Jen McCreight gets to experience Minnesota!

Living in paradise, the Pacific Northwest, has probably spoiled her, so it’s good that Mother Nature is preparing for her visit. Right now, Minnesota is looking horribly bedraggled and grubby — we’ve been thawing, slowly, over the last few weeks, so the snowpack burying us has diminished by a foot or two, and what’s left is the filthy black dirty detritus covering everything, with a few exposed brown patches here and there. But nw we hear that temperatures are about to plummet again, and a snowstorm is on the way, timed to arrive just when I’m picking her up! She’ll get to experience the range of exquisite torments Minnesota offers us, with the exception of the bugs. She’ll have to come back for that in July.

Anyway, Jen McCreight is touring the state, visiting Minneapolis, St Cloud, and of course, the cultural center of our fair region, small town Morris. She’ll be speaking here on God’s Lady Problem: Breaking up with abusive supernatural beings, at 6:30 in HFA 6 on Wednesday, 23 March. We’ll be having a slumber party at my house that evening, with my daughter Skatje also planning to be in town, but before that, I’m sure we can make a run out to Old No. 1 for some conviviality. Come on out and hang out!

If the weather allows, of course. We might be snowed in for a while. I hope she’s prepared.

Jen’s full schedule, in case you don’t want to travel to the cultural mecca on the west side of the state to see her:

Tuesday, 3/22
St. Cloud, MN
7:00pm in Atwood, Cascade Room
720 Fourth Ave South
Host: Secular Student Alliance at St. Cloud State University
Facebook event

Wednesday, 3/23
Morris, MN
Host: UM Morris Freethinkers
Part of Pride Week programming, woo!
6:30pm in HFA 6

Thursday, 3/24
Minneapolis, MN
7pm in Murphy Hall 130
206 Church Street SE
Host: Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists (CASH) at UM
Facebook event

Let’s dissect Terry Mortenson

This is a local reminder: we’re gathering at the Morris Public Library today at 3pm to discuss the lies of our recent creationist visitor. All are welcome, if you want to try to defend him, please do…just be aware that there will be a group of intelligent, well-educated UMM students present who will add you to the menu. But hey, we were brave enough to show up for the Mortenson follies, are you brave enough to step into the lion’s den?

Ask an Atheist

This week, the University of Minnesota Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists will be hosting an Ask an Atheist panel discussion on Thursday, March 3, from 7:00pm – 9:00pm. This will take place on the UMTC campus, at:

Amundson Hall B75
421 Washington Avenue SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Here’s how it is described:

This week we are welcoming everyone from all theological backgrounds to come and learn more about atheists. We want to hear your questions and be able to answer them, candidly, to clear up any misconceptions about atheists that you may have. We will have a panel of an undergraduate student, a graduate student, and esteemed professor and atheist blogger PZ Myers available to answer your questions.

So show up, ask questions!

Another Minnesota embarrassment

It’s state representative Mike Beard. Republican. Christian. Moron.

He thinks we don’t have to worry about natural resources.

God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable. We are not going to run out of anything.

Nuclear war and the death of a few hundred thousand people? Whatever. Get over it.

How did Hiroshima and Nagasaki work out? We destroyed that, but here we are, 60 years later and they are tremendously effective and livable cities. Yes, it was pretty horrible. But, can we recover? Of course we can.

No, he’s not from the same district as Michele Bachmann. But he fits right in with her.

What should we talk about?

I’m going to be on Atheist Talk radio on Sunday morning at 9am, for a whole hour. Greg Laden is going to be interviewing me, and he’s put up a thread asking for questions. Any questions. Go ahead, make me writhe and suffer and struggle on Sunday — I don’t mind, and it’ll be entertaining. Greg also has a sadistic streak, so he’ll have more fun if he can pin me down and needle me for an hour.

I’ve got a busy weekend ahead of me, but fortunately I don’t have to travel too much this time. I’ll be speaking to the Humanists of Minnesota at 10am on Saturday at the Nokomis Recreation Center (2401 E Minnehaha Parkway, Minneapolis), doing talk radio at 9am Sunday on AM950, and speaking to the Minnesota Atheists at 1pm Sunday at the Roseville Public Library. And I think I’ve talked myself into buying a decent pair of shoes in the Big City somewhere in there. Come on around if you’re local; both my talks will be sciencey stuff about evolution and genetics, but I’m always open to random questions in the Q&A, so if Greg Laden doesn’t pick up your suggestions, you can always deliver your zingers in person.

Hey! Who let those Rethuglicans into my state government?

It’s astonishing how regressive Republicans can be. Would you believe the Minnesota Republicans think women are worth less than men, and are willing to pass legislation legalizing that view?

Minnesota Republicans have introduced legislation that would repeal the 1984 Local Government Pay Equity Act (LGPEA), which directs local governments to ensure that women are paid the same as men. While local governments say reporting requirements are costly, equal rights groups say the law needs to stay intact in order to ensure fair pay, especially for women of color.

HF7/SF159 would repeal a laundry list of mandates on local governments — including regulations on part-time police officers, agricultural programs for low-income farmers and grants for libraries — but buried in the bill is a full repeal of the LGPEA.

Republicans have lately grown very fond of tossing descriptive rhetoric into the titles of their legislation. I would propose calling this one the “Buy Female Slaves Cheap Act”, except that I’m worried that such a label would make the Republicans stampede to favor it.

Deeper in the article, it mentions that Minnesota was the first state to pass pay equity laws. Once upon a time, we would have been proud of that.

We’re still trying to hire someone for a tenure track biology position

Way back in October, I told you we were trying to hire a new cell biologist. We had a very successful search, found a whole lot of brilliant candidates, and then brought a few of them out for interviews, where they shone like stars and dazzled us with their potential…and then they all turned down our offers. We should have mentioned in our criteria that working here demands that you be slightly mad — only slightly, though, just enough to be committed to undergraduate education in spite of a remote rural location, but not enough to be be, you know, committed. It probably didn’t help to be holding interviews in the middle of one of the worst winters since I moved here (by the way, I interviewed for my job in July).

So we’ve extended the job search. This is what we’re looking for:

Preferred: Preference will be given to applicants who have an area of expertise relevant to our pre-health professional students and complementary to existing faculty interests. These might include, but are not limited to: immunology, pathophysiology, cancer biology, bioinformatics, and cell signaling.

Duties/Responsibilities: Teaching undergraduate biology courses including a sophomore-level cell biology course, an upper-level genetics elective course, an elective in the applicant’s area of expertise, and other courses that support the biology program; advising undergraduates; conducting research that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program, the division, and the campus.

Our new deadline is 21 February, when we’ll begin reviewing applications. We aim to bring people in for interviews in March — maybe the glaciers will have retreated a little bit by then. If you applied earlier, we still have your application on file; if you’re still interested, you can contact us and let us know that you still want to be considered.

Roger Nygard in Morris

The University of Minnesota Morris has a special guest coming to town: Roger Nygard, the filmmaker best known for making the movie Trekkies, about the Star Trek culture. He’s here as a guest of our philosophy department, though, because his latest movie is The Nature of Existence, in which he asks various people about the meaning of life.

I don’t know. Wandering around the world asking strange weirdos to explain why the world was created sounds like a lousy way to do philosophy, and an even worse way to do science, but it might be a great way to do entertainment. We’ll have to see.

He’s going to be doing a marathon screening of the companion series to the film from noon to 9pm on Sunday (tomorrow!) 30 January, in Imholte 109. This event is free and open to the public.

But wait! There’s more! And all totally free!

On Monday, 31 January, you can meet with Roger Nygard from 3:30-4:30 in the McGinnis Room of the university library. And then at 7pm, in Imholte 109, there will be a screening of the movie The Nature of Existence…again, open to the public. This event is sponsored by the Midwest Philosophy Colloquium, the International Programs Committee, and the Morris Freethinkers.

I’ll be dropping in on some of the events, depending on whether I can get all caught up in my lecture prep for the coming week (with my current load, I will die if I don’t have most of the work laid out on the weekend); I’ve also got to get some preliminary work done organizing some talks for the week after, which contains Darwin Day, in case you’d forgotten. I will peel myself away for at least a little while, though, to be entertained but probably not enlightened.

I get email

At the end of February, I’ve mentioned that a flack from Answers in Genesis will be appearing in Morris. I guess the local hosts of that event are a little worried that I might breathe fire over their little church, so they just sent me a note.

Professor Myers,

I am the local coordinator for the Answers in Genesis conference which will be held in Morris on Feb. 27 and 28 featuring Dr. Terry Mortenson. I realize that there is a lot of real estate between our opinions on this subject. My hope is that we create a respectful discussion about this issue which will be challenging.

I would like to meet with you, at your convenience, to discuss the conference, the schedule, and how we can make it a positive experience for all members of our community.

How odd and annoying. I’ve attended creationist events in town before, and they should know by now that I don’t cause grief, at least not during the talks. So I wrote this back to him. I always believe in being honest and straightforward with people, even creationists.

Hmmm. Well. I can guarantee you that I and the people I will be bringing along to the event will be quiet, polite, and entirely non-disruptive; we’ll do nothing but observe, take note, and possibly ask a few simple questions, and we’ll follow any restrictions you want to place on us. You can ask your friends at Answers in Genesis; I led a group of 300 students through the Creation Museum, and we did not run riot or create any real problems for the staff or other attendees. We’ll do the same here, although we definitely won’t have such a large contingent this time around.

But I have to be honest with you: there will be no respect for this nonsense, and I do not consider bringing in dishonest incompetents to miseducate and misrepresent science to be a positive experience for our community. We will respect your right to have discussions of this sort and will in no way impede your ability to present creationist dogma to your audience, but I will not agree in any way with any of it, and once I step away from your church grounds you can expect that my criticisms will be thorough and fiery and will not include any pretense of respect for Answers in Genesis or the Morris Evangelical Free Church.

I don’t quite see the point of meeting. You know my position, and I know yours and Terry Mortenson’s. It is your event and I do not expect any accommodation for actual, honest science in it, nor do I demand it. Since I have promised that I will create no obstacles to your agenda, there really isn’t any good reason to discuss anything about it.

I hope they weren’t misled by my prior instances of polite behavior into somehow thinking I’m nice, or something.

Oh, look what will be happening in my backyard

A representative from Answers in Genesis will be speaking here in Morris, Minnesota! And none of the scheduled talks conflict with any of my classes! Not that I’ll go to them all — I do have limits on how much BS I can be served before gakking up chunks — but I’ll go to some, and will live-tweet the foolishness and blog up the events afterwards. My introductory biology students will also get some extra credit for attending.

Sunday, February 27, 2011 to Monday, February 28, 2011
Dr. Terry Mortenson

Schedule

Note: Any overlapping times indicate multiple, simultaneous sessions

Sunday, February 27, 2011
9 a.m. All Sunday Sessions will be held at Morris Area Elementary School
9 a.m. Music Worship
10 a.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Creation vs Evolution: Why It Matters
6 p.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Dinosaurs: Have You Been Brainwashed?
7:30 p.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Noah’s Flood: Washing Away Millions of Years
Monday, February 28, 2011
11 a.m. All Monday sessions will be held at Hosanna Worship Center
11 a.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson The Seven C’s of History
(Grades K-6)
12:45 p.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Why and How to Think About Origins
(Grades 7-12)
6 p.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Origin of Species: Was Darwin Right?
7:30 p.m. Dr. Terry Mortenson Ape-men: the Grand Illusion

More Information

Contact Information

Bart Graves
320-589-2808
[email protected]

Notes

Location for Sunday sessions:
Morris Area Elentary School Concert Hall

151 S. Columbia Ave.
Morris, MN

Location for Monday sessions:
Hosanna Worship Center

46303 State Hwy 28
Morris, MN

This event is a combined ministry of
The Morris Evangelical Free Church
Hosanna Worship Center
Morris Community Church

It’s nice to see the centers of indoctrination into religious stupidity — the Morris Evangelical Free Church, the Hosanna Worship Center, and the Morris Community Church — boldly standing up to admit their participation in crimes against reason. And now you know the kind of folly we face here in rural Minnesota.