Darla the She-Goat

I'm still too busy to blog anything serious this month, so here's something easy. The following appeared in the December 2007 issue of the Atheists United newsletter, Rational Alternative (whose tagline reads: "Defying the idea that ethics come from God since 1982"). I punched this out in my spare time at the special request of the editor (who happens to be kin), as an essay entitled "Ethics

The Postmusical Age II

Last year I wrote about what I mean by our living in a Postmusical Age, and then listed a lot of my favorite new music to exemplify the trend. I have a really hectic month coming up and won't have much time to blog (indeed I won't even be home most of the time), so one thing I thought I'd do is talk about some more new music I'm loving lately. Light fare, you know. Just consider this an appendix

Appearing in Indianapolis

In addition to my upcoming appearances this February in San Francisco, I will also be appearing as the featured speaker for the Third Annual Darwin Day Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, sponsored by the Center For Inquiry Indiana and the IUPUI Freethinkers on Saturday, March 8 (2008). The all-day event runs from 8am to 4pm in the IUPUI Campus Center (420 University Blvd.) at Indiana

I Saw a UFO

I saw Kenneth Arnold's flying saucers. No kidding. Don't believe me? Here's my story... The Ovoids of Oxnard It was a bright, sunny day in 1993. Oxnard. California. I was riding my bicycle along a highway to the north and looked up and saw a formation of about twenty ovoid objects flying in formation. They were rotating along their axis of motion, like footballs, with one side black and one

Dissertation Done

Evidently good news to some, a horror to others, but...My dissertation "Attitudes toward the Natural Philosopher in the Early Roman Empire (100 B.C. to 313 A.D.)" has been accepted for formal defense. Five leading professors at Columbia University are reading it now (two of whom having already acknowledged its readiness for defense), and the department is scheduling a defense date, which will

Craig the Annoyed

Many fans have been telling me for weeks about William Lane Craig's childish rant against me on his radio show Dr. Craig's Current Events Audio Blog. Now that my dissertation has been accepted for defense (I'll blog on that in a week or two), I finally found time to listen to it. It is kind of sad. But it's the sort of petty and bigoted belittling I hear many Christians launch against whoever or

Appearing in San Francisco

I will be speaking at two separate events in San Francisco in late February (yes, 2008 is just around the corner!).First I will be delivering a new-and-improved version of my old (and ever-popular) talk on Miracles and the Historical Method, which mixes a little humor with a lot of education on how to apply a whole "tool kit" of historical methods on any claim about history, using ancient miracle