Stranded!

Well, I was trying to get home from my talk in Stillwater (more about that later), but the weather did not cooperate. We’re having one of those spectacular midwestern summer storms — a watery deluge, non-stop lightning so close and so bright it blinded me, a threat of tornados, etc. Since I couldn’t go faster than 10mph on the freeway, visibility was nonexistent, and word was that the storm was traveling in exactly the same direction I was, I decided maybe I should bag this travel stuff and found a no-name motel somewhere. If you hear that Clearwater, MN was demolished by tornados overnight … that’s me.

The weather is much more fun when you aren’t driving in it.

Assaults on creationism scheduled for Sunday and Monday

It’s a busy weekend coming up. On Sunday, 12 August, I’ll be speaking at the St. Paul Critical Thinking Club, at The Kelly Inn (off I-94 at the Marion St exit) from 10:00 AM to noon. Well, it’s scheduled for two hours, but I promise not to babble on for that length of time. There is a $10 fee to cover the buffet breakfast, and you need to rsvp to Lee Salisbury if you want to attend.

Progress and Opportunities in Evolution
Scientists are a pragmatic bunch who typically don’t worry too much about the deeper philosophical meanings of their vocation: the important property of a good theory is that it allows them to formulate experimentally testable hypotheses and leads them on to intellectually fruitful pursuits. I’ll summarize some of the reasons good scientists have found and are still finding evolutionary theory eminently useful, to the point that many of them take evolutionary conclusions for granted. There is almost no argument about the major ideas of evolution within biology because of its utility — the argument is entirely between a few representative members of the scientific community and scientifically ignorant and religiously motivated leaders of backwards ideology.

And then I talk to the Stillwater Critical Thinking Club on Monday, 13 August, from 7:00-9:00 pm at The Family Means Building on 1875 Northwestern Ave.

Complexity and Order in Evolution
One of the most common arguments for Intelligent Design creationism is that organisms are “too complex” to have evolved. This is fallacious: complexity is a natural consequence of evolutionary processes. It reflects a fundamental confusion in creationist thinking — they use complexity where they mean order, and order when they mean intent. I’ll be discussing these three different words, complexity, order, and intent, and their relevance to evolutionary biology.

And then I get to come home for a few days before my next out-of-state trip.

The first rule of foo camp is … you do not talk about foo camp

Mainly because you don’t know what foo camp is all about. Yes, I have arrived in lovely Sunnyvale, safe and sound, ready for my alter ego, Tyler Nerden, to face the google geeks.

While I was hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, what did I miss? I just caught Behe on the Colbert Report, and yowza, what a clown. Einstein’s theories were all about putting limits on Newton? And Behe is the guy who’s putting limits on Darwin? Can we just say he’s an idiot and be done with it now?

And speaking of dismissive one-liners, what the heck is going on here in my own little fever-swamp? There are 357 comments on this trivial article! I could tell just from the numbers that a troll has been at work, and what do you know, there’s David snarking away (68 of those comments are just him prattling away), and all you people are feeding the little infestation. Stop it. He’s not worth it. Poof, now he’s gone.

I will be checking in a little more regularly now, so behave yourselves.

I’m mostly normal!

People might read this definition of Asperger’s Syndrome and think, “Gee, that Miyyears fellow meets two of the three criteria, maybe that’s his problem”.

Asperger’s, like too many other mental illnesses, is in effect an almost whimsical diagnosis of exclusion: If someone is really smart, arrogant beyond measure, and tends to be an asshole or otherwise impossible to converse with in a normal way, then he must have a form of autism.

I’ll have you know, though, that I took the test and scored a 24, an “average math contest winner.” You need a 32 to suggest Asperger’s, and a 15 is the average. So there. I don’t have Asperger’s, I’m just cruel and insensitive.

They can’t shut me up!

Tomorrow, Sunday, at 1:00 in the Roseville Library, I’ll be giving a talk on “There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief”. Come on down and argue with me!

Now I have to get back to polishing this talk up. I suppose no more than ten powerpoint slides of equations is the limit? (Nah, not really—there’s no math in this talk at all. A few pretty pictures, though…).

By the way, if you listened to the Horgan/Myers Show, there was an unfortunate characterization of atheist organizations as groups of people congratulating one another on how much smarter they are than those crazy theists. As you can see, we actually do have issues of substance to discuss, and it actually helps to talk about them in an explicitly non-supernatural way.

And as everyone knows, the backslapping chatter about our plans for world domination are confined to the business meeting.

Your goal should be to achieve a score as close to mine as possible

This is irrational, an intrusion into my privacy, rude, and beneath me, but I have been tagged with another meme by the behavioral ecology blog. I am to take this test of my personality defects, post the results, and pass it on.

These are not personality defects. How can you call perfection “defective”?

Haughty Intellectual
You are 100% Rational, 14% Extroverted, 0% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsession with yourself as well, thus causing everyone to hate you for being such an elitist twat. On top of all that, you are also introverted and gentle. This means that you are just a quiet thinker who wants fame and recognition, in all likelihood. Like so many countless pseudo-intellectuals swarming around vacuous internet forums to discuss worthless political issues, your kind is a scourge upon humanity, blathering and blathering on and on about all kinds of boring crap. If your personality could be sculpted, the resulting piece would be Rodin’s “The Thinker”–although I am absolutely positive that you are not nearly as muscular or naked as that statue. Rather lacking in emotion, introspective, gentle, and arrogant, you are most certainly a Haughty Intellectual! And, most likely, you will never achieve the recognition or fame you so desire! But no worries!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Schoolyard Bully. (Bullies like to beat up nerds, after all.)

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Braggart, the Hand-Raiser, and the Robot.

Although the “brutal” score is a filthy lie. Just to prove it, I will gladly torment others with this pointless exercise.

Tinny Words

Tiny Frog

Random Intelligence

Salad Is Slaughter

Lacrimae Rerum

CultureCat – Rhetoric and Feminism

The 19th Floor

The Squid Zone