Rum and Reason

I love red state updatae. Jackie and Dunlap fill us in on the latest.

Richard Dawkins appeared in Real Time with Bill Maher last night, and there’s a video up on youtube. Let’s see how long it hangs around for. There’s a lot of controversy over Maher’s reciept of the Richard Dawkins award this year. Read more about that here. Maher may be a nutjob ‘big pharma’ conspiracy theorist, but he made religulous, so we gotta like him just a little don’t we?

Our friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta has made my dreams come true by enlightening us to the availability of the infamous Smith Cotton High School Tiger Pride Marching Band t-shirt with evolutionary imagery that was so ridiculously ruled offensive on religious grounds at a high school band event. Read more about the story at Hemant’s blog or contact Main Street Logo to buy your own piece of ridiculous history!

UPDATE:

This shirt is available now from the website http://www.hayseedshirts.com/shirts.php

I’m a big fan of Tim Kilgore. He’s an ex-Jehovah’s Witness who has devoted his spare time to asking the tough questions on Youtube that the JW’s don’t seem particularly eager to answer. Tim is a new father and a genuine guy who is clearly out to enlighten as opposed to being out to ridicule. You can find Tim’s channel here. Here’s the introduction video to a now 69 part series entitled “Tough Questions for Jehovah’s Witnesses”. Enjoy!

One of my favorite youtube atheists Pat Condell has returned with a video entitled “The arrogance of clergy“. As usual Pat is in fine form, eloquent and insightful with a dash of anger. Preach it Pat! God bless atheism!

Pat offers audio versions of his youtube videos at  http://patcondell.libsyn.com/

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has tipped us off to a brilliant blog in which the voyage of the HMS Beagle, or more specifically Darwin’s account of the voyage, is being posted in good ol modern blog form for us to follow at our leisure.  On the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s ‘On The Origin of Species’ this innovative exploration of the voyage which lead to science’s most important discovery comes as a welcome and fascinating diversion from the troubles of modern times.

Check out the blog over at thebeaglevoyage.com and subscribe!

After finding out http://www.rumandreason.com was taken by a foodie blogger somewhere in the Bahamas, I decided to bite the bullet and register the .net version anyway. That’s how great I thought my clever website name was. So why rum and reason? I drink a lot of rum, and I believe in critical thinking and the promotion of reason as a virtue. Do join me, won’t you?

Cheers!