At least that’s what I’m assuming they’ll have at the Creation Evidence Expo in Indianapolis, Indiana this weekend.
Nah. I’m fucking with you. It’ll be an exercise in failures of critical thought, blind devotion and ignorance of scientific fact (READ: LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!) and a delectable smorgasbord of logical fallacies.
And Louise Kellar – aka Spa_YediMonster on Twitter – will be there to report on all of it.
I like Twitter. I use Twitter to help me hear about current events, to keep up with friends and to reach larger audiences about my blogging and activism. And Twitter followers are awesome because they let me hear about subjects and ideas that I might not have discovered on my own. You can’t have too many Twitter friends!
I was thinking about that…and right now my brain is in hyper “What gimmicks can I think of to help raise money for SSAweek?” drive and then
I like Twitter followers, I want to reach more people who might enjoy my tweets, and I want an excuse to donate to Secular Student Alliance. I think I’m on to something here…
So, this morning I sent out this tweet:
I just check at lunch and I had accrued 24 new followers! Not bad, not bad. But then I did the math and realized that that is only $2.40. That’s just not going to do. And really, isn’t your follow worth more than a dime (your follow is priceless, but my bank account is not, sadly)? So just now I sent this out:
I’m applying that 25 cents value to all previous follows, and in the time it’s taken me to write this I’ve gained eight more, bringing us up to 32 followers = $8.
It’s a start. Will you help me reach my $50 goal? Follow me @abiodork and spread the word!
P.S. My 24 hour blogathon to support SSA Week starts in less than 48 hours!
Welcome back to the internet, everyone! Did you miss it? I missed it, but there were a couple of amusing highlights:
1) @herpderpedia – User @qrush made this Twitter account, which acted as a repository for all of the tweets from people freaking out about Wikipedia going dark. The F*bomb was dropped quite a bit, many users mourned the “death” of Wikipedia with RIPs, and there were frantic queries from students about how they were supposed to finish reports. If you suffer from an overflow of hope for the human race, this will bring you back down with a healthy shot of cynicism.
WTF, Wikipedia!? How am I supposed to graduate now? Thanks for nothing! Image source
2) #FactsWithoutWikipedia was a hilarious timesuck. People created stories, lies, satire and other “facts” about life, the universe and everything. And of course, a quick Wikipedia search was unable to dispel any of these during the blackout.
3) After a full day of laughing at those afflicted with #herpderpedia, I went to put together my write-up for this weekend’s interview with Sean Faircloth on Atheists Talk radio, and I had a moment of panic when I clicked on the bookmark of his wikipedia page and was denied.
Okay, it was a very quick moment of panic, because there were very simple work-arounds for getting to Wikipedia yesterday (after all the point was to raise consciousness about SOPA and PIPA, not to deny people access to the site). But, I decided to get my information the “old-fashioned” by going to the electronic sources of the information that Wikipedia articles mine to get their information. You know, the number two and three results that come up when you Google a subject.
Wikipedia has a page up now with their estimates of the success of the blackout. From Wikipedia:
Was the blackout successful?
The English Wikipedia joined thousands of other web sites in protesting SOPA and PIPA by blacking out its content for 24 hours. The purpose of the blackout was twofold: to raise public awareness, and to encourage people to share their views with their elected representatives.
During the blackout:
- More than 12,000 people commented on the Wikimedia Foundation’s blog post announcing the blackout. A breathtaking majority supported the blackout.
- More than 162 million saw the Wikipedia blackout page.
- More than eight million looked up their elected representatives’ contact information via the Wikipedia tool.
- Anti-SOPA and PIPA topics began trending globally on Twitter immediately after the blackout began. Hashtags included #factswithoutwikipedia, #SOPAstrike, and #wikipediablackout. At one point, #wikipediablackout constituted 1% of all tweets, and SOPA accounted for a quarter-million tweets hourly during the blackout.
- A quick search of “SOPA blackout” on Google News produced more than 8,000 links as of this writing.
The page also reiterates some of the basic information about the bills, what we can to do keep up-to-date on SOPA and PIPA as they progress through Congress, and next steps that we can take in working to defeat SOPA/PIPA.
Wikipedia wasn’t the only site that went dark in protest of SOPA/PIPA. How was you day affected by yesterday’s blackouts?
So, this was a heck of a weekend.
Saturday marked the end of my 30DaysofBiking, so no more posts about bike rides to the grocery store or McFlurry runs. I know…you’re crazy disappointed. It was a good experience, especially because I was pushed to ride in weather that I normally would have avoided. Now I may be less likely to skip traveling by bike in the face of inclement weather; riding in rain wasn’t really that big of a deal. I’m still probably not going to be a winter rider, though.
On Sunday we braved the cold to see the Heart of the Beast Theater’s (HOBT) May Day Parade on Bloomington Avenue in Minneapolis. We arrived early – 11:45am (we rode our bikes even though it May 1st and I was like 30daysofbiking is totally over and I don’t have to ride if I don’t want to but parking is going to suck so let’s bike) – to stake out a spot and watch the crowd arrive. There’s always great people-watching at the May Day Parade. I think I viewed most of the parade through the lens of my camera since this is the first time I’ve gone with the fancy DSLR. Of course that means I came home with about 500 photos, which may take a day or two to filter through.
And then there was the twitter explosion at about 9:20pm last night. I’ve learned about huge breaking news on twitter more times than I can count now. The most recent instances that burn in my memory are the riots in Egypt, the attempted assasination of Gabrielle Giffords, the earthquake in Japan, and now the death of Osama bin Laden. Last night someone tweeted a message to this effect: “Daddy, where were you when you found out about OBL?” “On the couch in my underwear with some cheetos and my iPhone, honey.” Oy, so true.
I’m not really processing the whole “hey, that terrorist leader who we’ve spent almost 10 years tracking is finally dead” thing that everyone is going on about today. My first reaction last night was shock, then joy that we had finally achieved our goal, then a sharing of elation, good cheer and snark on twitter (Trump wanting to see the death certificate, the undermining of the royal honeymoon, how President Obama must have been giggling at the Correspondent’s dinner, etc.), and a fleeting feeling of vindication for the victims of 9/11, the service members who have died or been injured in the search for bin Laden, the civilians in the Middle East who have died as a result of the last 10 years of conflict. Then I felt grief for all of the loss of life, the waste that has happened, and will probably continue to happen. I followed that up with a solid five minutes of overanalyzing all of my reactions of the past hour.
It’s good that we’ve officially closed this chapter, and now I’m waiting to see what the fallout is going to be. It IS a huge effing deal, and I want to see how this new information going to affect our men and women serving in the Middle East, how it’s going to affect our nation’s budget and priorities, the upcoming elections in 2012, and people’s perception of terrorism, security, the United States, Islam, President Obama, the military, the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has been a huge part of our lives…what’s going to happen now? Sorry, no words of wisdom or deep insights. Just questions today.
Very, very funny. And cute. And funny. This is only the first two screens, but the rest of the correspondence was collected by Matter Anti-Matter, which has a lot of posts that I find amusing. Check her out!
