Hello, Southern Illinois University Carbondale! I’ll be heading south next week for SIU’s annual Darwin Day lecture.

Thursday, February 10: A public lecture entitled “The Evolution of Cooperation” will be presented by Dr. Paul (PZ) Myers, associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Dr. Myers is the author of Pharyngula, one of the most widely read science blogs. The lecture will take place at 7 pm in Ballroom B in the SIUC Student Center; refreshments will be provided after the lecture.

It’s free, too…I am so cheap. Show up and I’ll talk science at you for an hour.

I guess my Montreal talk is going to air in Ontario tomorrow…or as Larry Moran points out, it’s also on the intertubularities.

Every time I do this I get email from people who say they were startled to hear my voice on the radio, so I figure this time I’ll warn you so I don’t cause any traffic accidents. I’ll be on Michael Slate’s radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles this morning, and we’re trying to do this on a monthly schedule. So if you’re driving along (you’re in LA, so you probably spend most of your time driving, right?) and you hear me announce over your radio that gods are hokum, it really isn’t a divine communication.

They’re actually selling tickets for these events, so get in line early. On 21 May, I’ll first be the centerpiece at lunch, and then that evening, I get to be the anticlimax to Jamie Kilstein. This is going to be tricky…everybody complains that I’m so mellow and mild in person, but coming up after Kilstein, I’m really going to suffer in comparison.

It’ll be fun anyway. Really. I promise.

With some relief, I have finished that gift case of beer, ending with a Great White Beer.

I usually don’t have a beer every day — more like one every few weeks — so it was a bit more than I am used to. It was still an interesting exercise, trying them close enough in time that I could actually form some impressions about what I liked best. I’m not a fan of the spiced beers, and the fruity one was the worst. The pale ales were OK, but they do have a bitter edge that I could live with, but wasn’t enthusiastic about. I favored the pilseners best, I think. This taste test omitted any dark beers, though, which is what I usually order.

I could do with a Guinness now, but I think I’ll stick to drinking tea for a while.

It’s a lonely night here at Chez Myers — my wife couldn’t make it home through the blowing snow and occasional whiteouts, so she’s holed up in a hotel down the road, while I’m left home alone with nothing but the Blue Paddle Pilsner Lager.

It’s not bad, but it’s no substitute.

The label on the Gordon Biersch Märzen says, “A smooth, auburn-colored Bavarian lager with a mildly sweet finish. It was originally brewed in March (“März” in German) and stored in caves to be drunk during warmer weather.” Warmer weather? I have consumed it prematurely then.

Christopher Hitchens explains how to make a decent cup of tea. He’s got it exactly right, too. Last year we learned how to make good tea using the loose leaf and a strainer, and we’ve been tinkering with the procedure all this time, and it’s true: tea is finicky. You get huge variations in flavor with minor little changes in how you make it.

We’re currently setting up an automatic tea maker in the evening so we can just flip a switch in the morning and get a perfect pot every time. It automates what Hitchens describes: it heats the water to boiling, pours it directly on the leaf in an infusion chamber, and times it just right. It works really well.

Usually, during the day, I just heat water the old fashioned way in a tea kettle on the stove and pour the boiling water through a strainer in a cup. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now…