Giving up the ghost

Guest Blogger Danio:

When I began to seriously question organized religion, years ago, it didn’t take long to conclude that the myths I had been taught as a child were no more tractable than any of the other thousands of belief systems that have come and gone throughout human history. While I quickly and cheerfully discarded all god-belief without regret, the concept of the soul, a consciousness of some kind that could persist beyond the physical life, was significantly harder for me to relinquish. The idea that the essential ‘me’ would cease to exist upon my death was not nearly as disconcerting as the realization that my departed family members, of which there are, regrettably, many, were no longer present anywhere, in any form.

Science and reason helped me overcome this sense of loss, and appreciate the importance of accepting life, brutal and exquisite as it is, as an ephemeral, purely biological process. Reading Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain and various other works helped me to clarify my feelings on mortality. PZ has also written eloquently on the subject, when, for example, he discussed the brevity and relative insignificance of human life on a geological time scale.

Most of all, I have arrived at this acceptance as a lover of science, contemplating the wonders of genetic transmission through lineages. I can easily envision a connection, a common thread that runs through the years, linking my life to thousands of others. I see the ghosts of countless ancestors flit across the faces of my children, with all their various expressions of youthful joy and consternation and everything in between, and recognize that my offspring represent the distillation of innumerable contributions to the molecular constitution our flourishing family tree–the joining together of humanity at its most elemental.
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How did I forget that?

I’m a little brain-dead this morning, but at least I’m remembering to note that it’s MAJeff writing this. I’ll be better once I have my coffee, I hope.

I spent all day yesterday immersed in job hunting materials. Prepping files for submission, organizing application materials, creating individual files on disk and hard copy for every school. You know, that nasty ol’ administrative side of job hunting, the kind of work you just have to grind through all at once, rather than waiting, but that has to get done in order to avoid complete chaos.

This weekend a friend was over for my dinner. I was actually lamenting that I had not yet, in several years of teaching, had the opportunity to teach Introductory Sociology. (It’s not just because schools want someone who can teach it, but I think it would be a fun class.) He was looking at my vitae and saying I hadn’t yet taught any general ed classes. I listed off several, and got to “Social Problems.”

“That’s not on here,” he said.

“I’ve taught it at two schools. Oh crap, what else did I screw up?!”

Thankfully, that’s the only class I omitted. I think I caught all the typos, and I haven’t omitted any schools. I did have to remind myself of a few of the “professional service” activities I’d done so I could include those when I was editing it last month.

Omitting a class or two on the list of courses I’ve taught is actually pretty minor, especially with the list of classes already on my vitae.

At the ASA conference last weekend, a friend was was telling me about her job. She does a lot of the administrative side of things, including hiring, at a community college. Her favorite letter was one declaring how excited the applicant was to have the opportunity to work with graduate students at the college. At the community college without graduate programs. That’s pretty much a circular file application, I would guess. Others told stories of applicants sending cover letters to a completely different school than the one they were applying for.

Let’s hear your job-hunting horror stories. I don’t have any big one’s yet. (I can’t think of any from previous job hunting experiences, but I’m sure I screwed something up.)

They say misery loves company. What stupid things have y’all done or seen that just made you laugh?

And now, I’m back to job hunting (and dissertating).

Ecuador!

Quito is not a shiny city. It’s a bit shabby, with peeling paint, narrow twisty streets, buses belching fumes, and cheap gray tenements erupting all over the hillsides, and it is also far too churchy for my tastes. But man, it has character. It’s a wonderfully lively place, and what it lacks in chrome it replaces with color and quirkiness and charm. We had a good time today touring the Old City.

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I was charmed by this little restaurant with guinea pigs turning on a spit. We didn’t have a chance to stop and sample them, though, since we had to scurry up the road to visit the equator.

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There’s the famous Trophy Wife, straddling two whole hemispheres at once.

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Tomorrow, we have to rise up early for our flight to the Galapagos — communication may get even more limited for a while. Trust me, though, we’ll be having fun.

Hola from Quito!

Hey, I’ve safely arrived here in Quito, Ecuador…and of course, I beat Phil Plait here, getting through customs and to the hotel long before he did. He’s got to be getting used to second place by now.

I see the guestbloggers have come through and are doing a bang-up job, so I don’t need to say much at all. We’ll be touring the city tomorrow and won’t have much time to write then, either — so don’t expect too much from me in the near future. Not even in reply to Matt Nisbet.

Speaking of slanderous, self-serving frauds, Ray Comfort has been claiming that I “chickened out” of our debate on WDAY radio. This is not true, and it’s unfair to the radio station. They actually changed the format on their own initiative because they felt that 20-30 minutes would not let us do justice to our positions if we had to split the time. I have a formal statement from the producer that they’ve asked me to post:

For why we decided to change formats, we came to the conclusion that being we are a caller driven show, while having both Mr. Comfort and Dr. Myers on at the same time would be entertaining, neither would have been able to fully develop their respective positions, or take many questions from callers. We decided this Monday afternoon. We attempted contacting Mr. Comfort, with no success, and when I spoke to Dr. Myers he was gracious enough to move his interview to Wednesday morning. We sent several emails to Mr. Comfort (actually his assistant) with the changes to the format, and the emails were eventually responded to.

It is possible, however, that the information in the emails to Mr. Comfort’s assistant was not passed in full to Mr. Comfort. It is also possible that one of the emails we sent to Mr. Comfort’s assistant was lost due to the problems we’ve experienced with our email server this week (which has been an absolute nightmare). This could account for the misinformation that Mr. Comfort is stating on his blog. I will email his assistant this afternoon and try to straighten this out.

Feel free to reproduce this email on any blogs where this discussion is taking place (I’m guessing on Pharyngula and Comfort Food). If there are any further questions, feel free to email me at benandjim@wday.com

Thanks again,

Erik Matson
Producer, Ben and Jim in the Morning
WDAY Radio

I have never been a fashion model before

So many people are asking where I got my “Knowledge is Power, Power Corrupts, Study Hard, Be Evil” t-shirt, as modeled here, and I wish I could help you, but I don’t know where you could order your own. I can tell you exactly where I got it: in Detroit, at Moonbase ConFusion, from one of the many vendors in the dealer’s room. I know, that doesn’t help much. Sorry.

Someone could always go to Cryptic ConFusion in January and hope that the same t-shirts are available then…it’s a great con, even if this particular shirt isn’t always available.

Hooray! ElfPirateMonarch found that identical t-shirt design!

Priorities

Yes, the sad little cracker has met its undignified end, so stop pestering me. The cracker, the koran, and another surprise entry have been violated and are gone. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the details, what little of them there are. I must quickly apologize to all you good Catholics who were hoping to attend Mass, since you can’t anymore — I have been told many hundreds of times now that cracker abuse violates your right to practice your religion. I guess you’ll have to adapt. Secular humanism is a good alternative, if you aren’t already flocking to join the Mormons.

Anyway, I’ve got important things to do today. It’s my oldest son’s birthday, and I told him that as a gift to me him, I’d take myself him to see The Dark Knight. I sure hope the world doesn’t end before the movie does.

Time for a brief break

It’s been a high-stress week — not because of anything on the blog, I assure you, since that’s all been chaos over trivialities — but because all my recent travel has put me far behind on a lot of work, with missed deadlines and heaps of writing that had to be done right now. A significant chunk of all that has been polished off now, so I get to relax for a little bit. Now I just have to figure out how — I think I’ve forgotten.

I may blow up a few things in Warcraft, or I may go hide away and read a book. Movies are out — all that’s playing in Morris right now is Wall-E. At any rate, I think I’ll drop offline for a few hours and do something that doesn’t involve deep thought and tapping away at a keyboard (unless, of course, my editor demands fast rewrites, which could happen). I’ll be leaving you all to your own wiles for a wee bit — consider this thread an open invitation to talk about your pleasant pastimes that do not involve SIWOTI syndrome.