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

If you’ve ever wondered what a couple of Molly winners, Sastra and Blake Stacey, look like…

It’s true. Blake is a creature of Kong-like immensity, beware!

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!

And she has pictures to prove it! You can also download the podcast in which we both speak. Oh, and there’s about 40 people who showed up at the Pharyngubrunch at Q. Cumbers who can testify that we all had a wonderful time.

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.

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.

Whoa. We had a long evening of it here at the Atlanta Pharyngufest — we closed the place down at almost 2am, and these ferocious Southern skeptics were still arguing philosophy and religion as I was staggering away (thanks to Pradeep Satyaprakash for the ride home!). They win. Here’s a quick pan of the crowd early on — it got up to almost a hundred people later in the evening.

The attendees made a commemorative card for the event that was huge. Here’s one bit of it — a portrait of yours truly. It’s an amazingly exact likeness.

Now…unconsciousness awaits. They wore me out!

From Pradeep, here’s a flickr photo set of the event; and here’s another photo set from Tim Farley.

I have arrived at the airport to discover that my flight to Atlanta has been cancelled, and I’ve been rescheduled to a later flight. No big deal, except that now I’m stuck in an airport for five hours, and I’m now scheduled to arrive in Atlanta at 5pm. This means I will almost certainly be late for the Pharyngufest…but I’m sure y’all can start the party without me. I’ll get there as soon as I can!

I’m expecting a busy, busy day tomorrow — I have to get up painfully early to drive to Minneapolis and fly off to Atlanta. Y’all remember we’ve got a Pharyngufest at Manuel’s at 6, and I expect everyone to come on down and say hello.

I am not looking forward to another run through TSA. There may also be a hatchet job in the Washington Times tomorrow morning — watch for it. I think I’ll be reading some science papers on my flight, and do not want to hear another word from loons for a while. Skeptics! GECCO! Science! Excelsior!