Eden Prairie, one of the Minneapolis suburbs, is getting a visit from that piglet-lovin’ fella, Ken Ham on 29-30 April, at Grace Church. My calendar is actually free that weekend, so far. I’m tempted to crash the event and witness the lies firsthand, unless something more entertaining comes up, like a prostate exam or a tax audit.
Look: Greta is going to be in Minneapolis and St. Cloud this weekend, and she’ll also be on Atheist Talk radio on Sunday morning.
I’m hoping to make it to her Sunday talk, but I have a conflict: on Sunday, 18 September, before her talk, I have to appear on a panel over the internet to speak at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California. Thanks to the wonders of science, I don’t have to be in San Jose…I just have to have a quiet place with a stable internet connection. If I can arrange that, I’ll drive in to the Twin Cities.
The topic of the panel is “Religion and Science: Beliefs and the Brain,” and it’s associated with the opening of an exhibit on Islamic science. I get to be the poopyhead arguing that science and religion are incompatible, in case you couldn’t guess.
Scum of the earth. Parts of Michele Bachmann’s district contain the most smug, pious, conservative rat-buggering jerks on the planet (like Marcus Bachmann and his anti-gay “clinic”, for instance). And the symptoms are beginning to show: the Anoka-Hennepin school district, part of Bachmann’s domain, home of the Elmer Gantry-wannabe Bradley Dean, is also the epicenter of an epidemic of teen suicides, 9 in the last two years. These are kids who were bullied for being gay, or suspected of being gay, or not fitting in to the their inbred little community (and who would want to?), and the school district has been acquiescing to pressure from religious groups to maintain a policy of intolerance and even demonization of gays.
As civil rights groups have pushed the Minnesota school district to do more to increase tolerance of LGBT students, conservative religious groups fought to keep them away from public schools. After Samantha’s suicide and several others, students in Anoka-Hennepin schools participated in the Day of Silence. The event, organized by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, encourages kids to remain silent for the day in recognition of the effect of anti-gay bullying and harassment. In response, religious activists took up the “Day of Truth,” an event championed by the “ex-gay ministry” Exodus International that’s usually held the day before the Day of Silence. Students who participated were encouraged to engage their classmates in discussions of homosexuality from a Christian perspective.
Fifteen-year-old Justin Aaberg appears to have been one of the targets of this initiative. One day last year Justin came home and told his mom, Tammy, that another student had told him he would to go to hell because he was gay. “That did something to his brain,” she says. He hanged himself in his bedroom last summer. Only after his suicide did Tammy learn that the Parents Action League had reportedly worked with area churches to hand out T-shirts promoting the “Day of Truth” to students at his high school (which is also Bachmann’s alma mater). The students were also instructed to “preach to the gay kids,” Aaberg says. (No one from the Parents Action League responded to a request for comment.)
You would think that Christians, who claim to have the moral high ground in everything, would recognize that driving kids to suicide is not ethical behavior. Unfortunately not; it’s part of their agenda. If they can’t convert them to their sanctimonious faith, it’s just as good to have them dead.
Will the school district change its policies? I doubt it. The churches dictate what is allowed.
I was reading Roger Ebert’s lament over the disgraceful decline of quality in theater projection (a function of theater owners who just don’t care anymore and the corrupting influence of bad 3D), and then I remembered that last year I took some pictures of the funky old technology in our local movie house, the Morris Theatre.
This is a classy old place, a bit run down now, but once it was the entertainment center for the whole community. It was built in the 1940s, and it’s very old school: a single screen, so you don’t get many choices here. What’s playing this week is what’s playing this week. That’s fine, though, since you don’t go just for the movie, but for the atmosphere and to sample the different audiences that show up for different movies.
Anyway, my daughter, Skatje worked there until she graduated from college and abandoned us to move hundreds of miles away and leave us desolated and lonely, and so one evening when I was the only customer in the theater (that sometimes happens, and then I get the whole big screen to myself, which is not economically viable, but that’s a whole different matter), I puttered about getting in the way and seeing what was involved. I took a few pictures. I don’t know if they’ll make sense — the room was awesomely cluttered and complicated.
I’ll be on Minnesota Public Radio on 31 May, on a program called Bright Ideas, in front of a live studio audience, which will probably pepper me with obnoxious questions. Or fun questions. We’ll find out.
This event may have already been ‘sold’ out (tickets are free) — but you locals can try to get in here (Never mind, it is already sold out).
Michele Bachmann opened her mouth again. She compared increasing the tax rates for the rich to the Holocaust.
She said she was shocked to hear that many Americans weren’t aware that millions of Jews had died until after World War II ended.
Bachmann said the next generation will ask similar questions about what their elders did to prevent them from facing a huge tax burden.
“I tell you this story because I think in our day and time, there is no analogy to that horrific action,” she said, referring to the Holocaust. “But only to say, we are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes a similar death and a similar taking away. It is this disenfranchisement that I think we have to answer to.”
Shorter Michele Bachman: “Expecting me to bear a fair share of my civic responsibility is like gassing me to death!”
Hey! Martin Rundkvist is in Minnesota, and Greg Laden will be interviewing him for Atheist Talk radio tomorrow morning at 9am Central time.
Now I’m tempted to drive in to Minneapolis tomorrow for the brunch at Q Cumbers. Must finish projects first…must finish prep for Monday class, too…aargh, don’t know if time will allow.
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
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?
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!
