Nothing has changed out here, Sandy—people still fight over Vikings in Minnesota. I live just a few miles from the Kensington Runestone Museum, and I know better than to dispute it now. (Nah, not really. If some asks, I’ll tell ’em I think the runestone is a hoax.)
Once again this year, I’m setting up our Café Scientifique-Morris, which is going to be held on the last Tuesday of each month of the university school year. This time around, that means the first one falls on…Halloween! So we’re going to do something fun for that one: maybe some costumes, lots of clips from classic horror movies, I definitely think we’re going to need some bubbling retorts of colored fluids, and the chemistry department is tentatively going to provide some treats (ice cream made with liquid nitrogen—chemistry and treats don’t usually go together in people’s heads, I know.) This is the announcement for the first talk:
I’ve been ripping a few DVDs from my collection with classic portrayals of scientists—the Universal Frankenstein series, Re-animator, the Bond movies, etc. (any suggestions? Pass ’em on)—which show us off as evil villains, and I’m going to show short clips from them to illustrate our poor image. Then I’m going to follow up with more but less exciting clips of people like Sagan and Wilson and Dawkins and, if I can track it down, Bronowski to illustrate the real humanism of good scientists. Suggestions for the latter part are also welcome, and that will be the heart of the talk, but face it: I don’t want to overdo the moralizing, and all the fun is going to be in the monster-makers.
I’ve also finalized our schedule. I’ve opened it up to a few people on the other side of campus, so we’re also going to hear about the legal standards for the admission of scientific evidence, and the economics of alternative power generation and transmission, in addition to a discussion of the chemistry we all use in our homes, a bit of astronomy, and a session of insect identification.
It’s looking like a good year for this seminar series. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by!
Note the headline on our student newspaper.
It refers to the fact that our football team played Trinity Bible College’s and beat them by a damnable 67 to zip…and that we’ve probably got a smart-ass heretic on the newspaper staff.
Y’all come on down—we’re having a party at my place tonight. Everyone bring something to eat or drink, hang about, talk, listen to some music…
| All you need is hate | The Delgados |
| Black Cadillacs | Modest Mouse |
| Viktorin | Hedningarna |
| Lullaby | The Cure |
| Thunder Road | Bruce Springsteen |
| Skinfakse (Delivering The Light) | Hege Rimestad |
| Porcelain | Moby |
| El Prado | Tom Griesgraber |
| Sugar Magnolia | Grateful Dead |
| Excitable Boy | Warren Zevon |
| Consequence Of Sounds | Regina Spektor |
I’m going to be so lonely tonight, aren’t I?
This is much happier news. Our county Democratic-Farmer-Labor party is having a fundraiser on 5 October, and we have a big-name guest to draw in donors…
Minnesotans are going to be a little less above average in October, when a gaggle of evil morons hit the state: James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer are having a rally in St Paul to “motivate pro-family conservative Christians.” It may also help motivate us pro-family liberal atheists.
Andy wonders which Minnesota politicians will show up for these hucksters for fascism: would Michele Bachmann be a safe bet? Mike Hatch better not; I’ve seen a few of his ads, and his gun-totin’ bird-killin’ pseudo-populism is almostas annoying as Mark Kennedy’s badly acted family dramas that play up his ‘credentials’ as a CPA—if Hatch sucks up to Dobson, he’ll lose my vote. I will rip his sign out of my yard.
Real Minnesota purists will like this: a new blog, Sky Blue Waters, dedicated to environmental issues in Minnesota. The big story right now is on a major oil pipeline being run through the state, and there are also articles on other Minnesota concerns: energy issues like wind farms and ethanol production, and pollution concerns, like runoff from feedlots.
So I took The Minnesota Purity Test, and got a score that says I’m 62.1% Minnesotan. Not bad for a non-native…but then, my mother was born here, and a lot of the test is more a measure of Scandinavian-American heritage. There are a lot of people in the Seattle area who would score well on this.
Just in case my wife happens to check out the internets this afternoon, I’m sure she’ll be interested in seeing the state of her yard.
The plumbing crew came out this morning to repair our broken water main, and apparently to also plant a dead pagan king in a nice barrow outside our bathroom window, and imprint the rest of the lawn with interesting trackways. Oh, well, at least we now have fully restored water pressure.
I must also thank the kind reader who sent us the disaster preparedness and cleanup manuals. They’ll come in handy—as you might guess, there’s now a musty odor rising from our basement, and I don’t think it’s from the moldering dead king. His generosity was only exceeded by Governor Kathleen Blanco, who’s flying up from New Orleans to give us some advice tonight.
