Richard Carrier and I will be speaking in Springfield on Saturday afternoon, in an event that has been blessed by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If you’re in the neighborhood, you won’t want to miss it!
And now I get to spend my afternoon sitting in an airplane. Ho hum.
Here are the details people wanted; there’s more in the Facebook announcement. I understand it’s scheduled for the same time as their homecoming football game, but you can always get the score to that later…come on around, we’ll have a good time.
I’m looking forward to meeting Carrier, finally, and of course, all the Missourians. We should plan a Pharyngufest for that evening (it’s a Saturday), so even if you do choose to go to a boring old football game, we can meet up later. Leave suggestions in the comments for good locations.
I just received a big ol’ mailing tube in the division office. The office staff made a little joke about how they’d rather I didn’t open it there, just in case (the Catholics will be so happy — they’ve managed to instill fear in uninvolved innocents), so they missed out — it was a beautiful print, all for me.
Thank you!
I also received another present, a wonderfully warm hoodie with an exceptionally cute bit of art on the front. He’s squinking hearts! And aren’t I adorable in it?
No name was on the package, and there was just a note that revealed that the source was from France. C’est magnifique! Un grand merci!
This is a very simple, lucid video of Spencer Wells talking about his work on the Genographic Project, the effort to accumulate lots of individual genetic data to map out where we all came from.
I’ve also submitted a test tube full of cheek epithelial cells to this project, and Lynn Fellman is going to be doing a DNA portrait of me. I had my Y chromosome analyzed just because my paternal ancestry was a bit murky and messy and potentially more surprising, and my mother’s family was many generations of stay-at-home Scandinavian peasantry, so I knew what to expect there. Dad turned out to be not such a great surprise, either. I have the single nucleotide polymorphism M343, which puts me in the R1b haplogroup, which is just the most common Y haplogroup in western Europe. I share a Y chromosome with a great many other fellows from England, France, the Netherlands, etc., which is where the anecdotal family history suggested we were from (family legend has it that the first American Myers in my line was a 17th or 18th century immigrant from the Netherlands). Here’s a map of where the older members of my lineage have been from: Africa (of course!) by way of a long detour through central Asia.
Hello, many-times-great-grandpa! That’s quite the long walk your family has taken. Howdy, great big extended family! We’ll have to get together sometime and keep in touch.
If you’re interested in finding out what clump of humanity you belong to, it’s easy: you can order a $100 kit, swab out a few cheek cells (just like they do on CSI or Law & Order!), mail it back, and a few weeks later, they send you your results. It’s not very detailed — they only analyze a small number of markers — but it’s enough to get a rough picture of where your branch of the family tree lies. And for a bit more, Lynn can turn it into something lovely for your wall.
By the way, Lynn and I will be talking about the science and art of human genetics in a Cafe Scientifique session in Minneapolis in February.
I motored into my driveway at 1am last night, after a long day and a long flight from LA. And now you expect me to start blogging again? You people are so demanding.
Oh, well, it was a fun weekend, and you can see some of it already on the web. That wild man Scooter was there, and he made an audio recording of my talk at Libros Revolución. There was a good crowd there, including lots of Pharyngula regulars, and it wasn’t your usual ‘guy lectures at mob’ sort of thing — it was more like a comment thread here. People kept interrupting me and throwing out their own ideas. I’d come with a fairly long and detailed set of notes, and I ended up just throwing them away and mostly winging it to keep up with all the input. It was a blast — I wish all my talks would go that way.
And if you’re just so dang tired of listening to me all the time, Scooter also interviewed Sastra. She talks just like she writes, did you know that?
I’m at the big Atheist Alliance conference, and this has been the very busy day, so I thought I’d just mention a few of the fun things going on.
Last night at Libros Revolución was a blast, and thanks especially to Keith for driving us around. Lots of familiar people from the threads here were present, as well as many new people. I do have to comment on one fellow (who can volunteer his identity if he wants):
Awesome tattoo.
At lunch, I got to sit next to Jill Sobule. She reads Pharyngula! Everyone say hello to Jill now. Of course, she also ‘fessed up to reading WorldNutDaily for the humor value, so this may not be an entirely flattering revelation.
The secret guest at this meeting was supposed to be Ayaan Hirsi Ali; her presence was kept secret because of the threats against her life. To no avail, though: local security freaked out on the Queen Mary and in Long Beach, and she wasn’t allowed to attend. We had to settle for a too-brief video link from an undisclosed location.
Got little kids? Here’s a site you must check out, Charlie’s Playhouse. THey are making and marketing simple games and displays about evolution for young kids, a niche that needs to be filled. Their wall hanging belongs in every grade school classroom in the country.
My talk is over. I took a different direction than I usually do — I got lots of questions, which is good, but I never can tell how successful these things are. People tend not to go up to the speaker and say, “that sucked”. (You can, you know—I can take the criticism).
I’ve done three video interviews so far today, and there were several others stacked up. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be at the happy hour social event at 6, the banquet at 7, and this Religiomania thing, whatever it is, for at least a little while around 10. Busy busy busy.
I fly back tomorrow. I may just sleep all the way home.
Have fun in the comments while I play!
I’m getting some email from local people wanting to get together while I’m here in LA. The best opportunity is tonight (Friday, 26 September), when I’ll be speaking downtown at Libros Revolución, at 312 W. 8th St (between Broadway & Hill streets). We’re scheduled to start at 7:00pm, but due to the curiously static nature of evening traffic in LA, we’ll probably offer a little leeway and may start a little later than that…and of course, if you can’t make even our delayed starting time, I’ll be hanging about afterwards, probably seeking out some nearby watering hole. So come whenever!
Unfortunately, I left my red-green glasses at home, on the arm of my comfy chair, I think, so I had to settle for watching me looking flat. I was interviewed by 3D Science News, and they’ve just put the video of the first part online. Don’t get your hopes up, Vincent Price was much better in the 3D House of Wax movie.
Uh-oh. I’m at the Atheist Alliance International conference, and I’ve just discovered the Klingons for Jesus site…and it’s convinced me. I’ve converted. Should I cancel my talk, or should I go ahead and preach in Klingon to an audience of atheists?
P.S. If you’re at the conference, too, and you’d like to get together for dinner, drop me a line, I’m free.
This weekend, I’m going to be speaking at the Atheist Alliance International Convention, along with a team of secular luminaries. I’ll be spending most of my time on a big boat, the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, but I will be creeping out to foment revolution at Libros Revolución on Friday, 26 September, at 7 pm. So even if you aren’t going to the big conference, you can probably catch me saying rude things about dogma at the bookstore.
I’m planning an informal talk for this one, but I’ll definitely be explaining the value of science in eroding belief, the importance of activism and protest, and the oppressive nature of religious thought. Come on down and argue and howl!
