• Obligatory self-promotion: My new book Meta: On God, the Big Questions, and the Just City, an atheist/Christian dialogue written together with Andrew Murtagh, is now available on Amazon Kindle. Check it out! We’re also planning a book tour with speaking events to be announced soon, so stay tuned.
• If you’re an atheist who cares about making the world a better place, you should consider attending the American Humanist Association’s Secular Social Justice convention, to be held in April 2018 in Washington, D.C. It’s a valuable reminder that atheism and humanism can speak to the moral issues that matter to women and minorities, and aren’t just for old, out-of-touch white guys. See also Sincere Kirabo’s column, Humanist Organizing for A Better Tomorrow.
• Apropos of my recent post on the robots coming to take over human jobs, here are two more stories that show how technology is bringing us closer to the post-work society: agricultural robots that can learn the difference between weeds and crop plants, and spray only the former with precisely targeted jets of pesticide – eliminating the backbreaking job of weeding, and vastly reducing the amount of toxic chemicals farmers have to dump on their crops.
• Computer vision also allows robots to watch out for and avoid their human colleagues, making it possible for them to work in small businesses and factories where it would have been too dangerous before.
• The Cool PopeTM shocks Chile by saying that victims of a notorious pedophile priest are committing slander by accusing their bishop of covering it up.
• “Hello, fellow millennial! I am a regular human covered with regular human skin just like you, and I strongly believe we should adhere to the philosophy of Ayn Rand.”