Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainWe're down to the final 24 hours to get your submissions in for Carnival of the Liberals #42. Zaius Nation will be hosting this special July 4th edition of Carnival of the Liberals and he has a specific theme in mind -- defining patriotism -- so check out Dr. Zaius' post for all the details, but be sure to send in your submissions by 11:59PM on Monday, July 2nd via the blogcarnival.com form.
Continuing the patriotic theme, BlueGal & Co. have the Independence Day weekend Blog Against Theocracy going full tilt. Show your support for our first freedom by writing about how separation of church and state is patriotic. BlueGal's got the scoop at the BAT blog. Remember, BAT is about atheists and theists working together to support a Constitutional right that benefits everyone. Also, this time around there's an automated system in place to get your BAT posts linked on the front page of the Blog Against Theocracy blog. Details are here.
Finally, we still have plenty of hosting spots open this year. Why not volunteer by sending me an e-mail with your preferred date? Check the schedule for open slots.
The next edition of Carnival of the Liberals will be upon us soon and the deadline for submissions will be here even quicker. CotL #41 is at World Wide Webers this Wednesday, June 20th but you need to get your best liberal blogging to Karl Weber by midnight Eastern, Monday, June 18th. As always, thanks to everyone who has sent in their posts so far and for the rest, blogcarnival.com is your friend.
Don't forget that Zaius Nation will be hosting the July 4th edition of Carnival of the Liberals and he has a specific theme in mind -- defining patriotism -- so check out Dr. Zaius' post for all the details.
Continuing the patriotic theme, BlueGal & Co. will be doing another round of Blog Against Theocracy this Independence Day weekend too! Show your support for our first freedom by writing about how separation of church and state is patriotic. BlueGal's got the scoop at the BAT blog. Remember, BAT is about atheists and theists working together to support a Constitutional right that benefits everyone.
On a slightly off-topic note, Susan R. from Miss ELISA's World writes to let us know she's started a new site, Eureka Science, devoted to be a Q&A forum to "inform and educate the public about science without the distortion of the media or politics". The site's brand new but I think it's a great idea and we certainly wish her the best with this endeavour.
Finally, we still have plenty of hosting spots open this year. Why not volunteer by sending me an e-mail with your preferred date? Check the schedule for open slots.
The 2007 Blog Against Theocracy movement graphed: Number of Blog Against Theocracy posts recorded by Technorati per dayHey gang, I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who participated in this weekend's Blog Against Theocracy. The response was more than I could have imagined. I know I am, and I'm sure Blue Gal is as well, incredibly proud and overwhelmed at all the support Blog Against Theocracy received. The graphic shows a graph as of about 2:15PM EST of all the posting activity regarding BAT over the past few days (at least the posts Technorati knows about), and the Technorati WTF post has gotten 73 recommendations as I type this. As you can see this little blogswarm became a movement and then quickly grew into a major grassroots effort on the part of the blogosphere. You're all simply amazing. read more »
So real life interferred and I did not have the time I had wanted to write for Blog Against Theocracy. In a way it doesn't even matter, because the response to this blogswarm has be so strong; just beyond my expectations. There have been so many impassioned, insightful, smart posts in support of our first freedom by both believers and non-believers I don't see how I could add anything to the conversation. But that's the most important thing to take away from this whole experience I think and why I so enthusiastically signed on to help out with Blog Against Theocracy when Blue Gal first ran the idea by me.
It's the conversation. For far too long believers and nonbelievers have been sniping at each other. Meanwhile the people that are really our common enemy, the people that would impose their own beliefs on all of us, the people that have made systematic attempts to undermine separation of church and state in this country, have been left unchecked. Yes, there are some believers that are trying to demonize and denigrate atheists, and we have a long way to go in countering common perceptions of nonbelievers in our society. And yes, there are some atheists who do go out of their way to do much the same to believers by characterizing them as delusional or irrational, who succumb to a sort of utopian fallacy in their belief that religion is the cause of all the world's problems.read more »
The Blog Against Theocracy movement is just getting bigger and bigger and I'm sure a large part of the reason why are all these great logos bloggers have been sending in to Blue Gal. Today's BAT logos come from Flaring who also has a rather fishy photostream on Flickr. Shiny!
Just saw this beautiful graphic that Rabbit Mountain did for the upcoming Blog Against Theocracy on Easter weekend, April 6-8 over at Blue Gal's blog. This is one of the neatest things about the blogosphere... All these gifted people, no matter what their craft, that you bump into and get to share your thoughts with.
In case you've been out of the loop, Blog Against Theocracy is a blogswarm that Blue Gal is throwing together to highlight First Amendment establishment clause issues. The premise is really simple... To get as many bloggers doing something (whether written, visual, audible or what it doesn't matter) in support of separation of church and state on each of those days. This blogswarm is meant to be inclusive and not solely the realm of believers or non. For more details, check the Blog Against Theocracy blog.
The anti-theocratic blogswarm has its' own home now! Blue Gal has set up a Blogger blog at http://blogagainsttheocracy.blogspot.com to serve as a central location for information related to the 2007 Blog Against Theocracy and a place to hold the linkfest associated with the event.
Don't forget to tag your Blog Against Theocracy posts with 'blog against theocracy' if you can. It's not required, but it's nice since it helps search engines create an instant index of all posts related to the blogswarm. Technorati tags are especially encouraged and are easy to do (see my earlier post) even if your blogging platform doesn't support them, but don't sweat it if it's too much of a hassle. We'd like to encourage maximum participation and minimize the autocratic dictates.
Technorati Tags: 
blog against theocracy
Blue Gal provides us with some more information about our upcoming Blog Against Theocracy scheduled for this Easter weekend, April 6-8. If you've been out of the loop, the idea is simple. Just write in support of church-state separation each day April 6-8. Blog Against Theocracy promises to be absolutely HUGE!
You'll want to read Blue Gal's full post but here are some topics that you might want to blog about during the blogswarm taken from First Freedom First's website. Really, the establishment clause touches on so many issues of importance to everyone in our country, not just liberals or atheists so these shouldn't be taken as a representative sampling:
FFF is a highly useful resource for establishment clause issues and I recommend everyone cruise on over there for a look.
Also, we've got another great piece of artwork (displayed on this post) for you to use on your blogs courtesy of Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors. Way to go Tengrain! Thank you!
Blue Gal and I are coordinating on putting together a special blog for Blog Against Theocracy as a central clearinghouse for information on the event and to permanently host the giant linkfest we'll be doing. We'll be hammering out details as we go along, but the intention is to keep the structure of the blogswarm really loose. One recommendation that we'd like everyone to take part in though is to place a 'blog+against+theocracy' Technorati tag in your Blog Against Theocracy posts. This will help create an automatic index of all the Blog Against Theocracy posts.
If your blogging platform doesn't support Technorati tags, all you have to do is create a special link in your posts. You can use Technorati's how-to, or get the code here but your HTML will look something like this (note the + signs and rel="tag" in the Technorati link):
<span class="technoratitag">Technorati Tags:
a href="http://www.technorati.com/tag/blog+against+theocracy"
target="_blank" rel="tag"
title="Find blog against theocracy posts on Technorati">blog against theocracy</a>
</span>
Which ends up displaying like this:
Technorati Tags: blog against theocracyread more »
Finally, help spread the word everybody and a big thank you to everyone who has promoted Blog Against Theocracy so far!
Blog Against Theocracy: poster by Liz DitzAlthough I think Blue Gal is working on some graphics, Liz Ditz over at I Speak of Dreams has made some nice ones to use with this upcoming Easter weekend's Blog Against Theocracy (April 6-8). Thanks Liz!
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I'd like invite you all to Blog Against Theocracy. This is a little blog swarm being put together by everybody's favorite panties blogger Blue Gal for Easter weekend, April 6th through the 8th. The idea is simple. Just post something related to, and in support of, the separation of church and state each of those three days. Something big, something small, artistic, musical, textual or otherwise. The topic is your choosing. Whether your thing is stem cell research, intelligent design/Creationism, abortion rights, etc., it's all good. Separation of church and state impacts so many issues and is essential.
Blue Gal is still putting the finishing touches on everything and tying up loose ends so check in regularly with her for updates. In the meantime, if you need a little information to tickle your muse then you'll want to check over at First Freedom First for a ton of excellent resources. FFF is a partnership of two very cool groups; Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. Also, I can personally recommend this interview on CFI's Point of Inquiry podcast with Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. The Center For Inquiry is just one of many supporters of the FFF project.
So get involved in a little blogactivism and help raise awareness on the need to preserve separation of church and state and protecting the First Amendment. Your help in recruiting bloggers for Blog Against Theocracy is needed and appreciated too.
