I had a harrowing morning. I got up at 5 to make the long drive to the airport, only to discover that last night, after several days of rain, it had frozen. And snowed. Uh-oh, you say…at least in my usual caution I had given myself 5 hours to make a 3 hour drive, so I figured I’d have no problem.

It wasn’t bad; little traffic, the roads were icy, but I was taking my time and coping like a real Minnesotan. Then, as I was leaving lovely Glenwood, I saw a truck stopped to make a left turn way ahead — like 4 or 5 blocks ahead. So I touched the brakes to slow down a little more. So I tried to slow down a little more. So I tried very hard to slow down some more. Why isn’t this car slowing down at all? I still had plenty of room, so I started easing over to the right to miss the truck on the shoulder. I tried to ease over. Why isn’t the car turning? I was pumping the brakes and trying to shift over just a little bit, right up until the moment I crunched into the right rear corner of the truck.

I’d managed to slow it down enough that the truck was hardly damaged — a shattered tail light, and some dinged up body work. Unfortunately, my car smacked right into the wedge of the back corner directly at my left front wheel, and then slide forward to take out the driver’s side door. The wheels looked rather pigeon-toed afterwards, and I got a broken glass shower.

You will be pleased to know that I did not pray at any moment, but kept busy trying to get the vehicle under control. I did have plenty of time to curse at length and polysyllabically, saying cruel and hurtful things about the car’s ancestry and the sexual and excretory habits of Minnesota weather systems.

I have bounced back! My wife made an emergency run from work to pick me up and deliver me at the airport (I owe her big time now). I’m now waiting to catch a slightly later flight than I had planned, but I’ll still make it to Michigan in time for my talk tonight. Have no fear, I will also look composed and fabulous when I make my entrance.

For the past few years, I have been receiving postcards from Theo Nelson regularly. They are lovely and colorful handmade cards with a poem on the back. I got another one today — all the others are lined up on a wall in my office — and I thought it was about time to mention it. It’s Spring again!

Of course, Spring in western Minnesota doesn’t look much like that: what we have is lots of gray rain, gray dirty snow shrinking into lumps of gray dirty ice, and brown grass poking up through mud…but we’ll take it!

(Reverse of card below the fold)

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This week, I’ll be heading off to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a few days, and more than a few of you have been asking me for the details. Here’s my itinerary:

Wednesday – March 25, 2009

4:00-4:30 pm – Interview with Jeremy Beahan – Reasonable Doubts Radio Show/ Podcast

5:00 pm – Check into Hotel: Days Hotel Downtown GR.

6:30 pm – Meeting Setup @ WCC (Jeff Seaver will pick you up at Hotel at 6:15)

7:00 pm – CFI Featured Event @ WCC Format: 45-60 minute presentation with Q&A following (RSVP here).

9:00 pm – After event Social at Vitale’s Restaurant.

Thursday – March 26, 2009

9:30-11:30 am – Breakfast with Science Professors. Discussion topic: Evolution Education Mezze Restaurant – Downtown Grand Rapids (Attendee’s TBA).

11:45-12:15 – Interview with Ed Brayton of Declaring Independence – WPRR 1680

12:30-2:00 pm – GRCC Campus Event: Discussion. Some will have “brown-bag lunch” – we can provide food for you based on your preference or get lunch after this event.

4:00-5:30 pm – GVSU Campus Event: Discussion

7:00 pm – 3 Beer Discussion (RSVP here): Social Event & Dinner with CFI Members (you are invited to join us for as long as you are interested)

Maybe I’ll see a few of you there!

It’s true — I’m going to be speaking at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana on Friday, 13 March, at 6:00 in Gregory Hall. Well, nominally at 6:00 — my flight schedule is cutting it awfully close, giving me only an hour of leeway, so we’ll see if I make it in time. If I don’t, start the conversation without me. This one is going to be a bit on the history of embryology, with some discussion of modern interpretations of the well-known facts of development…including the thoroughly bogus claims of creationists. I will be teaching the controversy — I’ll be showing the audience how idiotic the Discovery Institute’s claims are.

I have no after-the-talk plans…yet. I’m sure that an informal get-together will coalesce afterwards, however.

For future reference, I’m also going to be in Michigan in two weeks, in Ashland, Oregon on 22-24 April, and LA in mid-May. I cut back a bit on my travel schedule this semester just to protect my sanity.

I was born at 7:07 am on 9 March 1957, so today I’m supposed to celebrate the fact that the earth has circled about the sun an integral number of times. I think I’ll, oh, go to work all day. It should be fun!

I have safely arrived here in Calgary, and here are the plans for Sunday:

At 10:30, we’ll be having brunch at the Best Western Village Park Inn.

At 2:00, I’ll be speaking at the University of Calgary.

At 6:00, come around to the Kilkenny Irish Pub. There are possibilities of haggis.

Sound good? Sounds busy! See you tomorrow!

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The great comment registration experiment is still in progress. I will switch it off on Wednesday to allow everyone to weigh in with their opinion. There are a few things I can experiment with on my end, too — we’re supposed to somehow be able to use OpenID instead of Typekey, for instance. Bear with it for a little longer, though.

I mixed up my dates in a recent post, so here’s a clarification on precisely when I wll be in Calgary and Edmonton.

Sunday, 25 January, I’ll be at the University of Calgary, talking about science education and creationism.

Monday, 26 January, I’ll be at the University of Alberta for a debate with Kirk Durston. For even further confusion, unfortunately, that site says the debate is tonight — that’s not going to happen. It’s next week.

These are open to the public. There will be festivities somewhere around them, I’m sure.

People are also asking about the Ohio event in February. It’s still at the state where none of the details are worked out, and I’ll post those as soon as I know them.

Checking my mail today, I discovered one curiosity, one holiday card, and one piece of Very Official Stationery from the University that employs me.

The curiosity: I actually got a reprint request. Those are very strange — it used to be that you’d always get a flurry of these after publishing something, and you’d be sure to order lots of extra copies of your paper so you could send them out, but nowadays they are going the way of the dodo. It’s so much easier to download the paper from the journal’s electronic archives, and even when I get a request because of limited access, I can just email a pdf. I usually only get these from third world countries anymore. This one, though, was from the US. From Liberty University. Asking for a copy of my review of Miller’s book. Weird. Sorry, but I don’t have any paper copies of that article…and the request didn’t include an email address. How quaint!

The holiday card: it was from the OSU Students for Freethought. May the FSM nod benignly upon you, and caress you all with his pastalicious appendages.

The Official Notice: my request for a sabbatical leave next year has been Officially Approved! Huzzah! I have big plans for some serious writing, new course development, and new research directions, and now I may actually get the time to do it all.

This is sad news. Greg Cahill, an old acquaintance who had been a fellow graduate student with me at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, has died suddenly. I did not know him well, but I remember him as a fine fellow among my small cohort of fellow students, and it’s sad to hear of this unfortunate loss.