SURE Site is Live!

Check it out: ucsbskeptics.com

UCSB's secular student group finally has its website... I'm hoping UCSB atheists and secularists of all types will find it when they search for a group like ours. We need more of a presence, and I think a proper website will definitely help.

Pardon the dust.

SURE Website Coming Soon!

I got SURE's Director of Public Affairs position! So now it's time to get to work...

I've been working on a website so we have more of an official central hub of information on the net (something better than facebook), and it's going pretty smoothly so far, despite having almost no experience with this stuff. I've been looking through SSA Affiliate sites to get ideas for stuff I want to include - the Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists won the SSA's recent best website award, and I also like the site from the Secular Alliance of IU.

Lots of these sites are sort of blog-website hybrids (lots are on wordpress), so that might be a good design to follow: right now I'm hosting it on blogger and building it to look like a regular website, but it'll include a blog function. Even though we get free hosting from the OSL, I'm trying it here first since that's what I have the most experience with.

Here's what I have so far:


It'll be active by sometime this summer.

Running for SURE's new Director of Public Affairs

I presented my little candidacy speech today for some of the members of SURE, the atheist/agnostic/freethought/secularism group on campus at UCSB - I had to cut out a bunch of stuff from my speech to fit it all in under the five minute limit, but still had some good points to talk about. Too bad it turned out I should've practiced the speech a bit more to get it down pat, so I could have avoided being all weird and awkward in front of everyone... but I'm pretty sure I gave a good enough speech to have a good chance to be the next DPA. Here's the speech outline for anyone who's interested: SURE speech outline. It's pretty rough as it is, but that's how I roll.

I said something about not putting up offensive posters in the speech... what I meant was that our posters shouldn't be part of a negative campaign that portrays religious people as stupid (I think there might be room for possibly portraying religious practices, or something, as stupid, but not the people). The poster that said "Don't believe in fairy tales? Neither do we" was great, because it's showing what the group is, and provides a welcoming tone to fellow nonbelievers. Whatever we put up will be offensive to some people just because of the fact that we're a secularist group in the first place. I'm not advocating worrying about every single person who might possibly get offended, I just wanted to say that our ad campaigns should definitely portray us positively - I'm all for lighting a fire with some controversial ads, I just want to avoid looking like a dick.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to helping out with the group next year, no matter whether I actually get elected to a position.

Dan Barker to speak at UCSB!

Imagine devoting nearly 20 years of your life preaching to people about the "saving" power of Jesus and the holy spirit, going on missions to Mexico, producing and playing Christian music for the masses, and traveling around the country to warn people about the rapture, which could come any day now. What does it take to go from a life of proselytizing in the name of Jeebus, to being one of America's most outspoken atheists - a co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and a published author of several books about atheism?

Dan Barker is coming to speak at UCSB on Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 6pm. The event is being hosted by UCSB's freethought campus organization, Scientific Understanding and Reason Enrichment.

It should prove to be a very interesting talk, as he speaks about his "deconversion" to atheism from almost 20 years of being an evangelical preacher. (Plus it'll be FREE, so what's not to like?)

The event is taking place at Ebarcadero Hall, UCSB at 6pm on Wednesday, Nov. 12. (935 Embarcadero del Norte, Goleta, CA 93117).

Here's the FFRF events page.

Please come by if you're in the southern California area!


Image from FFRF site.

Actual Vector Calculus homework question:

If Yoda says to Luke Skywalker, "The Force be with you," then the dot product of the Force and Luke should be:

A. positive
B. zero
C. any real number
D. negative

The correct answer should be E. Facepalm.

First few days: Done

I've survived the first two days of Fall '08 pretty painlessly. I like my schedule (nothing before 11) and I'm not majorly behind in anything yet.

I just need to get my assignment schedule in order and do some reading and I'm all set for Monday.

Now it's time to see how late I can stay up and still wake up before 11.

SURE UCSB, the Blog

6/7/08 UPDATE! SURE now has an official website: ucsbskeptics.com. The blog was also updated: ucsbskeptics.blogspot.com

Remember SURE? The slightly under-promoted, fledgling (but growing) free thought student group at UCSB? We have a blog now!

Check it out: Faithless The SURE Blog

I'm really excited about going back this year... Funding!


Stop on by this school year if you're interested: meetings every Wednesday at 6pm in Theater and Dance 2600.

Judge rules UC can deny credit from Christian courses

From SFGate:

A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.

According to the judge,

UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

I would be shocked if UC actually accepted anything like that...

Via RichardDawkins.net

Freethought Club UCSB: SURE

Edit 6/20/09: SURE has a website now! Check out ucsbskeptics.com for news and info about the group!

I'm part of a secular student group at UCSB called Scientific Understanding and Reason Enrichment, or SURE, a small organization which meets every [edit: check the website for updated meeting time and place] to hang out and have fun with a bunch of fellow godless atheists, agnostics, and the like. We're not much of a "presence," but we're only a fledgling club yet, and hopefully with some more funding and some more active members we can make ourselves into a more formidable group.

Something that I don't really like about the group is the name... Scientific Understanding and Reason Enrichment makes for a cute acronym, but it's a real mouthful and sucks to type (I considered a copy-paste from above), and might give an image to an outsider of a bunch of nerds who like to meet to tell each other chemistry jokes (Q: What is the name of the molecule bunny-O-bunny? A: An ether bunny! HAHAHAHAHA!!!), but that's just a minor gripe.

I don't have too much of a problem with the name - what I really don't like is that a Google search for "Freethought Club UCSB" or "Skeptics Club UCSB" doesn't turn up much on a search engine as of now. (I think we're listed in the bowels of the Secular Student Alliance site)*. If I were an atheist student looking for an atheist group at UCSB I would probably just Google it.

We're getting some kind of school funding coming up next year, which I hope will also help in the out-reach department.

So if you're an atheist, agnostic, or just curious, and you're coming to UCSB or are already here, come on by!

Check out our Facebook Page for a little more info about who we are and what we do. (I guess you have to have a Facebook account to see the group page... we should change that too).


* We aren't even on the official on-campus groups page for UCSB! (At time of posting).

EDIT 7/13/08: We're listed on the Office of Student Life site, but I had to do some searching: link

Shipwreck

Following with the photography theme from last night, I thought I'd post a little something I shot with my camera-phone the other day (by the way, I got a new camera-phone!).

This boat washed up in the recent storm here at UCSB. I was taking a bike ride around the lagoon, and figured I'd take a shot of the boat from on top of the bluff... I think it turned out pretty well! Especially in black and white mode.

We also had a boat wash up a few weeks ago in a separate storm. It's sort of becoming expected that there'll be some new boat on our beach every time it rains.

Old Photoshop Projects

It's a few weeks into the quarter, so that's the basic explanation of the blog drought. But it's time for a break, and I just rediscovered some stuff I haven't thought about since last year!


A few of my friends just got Photoshop. I took a Photoshop class in high school, so I was showing them some of the basics.

Most of my work in that class I'm not that proud of, but there are a few that I like. Like this magazine cover I made:



This one's more of an artsy type piece:



It was the self-portrait project for the semester. It's supposed to represent my journey into my current state of skepticism and rational thought, or something like that... (The top half has science and technology stuff, and the bottom has the bible).

I have a bunch more, but they're just the basic "make this flower look better" and "fix this old picture" stuff, so no need to put them here.

Well, don't vote for any Republican candidate.

Remember this video?



I'm scared too, Jon.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a side note: There are a bunch of large-lettered chalk advertisements for Ron Paul all over campus... I just hope people don't fall for the old "I'm voting for the candidate with the biggest letters" trick.

Oh and here's a candidate issue stance chart that was posted on BoingBoing (or something) a while ago:


(Click to biggerize).