Crazies in the comments

How do you deal with nutcases who leave comments? The sort who could benefit from a psychiatrist, but won't see one for fear of being given mind-control drugs? Do you politely disagree with them, slap them down, or just delete their comments?

Truth, lies, the media, and the Columbine shooting.

What do you know about the Columbine massacre? Some misfit loners in black trenchcoats got sick of being bullied and shot up the school, right? Wrong. The media made up a story, and then didn't let the emerging facts get in the way.

Via Kevin Pease's LJ.

A stupid Passover story

With the end of Passover, I thought I'd tell a story. One of the traditional holiday songs is Daiyanu. Daiyanu (or Dayanu, or Dayenu—the correct spelling is דַּיֵּנוּ) is a Hebrew word meaning "it would have been enough", and the song is a list of gifts from God.

When my sister was little, after singing the song, she once asked "Why do we want anu to die?"

For anyone familiar with the holiday, here's a Facebook haggadah. People who have never been to a ceder may enjoy it too, but they'll miss a lot of the jokes.

On the title of this blog

People have remarked on the title of the blog. It comes from a post I read in the xkcd forums: something like "Pray to God, or your atheist god, that it never happens." I thought it was pretty funny example of completely missing the point. (Although they wouldn't be alone, 21% of Americans who identified themselves as atheists said they believe in god¹.)

I chose it mostly because it was a funny and memorable phrase. It works on other levels too, though. It's a reference to my single-digit readership: I'm talking, but nobody's listening. It's a little bit of a stretch, but you could even say that other people are the closest thing an atheist has to a prayer-answering god.

My mother is kind of ashamed of the blog, though. I don't completely understand why; the best I can figure, she thinks the word 'atheist' is horribly offensive, or something. I was pretty disappointed.

¹ http://religions.pewforum.org/reports, click "Report 2" and scroll down to the second table.