Hide the women and children!

The atheists are coming!

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It’s nice to see we’re getting front page coverage on the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but it’s also sending the wrong message. American Atheists are having their big conference in town next week, but we’ve been here all along and we aren’t leaving after Easter. It’s a somewhat muddled article, too — the writer seems a bit confused by this whole atheism business.

No one can say for sure how many atheists there are, partly because those within the movement can’t agree on the definition of an atheist. Some count humanists, agnostics and practitioners of astrology as atheists, but others draw a tighter circle.

Somebody has to explain to him that practitioners of astrology are regarded as creationists, not atheists. That’ll confuse him even more.

Anyway, the article does give some nice plugs for Minnesota Atheists, the Atheists Talk radio show, and Atheists for Human Rights. And I’ll be sure to get my horns trimmed and tuck my tail into my underpants so I don’t alarm people when I’m walking around downtown Minneapolis this week.

Signs and wonders

I have just walked outside in Morris, Minnesota, and you may not believe this, but there is liquid water falling from the sky. I even spotted an absence of coats, and someone rollerblading. Have I been magically transported to some tropical paradise, like Portland, Oregon?

Cafe Scientifique tonight

Today is my very, very long day, but it’s going to be loads of fun. This morning, my intro biology students and I are going to shred creationism in lecture; this afternoon, I teach our first fly labs in genetics (warning to colleagues: there may be escapees); and this evening at 6, it’s time for our Cafe Scientifique, down at the Common Cup Coffeehouse in town. The first 7½ hours of my teaching day you only get to join in if you pay tuition here, but Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public!

Tonight, Jamey Jones of the Geology discipline will talk about “Using rocks to tell time and reconstruct Earth history” — so if you’ve been wondering how we know something is 10,000 or 10,000,000 years old, come on down.

Cline at UMTC

Hey, Minneapolitans — Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists have two big events coming up soon. This week, it’s pizza and bowling on the UMTC campus. I’m probably not going to be able to make that one, but the week after, on 6 March, Austin Cline will be speaking on critical thinking and skepticism, and I may be able to get into town for that one. Let’s all go say hello to another godless blogger!

The moon is going away!

What a perfect situation: it’s bitterly cold outside, but the moon happens to be in the sky right outside my front window, so I can see it from the comfort of my living room. It’s half gone right now!

Now the moon has gone dark and red! Surely these are evil portents. What god should I worship to bring it back? Who should I sacrifice?

I’d take a picture, but the moon is high in the sky at an angle that would make it difficult to photograph through my window … and I really don’t want to go outside. Fortunately, Lindsey Bradsher sent me a picture she just took.

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As Morris goes, so goes the nation

Turn off your TVs. Don’t bother watching the election coverage. I know you’ve all been wondering how little rural Morris, Minnesota, population 5000, would vote in the super Tuesday voting.

Turnout was heavy, with between 400 and 500 people showing up for the caucus, and the results were … (drumroll, please) … about 2:1 in favor of Barack Obama. A landslide victory!

The full, final, official tally for Morris:

Biden 1 0%
Clinton 139 26%
Dodd 0 0%
Edwards 8 1%
Kucinich 2 0%
Lynch 1 0%
Obama 387 72%
Richardson 0 0%
Uncommitted 2 0%

We had a turnout of 540 people, over 10% of the residents of the town. For a caucus. The Democratic base is motivated and ready to get out and change things. Now all we have to do is get the Democratic leadership to go along.

Cafe Scientifique tonight

Come on out to Morris this evening — at 6:00, at the Common Cup Coffeehouse, Van Gooch of the biology discipline will be talking about bioluminescence and other phenomena in our Cafe Scientifique. The title of his talk is “Light Giving Life: Real and Artificial,” and I know he’s planning to bring sample organisms to hand out to the attendees.

Tune in Sunday morning

Remember—every Sunday at 9am, you Minnesotans (and clever others) can listen to the Minnesota Atheists radio program on Air America. Tune in tomorrow — it’s especially important since I’ve heard that Air America has actually already lost one advertiser because they had the gall to actually allow atheists to broadcast on their show. We’ll have to demonstrate that the program can get a strong audience, so listen in, call in, and if you have a business that you advertise on the radio, think about buying some time on the show. And if you’re in the area, patronize the businesses that are open-minded enough to advertise there (I noticed that the Q. Cumbers restaurant was one such advertiser — try it sometime).

By the way, we’re revamping the format a little. My “Moment of Science” got cut short last week, so the new idea is to give it a whole 10 minutes every two weeks, instead of 2-4 minutes every week. So I won’t be on tomorrow — listen anyway — but August Berkshire and I will have a more substantial conversation next week, on resources for people interested in learning about evolution.

Also, Minnesota Atheists will be meeting tomorrow afternoon at the Roseville Public Library, to hear Jen Tudor discuss Sex Across the Curriculum, where you’ll get to hear about “politics, pleasure, queer identity, lubrication, masturbation, and religion.” I wish I could go, but it’s -10°F right now and expected to drop down to -25°F tonight, so traveling is to be avoided…and there’s also this nagging nuisance of a new semester starting on Tuesday.

I really don’t understand Republicans

Somebody has to explain the logic of certain Republican values to me. Introducing something called the “Middle Class Job Protection Act” (which is actually, of course, nothing but a massive corporate tax cut), our own Little Miss Chipper Crazypants, Michele Bachmann, thinks this is good news:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

Once upon a time, we had this thing called the 40 hour work week — the idea was that it was good for the middle class to be able to get a living wage from a reasonable amount of effort. Now we’ve got Republicans handing out corporate welfare and getting excited because the working class has to labor for longer hours in order to make ends meet. I don’t get it. Do they think their local mechanic likes having to put in longer hours grubbing in grease and barking their knuckles and wrenching their backs?

I remember a few rough years when my father had to work two jobs, a day job reading water meters for the city and then doing custodial work in the evenings. It wasn’t because this was a fantastic opportunity to achieve prosperity — it was because he was desperate to pay the rent and keep food on the table. When people are having to work harder, it’s not a sign that the middle class is thriving.

I’ll have to remember this one for when Bachmann tries to run for reelection.

(Hat tip to John McKay)