Philadelphia!

Everyone wants to know what I’m doing in Philly this week. Me, too! Here’s everything I know so far.

  • I’m flying in on Wednesday morning, 19 November. At 5pm, I’m giving a talk on science blogging at the Kelly Writers house on the U Penn campus.

  • Thursday, 20 November, is the big event: Janet Browne will be lecturing at 6pm. I’ll be there in the audience, enjoying myself. You should be there, too. You’ve all read her magnificent two-volume biography of Darwin, right?

  • Sometime after that, the evening of the 20th, I’m going to aim to attend Drinking Skeptically, at Tattooed Mom’s, 530 South Street.

  • On Friday, the 21st, I’ll be presenting at a symposium between 11 and 5. I don’t think this is open to the public, but I could be wrong — I’ll let you know. I’ll be talking about abuses of embryology by creationists and by some legitimate scientists.

There are many other items on my personal agenda. I might be doing something with the Secular Society of Temple University, if I can wedge it in. I’m certainly going to sneak away to a museum or two sometime: The Academy of Natural Sciences has always been a favorite spot of mine, and they’ve got a cast of Tiktaalik on display now. The Mütter Museum is also showing an exhibit on evolution and medicine. I’ll post something once I get there if my schedule firms up.

We have more details on the Friday symposium, which is open to the public.

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Hooray! I win the prize for longest title!

It’s a crazy world out there

It isn’t so good for a fellow’s sanity to get the full dose of my inbox all at once, rather than spread out over four days. I got my mail working again a little while ago, and just browsed through some of the crazy stuff you people send me. Be amused.

  • A priest dared to ordain women. He’s getting a reward, though: he’s being excommunicated.

  • A priest denies communion to Obama supporters. He’s intrinsically evil.

  • I have to give the Pastor Ray Mummert award to the Bishop of Lancaster, who has declared that the problem with the church is all those darned educated people who aren’t attending Mass.

  • Maybe I should find a case of a commentator saying something nice about someone. How about this? Sarah Palin is the incarnation of “practical common sense conservatism”. Well, you all know what I think of conservatism.

  • People are worried about the “mark of the beast”? Really? A company that makes recognition systems tries to preempt concerns that their devices are tools of the devil by making a suggestion in all seriousness that people should use their left hand in their scanners, because the bible says the mark is on the right. Little do they know but that agents of the anti-christ will be observing scanner use and writing down the names of anyone who uses the wrong hand in their satanic machines.

  • And of course I’m still getting lots of loony Catholic email over crackers. This one from a Catholic priest, I thought, was amusing.

    What about eucharistic miracles that have happened in our own times?
    http://www.dsanford.com/miraclehost.html
    this one was actually verified by a scientific team and some video footage.

    Also, my patron saint, saint joseph of cupertino (1603-1663), would levitate as he consecrated the host at Mass, this was witnessed by many people including the pope of the time and other secular leaders. he also performed other miracles just like all the official catholic saints …

    I think “just like all the official catholic saints” is the operative phrase here. Cheap tricks in front of credulous audiences…just like all of them.

Radio reminder

In less than an hour, Atheists Talk radio will be on! This week, they’re discussing how to talk to a christian proselytizer, and are also having a segment on fundamentalism. It sounds very depressing, but I’m sure it will be good.

By the way, I am back home, and my laptop is still dead. I’m using an older, slower, smaller laptop while the other is out for repair, and I’m just now beginning the slow process of doing a complete restore to this little machine. I’m feeling sort of brain-damaged, but at least I’m getting some functionality back.

One thing that never restores very well, though, is all my old email. I have an abiding hatred for Apple’s Mail software, and it gets even with me by being a PITA, and compounding that with the fact that I’ve been unable to get to my mail for several days, meaning that there is probably a backlog of a few thousand messages awaiting my attention, I suspect my email is probably hosed. I hope nobody is expecting too prompt a reply from me today.

Relying on the Mollies

Yes,. I’m still down for the count with a dead laptop, still only able to get on to the web in a limited way. Since I have just been reminded that I am behind on the bestowing of the Molly awards, it seems appropriate that I just turn it over to you all to make your nominations right here in this thread.

And with that, I’m off to the airport, flying home by way of the famous Apple Store in the Mall of America, in hopes that some genius there will manipulate the fabric of space-time and restore my lost video.

PZ Myers naked

It has come to this. I can’t get to my files on my laptop, my usual posting habits are disrupted, and site traffic is way down. I have to resort to a desperate ploy to regain your eyeballs. I know, it’s shameless, but this kind of thing sells, so until I can get my gadgets fully restored, I’m going to have to use my collection of nude action photos to keep your interest.

(Say…if I coupled this to donations for a new laptop, I could get rich, although the constant demands that I please stop might hurt my ego.)

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Catastrophe!

I’m in the pleasant town of Kearney, Nebraska to give a couple of talks at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and something tragic and horrible has happened.

My laptop has died. The video card, she no longer generates the video. It makes it rather difficult to illustrate my talks with projected images. It also makes it difficult to get on the web and engage in the blogging (I’m using a hotel business office computer to post this).

I’m planning to stop at an Apple Store at the Mall of America when I get back to Minneapolis tomorrow and beg them to FIX IT RIGHT NOW, but until then, I’m crippled, with half my brain no longer functioning. It does make my talks more entertaining, though: I’m just talking. I’ve managed to fool them all so far, but today’s talk is all about embryonic development, and I’m going to have to show the evidence through interpretive dance, epic poetry, and finger puppetry, I think. It might be amusing, anyway.

An early Christmas present!

Watch Bill Donohue explode! I know, it’s so easy to set him off, so it’s not much of a present…maybe we should think of it as a reassuringly repetitive holiday tradition. This time he’s outraged because humanists bought ad space on city buses. It prompts him to a tirade about atheists, Hitler, and even fatwah envy — they’re always picking on Christmas, and don’t have the guts to abuse Ramadan, don’t you know.