Famous Atheists

Came across this List of atheists today.

Here are some big names I didn’t know about…

- Ron Reagan (President Ronald Reagan’s son)
- Lance Armstrong
- Ernest Hemingway
- Mark Twain
- George Soros (billionaire)
- Jodie Foster
- Sir Ian McKellen

FYI…

Also, take a look at Article 11 of…

Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, 1796.

Think before you die!

My mom likes to forward all kind of little stories and things that come to her over the internet to everyone in her address book. For example, the horrible little scam that is described on this page is something I got from her a few weeks ago. But more recently I got the “Cherokee Legend” email.

Cherokee Legend

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of passage?
His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.
He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN. He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear al l kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!
Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.
We, too, are never alone. Even when we don’t know it, our Heavenly Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.
If you liked this story, pass it on. If not, you took off your blindfold before dawn…

This was so bad I had to respond. So I replied to everyone she sent it to and everyone who got it when the person sent it to her. This was about 50 people who all got this email from me:

Wow… That is incredibly insulting to an entire race of people who were mercilessly slaughtered by Christians or converted under pain of death. An entire culture is gone from this planet and now being used for little anecdotes to support the religion responsible for its destruction.

Obviously, my parents were not happy about this…

Its one thing to send this kind of response to me and Dad - but it really hurts us and pisses us off that you would send your responce to all those other people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That was truely irresponsible, hurtful and extremely embarressing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
The only reason I sent it to you is because of your Boy Scout experience - out in the woods - all night, or did you forget about that? And everything else that you were taught.
There is a lot more I would like to say but I woun’t. I ‘m to hurt and embarressed.
I do love you very much, but you were not raised that way and I just can’t believe you did that!! You obviously did not get the real meaning of the e-mail.

The truth might set you free, but it will also piss a lot of people off lol. I stand by what I said though, and should have said a lot more. Maybe I made someone stop and think for a moment… A lot to hope for though.

As of yet, none of those other people responded to me, I’ll update this post if anyone does.

(The title of this post is from the new Bad Religion CD btw!)

Spiritual Fantasy

I found out recently that a friend and former co-worker has just decided, at the age of 28, after living an active and successful life, that he is going to become a Catholic Priest.

I think that this is very sad.

I worked with this guy for over a year and was hoping that I would have the chance to work with him on some sort of business project again some day. He has all the qualities of those who can become very successful; an entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence, persistence, and he is a talented salesman. He could have become very wealthy in his professional life, and I would have assumed him to be the type of person who would have wanted to find happiness in his personal life with a family eventually.

But now he is going to give all of that up and use those talents to “save souls” in an unhealthy and unnatural lifestyle. Such a waste.

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. -Carl Sagan

But we all must find our own way in the world. I do respect the courage it takes to make such a huge and life-changing decision.

The HillSeven Concept - A Blog Network

Starting in January, I am going to begin serious work on my new business venture, HillSeven. HillSeven.com will primarily be a blog network. There will be supplementary businesses, such as eBay stores, ebooks and perhaps even Second Life operations, but they will all tie in with building a network of high-traffic blogs.

Why blogs?

If you are one of the many people who hear the word “blog” and think of teens ranting about their lives, you many be wondering what the hell I’m talking about, so I will provide a bit of education…

Monetized blogs can actually drive some serious income. There are many blogs out there that pull in $5,000+ monthly. Of course, that level of income takes some serious time and effort to set up. Good content must be created on an almost daily basis for over a year to pull in any serious amount of traffic. But the people who can do that can pull in some serious income as well as a variety of other perks.

Why don’t I just set up my own blog and focus on that?

I am, sort of. I have this site that I write for once in a while, and I have StockWeblog.com that I write for, but there’s lots of other people out there who can produce much better content than I can, I’m sure. So I want to help new bloggers by giving them a professionally designed site to write on and just let them worry about creating great content while I manage the business side of the operation. Some of these blogs might be team efforts, like StockWeblog.com, and some will be for individuals, like this site.

Why can’t these potential bloggers just set up their own site?

That would be possible for some people, or anyone can go to WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace or one of the other major sites and get a cheap yourname.whatever.com free blog right away. But I have spent months learning how to set up blogs. Including how to design and market blogs, how to work with PHP and CSS (and this is with a pre-existing strong knowledge of computer programming), and how to effectively monetize them. I think I’m pretty decent with computer graphics, as well. Plus, I will have a dedicated server and the resources to fund new sites.

So anyone who wants to blog on their own will have to spend their own time learning all this, or they could just work with me and get the benefits of this knowledge without spending the time or effort that they could be using to create content. And not only will the site that I create not cost them anything, but they will have me working every day to make them a lot of money with it, because I’ll only make money if they make money.

Why a network?

Synergy. Along with the benefits described above, creating a network of blogs and other related business should greatly improve the traffic flow. The blogs can be linked together in various ways to get visitors to the site on the network that they will enjoy the most. I can’t give away too much of this part of the operation, but I have some ideas that I think will work very well.

Who do I want to work with?

Anyone. I want to talk to people who may be serious about blogging, but even if you only have the slightest interest in writing about anything that you enjoy, send me a message and we’ll see what we can work out. I am currently talking to a few people about this but I will constantly be looking for more who are interested.

Any topic has potential. Political, Religious, Tech and Personal Development blogs seem to be the most popular but there are some highly specialized blogs (e.g. scrabbooking) that seem to be doing well. Anything you’re interested in and could write about often would work. Video blogs are becoming quite popular as well (via YouTube). I would like some of these new blogs that HillSeven sets up to be a combination of written and video content.

Even if you just think the idea is interesting and might want to be involved in some way other than writing, let me know. I would also like to find a few recruiters/designers to work with as well.

Contact me here.