If ever you accidentally put your underwear on backwards, you’ll discover how precisely it is tailored to human anatomy, and acquire a new appreciation for the garment industry.
I am saddened by the news: Victor Stenger was a hardcore physicist with the sensibilities of a liberal arts professor. His books and essays are excellent — he always presented the physics without compromise, but he also explained how we came to understand what we know. I like my science leavened with that historical perspective, and he always delivered.
God and the Atom, for example, starts with ancient Greek philosophy and works its way forward…and convincingly argues that our earliest views of physical science were godless, and that only later did the mystery religions creep in and taint productive avenues of thinking. His very latest, God and the Multiverse, is sitting on my desk right now. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.
I got to meet Vic many times — somehow, we seemed to end up as the sciencey pair, one physicist and one biologist, at a lot of atheist conferences. He was also a genuinely nice guy, friendly and fun to talk to, and I was always pleased to see we’d both be at an event. I’m missing him already.
Here’s Vic at Skepticon 3. I have to mention that there are plenty of essays and discussions available at the link to his home page up top.
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We’re wrapping up our weekend at Lake Itasca, and I’m about to head south for the beginning of fall semester at UMM, so I’ll just leave you with some miscellaneous writing by other people.
I am the woman you laughed at on the internet: it turns out that fat jokes have victims.
GoFundMe campaign for Ferguson shooter drowns under racist commentary: almost a quarter million dollars was raised for Darren Wilson, and the comments…oy, fucking racists.
What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings: would you believe that data on shootings by police officers is incredibly hard to come by? I wonder why.
#FreeWarMachine: A hashtag for the worst people on planet earth: Try it yourself at #FreeWarMachine. It’s being invaded by anti-trolls now, so it’s a little better, but yesterday…all hope for humanity was lost. I found this one person who was so vile that I was instantly motivated to try and report him for abuse, the first time I’ve done that, and discovered how impossibly tedious Twitter’s abuse reporting mechanism is.
More than 60 years later, a love note from a familiar stranger: all right, a sweet story for dessert.
Rebecca Watson is having a moving sale, and that means everything in the Pharyngula store is half off with the promo code “hellyeah50”.
I feel so cheap, suddenly.
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A few of our organizers had collisions with their schedule, so we’re putting off FtBCon for a few months. I’m partly at fault, so blame me — I just got back from the UK, had a week to get everything together, and then looked at my calendar and saw that the date was scheduled right on top of our field experience for incoming biology students. Yeah, I was going to somehow manage an online conference requiring a couple of days of connectivity while shepherding a horde of first year college students around Lake Itasca.
A few others had similar problems with the timing — the end of August turns out to be very awkward for many of us, with academics and students facing other transitions — but I’ll let you all say it’s entirely my fault.
We do have a great lineup in readiness, and it will be even better given a few more months to develop, so none of this is a problem with the speakers, but is entirely due to the distractions that depleted our collection of available organizers.
That’s right, he is now DR A Million Gods.
“Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.”
My apologies, William Goldman, but that is pure bunkum. Either a lot of kisses deserve the assessment, or I’m the most fortunate person in the world to have seized the title of holding all five.
I remember the 18th of August, 1976 vividly. It was a Wednesday. I was 19, which is a damn fine age to be. I was spending my summer saving up money for college, doing stoop labor at a nursery, spending my days weeding and hauling plant pots and clambering about on greenhouse frames nailing down sheets of plastic. My neck and ears were red — I wore a hat, but even the Pacific Northwest sun will scorch you on those days when you aren’t slogging about in the rain. I wasn’t making much money — minimum wage — but in those days, college was a bit more affordable, so I’d get by.
That doesn’t sound like a glorious summer, I know, but at the same time I’d started dating a girl. Really, when you’re 19, having a girlfriend puts a glowing rosy patina on everything (hmmm…it even helps when you’re 57.) We’d both done some traveling fresh out of high school, and I’d called her up back in June when we’d both come back to our home town, and asked her out on a date, and then we started going out every week, and then more often than once a week. It was a Wednesday, you know. I got off work, cleaned up, and borrowed my father’s station wagon to go out to the pizza parlor.
That’s what we’d do. We’d get together, we’d talk. We’d go places, and talk. She was smart and funny and interesting, and we had good times together. To explain this next bit, though, you have to understand that I have no illusions that this was a simpler, more genteel time, with ladies acting like ladies and gentlemen like gentlemen — it was the 70s. It was a loud, raucous, garish decade, and casual sex was common. But I was a shy nerd with absolutely no self-confidence at all, and she was a serious young woman working towards an academic career.
So on that warm August Wednesday, I was working up my courage to ask for a goodnight kiss.
Stop laughing.
No, really, stop. We were both comfortable with a friendly relationship, you know, and I liked her.
So we’d only been dating for 2½ months, and I didn’t want to be too pushy and risk ruining a good thing for a kiss.
You’re laughing again.
So there we were, at about 11 at night, and I’d walked her to the door of her parents’ apartment, and as she was going inside, I nervously delivered my corny and clumsy line: “I was hoping to say goodnight more properly.”
She laughed…and she started to raise her arm, as if she was going to give me a goodnight handshake, which would have been hilarious and soul-crushing. Then she seemed to think better of it, smiled mischievously, and stepped forward and planted a good one right on my lips. And then she whirled about and went inside.
It was glorious. Thirty eight years ago and I still remember it, and I know I’ll remember it on my deathbed someday.
What made it especially wonderful was the unmistakeable consent — she wanted to kiss me. And afterwards, she looked…happy. I felt like maybe I wasn’t so awful after all, and that maybe someone in the world could actually like me. Every human being needs that, and it’s in our power to give it to others, so I don’t think it’s rare. Maybe it’s more uncommon than it should be, but I would hope everyone can feel it sometime in their life.
It also gives you magic powers. I somehow floated home, and the old station wagon drove itself back to the garage, I think.
