The first panel (DPR Jones, Lone Frank, Richard Dawkins) at the Wotld Atheist Convention has got us off to a roaring good start. Lots of interesting discussion and disagreement within the panel and the audience, good questions, not too many audience manifestos.

There is a delegation of Muslims here, one of whom stood up to ask a question that instantly marked him as a moron: he asserted the common inanity that Dawkins believes in a universe of nothing but chance. There were boos, Dawkins ripped him a new one, but of course he was undeterred. Now the Muslims are hitting the twitter hashtag #wac11 hard.

The basic conflict raised was by DPR Jones, who expressed a rather pessimistic view that religiosity was an inevitable consequence of human psychology, and we’re not going to escape it. I disagree. I didn’t raise my hand and comment, though, because the Q&A should be for Qs — those things that end in question marks — and I have my own soapbox. 

Psychology is not an issue of inevitability. We grow and change all the time, and to suggest that one state is determined because we can developmental evidence for it is misleading. An example: there is a game that children play that palls for us adults. It’s called peek-a-boo. That one year olds can be naturally thrilled by hiding and reappearing  says nothing about adult behavior. Unfortunately, we live in cultures that have enshrined peek-a-boo as an act of reverence, that couples weekly peek-a-boo sessions with sociability, and tells everyone they’ll be horribly punished if they aren’t good at peek-a-boo. Don’t tell me it’s an inevitable aspect of human nature, because my response will be to tell you to just grow the fuck up. Some of us already have.

They have an official wish list. it’s mostly “drill, baby, drill” and other heedless, short-term indulgences and catastrophes, but it also openly advocates ignoring science.

In California’s dry central valley, ensure that no federal scientific report … requiring water for endangered fish be allowed to interfere with farmers’ rights to their historical maximum allocations.

That bodes well. Bugger evidence, let’s do whatever maximizes profit now!

I write in my sleep. You see, the way it works is that if I have something on my mind when I go to bed, my brain will churn over it all night long, and because of the way my head works, it will spontaneously generate a narrative. I do that in all of my dreams — I float aloof from the events, mentally transcribing what’s going on. My consciousness is a kind of disembodied reporter, I guess.

This quirk can work out well. Lots of my longer posts are composed while I’m sleeping — I wake up in the morning and the structure of the story is all laid out in my head, with a jumble of words stacked up waiting to be written down. It’s not a complete word-by-word write up, but major themes and key chunks of text are all done, and writing is more like splicing in a few transitions and tidying up some rough edges than actually, you know, writing, whatever that is.

 Sometimes this has weird results. Like last night. I had finished organizing my talks for this trip I’m on, I’d packed up my gear and had my suitcase by the door, and I went to bed with nothing in particular on my mind, relaxed and unconcerned about the coming week. This is a dangerous condition for me. It means strange, random stuff will waft unbidden through my dreams, and when I wake up I’ll have something really freaky queued up in my consciousness, and my brain will be all “dude, time to get those fingers wiggling and frog vent the blast core to clear this crazy stuff out of the cortex,” and the sober, responsible part of my awareness will be all “no way, meat lump, they’ll lock me up if any of that escapes my cranium,” and then I’m cranky and blocked up all morning.

So, anyway, this peculiar dream/memory/vignette swam into the purview of my floating narrator last night, got annotated and slotted into the blogging module of my brain, and was sitting there waiting for digital instantiation this morning, so I typed it anyway while I was sitting on my boring shuttle ride, just to clear it. It’s not as bizarre as some of my undirected dreams (no way are my sex dreams ever being manifested; they’re choreographed by some twisted Rabelaisian alien), and travel is disrupting my usual schedule, so I’m dumping it online as filler anyway. Don’t judge me! Just think, it could be so much worse.

This one is nothing but an old recollection of cleaning fish. Fair warning, though: it’s channeled straight from my id, and what is an evocative memory for me might be a shrieking nightmare for you. And don’t expect much — it’s just a dream.

[Read more…]

It’s nicely done. The difference is that this one is a parable about sausages.

I’ve heard the “waily waily o waily” cries from the mob after the Endless Thread took a brief vacation. Well, too bad, TET had a wonderful time napping on the barren coral sands of Pukasavilivili, but now it’s back and is slogging in to work.

Don’t listen carefully to the lyrics, or you may learn that TET has not completely shed its cynicism. It would need to spend much more time in the islands to do that, and would also need to meet a lovely Polynesian girl and find redemption for humanity in love and kindness and hope. But no, you had to drag it back.

(Current totals: 12,473 entries with 1,389,844 comments.)

It’s always a surprise. I’m lounging in St Paul with an iced tea, browsing the City Pages, the news and arts weekly, and after reading a good article about the recent pharmaceutical debacle with levaquin, I turn the page, and there’s my name. dang, that’s right — I’m expected to perform.

It’s true, and it has been empirically evaluated: Guinness really does taste better in Ireland.

The results of the Guinness-tasting t-test were clear. Pints consumed in Ireland had a mean GOES score of 74, compared with a score of 57 in pubs outside Ireland. While Ireland may not necessarily keep the best stuff to itself, the science is clear: Guinness tastes better over here.

Being a Man of Science myself, of course, I’m not going to simply accept this claim, but will have to engage in some spot-testing and verification next week in Dublin.

…the fear he fosters spreads around the world.

This woman, fearful of the end of the world, took a boxcutter to the throats of her two daughters, and then sliced her own throat. This is what religion encourages: fear based on imaginary terrors.

Here’s a man who committed suicide in Nairobi. Here’s a family torn by parents who gave away everything to Camping; the mother said a daughter would be left behind…at least she didn’t try to cut her throat.

I want to see Harold Camping prosecuted for bilking people out of their money, for destroying lives and families. I want to see his radio empire dismantled and the people who promoted his lies disgraced and ashamed.

It won’t happen.

I’m busy in DC this weekend, so I thought I might just dick with you all by letting Pharyngula go dead for the whole weekend, as if I’d been raptured. But I decided to be nice and at least mention that I’m still earthbound. (Although there was a scary moment on the plane last night, when something went bump-bump-crunch-thumpety-thump over by the right engine at 30,000 feet, and the pilot came on to announce, “Nothing to worry about, folks, we just mumbley-mumbley throttles mumble flanges something or other Jeffries tubes, but don’t fret, we have “procedures” — just fasten your seat belts, please.” And then we landed and didn’t die in a fiery flaming fireball of fire, so I guess it all turned out OK. And there was a fire truck hanging out by the right engine afterwards, which was reassuring.)

Anyway, Roy Zimmerman!

Of course, I could still dick with you by going silent after 6pm Eastern, when the Rapture is supposed to hit the East coast, but since Australia and New Zealand are still there and report nothing has happened, I suppose any joking around has been blunted.

Although…Australasia and Asia and Europe are all full of funny heathens, anyway, so you wouldn’t expect them to notice a Rapture. It’s only when the Republicans get picked up that it will be obvious.

It’s a great lead: Atheists have better sex. Sign me up already.

Put it on billboards, too.