A fine time in Morris

#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!

Last call for the Midwest Science of Origins Conference

The conference starts here in Morris tonight, with an opening lecture by yours truly on the evolution of creationism in the science auditorium on campus. It’s just the one event, so you’re forgiven if you only show up tomorrow for the main course — a day of science and philosophy, starting at 10am and continuing with breaks until about 7. All talks will be held in the science auditorium, except Neil Shubin’s at 2:00, which will be held at the elementary school gym (just a few blocks down the road from the university).

Then, on Sunday, we wrap up with Chris Stedman talking about community service or something.

Come on out! It’s going to be a grand couple of days, and we’d love to make the community wonder what’s going on by swamping all the local restaurants at lunch and dinner.

I’ve received questions about this: what if you haven’t registered? DON’T WORRY. SHOW UP ANYWAY. It’s entirely free, they just want you to register to help keep track of how many show up, and to get contact info for future events. You can also just show up for any one talk you want to hear (Shubin is in the Elementary School because we expect more will show up for that talk than the others). It’s OK — this is all casual and fun, the goal is engagement with the region and community, and we’re not going to force anyone to jump through hoops.

Good news from Anoka-Hennepin

The Anoka-Hennepin school district has been notorious for its bullying, anti-gay discrimination, and suicide rate. A group of six students sued them for the district’s outrageous lack of common decency; tonight, the school board folded and settled the suit out of court. There was a cash settlement of $270,000 to the kids, and the district has also agreed to work with the US Justice Department to end their history of tolerance for abuse.

One Republican board member, Kathy Tingelstad, resigned over the settlement, claiming that it was going to cost too much. Where was her concern for the cost to the district when kids were killing themselves and the district was becoming infamous for its war on gay teens? She was just a tool of the anti-gay Parents Action League. Good riddance, and may PAL wither and die.

Holy crap! I’ve got to get me a gun!

The Minnesota legislature is working up a new law that makes it justifiable to pull a gun and shoot someone on mere suspicion of a threat. Don’t run away, don’t avoid trouble, just open fire!

The just-passed Minnesota bill to expand “Castle Doctrine” gun rights should be called the Shoot First law. The Minnesota law—and bills like it pending in Texas, Pennsylvania and other states—allows gun owners to use deadly force outside of their homes on the basis of merely feeling threatened. No longer would there be any onus to retreat from perceived danger. That’s why the term Shoot First is appropriate.

Under HF1467, you can shoot somebody:

[6.25] to resist or prevent what the individual reasonably believes is an offense or attempted offense that imminently exposes the individual or another person to substantial bodily harm, great bodily harm, or death; or

[6.27] (3) to resist or prevent what the individual reasonably believes is the commission or imminent commission of a forcible felony.

I was horrified to see who’s defending this bill, but totally unsurprised.

Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, said, “This bill is about good folks and giving them an opportunity to defend themselves.”

I voted against Ingebrigtsen in the last election — I could tell he was just another pig-ignorant Republican thug. Now it’s confirmed.

Somehow, I have this notion that “good folks” aren’t all about hair-trigger firearms use.

Somebody ought to mention to the sponsors of this bill that it allows atheists to carry a gun, and use it. Don’t forget, we’re untrustworthy and not good folks.

The Midwest Science of Origins Conference!

It’s on! Students here at UMM got together and have organized their very own Midwest Science of Origins Conference, to be held in Morris on 30 March-1 April. As the big name speaker, they’ve got Neil Shubin to tell us all about Tiktaalik, and some other regional folk to talk about physics, biology, anthropology, and philosophy…and also Chris Stedmaaaaaan (you can tell right away that this isn’t a case of me dictating to them what to do — this is entirely student-organized and run). Come on out and learn!

What, you say, you can’t come all the way out to itty-bitty Morris on the edge of nowhere? Then send your money, instead. The conference is free, but they are looking for donations to cover costs.

For every hundred dollars donated, I promise to growl angrily at Stedman. See? That’s how he can contribute to freethought!

(Also on Sb)

Oh. It’s Valentine’s Day.

I don’t believe in it. When you’re happily married, every day is Valentine’s Day.

But I did stoop to explaining where the heart is located in an arthropod, with diagrams, to my intro biology course, just in case they wanted to make a card for their favorite invertebrate. That’s my only concession to this manufactured event.

Also, the Morris Freethinkers are tabling at our student center today, celebrating a belated Darwin Day. Stop by and get your picture taken with Charles Darwin!

Help out a local girl scout

She has a project to oppose racism, and one of her goals is to acquire a thousand signatures on a pledge.

The Gold Award is the highest award a Girl Scout can recieve. I decided to title my project "Rani’s Roses Against Racism", because I have experienced racism, and I wanted to make a change. The petals consist of: White, Beige, Brown, Black, Tie-Dye, and Red. All represent the skin color of people. There are 7 total colors used in making this rose.

Please sign my pledge "I Promise To Honor Myself And Others". You can click on the website that will show up after you sign the pledge, and make one of your own. :)

That’s it. I think we can fill up her pledge page fast.

Today is Shawn Otto day at UMM

We’re having a visit today from Shawn Lawrence Otto, a fellow who has been fighting against the un-American war on science on the web and in a book, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. He’s speaking on campus tonight at 7:30 Central, in the HFA Recital Hall — I urge local community members to show up, he has important things to say about education and climate change — and that talk is going to be streamed live, so all you distant strangers can also watch the show.

It was a little strange, though, to get messages from the university administration telling me I’m expected to go to dinner with him. It turns out, I’m in his book — there’s actually a substantial 4 or 5 page section in there where he discusses an interview he had with me (I’m getting old, and I’ve done so many interviews that they all bleed together), so I had to run out and get a copy of the book to find out what I was getting into. It all sounded a bit Chris Mooney-like.

Fortunately, the book is good — if the topic is a bit Mooneyish, it’s the Mooney of The Republican War on Science, and not the batty, Nisbet-bespelled Mooney of Unscientific America, and his stuff on me isn’t a hatchet job. Otto doesn’t come out and declare me the absolutely correct master of all I pontificate on (I’ll have to bend his ear and make suggestions for the second edition), but at least he recognizes that there are many different angles to take in fighting ignorance. You are allowed to read the book and listen to the talk without feeling outraged.

(Also on Sb)

#OCCUPYMORRIS

I never thought it would happen, but the flaming radicals here in rural Minnesota are actually rising up to overthrow the system. Tonight, 1 November, at 6pm, the 99% (which should be about 4,950 people, given the population of our town) are meeting on the campus mall to MARCH ON MORRIS. Which means about a ten-minute walk.

I’ll be there. Everyone should show up. All you townies and students, country farmers, vagrants passing through, faculty and staff, hardworking blue-collar wage slaves, come on out tonight!

I’m hoping this will be the seminal event that crystallizes the whole movement and shatters the dominant paradigm. It could happen. You don’t want to miss it, do you?

Petty internet blackmail

I have to mention two strange examples of internet thuggery.

I hosted a Thunderf00t video the other day in which he outed his own identity, in response to attempts by a youtuber named DawahFilms to extort him with threats of revealing him. It was a nice way to short circuit a threat. I keep hearing from people complaining, though, that Thunderf00t is the bad guy here, which I find completely baffling. Notice: he revealed his own name, not something about DawahFilms.

I have now received email from DawahFilms arguing his case. He’s not very good at this, because it contained this argument:

I am neither a person who threatens death on people for their “free speech” or “criticism” (in fact Ive made videos condemning such behavior) nor am I out to “hurt” Dr. Mason, but instead wished to report him to his university for his unethical behavior and treatment of me.

That looks like a confession to me. I really don’t care if Thunderf00t said rude things about Islam or about defenders of superstition on the internet or youtube; but when people try to threaten their critics’ livelihood, as DawahFilms wants to do, I’m not at all sympathetic. Especially when they’re so weirdly oblivious that they can claim that they don’t want to “hurt” someone, and that they just wish to report him to his employer, all in one sentence.

The second case involves a colleague at UMTC, Bill Gleason, who is getting harrassed by one of the dumbest local ideologues it has ever been my displeasure to encounter online. I’m talking about Thomas Swift, aka TJSwift, AKA Swiftee, a far right, illiterate crank who tainted Pharyngula for a while, until he was banned.

You cannot imagine how stupid TJSwift is. He’s not a master of rhetoric; he struggles with spelling, and punctuation, and grammar, and can barely compose a tweet. So instead, he resorts to scribbling crude cartoons in MS Paint. He also has no artistic ability; these things are the kind of crude caricatures one might find scratched into the walls of a filthy toilet stall in a run-down gas station. To make them mildly recognizable, he pastes in digitized photos of people’s faces. Otherwise, though, they are incoherent, sloppy, pointless scrawls.

I saw some of the examples Gleason posted, and recognized the style immediately. I was getting a collection of these sent to me a year or two ago, emailed under a pseudonym, and containing little more than the kind of pornographic imagery you’d expect of 9 year old, talentless, angry idiot — cartoons of me having sex with a dog (or a cow, or a beige blob…something unrecognizable), for instance.

The real surprise, though, is that this frothing nutcase is allied with some of the most prominent conservative bloggers in Minnesota, Powerline and Mitch Berg. This is how low the Right has sunk.