Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

I just wanted to point out a new addition to my blogroll: Funny Munny. It's hilarious. I was reading his post about big business reading blogs to get honest opinion and the way he ended it was aweseome:

Okay, Umbria[company behind the softwarea], let's see you work your magic on this honest-to-goodness opinion of a white male between the ages of 18 and 25: Kellogg's needs to bring back their watermelon Pop Tart. I repeat, give me back those scrumptious watermelon Pop Tarts. And I obviously have lots of money to buy them with seeing as I got too jiggy and now there's bling in my prostate.

It's just too funny.

This series will be a weekly (hopefully) endeavor where I will imagine some hypothetical conversations with my boys when they grow older. Hopefully they will prove insightful. Not too sure on what the format is going to look like, but I'll tweak things as I go along

Son: Hey dad, can I ask you a quick question.

FSA: Sure son, what is it?

Son: Um, well I was just wondering, why don't we go to church?

FSA: Why were you wondering that, if you don't mind me asking?

Son: Well, some of my friends were asking me at school. They were talking about going to church and stuff, and they asked me what church I went to. I told them that we didn't go to church and that we just stayed at home, but I figured I'd ask you why.

FSA: Ok, fair enough. You see son, church is for people that belong to certain religious groups. It's for people who more or less believe the same thing and every Sunday they meet to talk about those set of beliefs and be part of a community of like-minded individuals.

Son: How come we don't go?

FSA: Simply because we don't share one major belief. I'm an atheist, and your mother is a...hmm, spiritual agnostic is the best way to put it.

Son: What does that mean?

FSA: (laughing), for me it means that I don't believe that god exists. For your mom, she's not really sure if god exists, but she tends to believe that there is a spiritual realm to the world...or something like that, you should talk to her and get her thoughts on the matter.

Son: What does that make me then?

FSA: Well son, most likely it'll make you either an atheist, or an agnostic. Most kids usually follow their parents when it comes to religion.

Son: I thought grandma and grandpa were Christian though? Why aren't you a Christian then dad?

FSA: That's a long complicated story, son. Suffice it to say that I took a look at the evidence and it lead me to atheism.

Son: What do you mean by that dad?

FSA: That's going to be a conversation for another time son. I promise we'll get to it though...we could go to a church if you wanted to see what it's like. Maybe we could go to different congregations and we'll talk about what we like and don't like.

Son: Do you think that would be a good idea?

FSA: It's just a thought. I'll talk to your mother about it and see what she says. We might go to a Unitarian Universalist church first and see what they're like.

Son: Ok...what's a Unitarian Universalist?

FSA: I wish I knew son, but we'll figure it out together. (wink)

Son: (laughing) Ok dad, if you say so.

FSA: I love you son.

Son: I love you too dad.

~Fin

So that end's the first of what should be a weekly series. In this short conversation, I wanted to touch on how my sons might feel like an outsider because of our familiy's lack of religion. I hope that I'll be able to do a better job explaining to them, while at the same time allowing them to explore and be their own person. I'll try to refine the format and improve upon the dialogue going forward.

Some quick updates:
- I'm a wiggly worm in the TLLB Ecosystem. Alright!

- Carnival of Personal Finance #33 is up and my goals post is listed. Yeah baby!

- As a follow-up to my 0% balance transfer post, a few things have changed. Credit card minimums are going up to 4% and emigrant direct (one of my online banks) has increased their rate to 4.25% APY. As a result, I expect to make roughly 3.32% APY on the 0% CC balance transfer. I expect to generate roughly $500 in passive income for Mr. and Mrs. FSA. Wohoo passive income! Also, it's been mentioned that doing these offers will hurt our credit score, and I'm aware of that. We're not going to be applying for anything important anytime soon, so I'm not worried about the hit we're going to take. Gotta love arbitrage.

- I've been mulling an idea for a series. I will be starting one called "Conversation with my sons". In each one I'll post a fictional conversation between me and my sons when they are older. The topics will be varied and I'll delve into many controversial issues. I figure the series will be enlightening to my readers as they learn more about me and I hope that it will provide practice for later in my life. When the time comes and my sons ask me some of these questions, it will be nice to have a template of sorts.

Anon in my previous lotto post has been playing devil's advocate saying that he/she is still going to play the lotto. Here is the comment:

Well, if the choice is a dollar on the roulette wheel vs. a dollar on consumer goods, I say let the good times roll! or, as you suggest I could take my weekly dollar and put it in a savings account and at the end of 30 years at 4.0% (taxed) I'd have 2,300 dollars which with inflation will be worth less than 1,000. Since I will have saved 1560 dollars from a lifetime of avoiding the lottery and depriving myself of M&Ms, that doesn't seem like very good return. Even if the chance of winning the lottery is teeny-teeny tiny, it is still larger than my chance of getting great honking wads of cash with my dollar any other way. Hey, someone has to play devil advocate! I should mention here that the 2nd dollar that you spend on the lottery each week is completely wasted since it does not appreciably increase your odds. Guess I wont have to skip the diet Coke.

First, if you took that $1/week and invest it in the stock market for 30 years, assuming a 10% rate of return, you'd have almost $9,000. Take into account 3% inflation and you're looking at $4,000. True it's not "great honking wads of cash", but I'll take it.

Ironically, you touch on the second point I wanted to make: "the 2nd dollar that you spend on the lottery each week is completely wasted since it does not appreciably increase your odds". This is even more true over the entire 30 years. I took a look at the fictional lottery that I mentioned before, and here is what I found

After 30 years
Probability of matching 3 numbers	99.9999820851%
Probability of matching 4 numbers	48.7778006739%
Probability of matching 5 numbers	1.0045145272%
Probability of matching 6 numbers	0.0031159717%

After 30 years of playing the lottery, you have a 99.9999% probability of matching 3 numbers. So you'll definitely win that $3 dollars, but you'd have spent $1,560.

You have a 48.77% chance of matching 4 numbers, so then you'll win a couple hundred dollars.

Now it gets really bad, even after playing for 30 years, week after week, you would still only have a 1% chance of matching 5 numbers and a .003% chance of matching 6 numbers. Needless to say, your expected value is still quite negative. Plus remember, this is the cumulative probability, you're still very unliklely to win on each individual lottery game.

So there, that's it. No more lottery posts after this, I swear. :)

On another note, Anon, thanks for playing devil's advocate on this one. If you're going to forgo those M&Ms to play the lotto, that's fine. The sad part is when you have people that forgo food for their families to play the lotto.

Here is the rundown on the first two lotto posts:
- First lotto post
- Second lotto post

I have been featured over at bargaineering in an interview with Jim for his PFB Spotlight: Financially Savvy Atheist.
I just wanted to let Jim know that I'm very appreciative for the spotlight. I enjoyed the interview, oh and thanks for the ING reference as well :). Thanks so much.

To any new visitors, welcome and please feel free to look around.

You can contact me at frankyj009 with yahoo. Thanks.

I've recently opened an ING account. If anyone would like an additional $25 for opening the account email me at frankyj009 with yahoo. I'd get $10 for you signing up and contributing $250. Jim, at bargaineering was kind enough to refer me and I got $25. Also, they are currently having their special 4.75% APY period. So now is a good time to sign up.

Thanks.

Thanks to everyone that commented on the net worth snapshot post. In this post I wanted to talk more about our financial goals and why financial independence is important to my wife and me.

When it comes to money, my wife and I had similar upbringings. She was born in the US but her parents were immigrants from another country. My entire family (except for one brother born here in the US) immigrated to the US at different times. My wife's parents and my parents both came to the US for two main reasons: better educational opportunities and jobs.

We both grew up watching our parents struggle with money, from paying the bills to chasing get-rich quick schemes. Our parents also shaped some of our frugal habits, for example: we almost always get water when dining out; we gravitate towards the clearance section in stores and stuff like that.

The short end of it is that experiencing our parents respective struggles made both of us resolve to be financially independent and secure, albeit in different ways. It made me want to be rich, i.e. butlers, maids, and mansion rich. It made my wife risk-averse and crave financial stability. As a result, we compromised at financial independence and freedom :).

Ideally what we would like to do is "retire" when we are both 45. By "retire", I mean we want to stop working and do whatever we want for 3-5 years. That includes traveling around the world, spending time with our children and/or grandchildren; visiting every single tourist destination in the United States...you get the idea. Personally, I'm looking forward to being able to spend time with my wife and only my wife. It would be like when we first started dating in college, only this time we'd have more money and gray hairs.

After the initial downtime, we'd most likely become bored and decide to start working again. However, we'd be able to work in "fun" jobs. I'd like to try my hand at teaching, maybe as a high school math teacher, or how about a realtor. Hell, maybe we'll work at Starbucks! The point is that we'd have the freedom to do what we want.

To meet these lofty ambitions, I've calculated that we will need approximately $3,000,000 in retirement assets. I used a variety of retirement calculators that I found online. The main assumptions were usually that we retire at 45, die at 95 and our only source of income is our 401(k) and other taxable assets (so no social security, or pension).

The only caveat is I've promised my wife that if at anytime before we're 45 that our net worth including our primary home is greater than or equal to $4,500,000 then we would retire right away. So if the market has a huge run-up one year and we juuuuust peak over that for a brief millisecond, we have to retire. That's why I've listed our goal net worth at 4.5MM. It sort of corresponds to our target age for retirement, but it was more of a random number we could both agree on.

It's not going to be easy trying to meet that goal. While we are on the right path, I still think there is so much more that we could be doing. Here are some of the areas where I foresee improvement:

- We're going to start funding my 401(k) once my company starts matching. Looking back, I would have started right away, but we've committed ourselves to this method. Plus, instead of funding the 401(k), we're paying down credit card debt. So it's not a complete waste. After this year, I'd like to start funding a Roth IRA while we still qualify.
- We need to do a better job with our budget. I've tried using MS Money but haven't been as diligent as I would like. One weak area for both of us is eating out. We like to eat out a lot. This is especially tempting when we're both tired and don't feel like cooking, and the kids are acting up. We've thought of a few ways to deal with this. One is to budget $20 a week for eating out, and once we've used it all we're not allowed to eat out anymore. Anything we don't use, we save. Another is to try to utilize coupons when eating out, or only eating at places where we have coupons and/or specials (like kids eat free).
- Another area of weakness is impulse buying. To combat this I need to be more vigilant with MS Money (theres that program again) and as Early Riser said: "measure [my] progress and know where [my] money is going at all times."
- We don't do a very good job of living below our means. Part of this is due to the credit card debt we took upon ourselves to furnish our home, as well as a combination of the other weakness mentioned above.

This is the short list of what needs to be done. I would add to it learning as much as possible about all sorts of personal finance issues from books, personal finance blogs, and other internet resources.

I would greatly appreciate any advice from the blogosphere. I haven't the time to peruse through all the great posts that are out there that probably deal with most if not all of these issues I've mentioned. I will keep reading the personal finance carnivals on an ongoing basis as well as contribute as much as I can.

Carnival of the Godless # 32 is up at a pixelated mind. My post about Bruce Almighty is featured. Check it out.

Carnival of Personal Finance # 32 is up at be capitalism. My post regarding 0% balance transfers is up. Check it out.

Here is the net worth snapshot for Mr. and Mrs. FSA.

Not too bad so far. The good news is that it's positive. The bad news is that financialbabysteps is catching up to us quickly. That is one financially savvy baby! A little friendly competition never hurt anyone :). Here's the rundown on our assets and liabilities:

We refinanced our home recently so the appraisal value is only a few months old. Funny story about our mortgages. I was just graduating from college and couldn't qualify for a conventional mortgage yet. We wanted to move in and get settled before I started working so we did an IO ARM which allowed us to buy the home when we wanted. After making one payment, I started working and we refinanced to our current mortgage which is a 5/1 ARM with a really low rate of less than 5%. The total P&I payment for the ARM is less than the IO payment of the first mortgage we had which is great. It was fortuitous timing for us since it was right around the time that interest rates bottomed out. We will certainly be moving in under 5 years, so I'm not worried about the ARM reseting at a higher rate. The only negative I have about the mortgage is that we're currently paying PMI. That sucks. I tried using homegain to see what some comps would be for our area, but they didn't have data for our little town. I'm planning on waiting another six months before trying to get rid of the PMI.

We own two used cars. We bought one with cash and the other we financed through our credit union with a 5 year loan. Ordinarily I would say that taking out a 5 year loan is a bad idea for a car, but considering the fact that the interest rate was exactly the same whether I got a 3, 4, or 5 year loan it made sense to me. The rate is below 5% on the car loan as well, and I can earn almost the same amount of interest from an online savings account so I'm not really in a hurry to prepay the loan.

The emergency fund really needs to be more, but we're going to be concentrating on the Credit Card debt first.

You might notice that we have started saving in our kids 529 plan, but hasn't funded my 401(k) or a Roth IRA. More than half of the kids 529 comes from family memebers for Christmas and Birthdays. We did the inial seeding to open the account, but we haven't added anything since we opened it last month.

In terms of the retirement accounts, my company doesn't match until I've worked for a full year. I'll also be getting my first raise at the same time that I qualify for the match, so that's when we'll start contributing.

A large portion of the credit card debt (> 75%) is currently in the form of a 0% balance transfer for 12 months. We're going to be aggresively paying that off in the coming year. The rest of it is from our home improvement project that we did at the beginning of the month and will be paid in full from savings. So far we have yet to pay any credit card interest and plan to keep it that way.

For our student loans I've signed up for the electronic payment option so I qualify for a lower interest rate. My wife is finishing school so we don't have a pay her loans for at least a year. I consolidated my loans and I'm currently paying less than 5% on the balance. My mortgage rate is actually lower than the rate on my student loans :).

So there you have it. Our financial picture for the current year. In another post I'll go over the goals that we have and how we plan to achieve them. Any comments or thoughts on our net worth picture would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

In a few months, I plan to start arbitraging the 0% balance transfer offers from different credit cards. I've seen it mentioned on several different personal finance blogs and I'll make sure to read through the fine print. I have one such offer right now, but the purpose of that one was to consolidate some existing credit card debt to one card and to aggresively pay that down. So far my wife and I have paid zero interest on the cards we have. The only interest we pay is on our mortgage (5/1 ARM), our car loan, and my student loans. All of these loans have an interest rate of less than 5%, so I'm not in any particular hurry to pay them down yet. We do have an ARM, but we plan on moving before it starts resetting annually. So far, so good.

One thing I wanted to check was how much we would be making with such an offer. Since these balance transfer usually require a minimum payment (around 2%) every month, that cuts in to the amount of free money we'd make. As usual, I went to excel to find out the answer. My results are below:

Everything in orange are input variables to tweak to different assumptions. So it turns out that the effective APY for this arbitrage is 3.56%. Not bad. I'd only lose .46% (46 basis points for those in the finance world) in paying the monthly minimum.

I wanted to make at least $1,000 in interest, but that required around $30,000 in CC debt and my wife wasn't too comfortable with that. So we compromised at around $500. In reality, I'd expect that ending total to be a little less, because knowing us, we'd forgo some of the interest to pay the balance off a couple weeks early (not too early though). Hope that helps some people who are contemplating this move as well.

Also, just so you know, here are the effective APYs for various required minimum payments:
2% 3.56%
3% 3.34%
4% 3.12%
5% 2.90%

At a 5% minimum payment, you're only going to be making 2.90%. I'd stop there, as anything more is going to reduce it so that it isn't really worth it (for me at least).

Wow, thanks to everyone for commenting on my lotto post, especially since it was my first post in the Carnival of Personal Finance #31. I just wanted to take some time to respond to some of the commentators:
-ARB: Thanks for the nice comment and I never knew that the lotto was called the stupid tax till now!
-mapgirl: I don't think I would call what I did game theory. I think I would just call it straight probability theory. And you're right about that guy's system for the lotto, it's a common gambler's fallacy.
-PFA: I saw that post, so I didn't want to regurgitate it, I wanted to add something different! Thanks for the comment though.
-Anon (2nd comment): by that logic, I should just open up an online casino account and put it all on number 4 at the roulette table, it is a better risk/return characteristic than the lottery after all. Why not save that money that you would have put in the lottery (or the M&Ms) and put it into a CD or emigrant direct? That would be more sensible.

Thanks so much everyone. I appreciated all the comments.

I saw this post over at Neo's Nest Egg: Net Worth = Assets - Liabilities. It's a formula I've seen before (or something similar) in The MIllionaire Next Door. To quote Neo, who's quoting someone else

Multiply your age by your gross annual income from all sources except inheritances. Divide this by ten. This, less any inherited wealth is what your net worth (excluding home equity) should be.

I posted that my result was $121,000, but I forgot add my bonus so my net worth is "suppose" to be: $132,000. My net worth isn't anywhere near that. Maybe if my house appreciated by some riduculous percentage by the time I age one year. It doesn't seem to work well for 22-year olds, but Flexo made the comment that it works well for people in mid-career, and I would tend to agree with him.

Oh man. My post below with regards to the lottery took forever to get done. This was due to the tables I wanted to add. Does anyone know an easier way to do tables with blogger? I had to export from excel to a web page and then copy paste. It kept messing up and this was the best I could do. Also, someone check my math. I think I did things correctly, but I'm not sure. Thanks.

Inspired by the recent article about people's perception of the lottery as their key to riches, I took it upon myself to compile the following tables to show how you lose money on lotteries.

Here's the rundown for this fictional but representative lottery:
- pick six numbers out of 60
- tickets cost $1
- if you match 3 numbers, you win $3
- if you match 4 numbers, you win $200

Two scenarios for matching 5 or 6 numbers
Scenario 1:
- if you match 5 numbers, the first person to turn in their ticket wins the jackpot/1000
- if you match 6 numbers, the first person to turn in their ticket wins the jackpot

Scenario 2:
- if you match 5 numbers, the first person to turn in their ticket wins the jackpot/500
- if you match 6 numbers, the first person to turn in their ticket wins the jackpot

In reality, if more than one person matches 5 or 6 numbers, they'll just split the money evenly, but to make the analysis easier for me, I'll just assume there is only one winner. By taking a look at the two scenarios, however, it will give me a slightly better picture and allows me to complete my analysis.

The table I generated calculates the expected value for each outcome and adds them up. The expected value is what you would expect on average to occur when playing the lottery. I calculated it by multiplying the probability of the outcome, i.e. matching all 6 numbers, matching all 5 numbers, etc with the payoff for that outcome. I then subtracted the initial cost of the ticket to get the total payoff.

Here is the first table for a jackpot of $10,000,000:

As you can see, the expected value for scenario one is -.66. So for every dollar you play, you would expect to lose .66. Likewise for scenario 2, you lose .56. What does this mean? It means you shouldn't be playing the lotto because you're effectively losing money everytime you play.

Then I asked another question: what jackpot would make this fictional lottery fair? Or in other words, what jackpot would I expect to pay one dollar and get a payoff of $1. Using Excel, I found that the jackpot amount was: $71,258,671.




So you might think, well, if the jackpot gets that high, then it makes sense to play this lottery, and you'd be correct, but only about this fictional lottery. The caveat is it would be WRONG to state the same about lotteries in real-life. That's due to the simplfying assumption we made about only one person winning the jackpot for matching 6 numbers. In the real world, that jackpot would have to be split among the number of people that had the same numbers. And as the jackpot gets higher and more and more people play, it becomes more likely that the number of people with the same winning numbers will be greater than one. As a result, your total payoff decreases and your expected value decreases along with it.

That completes my analysis and is also the reason that I don't play the lottery, and neither should you.

[Update]
An anonymous commentor has made two very good points, I've copied his/her comment below:
Two additional points that make the real-world lotteries an even worse deal:
1. You'd end up paying taxes on the winnings. Depending on your situation, this would probably mean another 30-40% reduction in the after-tax value.
2. The full dollar value is typically paid in an annuity format over 20 or more years. The net present value at the time of winning would be significantly less. Some lotteries allow for a one-time payout, but only at a discount to the "face value" of the winnings.

HT: Wall St Folly. There is article for the bear case for GOOG, specifically $100/share. Interesting read, once again, it could probably be true, it's just a matter of when.

The key weakness (as pointed out in the article) for GOOG is simply that it generates a huge portion of its revenues from one source: AdWords. There is no way that going forward it's going to be able to live up to the hype with such a large dependence on one revenue stream.

I found the article informative, click through and take a look.

Alright. So I've finished making some more updates. I have added some finance related links to the left. These are some sites that I visit often and have found them to be helpful and informative. I've added more technorati tags to accurately reflect what my blog will be discussing.

In regards to pfadvice...advice, I've been fiddling with blogrolling and I can't find a simplistic way to segregate the links into cohesive categories (i.e. atheism, finance, politics) without either having to pay money or having to create a separate blogroll. I'm going to leave it like that for now, and tweak it some other time. I have a couple of articles in the works, one regarding arbitrage and one about FICO scores. I hope to finish those in time for some carnivals.

That's all for now.

I found this disturbing piece of news over at TRA: Hasadistic Impasse

It's an article about male circumcision where Hasidic leaders are battling a controversial mouth-to-penis circumcision practice that infected five babies with herpes. TRA is spot on when he says:

In a sane world, grown men who chew the foreskins off little babies, infect them with diseases and kill them don't get to arrogantly walk out of meetings with health officials. They don't get to create impasses with powerful mayors. In fact, they don't get to meet with health officials or mayors. They're dragged out of their beds at 4 a.m. by police officers, locked up in prison for life and, if they ever get out, forced to register as sex offenders until they die.[emphasis original]

Now, as pointed out in his [TRA's] comments, they don't chew off the foreskin of babies, instead, they use their mouth to stop the bleeding...which makes it better...kind of...not really...

Whew! Ok, I just redid the blog. There is a new layout, new blogs on the blogroll, new title, and hopefully soon, new content. Let me know what people think. I'm happy with the changes, but the one thing I might do is change the google ads. I'm not sure if I like them where they are right now. We'll see.
[Update]
Alright, I've changed it so that the google ads are below the posts, so you get my high quality material first (:P) and then the ads. I like it better this way. Stay tuned for more tweaks as I progress.

Before I start, let me preface this by saying that I can't stand Suze Orman. I think that she's full o' crap. That doesn't mean that she can't give useful advice from time to time, she does, but at other times I find her extremely annoying. Just my little disclaimer.

Easy Ways to save $5000 a year

I've summarized them down below, plus added my own little quips and quabbles:

1. Save your spare change and put it in a special savings jar.
To this I would add, pick up spare change on the ground and add it to your jar. I already save all my spare change, but now I plan on picking up money off the ground.

2. Reduce CC interest rate debt.
Duh. She mentions 0% balance transfer. Already doing it.

3. Higher Insurance Premiums
Yep, already doing that too.

4. Stretch the calendar
I thought this was a pretty decent idea. If you get a haircut every 4 week, try getting it every 6 weeks instead. Fortunately for me my wife cuts my hair for me, so it doesn't really pertain to me all that much.

5. Go wireless
Forget the land line and go cellular. Already doing this one as well.

6. Use company benefits
Talking about tax-advantaged Flex-Saving accounts. Once again already taking advantage of this.

7. Potluck with friends
This is another idea that I liked. My wife and I both enjoy eating out and I do have to admit that we do it too often, but inviting friends over and having a potluck sounds fun.

8. Drink less expensive drinks
I don't go to a bar, I don't have a tab, I hardly drink alcohol at all.

9. Don't but premium gas for your car
Already doing this one. I never understood why people buy premium gasoline anyway.

10. Buy used instead of new cars
Yep, we own two used cars and have one car loan.

11. Be more frugal with gift-giving
My wife's family does a secret santa kind of deal. It's nice, less expensive, and cuts down on unwanted crap.

So there you have it. I was proud that my wife and I were already doing several of these things, but we're still far away from perfect. One thing that we are currently not doing is living below our means. It's not too bad right now as we're only living about $60 more than our means on a monthly basis, and I did get a year-end bonus, but we're going to have to address it soon. I will be giving some more detail about our current financial situation and our plan to fix it. Plus, I will also delve into why financial freedom and independence is so important to my wife and I.

I didn't have a blog back then, but this is an oldie from Mike over at The Mighty Middle. It's so f*cking funny, I had to post it. The title is Bilbe-Based Geography, and it was right about the time ID was gaining some traction

Revelations 7:1. "And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth. . ."

Isaiah 11: 2 ". . . the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."

People, the Lord has spoken unto me. I know, I know, it surprised me, too. Frankly I would have liked him to call ahead. A simple courtesy call. He could have left a message. "Hey, Michael, I, the Lord of Hosts will be speaking unto you this Saturday around 7:30 am. So either get up and shower earlier, or put it off a while."

But, no. And so the Lord spake unto me as I was lathering what little hair the Lord has left to me, and his voice was like the, oh, hell, I don't know, let's go with the peal of a thousand trumpets. And verily did I have to rinse off without applying conditioner. And I did depart from the shower cursing angrily under my breath. And lo, I discovered that there was no towel in all the land of Canaan, let alone my bathroom, because we have guests upon us, and we're down to hand towels. Frankly at that point I would have welcomed a little burning bush, I could have warmed myself. But this was as nothing compared to the way I lusted after burning bush when I was 16.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the Lord spaking. And although I'm no stenographer, and I was only listening with one ear because I'm reluctant to pay very close attention to mythological entities, here is the gist of what he had to say: Bible-based Biology is all well and good, but what about Bible-based Geography?

And the more he spake unto me, the more I thought, "you know, he has a point." Then, I went back and capitalized "He" because you're supposed to do that. And I wondered, if Bible-Believing literalists can turn to the Bible as the final authority on evolution, why do they so flagrantly flout the Word of God when it comes to other middle school subjects? Like geography.

The Lord has made it pretty clear that earth has corners. Four to be precise. He mentions it in Isaiah, he makes less clear references to it throughout the Bible, and then, as a capper, right there in Revelations, he drops it in again just in case we were starting to have doubts. Four corners. Not three. Not ten. Not none. Four. And yet, brothers and sisters, the secularists who dominate our schools insist on teaching that the Earth is. . . a sphere.

I (speaking on behalf of the Lord) demand that henceorth we teach students two different possible views. One, the Theory of Sphericity. But alongside that theory, we should also teach Scientific Flatism, the bible-centered world view that the Earth is flat, and a rectangle to boot. Or, I suppose it could be some kind of parallelogram. Hmm.

Are you listening, Kansas? Don't ignore the revealed Word of the Lord. And don't fall off the edge of the world. There be dragons there.

After much thought and a large cost-benefits analysis involving systems of equations and difficult calculations that I've forgotten how to do, I've decided against creating a new blog. Instead, I'm going to reinvent this current blog to fit my interest (that's what a blog is for anyway). Plus, I've already invested a fair amount of time and effort developing this blog and I don't want to start over from scratch.

So in a couple of days (possible a week) my blog will have a new layout, offer trackback with haloscan, and now deal with my two primary topics: atheism and personal finance. I hope that I'll still get a strong audience from the atheist blogosphere and my one theist reader (thanks Jim). I'll try to make the post obvious about what topic they'll be discussing, and I hope that the personal finance blogosphere welcomes an openly atheist blogger, but that will remain to be seen.

Here's to an interesting and informative new year.

Franky the Financially Savvy Atheist

I've been mulling the idea of creating a new blog for a few weeks now. I want to combine my current two main interest (atheism and finance). I've decided to go ahead and do that. I'm thinking I'll post a link to the new blog once it is up and running.

As such, I was wondering what is the best free blogging site out there? Blogspot is ok, but I'm disappointed with the lack of sophisticated tools like tags and trackback. If anyone could recommend some of the best types out there and then I can really get rolling. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

...than with a Sam Harris Article: Science must Destroy Religion.
Opening Paragraph:

Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live. Despite the ecumenical efforts of many well-intentioned people, these irreconcilable religious commitments still inspire an appalling amount of human conflict.

Like much of his writing, it is well written, controversial, and I find myself agreeing with most of it. Take a look. (HT to A Rational Being)

Hi there everybody. Happy New Year to all! This past week I've been out of town visiting my wife's family. It was hectic and fun but also tiring. I have a few more days off so I'll be catching up on all the chaos that's been going on in the blogging world. Hopefully, I'll start contributing to more carnivals as well. 2006 looks to be a busy and productive year, and I'm looking forward to it.