Marit Simonson, one of the helpful people I met in Oslo (and also one of the organizers of Kritisk Masse, the skeptics’ conference taking place in October), just sent me a pile of photos from our visit. Here are a few of the faces of modern atheism in Norway, taken at a picnic in Frognerparken AKA Vigelandsparken.
It’s another conversation recorded for posterity: I appeared on the irreligiophilosophy podcast. Fortunately, they did not ask me to pronounce “irreligiophilosophy”.
We’re back in Morris after our week in Oslo and Copenhagen. Now…sleep. But first, here are a few people who appear now and then in the comments:
It’s almost 2am in Copenhagen. Pharyngulites closed out another bar. Gotta collapse somewhere.
I shall rise again tomorrow!
Oh no…the day needed a few more hours. I’ve been at the Atheist Alliance International 2010 Copenhagen Convention listening to Roy Brown, Gregory Paul, Dan Barker, AC Grayling, and doing a little yammering of my own, and the Trophy Wife™ and I were supposed to go to the evening of Godless Entertainment featuring the always splendid Robin Ince, when we were waylaid, ambushed, and pounced upon by The Amazing Randi and invited to join him for dinner. I’ve mentioned before that Randi is one of those phenomenal conversationalists one must spend time with, so we got distracted over an excellent meal…and missed Robin.
He’ll be sympathetic, I’m sure. I’ll just ask him to repeat his routine for me over breakfast.
You all remember Robin Ince. If you don’t, this will remind you:
I should have gone. But no, Randi is very cool. But Robin is such a hilarious nerd! Randi did magic tricks at the table. But Robin would have made me laugh. Gah, must finish my cloning project so I can be in 12 places at once.
Tomorrow it will be worse, with parallel sessions. Perhaps if I stand very close to the wall between the two rooms and vibrate really fast I’ll be able to catch them all.
We’ll be at Ørsted Ølbar in a few hours, at 8pm. I shall try to cope for a little while, but I’ve got to tell you, those savage Vikings in Norway held me hostage last night until the pubs all closed and we were thrown out onto the street, and I shall need gentle nursing back to health. No berserkergang from me tonight, unless you serve me a horn of bear’s blood.
We had a lovely day in Oslo. Where were you?
This was taken at a park with a great many statues of naked people. I was horrified to discover that one of them was of me.
Aww, it’s too sweet. Karl Giberson is apologizing for the way evangelicals dishonestly propagandize, and he mentions me.
I have to confess that the temptation to ridicule one’s debating opponents is all but unbearable, especially when playing street hockey on the Internet, where one must shout to be heard. In the past few months I have tried hard to come up with clever rhetorical attacks on Jerry Coyne, Sam Harris, PZ Myers and countless others whose ideas I was supposedly challenging. PZ once wrote the following about me, which I thought was pretty clever: “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter, and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth.” Of course, I responded to his evangelistic assault on me by calling him “Rev. Myers” in an essay on Salon.com. And so it goes. (I recommend against verbal swordfights with PZ Myers — you can’t win.)
I have a feeling, though, that if he’d expanded on the sentiment it would have been to explain that I put poison on the blade, carry a dagger on the left for the occasional cheap shot, and like to taunt my opponents into a brash rage. I ain’t one of them aristocratic fencers with their pointless pinking, I’m a brawler.
I have had no sleep in two days, and I think I’ll sleep well tonight — especially after tonight’s meal at Mares in Oslo. Oh my — just perfect food at every bite, and good company with a few smart people from the university here.
There will be more tomorrow. I’ll be speaking at the Litteraturhuset at 3:30, and at 5:00 we’ll be having an informal Norwegian picnic at Vigelandsparken. Come on by, it will be lots of fun.
The Trophy Wife™ and I are on our way to Oslo and Copenhagen.
It’s not exactly a holiday for me — I’m voyaging to exotic locales so I can sit in hotel rooms hunched over my laptop. Expect the blog to be a bit light and fluffy this week.
