I’m about to fly away, and I got word last night that the Dean of the Chapel at Rollins is suddenly getting quite irate about my visit. Finally, someone is reacting to me as if I were the antichrist! Maybe we’ll get some controversy Saturday night, although more likely they’ll discover I’m this terribly mild-mannered academic teddy bear and it will all blow over.
There are days I wish I were 6’6″ with tattoos and leather and a voice that was all iron and fury…but it’s just not my thing.
I have sinned. While I was in Philadelphia, I was supposed to attend the Drinking Skeptically event on Thursday evening, and I was honestly looking forward to it…but I went to dinner with Michael Weisberg, Janet Browne, Rasmus Winther, John Beatty, Jane Maienschein, and a few others, and when I finally looked up from the conversation, it was 10:30. Too late. I offer abject apologies to Salvatore Patrone and everyone who showed up.
To get even, the Science Pundit has tagged me with a meme. I am, of course, obligated now to actually address it, as long as I’m groveling. Here are the rules:
Hang on, my entire life is random, a chaotic maelstrom with a thin thread of intent tangled in it. How am I supposed to pluck out just six fragments from it? Oh, well, here’s something:
The oldest object on my person is my social security card. I still have the very same rectangle of paper I was issued when I was 14 and got my first job. It must be made of gopherwood pulp to have held up so long.
I used to be wickedly accurate with a slingshot in my misspent youth. I haven’t used one since I was a teenager, though, so don’t send me out to slay any giants.
I have never smoked a cigarette or any other combustible tube, nor have I ever been tempted to do so in the slightest. My parents were smokers, so I was never curious, I didn’t see anything faddishly rebellious about it, either, and the habit always simply seemed revolting.
I have three small scars on my head and forehead, because when I was a toddler I had multiple independent falls and bloody collisions with coffeetables. My parents and grandparents apparently purged their houses of all such furniture until I reached an age where I was reliably able to stand up without falling down — when I was about 20, I think.
The biggest fish I ever caught was a 29 pound Coho Salmon. This was on the same trip where my father caught a 45 pound King. Oh, but we are fallen from the Ancient Days.
The quietest place I have ever been was an old growth forest in the North Cascades, when the wind was completely calm and the cedars went still and nothing anywhere was moving — it was eerie. Visit that same forest when there’s even a hint of wind, of course, and the trees are all moaning and whispering to you without cease.
Now I have to tag 6? I took a semi-rational approach, and plucked out the names of the six most recent commenters to leave a url here: Scrambled Stoic,
Big Dumb Chimp,
Susannah,
Mike Haubrich,
Matt Heath, and
Tim Fuller, you’re it.
I’ve got a rather laid-back schedule here in Philadelphia, and I took advantage of it this morning — I took a little walkabout around the neighborhood. Unless you’re from Los Angeles, cities are great places for walking, and it was very pleasant to idle along.
Then, of course, I was required to get lunch at a truck. And, of course, I had a cheesesteak. Wow. They only make these greasy confections right in this particular city, I’ve found: onions and peppers and chopped beef all fried together and slathered onto a slightly chewy roll, with a little cheez-whiz and ketchup (not mustard, Sidaway — you’ll catch me putting mustard on a cheesesteak on the day you put ambergris on your spotted dick). It is to die for, and you can’t have too many or you will die.
The rest of my afternoon is going to be spent tweaking my talk, then off to have tea with graduate students and Janet Browne — you are allowed to be jealous — then to Browne’s talk and Drinking Skeptically. It’s going to get a bit busier the rest of the day.
Fellow travelers, we all know this feeling of stepping off a plane into a strange city and following the signs to baggage/transportation, trying to get our bearings and find our way through these sometimes labyrinthine airports to just get out of these unattractive hubs — the whole thing with air travel nowadays is that you have to do it, and while you’re doing it, all you want to do is escape from it. I know that feeling well lately.
Well, I have arrived in Philadelphia, and it was different. I lived here from 1993-2000, and I stepped off the plane and knew exactly where I was and what I had to do: I strolled unerringly to the train terminal, got on board and paid my fare (which had gone up $2 since I was last here), and rolled off to my destination. It was great. I’ve missed the familiar litany of stations called out by the porter as you travel through the city, and the ease of just taking one of those big bench seats and relaxing while traveling.
I got off at the 30th Street Station, had to go say hello to the big guy with the wings (Old train stations are built like temples, have you ever noticed? Vast spaces with ceilings lofted far above you, and with fabulous winged art deco icons to get you in the right mood), and then knew exactly what I had to do to get to my hotel — take the Market-Frankford line to University City. It was so liberating to stand in that cathedral of transport and realize that I could easily go anywhere. I could have gone down those stairs and taken a train to Trenton and New York, no sweat, and it would have been a pleasant, stress-free rockin’ ride. Anywhere. I was tempted.
Compare the great Eastern urban transit options to our train station in Morris, Minnesota—a sad and shabby relic, abandoned. We’ve got the wide horizons, but there’s a pinched feeling as well, that there is no way out. Cars have closed us off more than they’ve opened us up, I think. Those horizons become a void rather than a destination. They turn us inward rather than making us cosmopolitan.
Small town America is a fine place to live, but man, I want to see more connectedness than the isolation we’ve got now. Places like Europe and the East coast always seem to have more openness — and in large part it’s due to the fact that you can go anywhere.
Everyone wants to know what I’m doing in Philly this week. Me, too! Here’s everything I know so far.
I’m flying in on Wednesday morning, 19 November. At 5pm, I’m giving a talk on science blogging at the Kelly Writers house on the U Penn campus.
Thursday, 20 November, is the big event: Janet Browne will be lecturing at 6pm. I’ll be there in the audience, enjoying myself. You should be there, too. You’ve all read her magnificent two-volume biography of Darwin, right?
Sometime after that, the evening of the 20th, I’m going to aim to attend Drinking Skeptically, at Tattooed Mom’s, 530 South Street.
On Friday, the 21st, I’ll be presenting at a symposium between 11 and 5. I don’t think this is open to the public, but I could be wrong — I’ll let you know. I’ll be talking about abuses of embryology by creationists and by some legitimate scientists.
There are many other items on my personal agenda. I might be doing something with the Secular Society of Temple University, if I can wedge it in. I’m certainly going to sneak away to a museum or two sometime: The Academy of Natural Sciences has always been a favorite spot of mine, and they’ve got a cast of Tiktaalik on display now. The Mütter Museum is also showing an exhibit on evolution and medicine. I’ll post something once I get there if my schedule firms up.
We have more details on the Friday symposium, which is open to the public.
Hooray! I win the prize for longest title!
It has come to this. I can’t get to my files on my laptop, my usual posting habits are disrupted, and site traffic is way down. I have to resort to a desperate ploy to regain your eyeballs. I know, it’s shameless, but this kind of thing sells, so until I can get my gadgets fully restored, I’m going to have to use my collection of nude action photos to keep your interest.
(Say…if I coupled this to donations for a new laptop, I could get rich, although the constant demands that I please stop might hurt my ego.)
I’m in the pleasant town of Kearney, Nebraska to give a couple of talks at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and something tragic and horrible has happened.
My laptop has died. The video card, she no longer generates the video. It makes it rather difficult to illustrate my talks with projected images. It also makes it difficult to get on the web and engage in the blogging (I’m using a hotel business office computer to post this).
I’m planning to stop at an Apple Store at the Mall of America when I get back to Minneapolis tomorrow and beg them to FIX IT RIGHT NOW, but until then, I’m crippled, with half my brain no longer functioning. It does make my talks more entertaining, though: I’m just talking. I’ve managed to fool them all so far, but today’s talk is all about embryonic development, and I’m going to have to show the evidence through interpretive dance, epic poetry, and finger puppetry, I think. It might be amusing, anyway.
Alright, I’m juggling way too many things here, but I’ve got to make a promise about where I’ll be tonight. After the talk at GMU, I’m going to try and get into the AU event at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill and spend some time with the good people there, and then I’m going to tear myself away to go to…The Dubliner. I’ll try to get there by 10 or 10:30 — if I’m late, start the party without me.
When I was in Toronto, both Ken Ham and Jesus showed up. Could somebody give a call to invite Bush (I hear that people like to drink beer with him) and Obama? I think both of them need to spend more time with the godless heathens.
I’m here at the Hyatt Regency in Washington DC, and I’ve received a lot of questions about my plans and availability. Here’s the deal: I’m here for an AU meeting, and that’s my first priority; then I’m giving a talk at GMU Saturday evening. I may have to depart from the traditional post-seminar beer pilgrimage this time, though: my talk is overlapping a bit with an AU event in the evening, and I should scurry back early to catch part of it.
Now there is the possibility of a late night (like, 10:00) get-together here at the Hyatt or nearby, and if there is any interest, I could probably gather a few other interested science bloggers to join us. Leave a comment if you think that’s worth doing>
Some people are getting a bit cranky about the fact that I pissed in their cornflakes this morning, so here’s a little more exposition.
A charismatic new face appeared on the political scene, somebody who was honest and sympathetic and intelligent. So he was a little more religious than I liked; he’s still a good man who promises to repair the damage of the former presidency. He’s running against a relic of that previous corrupt administration, his campaign slogan is all about change, and I am so relieved to have a promising choice. I campaigned for him, I stayed up all night with my friends on election night cheering him on, and I woke up the next morning optimistic for the future, glad that we finally had a progressive president.
Obviously, that wasn’t this year’s election. It was 1976, the very first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote, and the candidate was Jimmy Carter, a man I still think was probably the most honorable and decent president of the 20th century. But optimism and good intentions were not, are not enough. What followed Carter’s election was well-meaning bumbling, a dismal and unaccomplished presidency, and Ronald Reagan, the catastrophe that paved the road to our current state.
This election was so much like that one, only even more so. And I dread the possibility that jubilation will lead to complacency, that moderation will produce stasis, and that what will follow an Obama presidency could be something far, far worse than we can imagine.
So no, no ebullience from me, no brief relaxation into celebration. I’m charging up my cattle prod, because I want to goose the Obama administration into actually getting something done in the coming years. I think Obama could be a great president, especially since greatness in that office is measured by the magnitude of the challenges faced (which are off the scale), and the ability of the leader to rise to them. There is reason to have hope, but hope doesn’t get the job done.
Ten years from now I don’t want to be praising Obama by commenting on his generosity and his carpentry skills.
