Quickies

Skepchick Quickies, 4.12

Jen

Jen is a writer and web designer/developer in Columbus, Ohio. She spends too much time on Twitter at @antiheroine.

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15 Comments

  1. I must protest. That atheist Barbie makes us atheists look bad. I mean, “no pants to be ready for surprise orgies”? Apparently those orgies don’t just pop up surprisingly, but are extremely short too. Do they really flash past so quickly you don’t even have time to take your pants off before it’s over? That doesn’t speak well of us.

    I’m sorry, but that’s the way I am: I like my universe bleak, my babies medium rare and my orgies looooong and exhausting.

  2. Oh Noes…I did my undergraduate at Murray State University, but I never took a bio class there. Of course one of my engineering profs did a “debate” arguing for ID. Always giving engineers a bad name.

  3. I’m kind of disappointed that the atheist barbie is white. Cute idea otherwise. Emergency use of Snopes…. awesome.

    The article about near-death experiences is incredibly fascinating. The idea of an afterlife was the last belief I was able to let go of when I became an atheist. Still open to it, but I plan to be cryonically frozen so I suppose I may never know.

  4. some trudeau-ites showed up in the comments of that article to show once again that they have no clue about the different branches of government or the laws that regulate courtroom behavior. I wonder, when they have been slapped down so thoroughly in the past, why they are so eager to parade their nonsense around and act as if it is legal expertise.

  5. @Andrés Diplotti:

    What if you show up at home or at another atheist’s house and an orgy is already in progress? Do you want to waste time with pants? No. You want to get to business.

    You’ve obviously not been an atheist for very long.

  6. 1. Atheist Barbie (or Geek Barbie) is still Barbie. Fail.

    2. If anybody is interested, I’m following the McJenny school closing on my blog, Jenny McCarthy’s Teach2Talk Enterprises. I’m more interested in the school angle (it’s hard to start and maintain a school of any kind) rather than the McCarthy angle or the autism angle.

  7. One could, of course, wear tiny, tiny pants that one could rip off delicately as one gave praise to – well, no one – for the orgy.

    Where, I ask, are the condiments for that snack? Plain Baby is just so very bland. A little nam prik pao spices them up nicely.

  8. OK, so Excessive amounts of CO2 may explain NDEs. But what, I ask you, explains the Near Dating Experiences of a friend of mine – the ones where, shortly after the appetiser, his temples begin to pound, his vision tunnels, and his feet try to separate themselves from his body in order to escape more rapidly, as the flower of womanhood opposite him begins to expound on a) Obama’s real birthplace; b) the hidden Gay/Zionist/Alien agenda or c) ask him if he’s found Jesus. Will excessive CO2 explain that, as well? Or can we put that one down to testosterone poisoning?

  9. For a fictional take on the NDEs, read ‘Passage’ by Connie Willis. (The second best book by the best author I know.) A significant theme is the frustrations of genuine scientists trying to do proper research in a field full of woo.

    Our two scientist protagonists meet in a stairwell while trying to hide from the hospital’s NDE Woo-meister, whose idea of research it to describe to NDE experiencers what they should have seen until they agree to it.

    There is also Maisy, a (?about 9 year old?) girl who is a serial NDEer (bad heart) and could be a mascot for this blog. Maisie’s mother is determined that positive thinking is the key to everything, and it will all come out OK so long as you don’t give up. Fortunately her enthusiasm for any new treatment which might help Maisie is restricted to real medicine – although of the experimental unproven potentially dangerous kind. Maisie has a much more realistic outlook, and is quietly coping with the prospect of dying in her own way, by voraciously reading about disasters, especially ones with lots of children. She also finds ways to help the protagonists with research. (Other than by nearly dying multiple times.)

    Warning: mild spoiler for Passage in this link
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Willis

    Huge spoilers everywhere in this one:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passage_(novel)
    but the “Background” section is relevant and spoiler-free:

    Connie Willis’s inspiration for Passage came in part from her mother’s death, when Willis was 12. Willis felt frustrated that relatives and friends tried to comfort her with platitudes, so she wanted to write a novel that dealt with death honestly and could help people understand the process of death and mourning.

    The character of Maurice Mandrake was inspired by Willis’s anger at psychics and mediums who take advantage of vulnerable people

  10. Who has surprise orgies? Threesomes can be spontaneous but you kind of have to put some planning into an orgy.

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