I’ll be a part of Darwin on the Palouse, a Darwin Day celebration in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID:
- Daniel Dennett and PZ Myers will speak in the Cub Senior Ballroom at Washington State University in Pullman on February 9, starting at 7:00 PM.
- Fred Edwords and Jennifer McCreight will speak in the Clearwater Room at the University of Idaho in Moscow on February 10, starting at 6:00 PM. I’ll be giving my talk about Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, which is always a blast.
I find it kind of odd that I’m in fact returning to Moscow, ID. I was there when they hosted the Evolution conference a couple of years ago.
Not gonna lie, I’m kind of giddy to be part of the same event as Daniel Dennett. Thanks to the organizers for including me. Sadly I’ll miss his and PZ‘s talk, since I fly in Friday afternoon. PZ has already guilted me into buying him a beer as penance.
And I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have to point out a pet peeve. Whoever wrote the speaker bios writes that Dennett is an author and philosopher, that PZ is a biologist and has won many secular awards, that Edwords is an editor and director of secular organizations…and that I’m the blogger that did boobquake. I know that’s what I’m most famous for, but that’s all you come up with? You don’t think it’s relevant to mention that I’m the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Secular Student Alliance, that I’ve published in the Atheist Guide to Christmas, that…you know, I’m an evolutionary biologist working on my PhD? For Darwin Day?
Nope, boob joke. I will never escape it, will I?
Well, at least you “have become a public voice for science and reason”.
Those of us who know, know. Respect Jen! Wish I could be there, all the cool atheists are American these days.
Jen, 20 years from now there’ll be people who will think of you as the boobquake blogger.
Please don’t remind me :(
This is why one of my professors taught us never to let other people give your introduction for you…
I actually forget that you did boobquake until it’s pointed out.. and if you keep going on like this–it will become less and less of an issue…
of course–the fact that this happened is a sign that there’s still a long way to go… another generation or at least half of one….
Write the bio that you’d like to see for yourself, and submit it to any and all future speaking engagements, sometimes they even ask for a self written bio….you could even dress it up with things like, “One of the first women in space”, or, “Taller than most female skeptics”, etc., etc……
I somehow managed to read your blog for months without knowing you were the blogger behind boobquake. I think it was your followup on the Colbert visit that clued me in.
Pullman is pretty close but unfortunately I’ll be working. Is there any chance you’ll be at the Imagine No Religion event in Kamloops again?
Journalism rule: lead with the boobs.
It’s understandable that you might recoil when Boobquake is mentioned. But I wish you wouldn’t. It was an effective means of shedding light on the silliness of that Muslim cleric who blamed earthquakes on comfortably-dressed women. When I see the word “boobquake”, I don’t think “boob joke”. I think “stupid cleric”.
Short pithy items are hard to write; I think I see the constraints they were trying to work with. They gave you more words, by my count, than any one of the others (even Dennett). They made a point of starting each bio by establishing the speaker has international significance; apparently they weren’t worried about Dennett, but each of the other three has the word “international(ly)” quite early in it. and they made the non-indefensible call to use Boobquake as your international-significance item. Working within that call, a bit of copyediting can cut it down by about ten words, but that’s not much for a whole new thought, and a new thought would need to not detract from the strong finish, “She has become a public voice for science and reason.” Fwiw, here’s my trimmed version (notably removing unnecessary details of experimental procedure):
Jen McCreight, author of the blog “Blag Hag,” made an international name for herself in 2010 with Boobquake, a movement that went viral asking women around the world to scientifically test the claim of some Muslim clerics that scantily clad women cause earthquakes. She has become a public voice for science and reason.
You will never escape it. And PZ will never escape the cracker. That’s life for you.
You made a religious figure look ridiculous. What more could you hope for, honestly?
Although I do think it’s pretty awful that the last line is, “She has become a public voice for science and reason,” which makes it sound like, when you did boobquake, you were not a public voice for science and reason, but since then you’ve reformed or something.
Hello, people at Darwin day! Before you lies a chance to introduce someone properly!
PLEASE JUST DO IT.
It will be a central paragraph of all your obituaries.
Sadly, it’s the way of crowds.
“And every time I try to do something new, all they want is 1973.”
–That band that did the Million Dollars song.
“You don’t think it’s relevant to mention that I’m the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Secular Student Alliance, that I’ve published in the Atheist Guide to Christmas, that…you know, I’m an evolutionary biologist working on my PhD? For Darwin Day?”
“Yes, but” you have boobs! :)
Completely off-topic, but I’m ashamed to aay that I initially misread the title of this post as “come sex me for Darwin day” which, well… could make a twisted sort of sense, I suppose?
Time for another eye exam, I think.
Wait’ll the Christian Right blog-o-smear gets a hold of this:
“Noted Atheists Travel to Moscow to Celebrate Darwin Day: Our exposé of the sinister communist/atheist connection!”
Heh, boobs.
I’m kinda surprised they didn’t run this by you. Seems like a quick email to say “Are you cool with this description of you?” would be good practice in cases like this. Not that they’d have to accede your demands if you asked to be addressed as Empress of Awesome, with a PHD in Better Than You or something, but it seems like wise practice to check with you.
Especially as you might have experience and ideas in how best to market the product and full-color entertainment experience that is a live, speaking Jennifer McCreight.
As someone who receives press releases IRL, I know most of them are likely written ten minutes before send is pressed, but this is the era of email, twitter, etc. It’s one thing to annoy people when you mean to annoy them. It’s fun to do that, but it isn’t any fun to annoy people on accident.
Hopefully, though, it’ll be an interesting fact about someone whose later accomplishments are far better known, like Einstein working in the Swiss Patent Office.
Seconded! ;-)
While Darwin is of course the `biggie’ this Feb 12th, let’s not forget Abraham Lincoln who was born on the same date, and is famous in his own right.
Boobs. Ha ha. You wrote boobs. Now I’ve forgotten whatever else you were writing about. Boobs.
I don’t think the problem is so much that they mentioned boobquake as that the didn’t mention anything else.
Like, I doubt Jen would object at all to “Ms. McCreight first rose to international prominence by organizing ‘boobquake,’ a viral meme that both mocked and skeptically examined a fundamentalist cleric’s claim that immodestly dressed women were a cause of earthquakes and other natural disasters. She now serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Secular Student Alliance, published in the Atheist Guide to Christmas, and writes for Freethought Blogs under the moniker ‘Blag Hag.’ She is a doctoral student in genetics at Washington Whatever University and is deathly afraid of spiders.” >.>
..well, at least you have their *support* :P
Note: At some point or other they appended another sentence to her bio (an additional 18 words on top of her already generous word count). “She is an evolutionary biologist and vice chair of the board of directors of the secular student alliance.”