Other: When Standing By Means Standing Up

Occasionally, I've been invited to contribute to the Skeptic's Circle, which provides some good questions and interesting links to various and sundry items in the world of rational thought. Occasionally, it mentions a cause that one of the writers feels must be voiced, contributed to or argued against. Personally, I'm not a big fan of on-line petitions, believing that they are worth the paper they aren't written on; and contributions to someone I don't know to be applied in a way I'm not sure will be effective is, well, not something I'm likely to spare a bit of money for.

This being said, I'd like to direct your attention to Orcinus, and to an issue that is in his own back yard and in his field of expertise: the rise of neo-nazi visibility in the Pacific Northwest. I'm not going to say that it's a rise of numbers, because their numbers are difficult to gague (they ALWAYS say that their numbers are increasing), but it's the fact that they feel it is a good time to come out of their closets and into the streets that is noteable.

If any of you have a little money left after A) getting the first post-Christmas Visa bills and B) filing tax returns, may I nudge you into making him a small donation? He also has three excellent books focusing on racism and hate crime (Strawberry Fields, Death on the Fourth of July, and In God's Country) if you have a little more money and would like a tangible return.

Okay, that's it for my good deed of the year. I've got to mock someone now to get my karma back to normal...