A lot of the websites went dark last Wednesday to protest SOPA. But what is SOPA? What is the deal with this legislation? Why is it so bad? What are the arguments for and against, and what are the real facts when you cut through all the intentional and unintentional misrepresentation? In this second and final part, I finalize the case against SOPA.

Last week I wrote an article that looked into internet copyright and outlined some of the opposition arguments in detail. I am hopefully getting a shortened version of that article published in our school newspaper, the Denisonian — no doubt they’ll shorten it even further. While I do intend to, very soon, write Part II on SOPA, I wanted to publish the shortened version that I submitted for those who just want the general persuasive gist without all the lengthy analysis.

A lot of the websites went dark last Wednesday to protest SOPA. But what is SOPA? What is the deal with this legislation? Why is it so bad? What are the arguments for and against, and what are the real facts when you cut through all the intentional and unintentional misrepresentation? As a part of my personal protest effort, I offer a summary of my research to the bottom of things.

Recently, presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said “How could you have judgement if you have no faith and how can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?”, a clearly bigoted statement. These kind of statements are the ones that I dislike, because I am fighting for an appreciation of open dialogue aimed at collaboratively finding the truth of our world, not attacking others divisive insults.

After Bachmann and Glen Beck have attributed Hurricane Irene to God’s punishment, I take the advice of a friend and look at the data, seeing what recent natural disasters can tell us about God’s preferences.

Since today is July 4, which is the much celebrated and patriotic Independence Day holiday for us in the United States, I thought it fitting to write an essay on what it means to be patriotic. In a world where any indication of godlessness in the political sphere is often attacked as unpatriotic and unamerican, I stop to see why this is. Are atheists unable to be patriotic?

There is much hullabaloo on what the definition of atheism means. A lot of people feel it is arrogant or unreasonable to say God does not exist when there is still (at least) a minuscule chance God exists. Some people even want to redefine atheism to some sort of absolute denial of God. In this essay, I explain how these redefinition are misguided, what atheism means, why there are a lot of other names for atheism, and why that doesn’t matter. This essay is a very basic introduction to what atheism means.

Recently, Fox News used a study at one university and a professor at another university to come up with the idea that Mr. Rogers is “evil” for giving kids a false sense of entitlement. However, what does it say about Fox News when the study they used is not related and the expert they used is completely discredited? I don’t think it looks good.

Certainly telecom companies couldn’t rip up our internet by giving preferential treatment to companies that pay them, and hurting the chances of companies that don’t, right? Well, actually it could happen, which is exactly why we need Net Neutrality…

Only eleven hours after my previous blog post about Michael Steele using his race card, Jon Stewart’s show, The Daily Show, has a hilarious clip about the exact same topic, using the exact same topics. Check out his slant on the same issue in this post.