Greetings, folks! I’m Paul, the one referred to in the nice banner up there. I’d been putting a lot of thought into what I might say in my first post here at Freethought Blogs, and then I put in too much, and now I have precious little to say. But let’s be honest — it’s a better idea to simply let the blog speak for itself, right?
Good then. I’ll just give a quick idea of what the heck is going on here, and then we’ll be off.
Near-Earth Object is, as that really nicely-done banner says, a blog of overlapping magisteria. That is to say that this is not a one-topic blog by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, there is a foundation shared among the writers at this network, a shared embrace of secularism and skepticism, and of course I’m very much in line with all of that. What I wouldn’t count on from me is a litany of atheism posts, since a) I already work for a secularist organization, for which I do plenty of atheistic writing and b) I also contribute occasionally to Friendly Atheist, helping Hemant cover the politics and world affairs beats. So I get to scratch my godless itch plenty in other forums. (Wow, that sounds pretty yucky now that I’ve written it. No time to edit, though! This is the blogosphere!)
What I do write about is broad: Politics, culture, technology, music, parenting, and you’ll also likely find things like book reviews, gadget reviews, arbitrary musings on my surroundings, and the odd disembodied blockquote, Tumblr-style, peppered throughout the place. My atheism and skepticism inform almost all of this, but they will not likely be the focus of most of my posts.
Or maybe they will be! I reserve the right to have all of the above be totally untrue at any time, without notice.
I’m honored to be here at Freethought Blogs, really. Kylie and Ian were, to my knowledge, fairly instrumental in bringing me on board, and I am very much appreciative. And my thanks to Ed for taking the chance, and my advance apologies for all the ways in which I will embarrass both myself and the rest of the crew here. I’m really looking forward to this entire experience.
Some housekeeping:
Near-Earth Object has existed in several previous iterations, most recently at Tumblr, and I’ve begun the process of moving content over to this site. As you can imagine, that is never a smooth process, and while I’ve already gotten started on the triage work, some things like self-referential links and whatnot will likely still be broken. I hope to get most of that cleaned up sooner than later.
Since it was Tumblr, I also took advantage of its quoting feature, which posts quotations without giving them blog post headlines. Lots of those are now here on this site, and while I’ve given most of the recent ones provisional headlines, many remain decapitated. This may or may not change.
That most excellent banner I keep going on about? Designed by my friend/nemesis Justin Sapp. I’d point you to his website, but he’s still getting that together. So if you want him to design something for you, I’ll put you in touch. Oh, and the stars in the banner? Drawn by Galileo. Not even kidding.
This one is important: I work for a pretty important skepto-atheist organization, proudly, and there is nothing on this blog that is in any way endorsed by, vetted by, approved by, dating, or flirted with by that organization. My opinions are my own, blah blah, etcetera.
Okay, enough of that. I hope you’ll browse the archive and stick around to see what damage I do here. I know I’m looking forward to it.
Near-Earth Object 
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