Blogathon raises $5,483 for the Secular Student Alliance!

Thanks to all of you, Blogathon was a massive success! We ended up raising a whopping $5,483.01 for the Secular Student Alliance! That’s going to fund a whole lot of secular activism. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
As a geeky side note…I’d like to point out that now that we have three Blogathon data points, the amount donated has such a perfect linear fit that the R squared value is 0.9999. Of course, I purposefully set a linear donation goal for this year, so that may have influenced how much people donated. In that case, I should have set the goal to $10,000!

Tomorrow I’ll email those of you who won a copy of Michael Shermer’s book. But until then, I’m still recovering. Heck, I don’t even entirely remember what I wrote yesterday. Which were your favorite posts? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and that way all of my readers don’t have to wade through 49 posts to find the gems. If there were any gems. At the very least, reading my hate mail was fun.

Alright, back to being comatose!

Blogathon 2011 is complete!

For the third year, I made it through Blogathon! Made it without falling asleep or becoming (completely) deranged. And with your help, we managed to raise over $4,000 for the Secular Student Alliance. How awesome is that?
Thanks to everyone who donated, suggested ideas, spread the word, and kept me company in the comments. And thanks to my friends who helped keep me awake in addition to supplying me with pizza and cookies. In turned into an impromptu party here at La Casa de Blag Hag. You guys are awesome.

I’ll post an official Blogathon total once everyone has a final chance to donate. I think some people were possibly donating based on the content of my posts, so I want them to have time to count up the number of times I said kumquat or whatever they chose to keep track of. Well, hopefully they weren’t looking for the word kumquat, because I didn’t exactly use it very much. But just in case: kumquat, kumquat, kumquat.

…If you still want to donate, you can do so by clicking here or using the widget below.

Thanks everyone, and good night! …good morning! …I’m going to sleep.

This is post 49 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Q&A Quickfire Part OMG THE SUN IS UP

One last hurrah:

How do you feel about blogging after the blogathon?

Reasonable Jen will tell you I won’t blog for a while. Realistic Jen will tell you I’ll probably find something to blog about right after I wake up.

How badly do you want to sleep right now?

I don’t know what day it is. What. Why. Why am I alive. Why am I doing this to myself. Why am I getting on a plane to Indiana in a couple days. Omfg, Indiana. It’s like ten million degrees there. I’m going to evaporate. I want to just stay here and eat cookies.

…badly.

If you could dream about anything right now, what would it be?

About sleeping.

Favorite color of the alphabet?

Shreve.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?


Only if ever should do under really from when.

Also:


This is post 48 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

I just had this phone conversation

You only get to hear what I said:
Why are you calling me.
Wait, what?
Wait, every time you say “children in a van” you cut out.
No seriously. I hear “children in a van” and then “shhhhhhhhhhhhhh” like this is some top secret message that’s being intercepted by the FBI.
17 children?
Dancing to what?
No license plates or Ohio license plates?
That’s just as bad.
Wait, I thought you said seventeen.
How do you fit seventy five thousand children in a van?
Tessellate?
Goodbye.
They’re Aryan children Mark, they’re coming for you.
Wait did they multiply? Are they undergoing mitosis?
I can’t hold the phone.

This is post 47 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Are high school reunions a thing of the past?

This question comes from my mom, who spent last night at her high school reunion (I’ll be nice and not say what year the reunion was for). Will social media like Facebook take away from the “surprise” of seeing everyone at reunions? How many people go just to see if someone went bald, or got fat, or got super rich, or married someone hot, or had ten million children?
It seems like some sort of vindictiveness is the motivation behind going to most reunions, since you theoretically keep in contact with most of the people you like. But now you keep in contact with everyone. You know exactly what that old bully is up to, if the captain of the football team came out of the closet, or whatever.

So, has Facebook killed the concept of the reunion? Or will us humans keep gathering in person, even with the people we don’t really like?

This is post 46 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Guerrila skepticism on Wikipedia

One of the paper presentations I really enjoyed at TAM9 was Susan Gerbic-Forsyth’s talk on guerilla skepticism on Wikipedia. Not everyone has the time or motivation or talent to organize events, give talks, write blogs, etc – but people frequently ask how they can help the skeptical movement. Susan’s main suggestion was for people to edit Wikipedia.


It seems simple at first, but it really is important. One, Wikipedia is one of the first places people look when they run into a new term or name. It looks terrible if someone’s Googling a famous skeptic or skeptical organization and their Wikipedia page is sparse or nonexistent. Two, many articles often have a very paranormal and supernatural bias. It would be great if all false claims also had information from trusted sources on why they’re false. Otherwise they go unchallenged.


If this seems like something you’d be interested in, Susan has lots of practical information over at her blog. And these methods usually apply to atheist articles too.


This also seems like a good time to mention that I have a redirect, but not an article. Cough cough. And my friend Jason claims he’s cooler than me because he has an article and I don’t. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.


Er, I mean, it’s totally about increasing accurate representations of human knowledge, not a popularity contest. Right.


This is post 45 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

A challenge

FearBlandness tweets:

I challenge you to incorporate PZ, ponies and yourself into a post. I guarantee you’ll have a tenfold increase in donations!

Challenge accepted.

Drawn in MS Paint with the touch pad on my laptop.

NOW WHERE’S MY MONEY

This is post 44 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

How to get people to quit using homeopathic medicine

From SMBC:Come on Zach, you know this is wrong. The process of dilution is obviously very important in how the water molecules establish memory. It not just about decreasing the frequency of something. You must do the right water magi-er, mechanisms. Mechanisms. Or something.

Now, if we threw all of the homeopaths in the ocean…

Meta Blogging Moment: I had a little buffer time, so I was checking my webcomics. I noticed the newly updated SMBC was not, in fact, this SMBC. I suddenly couldn’t remember how I found this particular comic. Did I click a link on twitter? No. Did someone email me it? No. Was it on facebook? No. I was convinced I had finally lost my mind. Why in the world would I choose a random old SMBC comic to blog about in the middle of the night, when I had no prompting to look up something about homeopathy?

Then my friend IMed me again, and I realized he had sent me the link.

Sleep, I needz you. I needz you now.

This is post 43 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Another dose of surrealism

The following questions were left on my formspring.me account months ago, presumably by the same person. I can provide you with no other explanation:

People don’t use the word “fervent” enough, so today I began a meeting with “It is my fervent desire that all employees tuck mackerel into their trousers.” That failed to get me a promotion. What is their fervent problem?

Are there a lot of cats in your neighborhood? If so, keep track of them. One of them is more than just a cat. If you know what I mean.


Last night I took my girlfriend to a classy restaurant, but when I asked for ketchup the guy in the paper hat brought me some weird foreign stuff called catsup, so I sporked him in the eye. Now my gf says I haven’t done enough to demand anal. Women, huh?


Whenever I hear people use a word that rhymes with postulate, it fills me with so much anger that I want to crush their skulls beneath the heels of my jackboots. Is that normal? Or did they already get to you?


I saw a sign that said “We ship anything, anywhere, anytime”, so I asked them to send a unicorn to Mars in 1832. They hung up on me! Should I call the BBB, or man up and set them on fire myself?


Would you rather have the power to turn wood into eggs or control cardboard with your eye beams?


Is it safe to assume that anyone named Melvin probably isn’t too threatening?


Do you think that people named Timothy probably aren’t too threatening as well? Or a better question is, which is less threatening? Timothy or Melvin?


I thought I saw the abominable snowman today but it was just an abhorrent ice woman. Weird, huh? If I see her again what should I do or say?


I thought I saw the abominable snowman again, but it was just the abhorrent ice woman again. This time I talked to her and we hit it off. We’re going out tomorrow night! I hear she moves fast so there’s a chance for sex tomorrow. Any tips or advice?


My date with the abhorrent ice woman didn’t go too well. I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again. After we were …ahem… finished, it felt numb. Now it just sits there and won’t rise no matter what I do or watch. I think it’s useless. What should I do!?


…Five hours left. Gah.

This is post 42 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Would religion help my psychological issues?

From the mailbag:

Do you think your current psychological problems would be less severe or even non-existant if you could rely on a faith? (= + faith community?) Sorry if too provocative.

Honestly, no. I’ve dealt with these issues since I was little. It’s overlapped my naive atheism, my desperate attempt at deism, my agnosticism, and my well informed atheism. And you know at what point I was most miserable? When I was desperately trying to force myself to believe in a God that I knew didn’t exist.

Knowing that I was the only one who could make things better, not some mythical being? That was empowering. It’s not perfect and doesn’t replace counseling, but it certainly helped.

This is post 41 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.