Hey, it’s past midnight here. Time for a press release.
Please, if you are a member of a forum, or own a major newspaper or television network, feel free to post the following:
A new blog network is hitting the web on August 1. Led by two of the most prominent and widely read secular-minded blogs in the country – PZ Myers’ Pharyngula and Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars – Freethoughtblogs.com <https://proxy.freethought.online/> will, we hope, quickly become and important gathering place for atheists, humanists, skeptics and freethinkers in the blogosphere.
Freethoughtblogs will be more than just a place for people to read the opinions of their favorite bloggers. It will be a community of like-minded people exchanging ideas and joining forces to advocate for a more secular and rational world.
The network will launch Aug. 1 with a handful of blogs with many more to be added after the first three months of operation. Here are the five blogs that will lead the way:
Pharyngula <https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/> . PZ Myers has built one of the most popular atheist blogs in the world. Never one to shy away from controversy, Myers has built an astonishing following over the last few years and has traveled around the world speaking to skeptical audiences. As a PhD biologist he is the scourge of creationists everywhere but he takes on a wide range of subjects in his blogging, including religious criticism, women’s rights and progressive politics.
Dispatches from the Culture Wars <https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/> . Ed Brayton was raised by a Pentecostal and an atheist, sealing his fate forever as someone who is endlessly fascinated by how religion intersects with other subject, particularly science, law, history and politics. He is a popular speaker for secular organizations around the country, has appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and is pretty certain he’s the only person who has ever made fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.
The Digital Cuttlefish <https://proxy.freethought.online/cuttlefish/> : Cuttlefish are shy and elusive creatures; when necessary, they hide in their own ink. This particular cuttlefish has chosen as its habitat the comment threads of science, religion, and news sites, where it feeds on the opinions of those who are emboldened by the cloak of internet anonymity. Cuttlefish is an atheist, a skeptic, and is madly, passionately in love with science. The Digital Cuttlefish has, since October of 2007, been a repository of commentary and satire, usually (but not exclusively) in verse and now moves to Freethoughtblogs.
This Week in Christian Nationalism <https://proxy.freethought.online/rodda/> . Chris Rodda is the author of “Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History.” Since the release of her book in 2006, Chris has been blogging at Talk2Action.org and Huffington Post about the use of historical revisionism in everything from education to legislation. Chris is now launching her own blog on Freethoughtblogs.com that will accompany her weekly podcast, This Week in Christian Nationalism.
Zingularity <https://proxy.freethought.online/zingularity/> . Steven “DarkSyde” Andrew is a 40 something former stock and bond trader and one time moderate conservative. He grew up in the Southwest and has long been fascinated by science, particularly evolutionary biology, physics, and astronomy. He is a frequest contributor to the popular progressive website Daily Kos and now blogs at Zingularity, where legit science disappears forever down an event horizon of petty snark and cynicism.
Comradde PhysioProffe <https://proxy.freethought.online/physioprof/> . The pseudonymous PhysioProffe is, as the name suggests, a physiology professor at a private medical school who blogs about politics, academia, food, booze and sports. Not necessarily in that order.
This is only the beginning. Over the next few months we will add many more blogs to the network, including Greta Christina’s brilliant blog, a new companion to the award winning Reasonable Doubts podcast and many others.
Oh. What a shame…
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Yeah, yeah, "anonymous", whatever. "Rulership", blah, blah, blah.–Sweet. See you there, Cuttlefish. I wish upon you a big ol' centralised banhammer as well as, hopefully, other back end bloggy conveniences you may not have enjoyed previously.
I gather the switchover didn't go too well, but best wishes to the Cuttleblog in its new home.Zackoz
Halp, the switchover is confusing me!Have fun, Cuttle. :)
It kinda reminds me of the scene from Ocean's Thirteen, where they discuss the opening of the new casino–This was a soft opening, I guess.
knock knocknew rulership for bourgeois atheist pigletsottawaskeptics.org/forum?func=view&id=4316&catid=3
Oh man, that new site is soooo slooowww. It took nearly 2 minutes for the home page to load and anothe minute for the Cuttle page to load. And nearly 4 minutes for the registration page to come up. I'm still working my way through the registration so that I can comment over there. Also, the Cuttle banner is too small. I can't really see the details in the art work.Sigh… everything always gets worse instead of better.
I should get better, Die Anyway–they are actively hunting for a place that lives up to the promises that these people gave them.As for the banner, don't tell anyone, but there will eventually be rotating banners, some of which are more detailed (others just different). On the plus side, the banner there allows the post to be seen; here, I barely get the headline in the frame.
It got a little better then worse.Today I get "a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error". Didn't anyone tell FTB how much traffic Myers and Brayton can generate?One thing I noticed before I lost all connection. PZ has a link in the left hand column for logging in. No one else has that, not even the FTB main page. Maybe you could add it to your page or suggest to the Powers-That-Be that they include it on the home page?
I've been viewing Cuttle site number 2 along with it's co-posters. Your's has been updated constantly with great stuff. However, unlike this original one, which btw hasn't been updated lately, I can find no place to comment.I don't do Facebook, Twitter, or Google plus. Barely have time to get through all the blogs..sooo is Cuttlefish 2 only allow comment for the rarified?
Joan–In theory, anyone should be able to comment, and some already have. If you are reading the posts from the main page, the comments are hidden, just as they are here. But if you click through on each post (again, just as here), you should be able to comment. There was a period last night when commenting was disabled while servers were switched, and prior to that the whole site was so overburdened that I had troubles getting to pages myself, but it should be fine now.
There is no window for comments. There is a statement that you must be logged in for comment and upon hitting that comes a password verification window from WordPress. I put in the only password verification I have, which is my google one that I use here and it rejects it.Sooo I'm just saying. It looks like one has to apply for another password to something..(sigh)
Ok, Joan, I've kicked the settings, and it should allow you to comment now without registering (registration is specific to freethoughtblogs, so [I think] that's why your google registration wouldn't work). If our Dancing Monkey follows us over there, I may have to reinstitute registration, but let's see how it goes first.
Thank you Cuttlefish. I had not thought of the scourge following you there, but I'm very grateful to be eased into the comments section. Wish I'd written a hate poem about passwords.. I hate I hate I hate..oh (grin) Before I screw that window thing up, however I did want to say what a fantastic blog the new one is..your poems as always are superb and the ability to bounce subjects back and forth among your fellow blog mates would seem quite handy. The young man who did the monologue about faith was amazing. I saw the Julia Sweeny Catholic version of this on Utube earlier this year. It was a joy to hear his reasoning powers keep breaking through the party line..from a very early age.
Have really enjoyed reading Cuttle 2 most of the weekend. But.. Just when I thought it was safe… I got nothing but the magical Windows eternal spinning wheel of death. Now I get an ad for Bluethoughts.com Am I the only one whining..could I have a virus? Has DM actually made his pact with Satan and achieved magical powers? A better scenario could be that the popularity factor crashed the site. So swim back to us here on Cuttle 1 and tell us the scoop.
Joan, you were not the only one! https://proxy.freethought.online/dispatches/2011/08/08/sorry-about-that-folks/We had a glitch of sorts. Ought to be ok by now.
I get a generic screen from Bluehost. Is the link bad?
messy mom–it should be fixed shortly; I don't know all the technical details, but the problem (and the fix) propagate across the intertubes, and it takes a bit of time to reach every corner. It switched off and back on again a couple of times for me, but eventually was stable once again. Terribly frustrating, I know!
DC – repent and turn to God and you will live a life of peace.. we promise you thatwhat's the harm of atheism?groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy/msg/58e0fa2a4aebfa00
You misspelled "frequent" in the text following Zingularity. Just thought you should know. Also, I respect your interest in engaging dialogue. Although I challenge you to find a more diverse group of people to "even things out", the fact that atheists and scientists can get together in the blogosphere is a miracle in itself. Sounds like a Divine Intervention to me…
hope cuttlefish will do good on its new residence