saw what they saw in the world. They wondered whether anyone cared. Continue reading “Everything Is Horrid and Still I Hope and Work”

Everything Is Horrid and Still I Hope and Work

Saturday Storytime: Traumphysik

This is fine. I’m okay with the events that are currently unfolding, as is the protagonist of this story from Monica Byrne.

When I was finished cataloging everything, I did something I now regret. I carried one of the little pigs—a female, who was quite docile, and seemed happy to go for a ride—into the surf. I wanted to see if it could swim. I thought it must be able to swim, the species being so proximate to water, even though its ancestors were likely ship-borne vermin.

So I carried it down into the surf until I was knee-deep. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have gone so far out. I let it down into the water. At that moment, a wave of unusual force slapped my midsection and I fell into the water. I lost sight of the little pig. Then I glimpsed it again, underwater, twitching and writhing and sinking, clearly unable to swim. I reached for it but just then, another wave slapped me back, leaving me even more disoriented than before. I lost sight of it altogether this time. I didn’t recover it, or even see it again.

I felt quite bad. Maybe I should stick to physics.

In my dream last night, I managed to stand up in front of the full-length mirror I’d positioned at the foot of my mat. (The Navy sent it with me. Of course I must have a full-length mirror. God forbid I should be unaware of my appearance.) I was very intrigued to see that my image was not inverted—the MIT insignia on my nightshirt read MIT, not TIM as it does normally in waking life. I remember receiving that nightshirt my sophomore year; it was a gift from Professor Gaertner—-the wife Sofia, not the husband Bernhard; I should clarify, as they both bear that title—who thought I might be lonely as one of the only coeds at the Institute. I appreciated that.

And now here I stood, wearing the same nightshirt, noticing how MIT stayed MIT. This is the first deviation from known physics in waking reality.

In honor of the Gaertners’ German heritage, I’ve decided to call my experiment (and the universe it elucidates and its attendant systems) Traumphysik, which sounds more rigorous than “dream-physics.” Everything sounds more rigorous in German. Continue reading “Saturday Storytime: Traumphysik”

Saturday Storytime: Traumphysik

The Death of Jelly and Birth of Religion

It’s a strange thing, as an atheist, to be in on the early days of a religion. It’s even more strange when that religion is started by other atheists and when it grows mostly through the actions of yet more nonbelievers. Then, one day, you find yourself building a shrine.

My friend Kelly McCullough wrote an essay at Uncanny Magazine talking about how he’s created religions both on purpose–as a writer–and more or less accidentally–as someone who likes to throw a party and has weird friends.

Chris—still foolishly possessed of the idea that if it was in the fridge, it had probably at one time been food—was deeply disturbed by this discovery. But after a while, he worked up his nerve, prodded the alien life form with a fork, and discovered it was harmless. However, this experience made him very cautious when he approached the rest of the contents of the fridge, which turned out to consist of one never–opened jar of red currant jelly which had expired some two years before his arrival.

When I finally returned from my wanderjar, Chris naturally enough wanted to share the tale of his adventures in my apartment, and to question me about the candle (now tucked away in a box in a cabinet—but still unidentified) and the jelly. After some careful inspection of the items in question and dusting off of old memories, I was able to identify the candle. But the jelly defied my powers of memory.

Or, at least, that is one explanation. However, since I have never in my entire life eaten red currant jelly, nor to my knowledge has it ever been a staple in my family’s household, I have darker suspicions. I tend to believe that it condensed out of the mysterious cosmic stuff of missing hangers and lost socks, and that it happened some time between when I left the house on my trip and when Chris arrived a day later—and that it is possessed of inhuman and sinister motivations.

And so, I have never opened it or discarded it—for fear that someone else might open it. Instead, once a year—near the expiration date listed on the jar—we bring it out and throw a festival to appease it.

That time has come again.

Yeah, I’m one of those weird friends. No, I don’t believe a jar of expired jelly that spends the bulk of its year sitting in a fridge in a bag labeled, “Do not open or throw away”, is going to wreak havoc if we don’t bring worshipful offerings. I still tell people I’m going to “appease a jar of jelly” when I head out to the party. I still built the thing a shrine. Continue reading “The Death of Jelly and Birth of Religion”

The Death of Jelly and Birth of Religion

“Alix Jules on the Politics of Racial Resentment” on The Humanist Hour

For this week’s show, I sat down with Alix Jules to talk about racial resentment in national and movement politics.

The 2016 U.S. presidential election has turned into something that wasn’t supposed to be able to happen anymore. We’re supposed to be past this kind of open racism, yet here we are. So much for living in a “post-racial” America.

Alix Jules is a secular activist, writer, and sometimes co-host on Dogma Debate. He’s also on the advisory council of American Humanist Association’s Black Humanist Alliance. This week, he joins us to talk about the politics of racial resentment. We’ll talk about Alix’s visit to a Trump rally, but acknowledge that racial resentment reaches far beyond one party or candidate. We’ll also discuss Alix’s experience trying to talk about racial issues within the secular movement.

Please be aware that the final segment of the show contains mention of a racial slur.

You can listen to the podcast here.

“Alix Jules on the Politics of Racial Resentment” on The Humanist Hour

Minneapolis 2016 Sample Primary Ballot

Minnesota primaries are next Tuesday, August 9. You can find out where to vote and what your choices will be from the Secretary of State.

Close-up photo of an "I Voted" sticker with an American flag.
“I Voted!” by Vox Efx, CC BY 2.0

Every election, I share my candidate and issue research and my choices in each contest. Why? Because I have the time to do that research. Because some people trust my political judgment. Because even those who don’t will find it easier to make their decisions with the links here. Because I want people to have a model for how others make political decisions. Because every election, people are looking for this information.

This year’s ballot is pretty short. We don’t have state or city elections, and the presidential nominating process is over. It’s still important. Congressional representatives determine what our new president will be able to do. An immense amount happens in our state legislature. I hate that we vote for judges, but as long as we’re given that power, we have to use it well.

So here are my research, reasoning, and choices for my primary ballot. Continue reading “Minneapolis 2016 Sample Primary Ballot”

Minneapolis 2016 Sample Primary Ballot

Mock the Movie: Moral Panic Edition

Blame Pokémon Go.

There we were, bullshitting on Twitter about the inevitable backlash deriving from a simple video game being virally popular. I made a crack about Mock the Movie being ready for the moral panic movie whenever it came out, and someone asked whether we’d ever mocked Mazes and Monsters. Weirdly enough, the answer was “No.” So it’s time to fix that. This is the movie that would be known as Tom Hanks’ lead film debut if it weren’t instead known for being overwhelmingly paranoid about a game.

This was a television movie, so we don’t have a trailer to share with you. Instead, have this lovely little clip as a teaser.

This one is available on YouTube. Continue reading “Mock the Movie: Moral Panic Edition”

Mock the Movie: Moral Panic Edition