Here’s to another year of public atheist conversation. There was a time when we would have been stoned for heresy.

Reason will not be silenced. Magical thinking will be exposed. Thanks to this blog, we can find others with similar thoughts.

And I don’t have to tithe.

Here’s to the chickenhawks who are coming home to roost in 2006.

Here’s to Judge Jones III and the citizens of Dover, PA.

Here’s to Science Magazine for naming Evolution as scientific breakthrough of the year.

Here’s to the many exciting breakthroughs in astrobiology that have occurred these past five years.

Here’s to me being a big fat nerd.

Here’s to Ellen and Dave going on the old picture radio and sticking up for us non-believing folks!

And here’s to all my nogodblog cyberfriends: Spanders, reluctantatheist, The Seeker, sword_strike, karen, flanonblvr, HeathnZ, mxracer652, HairlessMonkeyDK, Peach63, say_no_to_christ, Darrow, sm, and everybody else here for many hours of simulating conversation and camaraderie. I’ve only been posting here three or four months, but I know for a fact that this blog has helped me sharpen my wit, challenged my preconceptions, opened my mind to different approaches and new ideas, and generally contributed to my continuing growth. I am very thankful for all of you.

My wife on the other hand is getting really sick of me spending so much time here. Oh well.

I just spent from 2:00 pm till 11:30 pm in the home of an old friend who died on December 10 at 58. Cancer.

His son-in-law and I were reviewing and collecting estate materials and helping his two aged parents.

It shortly became obvious that a substantial amount of my friend’s personal life was in disarray and that disarray manifested itself in a vast collection of fet_ish imagery. That imagery existed both as hard copy and extensive computer files spread across a 5-computer network.

One of the computers belongs to a small publisher and has to be returned ASAP – but 400 gig of files across two drives and two OS (a Mirror-door G-4 dual processor power Mac running OS 9.2 & 10.2) together with a Windows 2000 professional box acting as a mail and print server and an XP server box a couple of networked laptops and a Red Hat Linux P-4 hosting an Apache web server – made the matter fairly complex.

He was a very decent guy who had a lot of bad luck. Two guys who only had our friend in common put in a heck of a day – without pay, and without any expectation of recompense – because it is the only decent thing to do.

My friend is beyond caring, but his parents, daughter and her husband have a lot on their plate.

The work was fairly challenging from a technical standpoint- but the fet)ish material was distasteful. It has no value to the estate and we refrained from disclosing it -outside of obtaining authorization from his father to review and prepare the materials for proper disposal – I drove off to meet with my wife and spend a few minutes with her and one of our best friends at the midnight hour. I had nothing to drink (or, eat) as we worked to accomplish as much as possible on a day when the two of us had some “free time”.

Now I have a trunk-load of rank printed material that I will have to seal in “banker’s boxes” and send off to the document destruction company.

I was really concerned that I might be pulled over at a field-sobriety checkpoint and have the material discovered.

It didn’t happen and I’ll have the burn-boxes picked up Tuesday.

Neither of us performed this service for a reward in the afterlife. This is what friends do for friends. There was no fear that a deity?s wrath would descend upon us if we abandoned the task to outside experts. It was simply the right of an attorney and a family-member to act within the attorney-client confidentiality shield to protect the living from discovering embarrassing private facts about a deceased person.

I can’t say that I enjoyed the task, but it was the least I could do for a friend of 16 years.

Happy New Year, all.

I love it when I see them on the news lieing on behalf of their accused; I like it when a Black one goes into the bible belt and defends a supremicist; I love it when they teach me what freedom is; I hate it when a law school graduate don’t know.

They are brave; was Thomas Paine one, or Patrick Henry, John Adams was and was a good one too; and so was James Otis.

The best Americans taught me what patriotism is, else I would never know, but some would still say I don’t; but I know I do. They love their country but know when to hate it’s government. Some will easily spill their blood to defy it.

They are the best patriots.