Election

What have we learned from the 2012 presidential election?

Fringe people are scary.

Women should not be kept in binders.

Hurricanes have a liberal bias.

120 million people - roughly 80% of the eligible voters - went to the polls. That's 4 1/2 times as many people who go to Six Flags parks in a year.

The Gregory Brothers do a fine job auto-tuning the debates.

Epistemic closure is a real thing, even if you don't believe it is.

The Republicans faltered despite being right about the personal invasiveness of Democratic economics, but they were wrong about the personal invasiveness of their own social views. And people would rather risk economic struggle than submit to social authoritarianism, if there has to be a choice.

All the people who called Obama a Muslim extremist socialist a few days ago have been commenting on the weather and the nice songs they heard on the radio today.

And above all, if you claim you believe that your God intends rape as a means of procreation, you aren't getting elected anymore. People are just beginning to see the sickness in religion. We will see how it goes in the year to come.

We now have a second-term black president who is in favor of gay marriage. Is it too much to hope for groundbreaking changes in society's attitude toward atheists in the next four years?

Because we are not fringe people, really. We are not scary. We're almost exactly like the rest of them.