Ben Stein and I have something in common

Oh, Ben Stein, I shake my fist at you in rivalry. The infamous apologist for Republican criminality, idiotic economics, and creationist inanity got to present a commencement address to a famous university.

As it happens, I’m going to be out of town for a few days now — I’m off to deliver a commencement address myself. Yes, it’s another travel day for me, I’m afraid.

Should I be jealous? Stein got to speak at Liberty University. I’m speaking at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. I might be a teensy bit ahead. After all, this is what Richard Dawkins had to say:

“Many of the questioners announced themselves as either students or faculty from Liberty, rather than from Randolph Macon which was my host institution. One by one they tried to trip me up, and one by one their failure to do so was applauded by the audience. Finally, I said that my advice to all Liberty students was to resign immediately and apply to a proper university instead. That received thunderous applause, so that I almost began to feel slightly sorry for the Liberty people. Only almost and only slightly, however.”

That’s a difference between Stein and myself. I’m the one speaking at a proper university.

The Eagleton Delusion

The other day, I read this fawning review by Andrew O’Hehir of Terry Eagleton’s new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, and was a little surprised. I’ve read a smattering of Eagleton before, and the words “brisk, funny and challenging” or “witty” never came to mind, and the review actually gave no evidence that these adjectives were applicable in this case. I felt like ripping into O’Hehir, but was held up by one awkward lack: I hadn’t read Eagleton’s book. Who knows? Maybe he had found some grain of sense and some literary imperative to write cleanly and plainly.

So I was in New York the other day, and was offered a copy of Eagleton’s book, and took the first step in my imminent doom by accepting it. Then I tried to fly home on Saturday, one of those flights that was plagued with mechanical errors that caused delays and long stretches locked in a tin can, and also flights that were packed tightly with travelers…so crammed with people that they actually took my computer and book bag away from me to pack in the cargo hold, and I had to quickly snatch something to read before the baggage handlers took it away. I grabbed the Eagleton book. Thus was my fate sealed.

I was trapped in a plane for 8 hours with nothing to read but Eagleton and the Sky Mall catalog.

This is an account of my day of misery.

[Read more…]

Ich werde reisen an den Bodensee

Good news for me! I get to spend a week in Germany, attending the Nobel Laureate meetings at Lindau on 28 June-3 July. I get to have all the fun, but at least you’ll benefit indirectly, since I’ll be regularly blogging the talks here. In English. You wouldn’t want to see the butchery I would do to the lovely German language.

I was looking over the schedule, and what jumped out at me right after seeing all those great titles was that they are actually confining Nobel laureates to only half-hour talks. That will be something to see, too.

Looking for me in Ashland?

There will be a few opportunities for informal conversation today. I’ll be on an evolution walk at Briscoe Geology Park at 2:00pm today, and for those of you who can’t bear the thought of seeing me without a beer or four in you, I’ll be popping by the Standing Stone Brewing Company sometime after 9:30…after my talk and after I’ve had some dinner with Jefferson Center folks. If I’m late, don’t panic, just have some good conversation with other godless Pharyngulistas, and I’ll get there eventually.

Partway there!

Oy, this has been a long day of travel, and it’s not over yet. I’m at the Salt Lake City airport right now, with a long 5 hour layover. At least I have wireless and my kindle.

It’s a bit of a shock being here, though. I’d forgotten how much those big lumpy whatchamacallums, you know, those giant piles of rocks and dirt — oh, yeah, mountains — add to the scenery. Also, 80°. The world is not supposed to be that hot right now.

Oregon or bust

Get ready, West coast: in two weeks I’ll be in Ashland, Oregon, speaking in the Meese Room, Hannon Library, at Southern Oregon University, at 7:00pm on 23 April. If you aren’t a student, you’ll have to pay a whole $10 to hear me — that’s more than I’d pay to see a Michael Bay movie, and I won’t have any car chases or explosions! This is a talk sponsored by The Jefferson Center, and you should check them out if you want to know more. There may be other events around that date — I know I’m doing a radio program one morning, and I’ll be there for a few days.

The subject of the talk is the legacy of Charles Darwin, and I’ll be specifically talking about “Darwin and Design“. It’s one of the annoyingly ahistorical properties of creationists that they don’t look at the evidence, forgeting all the arguments that went on before, and they don’t seem to realize that Darwin’s Origin is fundamentally one long argument against design and intent in nature. I’m going to talk about both the history of the argument, from Paley to Darwin, and the modern evidence that demonstrates the dysfunctional uselessness of this repackaged theology called “Intelligent Design creationism”.

It should be fun. It should be even more fun if a few of you Oregonians who read the blog can make it.

I’m alive, never fear

I had a harrowing morning. I got up at 5 to make the long drive to the airport, only to discover that last night, after several days of rain, it had frozen. And snowed. Uh-oh, you say…at least in my usual caution I had given myself 5 hours to make a 3 hour drive, so I figured I’d have no problem.

It wasn’t bad; little traffic, the roads were icy, but I was taking my time and coping like a real Minnesotan. Then, as I was leaving lovely Glenwood, I saw a truck stopped to make a left turn way ahead — like 4 or 5 blocks ahead. So I touched the brakes to slow down a little more. So I tried to slow down a little more. So I tried very hard to slow down some more. Why isn’t this car slowing down at all? I still had plenty of room, so I started easing over to the right to miss the truck on the shoulder. I tried to ease over. Why isn’t the car turning? I was pumping the brakes and trying to shift over just a little bit, right up until the moment I crunched into the right rear corner of the truck.

I’d managed to slow it down enough that the truck was hardly damaged — a shattered tail light, and some dinged up body work. Unfortunately, my car smacked right into the wedge of the back corner directly at my left front wheel, and then slide forward to take out the driver’s side door. The wheels looked rather pigeon-toed afterwards, and I got a broken glass shower.

You will be pleased to know that I did not pray at any moment, but kept busy trying to get the vehicle under control. I did have plenty of time to curse at length and polysyllabically, saying cruel and hurtful things about the car’s ancestry and the sexual and excretory habits of Minnesota weather systems.

I have bounced back! My wife made an emergency run from work to pick me up and deliver me at the airport (I owe her big time now). I’m now waiting to catch a slightly later flight than I had planned, but I’ll still make it to Michigan in time for my talk tonight. Have no fear, I will also look composed and fabulous when I make my entrance.

Acknowledgment long overdue

For the past few years, I have been receiving postcards from Theo Nelson regularly. They are lovely and colorful handmade cards with a poem on the back. I got another one today — all the others are lined up on a wall in my office — and I thought it was about time to mention it. It’s Spring again!

i-d18a7f52b8001f050565f5f4e8d2110b-spring_front.jpeg

Of course, Spring in western Minnesota doesn’t look much like that: what we have is lots of gray rain, gray dirty snow shrinking into lumps of gray dirty ice, and brown grass poking up through mud…but we’ll take it!

(Reverse of card below the fold)

[Read more…]