#INR2 … done

Whew. Good meeting. You should have been here — it ended with a major bang with Seth Andrews blowing us away with some gorgeous video (Sagan!), Maryam Namazie wringing us out with her passionate opposition to the injustice of Islam, and Lawrence Krauss telling us how exciting it was to be insignificant residents of a universe that arose from nothing and is hurtling towards nothing. Now I’m exhausted, but I’m staying here in Kamloops for one more night, with beer to dispose of (I’m like Jesus, only instead of loaves and fishes, beer magically manifests itself in my hands every time I turn around. Which makes me greater than Jesus.)

I think we’ll be having an evening of the remnants of the Imagine No Religion 2 crew and speakers and attendees chattering happily over alcohol. Look me up if you’re still around.

Thank you, Jesus!

My grades are all in, and I can consider the semester done, done, done. Then what do I discover in my mailbox, to the envy of the staff there, but this lovely sight:

All I know is that the return address is to Jesus in California. Could it be…? Nah.

Praise Jesus, anyway!

Panic setting in

Aaargh, grades are due tonight! And I’m about to sink into hours and hours worth of administrative meetings! And then I looked at my flight schedules, and realized…I’m flying away on Friday to begin a nonstop round of travel and talks to Canada, Germany, and Iceland, and won’t be back home until 4 June!

MADNESS!

RAVING FIERY MADNESS!!

OK, taking deep breaths. Focusing. Engaging discipline. Must finish grading. Must complete paperwork.

Don’t bother me for a while, gang. Warning to trolls: cyberpistol set to disintegrate.

My day in Flagstaff

I flit out to Flagstaff today to participate in a BBC documentary. It’s part of a series with an interesting approach: they take True Believers on a road trip to confront them with evidence against their obsessions. Some of you Brits out there might have seen an earlier episode, the 9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip, in which 5 9/11 Truthers were taken on a bus tour of relevant sites in the United States. It apparently got good reviews (except from 9/11 Truthers themselves). You can watch the whole program yourself!

There will be some new episodes of the show coming out. The one I participated in today was a group of 5 believers in aliens and UFOs who are on a grand bus tour of the Southwest — they’d talked to SETI people in LA, a NASA scientist at Meteor Crater, a biologist who tried to set them straight on evolution and aliens, and they’re on their way to, of course, Area 51.

All I had to do was have a conversation with these 5 believers in alien abductions. It was…interesting. They were all very nice people, but they ranged in rationality from people who’d experienced unexplained events and were trying to figure out what happened, to a real loon who was utterly convinced that Jews were alien hybrids, reptoids had hybridized with humans, and the stone blocks of the pyramids had been cut with lasers. We argued for an hour or two, all of it was recorded, and I’m sure it will all be cut to the 5 juiciest minutes for the final show.

Keep an eye open for it next year all you British-type people, and let me know how it turns out.

The end is in sight!

This afternoon, I give the last final exam of the semester. There are still term papers trickling in, but I expect to have all my grading done by Friday. Hurrah. So when does my vacation start?

So I think I get a weekend at home sometime in June. A “vacation” is when you just get to stay home, right?

Almost there

I gave my last lecture to my cancer class. Tomorrow is the last day of my introductory biology class, which will consist of a mini-lecture on one last concept, returning exams and reviewing them, and the student evaluation of the class, which I don’t participate in. Easy.

I sit now in the wreckage of my office, papers piled around me, with more papers coming in imminently, and face the next challenge: grading like a madman. My pocket bristles with red pens. The first stack is to my right: I go to hide in some quiet place and slash and tear. Do not disturb me while the bloodlust is high and the aggravation puts me on the threshold of berserkerdom.

(Ah, they were a pretty good bunch of students this semester. I’ll try not to be too savage.)

Wait, I just got home!

I have to catch up with all of my classes now, but I also have to prepare for the next couple of weekends. Next on the agenda:

  • I’m flying off on Friday for the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism in New York. I’ll be talking about squid.

  • Next weekend is the Freethought Festival 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin. I shall be talking about the scientific method, and why it’s incompatible with religion.

  • Then I get a few weekends to stay at home and get through finals week. Yay!

  • On 18 May, I’ll be at Imagine No Religion 2, in Kamloops, British Columbia. I forget what I’m talking about there, something sciencey, I’ll figure it out later.

  • Also on 18 May, I won’t be attending the Women in Secularism conference in Washington DC, because I can’t be in two places at once. However, my daughter Skatje will be my proxy there and will be reporting back on it in her own cantankerous and independent-minded style (I have no idea where she gets that from).

I do have to say something about the Women in Secularism conference: some people are being condescendingly stupid about the fact that we can have a special purpose conference within the broader domain of secularism. It is embarrassingly idiotic that we actually have clueless atheists who are demeaning the idea that there is worth in dedicating conferences to specific issues: would there be any of this dismissal if it were a conference on secular parenting, separation of church and state, secular lobbying, race and religion, or the pernicious influence of religion on education? Because these are all pressing concerns, as is the importance of involving women in atheism, and it is a mark of the growth of atheism and secularism and humanism that we do have focused conferences. Expect to see more of this sort of thing in the future.

But somehow, macho assholes seem to think women are unimportant. Sorry, guys, this is the future coming at you: institutions will be egalitarian or die. And the only thing that’s unimportant is addressing the whines of spoiled man-children who break into tears and rage at any diminution of their privilege. Bye-bye, testosterone-addled dinosaurs.

See also this article at CFI.

Look, people, and yes guys, I’m talking to you specifically. This conference is not about “separating” women from men, it’s about having the spine as a movement to say that women deal with prejudices and oppression that are unique to them, thanks to religion, and at the same time recognizing that our own community has a LOT of work to do in how we treat, acknowledge, and highlight our female half. It’s not a conference exclusively FOR women, but yes, about them. Our boss Ron Lindsay says men absolutely should attend. PZ Myers says men should attend. And I’m telling you, too. If you think it’s a problem to have a conference like this, I challenge you to buy a ticket, show your face, and talk about it like a grownup. No more nameless Internet thuggery.

By the way, there are a limited number of $25 student registrations still available for the women in secularism conference.

Bleh

We got back safely last night after about 24 hours of travel from Australia. I slept like the dead. I am now risen and staggering about zombie-like, and will now lurch off to my 8am class.

You aren’t expecting new content here for a little while, are you? Really?