The Atheist Community of Austin is promoting their Bat Cruise 2014, with Richard Carrier and Chris Johnson. I was there last year, and it was excellent — the bats were spectacular, even if the speaker was just OK. Go for the bats!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Are Frightbats included? A talk from one of them would be cool.
Go for the bats…stay for the guano?
(I am kidding, I think Richard Carrier is an excellent speaker. Haven’t heard Chris yet.)
Awww…the speaker was a lot of fun last year. I got to hear the lecture on bats, and thought it was very clever to select them as the topic. Thanks so much for helping us promote the event for 2014. :)
@moarscienceplz
Several people with TAE participated in Chris’ project, and have offered financial support (along with a lot of others). So, it will be fun and interesting to see the film version being so close to “done.” He has said he’ll have preview clips available for the talk, and I’m really looking forward to it. The production time line should mean the film will be out in 1-2 months after the cruise–so it’s perfect timing to promote the project.
Carrier also has a book coming out later this summer, so that he will be offering some discussion on the academic response to it, along with potential response from the Christian community. According to Carrier, it’s “the first-ever peer reviewed academic book, from a well-respected biblical studies press, systematically challenging the historical existence of Jesus.” So, that should also be very interesting.
Both of these people had these really relevant projects happening, and ACA struck while the iron was hot, and decided to just bring both of them in, rather than try to choose one or the other. Both are worthy for discussion in the community–and I’m so looking forward to the entire weekend! :)
I wish I could go, I love bats! My family moved to eastern PA in 2003 and we used to love to watch the bats. We haven’t seen them for the past several years b/c of the white nose syndrome.
Hey, PZ, did you (or anyone else) save or record your bat talk? Some of us bat fanciers who couldn’t make it to the Cruise would love to read it.