I am now the current owner of the General Exam Hat.

Excuse me while I go pass out.

On a typical day I’d still be sleeping for four more hours, but right now I’m in the airport. And in a couple more hours, I’ll be in DC for the Women in Secularism conference! I’m super excited (well, excited as you can be at 5am and about to fly to an opposite coast). The lineup is amazing, and I’m honored to be a part of it. Can’t wait to see all of my godless friends!

Watch #WISCFI on Twitter for con updates. Of course, we won’t be tweeting the top secret lesbian rituals or our plan for worldwide castration, but…

I’ve said too much.

My flight will be just as fun. I get to read a dozen papers on multiplexing microRNA for high throughput sequencing to study for my general exam! Wooooooooo! …man, when I scheduled this conference a year and a half ago, my schedule was a little less hectic. Oh well. Honestly I’ll probably get more studying done while trapped on a plane without distraction (aka the internet).

If you’re at the con, say hi!

Sorry for the lack of posts. My written thesis proposal is due today, and I’ve been working overtime lately to get it finished. To tide you over, I give you what I wish could be my entire Significance section:

Instead I get to ramble for a page about expanding the knowledge in a field and evolution and cancer. Okaaayyyyy…

The advice:

“While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads. In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”

My summary: “You should have raised your daughters to be ignorant bigots who are unable to think for themselves and parrot crap that has been repeatedly disproven by science, just like my mom did!”

Thanks for the advice, hypocritical teen mom abstinence shill!

The SCA’s controversial new Executive Director is doing an AMA on Reddit. I know a lot of you had questions about her, so now you have a chance to ask her directly.

If you need inspiration for a question, check out this “interesting” interview Greta conducted with Edwina. “Interesting” meaning “frustrating as hell.”

First you hoard all of these strange delicious candy bars from me. And now you have a new quarter featuring a dinosaur? With glow in the dark bones?!?!

I hate your awesomeness, Canada.

In case you didn’t take a look at the calendar yesterday, I wanted to clear up some things for you. Greta isn’t leaving Freethought Blogs due to lack of rage. I’m not leaving Freethought Blogs because I’ve become an MRA. And the rest of Freethought Blogs is sticking around too.

Sorry for all the heart attacks we caused yesterday. Mwahahaa.

Tim Minchin touched me.

:D

You all should know who the fabulous Greta Christina is by now. And now she’s become even more fabulous by writing a book!

Available on Kindle and Nook

I was originally going to wait for the print version since I don’t have an ebook reader, but I couldn’t stand the wait. So I downloaded the Kindle App for my iPhone, prepared to squint at my screen during my flights to and from the Reason Rally. Then I made the mistake of starting to read it early… and I plowed through the whole thing in a day. I couldn’t put it down.

But it’s not surprising. Greta has always had the special power to calmly and pointedly explain even the most rage inducing or complicated topics. I often find myself reading her posts on a topic I’ve talked about, thinking “I wish I would have said it that way!”

And this book is no different. As someone who has been reading Greta’s blog for 6 years and has been an atheist activist for 5, most of the stories and arguments weren’t new to me. But they were put so eloquently that I still gobbled them up, and stored them away in my brain for future debates. Especially the various hilarious quotes involving peanut butter, hair dyers, drowning in chocolate, and parrots.

So in short: buy it now. You won’t be disappointed.

With the Reason Rally predicted to get 30,000 to 50,000 visitors, you probably won’t run into me randomly. But here’s where you can find me on Friday and Saturday, in case you want to say hello!

On Friday, March 23 I will be going to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. If you want to join me and let me be your unofficial genetics/evolution geeky tour guide, meet me outside of the main entrance at 2:30pm. This is assuming I don’t have any major flight delays – make sure to check my twitter feed for updates.

I also do not have any plans for dinner on Friday night. If you would like to join me for dinner near L’Enfant Plaza around 8pm, leave an RSVP in the comments. I need to know how many people are interested in order to pick a dinner location. I will update this post and tweet the final location by Friday morning.

EDIT: I have a reservation at 8pm under “Jennifer” for a big group in the dining room of:

Jenny’s Asian Fusion
1000 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024
(202) 554-2202

Please bring cash because they won’t do individual bills. And I’m not buying, haha. They have a full bar and are open until 11pm.

On Saturday during the Rally, you can find me at the Secular Student Alliance table in the sponsor tent from 1pm to 3pm and then 4pm to 6pm. Note there are two different tents next to each other that will each have an SSA table – so if I’m not at one, I’m at the other.

Finally I’ll be at the FtB/Friendly Atheist afterparty here. Well, maybe. Only the first 150 get in and I have to help the SSA take down their tables, so I may not even get into my own event. But I will try my hardest, even if it just results in me sadly peering into the window as you all point and laugh.

Who’s excited?!?!?!