Subscribe to and Contact HDC

 HDC Feed

 HDC Comments Feed

HDC by Email

HDC Comments by Email

HDC on Facebook

~~
Email Heaving Dead Cats to share news, personal stories, ideas, information and more. I'd love to hear from you.

Our Cats

Dead Cats Archive

Ooh, Shiny!

You can support this site by making your Amazon purchases via the links below even if you don't buy these books! (it costs you nothing extra)

What I'm reading now:
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (this is excellent. Well written and fascinating. Highly recommended)
God Is Not Great (Hitchens is extremely erudite but I agree with him a lot here. Excellent so far)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Listening to the audio version. Excellent!)


What I just finished:
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Recommended. The first half is a great read. Thorough and detailed but easy to understand.)
Letting Go of God (I listened to the audio version. It was poignant and funny. Highly recommended!)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (best trilogy I've ever read!)

Series

Happy Atheist Love

What Makes Us Uniquely Human?

The other day, I watched a 3 part special about what makes us uniquely human from the rest of the animals on the planet, namely chimps. It was very interesting and I wanted to share it with you. I’m linking to each full length video and then below I will link to Science Talk’s interviews with Alda about the show and other interesting things.

Here’s some information from PBS:

After some three and a half billion years of life’s evolution on this planet – and after almost two million years since people recognizable as human first walked its surface – a new human burst upon the scene, apparently unannounced.

It was us.

Until then our ancestors had shared the planet with other human species. But soon there was only us, possessors of something that gave us unprecedented power over our environment and everything else alive. That something was – [...]

A Little Spring Cleaning at HDC

Hello everyone. Sometimes a whim overtakes me and I just want to do a bit of sprucing up. I updated the theme I use here at HDC and it screwed things up a bit (like my header). Then I decided to look for a new theme that might work a bit better than the one I’m using now. So bear with me. I’m going to do some fiddling around which means things might look a bit wonky while I try to make it work.

If you see errors or problems, try refreshing after a few minutes, because I might be working on it. Or if you have comments, suggestions or complaints, comment [...]

America Shouldn’t Be So Arrogant

Here you go, Bill Maher rants about American hubris. 4 minute video:

I love it when someone popular and intelligent addresses a sensitive topic that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’ve been wondering for the past 8 years or more why we think America is so great right now.

There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism:

  • Patriotism: devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.
  • Nationalism: same as patriotism but also the idea that your national culture and interests are superior to any other.

While I am patriotic and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather move to, we can’t sit back on our laurels from previous generations and just let this fine country continue to rot in its own arrogance and [...]

Happy New Year, Heathens!

indifferent to your suffering

Here’s to an interesting year coming to a close, and the beginning of a fresh new year full of change and promise.

i be ok

I hope you’re all having fun with your celebrations and being safe getting to and from any parties.

tell me bout you

This change is really just an arbitrary moment in time. A time to take stock, and a time to celebrate.

bacon not done yetNext year will be awesome. I know, that’s my optimism speaking, but we’ll make it the best year it can be. :)

optimist kitteh, pessimist kittehThank you for helping me be my best this year. Luvz U guyz!

Aww, damnit, I was aiming for posting at exactly midnight. But my awesome husband just called to wish me a Happy New Year. Damn, I love that guy. Ok, thank you again for being such great readers and commenters. Suggestions always welcome, as are guest posters. [...]

Election 08 Map: This Speaks Volumes

Hello! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Douglas and I maintain the website Global-Atheist. Neece has been kind enough to allow me to mar up the place with my ramblings. I’m a member of the left-wing conspiracy and a godless heathen. Pleasure to meetcha! (Oh no, Sarah Palin folk talk… what will we do without you?)

As my first post I wanted to show you a little golden nugget of a map. It’s a beautiful map in my eyes and shows just how far our country has come in the last eight years, or even the past four.

I think this map speaks volumes about how fed up the population of the United States have been when it comes to the direction of this country. The gist of the map is this: the more blue the county, the more democratic it voted this election; [...]

Wow. It’s Over! And Other Goodness

First, let’s do the other goodness. The political bit follows. My friend has been busy lately and I want to share what he’s been doing.

  • Global Atheist is an aggregate site that refreshes every 15 minutes. It’s a great place to scan lots of awesome skeptical and atheist sites at once.

Now for the Rambling Political Bit:

After about 2 years of campaigning and general political nastiness, it’s over. We’ll have a new president soon! Change is in the air! President Barack Obama. I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad it’s done.

It seems that most of America is probably relieved and happy today, while some people (like my parents) are very angry and busy selling off their stocks so that they can leave the country. Maybe they can move to Canada. Oh wait, Canada really IS a socialist country. Just teasing.

Hopefully things will [...]

A Solar Revolution In Our Future

In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.

Getting energy from the sun isn’t the hard part, it seems. It’s storing that energy that has been a problem.

These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.

I won’t get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.

Here’s a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.

This is just the beginning though. It’s still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and [...]

Page 1 of 212