FFRF Day 1

This year we attended our first-ever FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) annual convention. This is their 40th annual convention, and this one was held in their home city, Madison, Wisconsin. Next years convention will be held in San Francisco (we'll be there, Will!)

Day 1 opened with an Open House at their HQ, Freethought Hall. 

It's a small building but their importance dwarfs their size, and it's within sight of the Wisconsin state capitol building.

I love FFRF's activism. You have probably heard about them suing this or that school board or school for injecting religion into their habits or curriculums. FFRF's success rate on these suits is extremely high. In a nutshell, FFRF defends the separation of state and church.

One of the obvious things about Freethought Hall is that the staff are big readers. There are books, books, books, everywhere. Row after row of books. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

There was a good turnout for the Open House, but I think the average age of an FFRF member must be 60+. Fortunately, most of the staff is probably under 40 years old, and we need more younger members. 

Just outside Freethought Hall is the Rose Zerwick Memorial Garden, complete with the Atheists in Foxholes monument and paver stones that you can purchase by donating to the org.

They have a life-size model of Charles Darwin, and we dutifully took pictures with it. Damn thing is very lifelike.

The formal opening of the Convention was held at the Madison Monona Terrace Convention Center, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building on the north shore of Lake Monona. It's a beautiful building. 

On Day 1, Cara Santa Maria received a Freethought Heroine Award. She gave a talk on science and how to communicate it. She runs a podcast, Talk Nerdy, and is a regular contributor to "Bill Nye Saves the World."

Next up was Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation magazine. She was given a "Forward Award" and gave a rather chilling talk about Trump and science.

The evening program included a Year in Review, and the FFRF has been busy indeed. Win. Win. Win.

Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born ex-Muslim, was the next speaker, and she received a "Freedom From Religious Fundamentalism Award." Those in the Muslim world who are brave enough to defy their governments deserve our support and assistance. In many of these countries, apostasy (leaving the religion) and blasphemy are still punishable by death. Pretty amazing.

The wife wasn't feeling too well this evening, so we skipped the talk by Paula Poundstone, the headliner. I heard later her talk was mostly just humor, which is fine, of course, but she was mostly simply "on tour" supporting her new book.

It's great to be surrounded by so many like-minded people, and I have to say I have never encountered a nicer and friendlier crowd. You can read about the convention and see some videos at this link.

join the fight

United Airlines

United Airlines just gets worse and worse. 

We flew from Houston to Chicago today, Sept 14, and when I booked the flights about a month ago, I booked a new fare that United calls "Basic Economy." I didn't notice this was a new fare class, and I don't recall any particular warning or notice that I was booking this new fare class until after I had booked it.

"Basic Economy" is marginally cheaper than "Economy." Like maybe $10 off of a $250 fare. Whoopee! As they say, the devil is in the details. Details like: you cannot pick your seats with this fare class; if you book flights with your family, you WILL NOT get to sit with them; you can't even take a normal-sized (reduced size) carry-on bag, and you only get one bag on board instead of the normal two; no "Premier Qualifying Miles (PQM); also, no changes, PERIOD; no cancellations, no changes. There are so many fare classes, who can keep up?

Sure enough, when my wife and I checked in, we were not seated together. At least they put us both on row 32, almost at the back of the plane, but on separate sides of the plane. 

Why is it that the plane is so hot before you take off? Talk about hot, this plane was practically scalding. In this 737, there are three seats on each side with an aisle down the middle. Hell, in first class, there were two seats on each side with an aisle down the middle. For what they charge for first class, there was not that much more room than in coach. OK, more leg room.

And WTF is with the tiny seats in coach?! If you are overweight, you do NOT fit in the seat. Sure enough, one guy on my left was so fat, he spilled over the arm rest into my space. You get hardly any leg room in coach, unless you pay an extra $20 or so, and then you get a whopping extra 3". So your legs are almost under your chin, it's hot as hell, and I am squeezed into the seat. 

Each seat now has a TV. How exciting. On comes the CEO, Oscar Munoz of United, to brag that United is now #1 in on-time departures. What bullshit. All this means is that we pull away from the gate "on time." So naturally, after we pull away from the gate, we sit and sit and sit on the tarmac for about 30 minutes, and the plane is so fucking hot I am just a puddle of sweat. You can feel a palpable sense of anger rising from the passengers, but what choice do we have? None. Nada. 

We finally took off and the A/C kicked in. At least the flight was relatively smooth. They must fly faster than normal so they can arrive close to on time, but we were about 15 minutes late. 

It's a fucking tragedy what United has done to Continental. We had a good airline in Continental, but United has just nickel-and-dimed everyone to death, including their own employees. What are we down to now? 4? 5 big airlines? And they always say the mergers will increase competition and be good for the consumer? Right. Bullshit! When was the last time a big merger was not allowed? I can't remember.

Fuck United. But they are just about the only game in town if you fly from Houston.

Joel Osteen

Roy Zimmerman, who will perform at the upcoming FFRF convention, took off on Joel Osteen, Houston's own "prosperity gospel" preacher. Osteen was certainly ripe for fucking.

Hurricane Harvey

We drove from South Padre Island into Houston today (Sept 12) and were dismayed to see all of the damage from Hurricane Harvey once we got close to Corpus Christi. Our route takes us up highway 77 and then highway 59 (I-69). 

So many fractured trees along the way, but once we got into Refugio, damn, multiple piles of lumber and who knows what here, there, everywhere.  Billboards with no message, just the posts; gas stations destroyed; crops chewed up and flattened; a few automobiles still laying on their sides. 

I made the mistake of not filling up with gas before leaving the Valley. When I got to around a quarter-tank remaining, we still were about 150 miles away from Houston and we had to find gas. If a gas station was open, all of their pumps might have been damaged or out of gas. In some cases, only one pump was open and there were lines of cars waiting. We finally scored some gas for a pretty high price of $2.799/gallon, versus the typical (lately) of $2.299 or cheaper. 

The love bugs were out in force too. Strange, because you usually don't see swarms of love bugs except in the springtime. Everything seems out of whack. Crazy fucking storms, lots of sunspot activity in the solar minimum cycle, total solar eclipse, it's the end of the world!! 

In Houston, the west side of Beltway 8 between highway 59 and I-10 had just reopened. It had about 18' of water in it over 10 days after Harvey left. They finally brought in pumps and pumped out all of the water. As soon as we hit Houston and tried to get on the Beltway northbound to get to our hotel on the NE side of town, we hit a mega traffic jam. It took at least a full hour to travel about 5 miles. 

Traffic has been bad in Houston for a long time, but after Harvey, with Highway 6 on the west side STILL closed, traffic has been a real nightmare. In total it took us over two hours to get from the SW to the NE side of town. 

Once we got to our Best Western hotel, we discovered that the hotel had been flooded during Harvey. It smelled like heavy mold and mildew. The elevator was out and they wanted to put us on the 3rd floor. No. Fucking. Way. Fortunately, they let us cancel our reservation with no penalty and we landed in an America's Best Value hotel a block away. "Best Value" is code for bare bones. No shampoos. One trashcan. Hard beds. Musty smell. A/C hardly worked. No coffee in the room. No chairs in the room. Suffice to say, we will NEVER book again at one of these hotels, but at least they had a room open.

We were very lucky to move out of Houston in January of 2017 to get down to south Texas. We missed this storm. If we had still been in Houston, we would have lost BOTH of our cars to the flood, as the apartment complex where we had been living had the parking garage totally flooded. 

This time, a lot of rich folks got flooded out on the west side. Typically, only the poorer areas flood, and they have no "pull" in government. But now that the rich folks flooded, I expect to see some big changes in Houston as to how they deal with floods. Houston needs to spend BILLIONS on infrastructure and flood control, but I kinda doubt they will have the political will. Still, with the rich folks demanding home buyouts, the chances of change are much greater. 

I understand that there are still hundreds of people living in shelters in Houston. The need is still great. Give what you can, but don't send it to the Red Cross or Salvation Army. Those two groups have too much overhead and much of the money doesn't even reach the people that really need help. The best choice is really the local food bank, or pick a charity that you really trust. When there is a tragedy, the scammers come out in force, so be careful.

Tom Hanks

I knew I liked Tom Hanks. It's really hard for me to like right-wingers.

he's just crazy

This country is in a deep hole, and a crazy asshole is in charge.

Watch this video on The Scene.