Flitting about as I have lately means I’ve been missing this, that and the other thing. So here’s a quick summary.
- Tuesday night I was at the Café Scientifique in Minneapolis, where UMM’s Timna Wyckoff gave a talk on antibiotic resistance. It was terrific! Lots of good questions throughout, and a mob of conversation afterwards. This is exactly how these events are supposed to go.
- I missed Michael Ruse’s talk at the UM on Wednesday—I was somewhere in Wisconsin, with a dorm room packed into a car—but I have one email report that he was entertaining but extremely aggravating. Anyone else care to say more?
- Paul Nelson gave a talk at UCI. It sounds like the usual thing we get from Nelson.
- A new Skeptics’ Circle has crystallized.
- There’s an I and the Bird sighting!
- The liberals are having a carnival!
Now I’ve got a couple of finals to give, and man, I’m exhausted. Driving to Madison and back again in one day is too much for this tired old guy—we got back about midnight last night, and then I had to drag myself out of bed at 6 to finish writing one of my exams. And then tonight…more grading.
Well then, I’ll fill you in. This was the same old same old. That was way overpriced; most people I talked with thought it was a ripoff. The other thing was dull, dull, dull, but at least I got a good nap out of it.
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So you see, you really didn’t miss much.
I just want to compliment you on the following imagery: “A dorm room packed in a car.”
Since this is an open thread, here’s something that might be interesting: Les of Stupid Evil Bastard has the story of how a minister’s Christianity made him vulnerable to con artists. Rather painfully obvious con artists, to anyone with a working baloney detection kit.
HTML links don’t seem to work properly in these comments, so here it is:
http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/comments/another_example_of_how_christianity_undermines_your_ability_to_reason/
(Weird. An URL gets automagically converted to a link, but the A HREF= tag gets munged.)
I suppose he’s better off than those fools who blow themselves up in crowded places or crash planes into buildings because someone else (who is definitely NOT going to kill themselves, thank you very much) tells them it’s God’s will for them.
P.S. New bug with TypeKey: now attempting to preview a comment before you post it will kill your registration. Horribly annoying. As if jumping through hoops once wasn’t bad enough.
More whining from an apparently “overworked” academic. Have you ever had a real job?
It’s a Miracle!
A wheelchair-bound woman walks – no runs! And all it took was the threat of arrest.