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!

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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)

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Hey yo! Michigan!

This week, I’ll be heading off to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a few days, and more than a few of you have been asking me for the details. Here’s my itinerary:

Wednesday – March 25, 2009

4:00-4:30 pm – Interview with Jeremy Beahan – Reasonable Doubts Radio Show/ Podcast

5:00 pm – Check into Hotel: Days Hotel Downtown GR.

6:30 pm – Meeting Setup @ WCC (Jeff Seaver will pick you up at Hotel at 6:15)

7:00 pm – CFI Featured Event @ WCC Format: 45-60 minute presentation with Q&A following (RSVP here).

9:00 pm – After event Social at Vitale’s Restaurant.

Thursday – March 26, 2009

9:30-11:30 am – Breakfast with Science Professors. Discussion topic: Evolution Education Mezze Restaurant – Downtown Grand Rapids (Attendee’s TBA).

11:45-12:15 – Interview with Ed Brayton of Declaring Independence – WPRR 1680

12:30-2:00 pm – GRCC Campus Event: Discussion. Some will have “brown-bag lunch” – we can provide food for you based on your preference or get lunch after this event.

4:00-5:30 pm – GVSU Campus Event: Discussion

7:00 pm – 3 Beer Discussion (RSVP here): Social Event & Dinner with CFI Members (you are invited to join us for as long as you are interested)

Maybe I’ll see a few of you there!

Hiya, Illinois!

It’s true — I’m going to be speaking at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana on Friday, 13 March, at 6:00 in Gregory Hall. Well, nominally at 6:00 — my flight schedule is cutting it awfully close, giving me only an hour of leeway, so we’ll see if I make it in time. If I don’t, start the conversation without me. This one is going to be a bit on the history of embryology, with some discussion of modern interpretations of the well-known facts of development…including the thoroughly bogus claims of creationists. I will be teaching the controversy — I’ll be showing the audience how idiotic the Discovery Institute’s claims are.

I have no after-the-talk plans…yet. I’m sure that an informal get-together will coalesce afterwards, however.

For future reference, I’m also going to be in Michigan in two weeks, in Ashland, Oregon on 22-24 April, and LA in mid-May. I cut back a bit on my travel schedule this semester just to protect my sanity.

Calgary!

I have safely arrived here in Calgary, and here are the plans for Sunday:

At 10:30, we’ll be having brunch at the Best Western Village Park Inn.

At 2:00, I’ll be speaking at the University of Calgary.

At 6:00, come around to the Kilkenny Irish Pub. There are possibilities of haggis.

Sound good? Sounds busy! See you tomorrow!

The great comment registration experiment is still in progress. I will switch it off on Wednesday to allow everyone to weigh in with their opinion. There are a few things I can experiment with on my end, too — we’re supposed to somehow be able to use OpenID instead of Typekey, for instance. Bear with it for a little longer, though.

Calm down, Canadians!

I mixed up my dates in a recent post, so here’s a clarification on precisely when I wll be in Calgary and Edmonton.

Sunday, 25 January, I’ll be at the University of Calgary, talking about science education and creationism.

Monday, 26 January, I’ll be at the University of Alberta for a debate with Kirk Durston. For even further confusion, unfortunately, that site says the debate is tonight — that’s not going to happen. It’s next week.

These are open to the public. There will be festivities somewhere around them, I’m sure.

People are also asking about the Ohio event in February. It’s still at the state where none of the details are worked out, and I’ll post those as soon as I know them.

Holidays: officially over

I have just returned from my last long drive of the season, finally and regretfully shuttling the last beloved member of the Myers clan off to the distant Minneapolis transportation hub. Now, at last, I can relax, shed of my patriarchal obligations (speaking of which, the hair is getting a bit long and wild, and the beard is looking a bit ferocious…I may have to do something to tame them). I’ve also feeling the fatigue of waging the war on Christmas — my trigger finger is all calloused, and the recoil bruises on my shoulder would make you weep to see them — so it’s nice to have a little armistice until they start up again, six months from now. I’ve even got a little time to catch up with the neglected blog!

Here are a few quick tidbits.

  • The quixotic Michael Newdow is suing to have godly invocations dropped altogether from the presidential swearing-in ceremony, and our very own Minnesota Atheists have joined in. I don’t think they stand a prayer. It’s still a good thing to keep speaking out about it, so I support them wholeheartedly.

  • You need a poll to crash. How about one from Lynchburg, VA, home of Liberty University, where they are asking, Atheist group files suit to keep religion out of inauguration. Okay? So far, 17% say OK, 83% say not OK. That might change soon.

  • A bus matron who was supposed to be assisting a young man with cerebral palsy, Ed Wynn Rivera, abandoned him on the bus, still strapped to his seat, while it was parked in the depot…for seventeen hours. She had a good excuse, though.

    Hockaday admitted to knowing that Rivera was still on the bus when it was locked up on one of the coldest nights of the year. Her rationale for leaving? She apparently didn’t want to be late for church.

  • Good news from Texas! The final draft of the state science standards is done, and by all accounts, it is good.

    But with the “weaknesses” requirement removed and a new definition for science, the new plan makes it clear that supernatural explanations like creationism and intelligent design have no place in public classrooms, said Dan Quinn with the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based nonprofit group that opposes religious influence on public education.

    Good work, Texas scientists and educators!

I hope you all enjoyed your godless holiday. It was much more pleasant than the religious one.

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