The Atheist News Podcast

Ever wonder to yourself: “Gee, I wonder what rockstar’s like Joe Prova do with their free time…?”

No? Really?

How about: “Gee, I’d like to get in a space ship, explore space, trade slaves and drugs for money, and blow up capital ships with Joe Prova! YEEHAAHH! ROCK ON!!!’

Well, you just might be in luck.

Step one:

Buy and install Freelancer:
http://www.amazon.com/Freelancer-Jewel-Case-Pc/dp/B000NJFMR4
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?PID=7376420&style=games&frm=froogleother
http://store.purplus.net/freelancerpc.html

It’s cheap and it’s from 2003, so I am pretty sure you can get it running on a TI calculator. Your shitty computer is NO EXCUSE!

Step two:

Download and install Freelancer Mod Manager

This is a program that is needed to install mods. If you run Windows 7, after you install it, you’ll need to run it as Administrator, which you can do by right clicking on the icon for the program and selecting “Run as Admininstrator.” You’ll only ever need to run it once. But not yet, wait till after step 3!

Step three:

Download the “Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion” mod

Step four:

Open the Freelancer Mod Manager (as admin, remember) and use it to install the Discovery Freelancer mod. It’s easy to do. You just point the program at the Discovery mod package and it takes care of the rest. DO NOT ENABLE ANY OTHER MODS. Just don’t.

Step five:

Run Freelancer! I have to run it as Admin to get it to work properly. Your mileage may vary.

Step six:

Click Multiplayer, hit “Yes” (get parents permission first!) select “Internet”, and then Select the “Discovery Freelancer 24/7 Roleplay” server.

Log in and create a character!

You can find me on there as either
moJoe (Smuggler)
Fin (Irish freedom fighter)
or
[NZ]Fin (Irish freedom fighter, different ship)

Toodle around a bit. They don’t really give you any instructions, but if you check out the key bindings in the Options menu [F1] (not escape) you can get a feel for all the stuff you can do. Once you know which way is up, send me a private message. One way you will know if you are beginning to know which way is up is if you can figure out how to send a private message. Cruel but true.

Sign in and mention the show to me and I’ll send you a $1,000,000 in game to get you started. That will buy you a decent fighter or freighter with which to build your empire. Hurry, though. I am not sure how much longer my wife is going to let me play. Ahem…

Here are a couple of the pictures you folks sent in for Draw Mohammad Day. (You have to click “Read More” to see them”)

SP sent me this one. Work a Comcast logo into this somewhere and my vision will be complete.

Z sent me this rather touching family picture of the prophet. He looks like just another Atheist News podcast listener standing next to a ghost with morbid fashion sense. See, we’re not so different after all.

AHAHAHAHAHAH. This is special. The pigtits were a nice touch.

More to come later, including mine (if I ever finish it.)

The ol’ Atheist News podcast…

Well golly. It’s been a while hasn’t it?

In my defense, only most of the wait for this show is due to the paralyzing haze of lethargy that has settled on me since I quit smoking. Once we got it recorded, my power went out and my computer decided it wouldn’t start up again for several days. Yes, yes, I keep saying I’m going to fix it, but then, a few days later, it starts up again and works for another three months and I can’t justify spending money on a new parts when the old ones work like… 75% of the time.

I’m pretty sure my computer gets more annual vacation time than the average Teamster. I’m kind of jealous.

None of this has anything to do with the news.

The show, let’s see, that was a few days ago… oh yeah!

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!

Pretty-much everyone who was organizing wussed out on this one, but there was one Facebook group that kept it together.

Any like I said on the show, if you are a listener and you did some art, send it my way, I’ll post it on the site. We don’t need a day to fight for our rights, we have all year long.

…

By the way, I hate Comcast. I was just sitting here fuming with impotent rage at how shitty they are to their customers. Then I realized that I could tell you guys about it and it made me feel better. I am now trying to think of a way to tastefully incorporate a Comcast logo and dog-balls into my Muhammad drawing. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

The comic I promised to show you on the show:
The New Gay Stereotype

Stream this episode!

In the first of our Atheist News Special Reports we conduct a short interview with a Post Graduate student and Saint Petersburg native Michael Middlebrooks who claims to have had a rather unpleasant run-in with the Governor of Florida.

We made several attempts to contact the Governor through both the Governor’s office and Charlie Crist’s senatorial campaign office, but were unable to obtain a comment.

If you are a Florida resident and would like to reach the Governor to weigh in on this issue, his office switchboard number is: (850) 488-7146
His email address is Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Stream this episode!

Richard joins me for another fabulously entertaining episode of the Atheist News Podcast. This week we start the show off with a candid discussion about why Dragon Age is likely to ruin my life. We also talk a bit about my printing misadventure as well.

In the news this week: The Catholic Church is apparently bursting at the seams with uninsured gay couples, unrepentant fetus defenders, doing God’s work, mamby-pamby Muslims, bankrupting the baby-boffers one diocese at a time and PRAYNAPPING® for Dummies.

Stream this episode!

Happy belated Halloween everybody!

Halloween is a favorite holiday of mine, and of course–because it’s fun and there is no Jesus involved–it’s under fire from the loonies. Richard joins me for a SPOOOOKTACULAR Atheist News Podcast show in which we discuss topics such as DEMONCANDY, God naming rights, the terminally credulous (some dead, some only sweaty), Michael Beeheeatch, the thwarting of political tomfoolery and which days of the week it is and is not acceptable to pick your nose. And, not to be left out, the Pope had some stupid shit to say about Halloween as well.

Enjoy!

Download Episode 017!

Stream this episode!

I arrived at the AAI conference and got registered. That was pretty slick, they had a press and VIP line, so I got to skip the line.

There are a number of booths around the convention center representing different organizations which I am going to try to visit later.

I’m currently sitting in on the live broadcasting of the Dogma Free America podcast featuring Sunsara Taylor, William B. Davis and PZ Myers in one of the conference rooms.

If you haven’t listened to the show before, it is quite similar to the Atheist News podcast; covering several current-event type news articles.

Sunsara Taylor is a writer for Revolution newspaper and an atheist and womans rights activist.

William B. Davies is perhaps better known as “the Cigarette Smoking Man” from the X-Files and is also an “outspoken skeptic, a proud atheist and a great admirer of Richard Dawkins.”

PZ Myers probably needs no introduction, but he is a biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris and his Pharyngula blog is probably the most popular atheist / science blog today.

I am not going to cover what was said, you can go check it out on iTunes, just search for Dogma Free America. I’ll add a link later when I’m at a computer.

More to come…

I’m sitting in the lounge car hanging out on the train. We just left San Francisco and I am bored senseless. Over all, the trip has been pretty fun though. I got about 4 hours of sleep before we hit Sacramento and the train attendant woke the whole damn car up evicting people back to their actual seats.

That was when I found out that they gave out free pillows; after I slept.

I got a chance to make a couple videos yesterday and one today. Richard confided in me that he’s never been on a train before, so I might a video tour of the train so that he doesn’t feel left out.

If you didn’t watch the videos I posted you might not have caught the little drama moment I had yesterday, but I misread my train ticket and ended up missing my train in Portland. My wife raced me down to Eugene in a crazed attempt to beat the train down there. In the end, Ms. Andretti was victorious and I made it onto the train.

Brains, beauty, personality and stunt driving skills, what’s not to love?

Well, not too much more to say. If Woody Harelson and Wesley Snipes show up to rob the train, I’ll let you know.

Sweet Jesus on toast!

I have a new appreciation for people who travel to conventions frequently. My wife and I spent all day washing clothes, ironing, packing, checking bank accounts, moving money around, and running errands. And only one of us is even going anywhere! My business cards turned out fairly unimpressive and they wanted to charge me $117 for them after quoting me around $40. To their credit, they lowered the price to $70 and were very gracious about it and–at the very least–they didn’t subject me to religious bigotry of the variety I received from Minuteman.

But, for all that, everything is done and packed and I am ready to roll. My Swiss-Army-Wife not only does laundry, irons and packs things for me, she is also a talented hairdresser, so I can look forward to a much needed haircut in the morning.

Tomorrow I am probably going to do the first of several video logs of my trip which will be posted on YouTube for those of you who really want the candid play-by-play of my trip experience.

So there you go guys: mobile blogging, twitter and a travel video diary. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but my Blackberry kicks ass.

Only 12 hours until departure for the AAI convention, more to come…

Well, it’s official gang: I’m going to the AAI convention in Burbank California! Thank you so much for both your words of support and your extremely generous donations–without which I would not have been able to go.

I have decided to blog about the trip from my Blackberry, so this is my test post to see if it ends up looking wonky. Included should be a pic of me and my son in which I am wearing my brand new, hand made “We Call Them Pirates” beanie, which was sent to me by PinkoKnitter! She’s a member of the Chariots of Iron Ravelry group at ravelry.com. The beanie is awesome and I’m going to wear it in California, even though it will probably give me heat stroke.
Right now I am at home, getting packed for my 30 hour train ride… I can’t wait until we get bullet trains. But, I am going to use my time on the train to send thank-you emails to all the people that donated for the trip and I might try to take some videos from my phone and post them online if I can figure out how to get that set up. Otherwise, I have some videos on my ipod about game theory from MIT’s Yale’s fantastic Open Courseware Open Yale Courses* website and I have a Nintendo DS. If you haven’t played Scribblenauts yet, you are totally missing out.

I am printing up some business cards to hand out at the show and I was trying to do it from a Minuteman, which is sort of like Kinkos only it’s a franchise. I get everything set up with the guy over the phone, finish the cards and format them the way he wants them, email him to him, and when I call the guy to confirm that we’re good to go, he tells me that he’s a Roman Catholic and he’s been to this site and since he didn’t like what I had to say about his Church, he wasn’t going to print my cards…

So, I caved and I’m doing them through a Kinkos. They have been surprisingly helpful.

Anyhow, I’ll post again tomorrow with more from my pre trip packing adventure.

–Joe

*I am a moron. It was the Yale website that I got the Intro to Game Theory courses from, not MIT’s. Sorry.

http://www.informationageprayer.com/

For only $49.95 per month, you can contract the services of the Information Age Prayer company to help you “show God you are serious,” and hire out one of their computers to say a rosary for you every day for a full month.

One of the oldest prayers, it is very powerful and can be used for important or pressing circumstances. It is especially good to say this prayer in church with a group of others. This prayer starts with the Apostles Creed and continues with a particular order going through mysteries one through five (see Prayer Text). The computer doesn’t need any beads to keep track of Hail Mary’s while saying this prayer, it will be voiced precisely the correct way each time for you without taking any breaks. Subscribe now to have this prayer said for you each day.

That’s right–using a text-to-speech program–a computer will say your prayers for you so that you don’t have to, and you don’t have to stop with the Rosary. You can get a Hail Mary for just $0.07 each! So you don’t feel like a total schmuck, a whopping 10% of the money you pay will go to charity. The FAQ section is especially mind-numbing. Either this person is a complete loon or a genius that has decided to cash in on Poe’s Law.

Unbelievable.

We did a stereo and a mono podcast to see what everyone thought, but soon there will be only one. Let us know which you preferred. The poll is in the side-bar on the site. Go ahead and cast a vote.

–Joe