Hanging out in Texas

Talk among yourselves, everyone. I’m in Austin — I’m actually right in front of the Capitol steps — for the Texas Freethought Convention, after getting in after 1am last night. I just heard Aron Ra shred the religious, and Matt Dillahunty and Richard Dawkins and Sean Faircloth are coming up. It’s good to be in Texas, a phrase I’m surprised to have ever written.

It sounds like the convention is close to being sold out, so you’re too late for the afternoon/evening sessions, but we’re going to be right out her in public all morning.

Oh, look…a picketer!

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A terrible, terrible confession

I’m flying off to the Texas Freethought Convention in Austin tomorrow night. I see on the schedule that I’m delivering the Saturday night keynote, and that I’m in the company of Richard Dawkins and Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty and Jessica Ahlquist.

My personal schedule lately has been raging chaos with obligations piled on top of responsibilities teetering on a foundation of work, and…

and…

Jeez, I haven’t even had a moment to think about what I’m going to say! In two days I have to give an hour talk that will make it worthwhile to hang about in an auditorium rather than going drinking. I am a bad, bad person.

But I’m really good at throwing a talk together on short notice. So I thought that what I would do is put it out to the Pharyngula commentariat: if you were in Austin on a Saturday night, and you had to listen to me talk, what would you want me to talk about? What subjects in freethought and/or science get you wound up, and would have you either pumping your fist or throwing beer bottles at the speaker (either extreme works)?

Leave suggestions. I’ll make up my mind so I can get the talk assembled on the plane.

Conspiracy Road Trip: UFOs

I haven’t had time to watch this yet, but I apparently appear very briefly in this program. It’s the usual thing — I spend a few hours talking, and it gets edited down to a few seconds.

I’m looking forward to it, because from my perspective I met those people and they were actually rather nice, but their beliefs about aliens ranged from mildly off the mainstream to rabidly weird and ignorant. I’ll be interested to see what emerged from all of the conversations — unfortunately, I’m still en route, sitting in an airport with a 2 hour flight and a 3 hour drive ahead of me, and then a pile of prep work before classes resume tomorrow.

Oh, yeah, and I’m feeling cranky. Probably just as well I’m going to be offline most of the day.

Travel madness continues!

Life? What life? I’m too busy flitting about. Last week it was Duluth and a long stint in Washington DC; today I’m in Murray, Kentucky; next week I’ll be in Austin, Texas, and the week after that, in Nashville for CSICon. And then I get a little break. After that, though, I wanted to plug Eschaton 2012, because it’ll be your last chance to see me before the end of the world.

Oh, wait. I’ve just been informed by the conference organizers that the world probably isn’t ending, so I guess you don’t have to go.

THE WORLD IS PROBABLY NOT ENDING.
NOW STOP WORRYING, AND CELEBRATE REASON!

Come to Ottawa for a weekend gathering of scientists, philosophers, authors, academics, skeptics, rationalists, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers, where you can see presentations and join discussions on science, skepticism, gender issues, theocracy vs secularism, godless ethics, parenting beyond belief. Featured speakers include blogger PZ Myers, author Ophelia Benson, philosopher Chris DiCarlo, science education activist Eugenie Scott, and many others. You can even participate in a live recording of Canada’s skeptical podcast, “The Reality Check” (trcpodcast.com).

Saturday evening we present our gala “Night at the Musuem” (held at the Canadian Museum of Nature), which includes a reception, talk by PZ Myers, and late night special events, with exclusive access to the Fossil Gallery and Earth Gallery.

The price of $275 ($225 for CFI members) includes access to the Friday night plenary session, a choice of 2 daytime tracks on Saturday and Sunday, lunches and snacks, plus the Saturday evening gala. (A limited number of volunteer discounts are available – email volunteers@eschaton2012.ca for more information.)

November 30-December 2
Ottawa, Canada

website: eschaton2012.ca
twitter: @eschaton2012
facebook: facebook.com/Eschaton2012

Oh my gosh, I’m part of a gala! I’m going to be doing a science talk on chance and coalescence theory and the failures of prominent creationists to grasp essential concepts, which sounds a bit somber for a gala. Maybe it will help if I dress all in motley?

The usual daily workflow around here will be temporarily diverted

Did you get my message? HELLO? I spent the whole night howling into the giant white porcelain telephone we keep in the bathroom, trying to let you know I wasn’t feeling well and probably wouldn’t make it in to work today, and that you’ll have to get your internet entertainment somewhere else.

Hello? HELLO?!? Maybe it was a really bad connection. There was this ghastly background echo of gagging and retching. I also wasn’t firing smoothly on all circuits: I was delirious and dehydrated, and I think I briefly turned into a worm, all endoderm and smooth muscle and peristalsis. The hindbrain emesis circuitry was working just fine, though, and was doing a fabulous job of moving my dinner through my digestive tract. Backwards. Let me tell you, I really regretted all those jalapenos I’d put on my salad.

I tried to warn you. I was sending out warnings to every one of you every 45 minutes all night long. I was pretty frantic. Oh, well, maybe they’ll show up in your voicemail later.

Uh…one thing. I might have accidentally uploaded an attachment. I pushed the button on the upper right of the porcelain phone’s console, and it made a wooshing sound like it was sending something big off into the world.

You might not want to open that.

An email FYI

So you want to get in touch with me? That’s been getting harder and harder as my email gets busier and busier, and also because my email software finally up and died in protest at the load last month, so I had to make some major changes.

My email is now split. If you’re trying to contact me at my umn.edu address, don’t. I sort that out separately and handle it at my office, and have filters in place that prioritize messages from other umn.edu addresses. That is so students and colleagues get priority and their email doesn’t get buried in all those other sources. Of course, if you are a student or colleague at UM Morris, you should use that address.

All you strangers and friends out there should use pzmyers@gmail.com. It peels out all my professional/job mail, so it has slightly less volume now. Only slightly. And it also has a ruthless set of filters on it, so even there it may not work to contact me. Sorry. I may also be setting up a third public address specifically for those of you who want to contact me about speaking engagements, and I’ll put that in the about page when it’s ready.

As for all you trolls and haters: write it on a piece of paper, eat it, crap it out, and flush.