Archive for March, 2012

#MSOC is off to a great start — we had the first talk this evening (OK, it was me, ho hum), and I was impressed: we got a good crowd of people, and most importantly, they weren’t just the usual science faculty and students I see every day, but we actually succeeded in drawing in people from the local community and region. Yay, student organizers done good! We had a good dinner with Neil Shubin, Marco Peloso, Dan Demetriou, and a gaggle of the student organizers at the local Italian place tonight. Tomorrow, more talks! It’s not too late to join us!

David Coppedge, the creationist who was fired from JPL and is currently trying to sue them, has submitted his legal brief as plaintiff in the case. It is…bizarre. It includes a screenplay in which Coppedge imagines a dialog between a couple of JPL staff — a dialog in which he was not present, which basically makes it a work of fiction. Are court cases often resolved on the basis of creative writing? This kind of crankery really seems to be part of a trend: there was Kent Hovind’s “subornation of false muster” defense, Bill Buckingham and Alan Bonsell lying on the witness stand in the Dover trial, the prolonged whining by Freshwater, accused of burning a cross into a student’s arm. Creationism seems to draw in the wackiest court cretins; I guess it’s not surprising, given that you have to be a bit off to fall for creationism in the first place.

Oh, look what the climate scientists have been saying for the last 30+ years. Episode CCCXII: WRONG! .

It was all about defeating that Australian upstart, and I have succeeded. Martin Pribble, my “competition” in the Readers' Choice for Favorite Agnostic / Atheist Blog of 2012, has been totally defeated, routed, smashed, squished, annihilated, beaten. Furthermore, the grudge match continues. He has been challenged to a Hug-Off at the GAC in Melbourne. He shall be pulped in person. I shall emerge as the most cuddly huggable lovable atheist in the world by standing on the bleeding, broken corpses of my opponents. That’s how a Hug-Off works, right? And this isn’t going to happen?

This keeps coming up. Follow these simple rules. That is all.