Getting ready for tomorrow's Creation Museum trip!

I am sooooo excited for the Creation Museum trip tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to sleep at all tonight. Stayed up until 3 am last night, need to wake up at 5 am tomorrow, and I generally don’t sleep when I’m excited for something. That’s alright though. I’ll be wide awake from sheer excitement. And the super large coffee I plan on getting before we leave.

Just so everyone knows, here’s how it’s going to go down tomorrow. I am going to try to tweet as much as possible tomorrow. I also figured out how to send photos from my phone through twitter, so you’ll be getting little low resolution treats occasionally. You can follow me by going here. You do not need a twitter account to read what I post. Everyone at the Creation Museum will be using the tag #CreoZerg in their tweets, so you can go there to see what everyone else is saying too.

I’m not sure when my first official blog post will go up here. One, I don’t have a lap top, so I’m going to have to snatch one of my friends’s. Two, after the trip I have to drive to Columbus for the Secular Student Alliance conference (also excited for that, woo!), and I can’t exactly type while driving or in the middle of someone’s talk. So at the earliest, you may have a post around 4pm if we go somewhere with WiFi for food. At the latest, something will be up by 1am-ish.

And apparently my friends are placing bets on what’s going to happen tomorrow: how long we’ll stay in the museum until being kicked out (not getting kicked out to not making it in at all), how many atheists will get arrested (0 to 250), how much physical harm I’ll receive (threats to death), and how many kinky atheists hook-ups I’m going to have (not even going to try to explain that one). Thanks, guys.

Feel free to make your own predictions or create new betting categories in the comments.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I’ll be wearing my “Stand Back: I’m going to try science!” xkcd shirt. That won the most votes. Second place goes to my club shirt and nakedness, so I guess day 2 of the conference I’ll be going in my birthday suit. Have fun, SSA members!

10 Hours until the Blogathon!

I’ve been itching to make a lot of different posts today, but I was selfish and decided to save them up for tomorrow’s Blogathon. It’s hard enough coming up with 49 posts – I don’t need to go and waste them hours before it starts. I have a good list of ideas accumulated, and I’m sure even more fun things will pop into my head as I go…especially once I’m more sleep deprived. I’ll be meta-blogging (aka blogging about the blogathon) on my twitter account, so go there if you want to see the most insane side of the event.

Most importantly, we’ve raised $300 for the Secular Student Alliance so far!!! You guys are awesome! Thanks to everyone who donated (especially my slightly OCD friend who made a small donation to cap the money off at a nice even number)! If you still want to pledge a donation, click here. You’ll be able to pledge up to 48 hours after Blogathon is complete, so if you want to do something like pay a dollar for every post you actually find interesting (hopefully it’ll be more than one dollar…), you can do that.

Feel free to keep sending me stories/topics/questions until about 8 am Sunday! And I’ll appreciate any comments you leave on posts – it’ll be good to know that someone’s actually reading while I’m slaving away at my computer.

I’m still crossing my fingers for a Pharyngula bump, but I’m not sure if it’ll happen (maybe he needs a couple more polite suggestions…? I dunno, I don’t want to harass PZ). Scratch that, here it is! Thank you so much, PZ! I would love to see the donation amount just skyrocket. It would definitely help offset the amount of money we’re going to be giving Ken Ham’s Creation Museum when all 200+ of us go (holy crap, what am I getting myself into?)

With that, it’s time for me to get a good night’s sleep and prepare for my blogging extravaganza! See you guys bright and early tomorrow morning!

The Creation Museum trip just got better

My friend Mark pointed out to me that we’ll have some wonderful programming during our visit to the Creation Museum with PZ. Emphasis mine.

“The Ultimate Proof of Creation” with Dr. Jason Lisle

When: Fri, August 7, 12pm – 1pm
The Ultimate Proof of Creation There is a defense for creation that is powerful, conclusive, and has no true rebuttal. As such, it is an irrefutable argument—an “ultimate proof” of the Christian worldview. This presentation will equip you to engage an unbeliever, even a staunch atheist, using proven techniques. Read more about the accompanying book here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Ultimate-Proof-of-Creation-The,6134,186.aspx

Dr. Jason Lisle did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. He grew up in a Christian home, and because his family believed in the authority and accuracy of the Bible, he had little difficulty in dealing with the evolutionary bombardment he received in school. To learn more about Dr. Lisle please visit: http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=40

This event is free with paid museum admission or Museum membership. Seating is first come first served.

Good luck, Dr. Lisle. You’ll have a room full of staunch atheists on which to test your hypothesis. This also sounds delightfully hilarious, but I’m not willing to pay four dollars for it:

“It’s Designed to Do What it Does Do Workshop” with Buddy Davis

When: Fri, August 7, 1:30pm – 2:30pm


Join Buddy Davis to explore God’s unique design of many different animals. He will show how God should be given the glory instead of time, matter, and chance. In this one hour workshop, you will have fun with several activities including sculpting a Tyrannosaurus Rex head from clay. You will also have the opportunity to sing-along with Buddy, including the ever popular “It’s Designed to Do What it Does Do.” Come learn how God has designed different creatures in unique ways to do what they should do.

Gifted by God in many ways, Buddy Davis is a sculptor, speaker, and singer/songwriter for Answers in Genesis. An adventurer and paleo-artist he leads very popular children’s workshops and plays many acoustic instruments. To learn more about Buddy please visit: http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=5 Ticket cost is just $4 with museum admission; a discounted rate is available for Museum members. This workshop is sponsored by Cedarville University.

Note to self: Cedarville “University” promotes crackpot religious artists who seem to think sculpting dinosaurs is proof for creation.

Unfortunately we won’t be there long enough to see “Ape-Men: The Grand Illusion” and “The Hearing Ear and the Seeing Eye,” the latter having such probing questions as “Why don’t your ears see, and why can’t you hear with your fingers?” I guess now I’ll never know! Oh wait, I know what the answer is. God. Right.

Three more weeks until the trip. I can’t wait!

August will be amazing

It’s official! I’ll be attending the Secular Student Alliance conference in Columbus, OH from August 7th to the 9th and I’ll be joining PZ in his visit to the Creation Museum on that Friday. Wooo! I’m pretty sure this will be the most amazing trip to the Creation Museum ever, so I’m super excited. Totally going to get a photo of me riding a dinosaur and then sobbing in front of the evolution exhibits.

You don’t need to be a member or a student to go to the SSA conference or the Creation Museum trip. Midwestern people, you totally need to come. I mean, I’ll be there. …Well, okay, more importantly PZ and Hemant and Dan Barker will be there. I just like to think I’m that important.

If you can’t come, you should at least think about donating to the SSA. It’ll help counteract the money we’re giving Ken Ham.

Alaska photos!!!

Yay, I finally found a way to transfer photos! I’ll just share some of my favorites here with you:

Eating at Pike’s Place on the Chena River. Good food, but even better view.

This was so hilarious that I almost bought it. It was in the gift shop for the Alaskan Salmon Bake, which is basically this hokey gold mine theme park we went to that had all you can eat salmon, halibut, cod, prime rib, and all the fixings.

This was the best part of the theme park. Weeeeee!

I also learned that polar bears tend to spontaneously combust in Alaska.

Creepy human-turtle zombie sculptures on campus. Thankfully it’s daylight 24/7, so no real worries of zombie attacks.

Downy woodpeckers! I took about a billion photos of these two, it was impossible to just choose one.

Doing the touristy thing with the Alaskan pipeline. Kind of anticlimactic, actually.

Caribou at the Large Animal Research Station!

D’awwww baby caribou.

Muskox! And my new arch nemesis, the seventy bajillion zillion mosquitoes of Alaska.

Muskoxen sparring! I am SO lucky to have gotten this photo.

In the Army Permafrost tunnel!

Never mind

Yeah, so that previous email was just spam. Got a couple other really similar emails later that were equally confusing. Man, I was hoping this would be some cryptic religious puzzle that would send me on a Da Vinci Code-like journey. Sadness.

In other news, I found a charger for my camera, woo! …But the camera shop was out of SD card readers, so still no photos for you. I may stop by a Radioshack on my way to the bird sanctuary tomorrow and try to grab one. I know it can theoretically wait, but 1) I’m going to need to get it eventually and 2) Some of the photos are too hilarious to wait a week to show. Wish me luck!

Conference update, photo woes

Another Alaska update before I head out for our banquet! Yesterday I went to lunch with my academic grandfather (my advisor’s PhD advisor), who I’ll call AG. I had never met him before, but he was really nice, funny, and intelligent.

AG: So you’re my academic granddaughter? I lose track, I’ve trained over 40 PhD students.
Me: Wow, that’s impressive.
AG: I like to consider it a failure to practice academic birth control.

He’s also one of the most famous and accomplished scientists here, and he gave me a lot of great grad school advice. Though my favorite was probably when he told me if I was certain I wanted to go into academia, to marry a sugar-daddy doctor or something so I actually have some money.

Him: Hey, that’s what I did. My wife is a physician. I don’t mind it!

My talk today went really well. I was getting more and more nervous about it as the conference went on. Yesterday at the member’s meeting for the society they actually announced the time and location of my talk to a room full of ~150 people because I was the undergrad award winner. My immediate thought was “oh fuck.” Though the room didn’t end up being packed, mainly because my talk was the first of the day at 8:30 am. And on the third day of a conference, people start waking up later and later. I still had about 40 people come though.

We were initially having some technical difficulties. The session chair couldn’t get the computer to work, so I was afraid I’d have to give my talk sans-Power Point (nooo!). That’s what I get for joking about doing an interpretive dance of my talk all week. But eventually someone in the audience donated their laptop, and we were able to hook that up to the projection system. Once I started talking I wasn’t nervous because I was focused on…well, talking. I was actually able to answer questions without sounding like an idiot, hooray! And many people told me it was great (including AG, woo!), and that they heard other people saying it was great, so I’ll call it a success.

And as for my photo woes? I have a ton of funny/beautiful photos so far, but unfortunately you don’t get to see any of them. My little camera that I was using before, the base I need to transfer photos and charge it broke during the plane ride. Blargh. Will try to go to Walmart tomorrow and see what I can do. And the big fancy photo – which I have a bunch of neat bird photos on – can’t upload without installing software, and the lab computers here won’t allow me to do that. So I guess you all just get the boring text versions of my adventures for now.

Banquet time!

Alaska!

I still can’t believe that I’m actually in Fairbanks right now. I guess I’ve been really busy all day with the meeting that it hasn’t quite sunk in yet – I’m sure once I see a moose wandering around it’ll hit me. It’s absolutely gorgeous here though. I’m used to pancake-flat Indiana, with Purdue being void of nature and full of brick monstrosities…but here it’s just hills and green everywhere. Seeing the mountains in the sort of pastel dusk colors from the plane was so awesome. I just wish I could have gotten a photo, but alas, I didn’t have a window seat.

Speaking of plane rides, mine were a bit interesting. My flight to Seattle I was sitting next to two frat guys, wearing their letters and talking about a frat conference they were just at. They were nice, but I found it mildly hilarious that they were both watching the in flight movie of Confessions of a Shopaholic and seemingly enjoying it. This also made my day:

Guy1: *headbanging as if to a hard rock song*
Guy 2: Dude, what are you listening to? *touches iPod so it lights up*
Me: *looks and sees “Clocks – Coldplay”*
Guy 2: Bro, awesome.
Me: …

When we were landing in Seattle there was a rainbow! That was neat.

My flight to Fairbanks was also interesting. I was wearing my non-theist shirt again (I just can’t get enough drama, I guess) and the middle aged guy next to me started talking to me. First he tells me he’s from Utah. Hmmm. Then he says he has 8 siblings. Alarm bells start going off in my head. Then he says he spent a 2 year mission trip in Boston for the LDS church. Yep. Thankfully he either didn’t read my shirt, didn’t understand it, or didn’t care because he never mentioned anything. It was still a little awkward. Mainly I just didn’t want to get into any sort of religious discussion, especially since it was about 3 am my time and I just wanted to go to bed.

Alright, off to the social at the campus pub. Seriously, why don’t we have an official campus pub? Lucky!

Leavin :D

Woo! Leaving for the airport in about 45 minutes! You know, I’m really not sure how big name bloggers post so often. Do they just never go on vacation? I’ve been trying to make some posts for while I’m gone, but I still feel like I’m going to be neglecting you guys. Well, it doesn’t help that I don’t have a laptop (waiting until grad school to get one). I can theoretically post from my phone, but it has a character limit so I get about 3 sentences in. I will make some posts about my adventures while I’m up there, but if not, I’ll at least write some stuff down so I don’t forget it when I get back. Just think of it this way: you’ll have a bit of a dry spell for a while, but then lots of crazy Alaska stories and photos afterwards!

Oh, and I think about everyone I know has told me to say hi to Sarah Palin. Ha. Ha. Yes, she’s the one person you know from Alaska and she’s an idiot. Hilarious. Though this wins for most original:

“Say hello to Palin for me. Knock up Bristol on my behalf.”
“That may be difficult for me to do, but I’ll try my best.”

See you guys later :D

Alaska Itinerary!

I leave for Alaska tomorrow, woo! I’m so excited that I feel like I’m going to explode, so I’m going to let out a bit of that energy by bragging about all the neat things I’m going to see. That way, if I’m not posting on a certain day you can at least imagine me hiking in the accurate beautiful location, right? Like always, suggestions are welcome for things I definitely should see in the towns I mention below.

Wed, June 24th: Leave for Indianapolis airport around 1 pm, get to Fairbanks 11:30 pm.
Thurs, June 25th: Conference starts at 8 am (this is going to be a rough day). Lunch with the ASM officers, various technical sessions, symposiums, etc.
Fri, June 26th: More technical sessions, picnic with delicious Alaskan Salmon/Halibut/Cod in an old gold mining town.
Sat, June 27th: My presentation at 8:30 am (ahhh!), more sessions, dinner banquet
Sun, June 28th: Last day of conference, sessions all day, mooch food off of the break sessions because I didn’t buy a meal plan

Mon, June 29th: Field trip to the Large Animal Research Station, the US Army Permafrost Tunnel, and the Alaskan Pipeline. Also visiting Creamer’s Field, a giant bird sanctuary, and whatever other random cool thing I find in Fairbanks. It’s only dark from 1 am to 3 am, so I theoretically have a lot of daylight to explore in! LARS has muskoxen and caribou, and I hope they still have babies this time of year because omg they’re adorable:

Think I can successfully smuggle this back on the plane?

Tues, June 30: Leave for Denali in the morning, get there around noon, store my bags and go hiking all the close trails until the bus for my hostel comes at 9 pm. Hope there are no creepers in the coed bunks.
Wed, July 1: Huge Denali trip! Get on one of the early buses that takes you deep out into the park, try to get as many awesome photographs as possible (If I get something 1/10th as awesome as what’s on Flickr, I’ll be happy).
Thurs, July 2: Leave Denali, arrive in Anchorage around 6, meet friend who lives there and drive to hostel in Seward.
Fri, July 3: Visit Exit Glacier and the rest of Kenai Fjords, hope it isn’t overrun by tourists, see fireworks at Seward at midnight.
Sat, July 4: 4th of July celebration at Seward! Not really sure what the hell’s going on, but should be fun. Drive back to Anchorage.
Sun, July 5: Explore Anchorage. Still not sure what the heck I’m doing, but I’m sure Friend from Anchorage and other random people will have suggestions.
Mon, July 6: Flight leaves Anchorage around 3 pm.
Tues, July 7: Flight finally arrives in Indianapolis at 10 am. Sleep schedule promptly messed up. Furiously check 500 missed blog posts, upload photos, and then be reminded that I actually have to get back to work at some point. Damn.

And today? Do laundry, go to the bank, get last minute camera stuff, go play with camera so I know how to use it, get Tru Blood episodes from my friend for the plane ride (omg sex + vampires = ADDICTED), finish some last minute blog posts, pack furiously, and don’t sleep because I’m too excited! Wooo!

Alaaasskkaaa :D