Oh and also – talk amongst yourselves. It looks so dead here when I’m busy elsewhere. Tell stories, complain, argue, explain, debate. Keep the lights on.
Twenty minutes before the first panel. Zoooooooooom.
Butterflies and Wheels
Gnu atheism, women's rights, internationalism, universalism, and gossip
Does anyone besides me think the hockey playoffs should not take place in the second half of May? Hockey is a winter sport. May 18th is closer to summer than winter.
Playoffs? What playoffs? Didn’t they end last week in Boston?
Earlier this week I mean. It’s been so long and I’ve been golfing.
There’s an art and music fest here this weekend. I took a couple teens down last night and I’ll take the whole famdamily + 2 today. It is going to be a hoot. It is hot, humid and likely will rain, but we’ll get to see people we haven’t seen in ages, listen to amazing music, stuff ourselves on BBQ and drool over the art. There are people in costume roaming the streets, pirates that give the kids free books and lots of chances for the festival goers to make a little art of their own. I’m particularly looking forward to the competition tomorrow that a friend of mine is entering (and winning, I’m sure).
On a sad note, this may be one of the last times I get to hang out with my bestie before she moves.
Part of the reason the hockey playoffs are even ridiculously later than usual was that stupid lockout that wiped out half the season. So the final will probably run until the end of June. I’m kind of hoping for a Boston/Chicago original six final, mostly because I don’t really care about any of the teams left in the running.
I’m normally an uber-hockey-fan, but the lockout really took a lot of that out of me this year. I don’t think I’ve watched a single game from beginning to end all season.
/now back to your regularly scheduled programming
I think Ophelia likes dogs, so here’s a link a friend just sent me of dogs shaking their heads. It looks like someone squirted a little water in their ears and took the photos with strobe lighting.
Dave, those are some nice doggies.
are we kind of the Left Behind contingent here? I assume those of us posting here are not at Women in Secularism. Meanwhile, while the dog lover is away, we Cats can play. What’s up? What can we stir up? to make it noteworthy when Ophelia comes back?
Of course we are, that’s why we’re discussing hockey and dogs.
@ unknown Eric #5
I have ended up feeling the same way after the baseball strike in what was it, 1994? where they canceled the world series or whatever? MLB has never “recovered” in my estimation, and I have seldom watched or attended any games since then.
I was just blown away by a talk at INR3 by Peter Boghossian. He specializes in deconverting theists, and has the best methodology I’ve ever heard. He’s being a bit simplistic with epistemology, and the talk of “interventions” is a bit jarring, but he’s given me a new approach and way to think about arguing against faith. I’m pre-ordering his book, stat.
At my funeral I want the Toronto Maple Leafs to be my pallbearers. So they can let me down one last time….
I HAVE ALL THE COOKIES!!
Also, Aruna Papp earned the first standing ovation of INR3 for her rousing talk on religiously motivated domestic abuse. There was nary a dry eye when she declared herself the “King of Whoredom.” You must check it out.
Oh, and Richard. Carrier isn’t talking about A+, but some silly scholarly stuff he’s spent a decade pursuing and researching. BOO, MOR FEMINISM PLZ.
Poor Carrier.
Challenge the historicity of Jesus: nods of approval.
Argue that historians must use Bayesian inference: RAGEFIT.
Richard does have the ability to declare you’re either with him, or wrong. Diplomacy isn’t his strong suite. I found the recent comments by Neil Godfrey on Vridar and Rene Salm on his blog interesting.
A Hermit @12
The quip of the day. 😉
Chris DiCarlo spent a fair chunk of his talk talking about free will. So the crowd knew what was going to happen when Dan Dennett stepped up to the mic …
And it did. There was an epic back-and-forth that consumed all the question time. The audience didn’t care.
As if that couldn’t be topped, Louise Antony dissed DiCarlo from the podium, and is refuting Sam Harris (and otter New Atheists, for some reason) for exhaulting science as a source of morality, and being philosophically naive.
INR3 has been an academic cage match.
Oh my, now Brian Dalton has renamed his talk (paraphrasing slightly, as my memory ain’t that good) “On the inadequacy of Bayesian priors as an epistemological methodology; or, Richard Carrier can suck my balls.”
Conflict! Call-outs like crazy from the podium! PANDEMONIUM! !
Christina Rad: I’m going to disagree with everyone who’s spoken.
DISAGREEMENT! WITH NAMED PEOPLE! FROM A PODIUM! WITH NO WAY TO RESPOND BACK! HOLY SHIT CALL OUT CULTURE IS EVERYWHERE!
More seriously, DJ Groethe delivered a talk about all the awesome things the JREF does (which was ok, they’ve paid the bills and have done awesome activist work), but sandwiched in between was a softened version of Ian Swiss’ talk. We’re not setting boundaries, but not all atheists are skeptics (just sayin’). This seems to be an official talking point now.