You know what, guys? I’m really worn out. Wednesdays I’ve just got back-to-back-to-back teaching — I talk and coax students into talking for about 3 hours straight — and I’m planning to vegetate for a while. Maybe a glass of wine and a really bad movie, and then early to bed.
You don’t need me for anything, do you? Just talk among yourselves, in your best Boris Karloff voices.
At 6pm Eastern (in about 2 hours), I’ll be getting interviewed on WFMU radio. It’s a call-in show, so feel free to ask intelligent questions.
Well, that was fun, but I fear I may not have sold many books. I got the impression it was a very liberal audience that wasn’t quite with reality, so all the questions that started off well with ideas about religion vs. science or an afterlife tended to veer off into acupuncture or UFOs of something, and I’d have to say “no, that’s bunk.”
You can download the show now.
I didn’t forget you. I got into Washington DC late last night, had a flavulous meal with Melody and Simon, slept, had a pleasant and interesting conversation with some ex-Muslims, had brunch with some local CFI people, gave a talk or something, signed a whole bunch of books, took a long cab ride to Dulles, and am now sitting in an airport waiting for a magic winged cylinder to fly me home. I get back to Minneapolis around 9, then drive home to get there about midnight, and then I get to rise up in the morning and go teach a couple of classes, which I’ll be preparing for on the plane.
I haven’t had much me time lately, but I did make a new friend, thanks to some generous Hordies.
So what have you been up to lately?
We have a few pictures of the event at GWU.
Tomorrow I’m heading off to Washington DC to talk happily atheistically
My wife loves bats, too. I think she’s jealous that she’s not going.
I’m flitting off to Washington DC on Saturday to spend some time being a Happy Atheist on Sunday. Come on by, I’ll talk a bit, I’ll read a bit, I’ll answer questions for a bit.
This webcomic was just too sad, and it reminded me of my childhood a little bit. Only it wasn’t my father, but my grandfather. And he’d drive me over to the Eagles Club and tell me to wait there or play on the sidewalk while he had a few drinks.
But he never gave me a couple of dollars to get some pop while I waited. That kid was so lucky.
Sorry about the earlier confusion, but it turns out the interview on Lutheran talk radio this morning was recorded and broadcast in the afternoon. But you can listen to the archive now.
They seemed nice. I hope they didn’t pull a Ray Comfort on me; let me know if the recording has me praising Jesus and professing my love of the Lutheran church.
Also, I’m done with classes for the day. Time to stagger home and vegetate.
Calendars are abstractions I ignore until I actually slam into the events listed in them. My teaching schedule has back-to-back lectures on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Today with that radio interview, I have been talking non-stop for three hours. And on Wednesdays, I have lab immediately after my last class. This isn’t hump day, it’s splat-face-first-into-a-brick-wall day.
One of my students kindly gave me a gift of tea on the first day. I’m going to slump down into an exhausted heap after this is all over, and try to soothe my poor overworked vocal cords with something wet.
Summer “vacation” (yeah, right) is over, and today I go back to the grind. I’m teaching cell biology and cancer biology this term, as well as an independent study course in science writing, and as my calendar shows, it’s going to be a very busy semester.
Or maybe they’ll surprise me & it’ll be an interview with Idris Elba
But as a last weird fling, remember that I’m going to do an interview on Lutheran Talk Radio at 10:30 Central. I have no idea what we’re going to be talking about, other than this book thingie I wrote — you think they might be sympathetic? — so maybe you can tune in to their streaming audio and listen as I get spanked by a crack team of Lutheran theologians. You want to hear that, right?
It’s very strange. Classes start tomorrow, and I’ve got a tough semester ahead of me with both our core cell biology course and an upper level cancer biology course…and I freakin’ know what I’m doing. Syllabi are all laid out, my lectures are all planned, and I’ve got my first assignments loaded into the blunderbuss, ready to be fired out at the classroom. It’s like I’m organized or something, when usually I’d be bouncing off the walls, panicking at all the stuff I have to get done at the last minute. Is this what it’s like to be an old teacher?
So I’m going in to work this morning. I have to fuss over fish, and I do have one planned meeting with my new advisees, but otherwise, I think I’m going to tidy up a student lab, clean up my office (it looks like a library walked in and exploded right now), and sit back with a cup of tea. Weird.
I might get anxious because I feel too relaxed for the day before classes.
At least I’ve got that interview on Christian talk radio tomorrow, right before my first class, to get me jazzed up and wired. I don’t want to be too mellow when I start lecturing.
