Listen and be disillusioned

You can now download the interview by Karl Mogel of Ken Miller and me. You’ll want to listen to it first of all for 1) Ken Miller, 2) the music I suggested, and lastly and leastly, 3) me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed with Miller’s explanation of his comments in Kansas against atheists—it would help if he could make a defense without relying on straw-man mischaracterizations of prominent atheists. The sound track is Roger Waters’ music for “The Body”, which has a nice biological theme, but also makes a sneaky dig at Intelligent Design creationism—it’s got fart sounds in it.

Now there is another problem that came up. As usual, whenever I slither out into the real world and actually meet people or talk to them, I get these comments: “You sound so mellow.” “You seem to be a nice guy.” “You’re like…a college professor.” “You sound wimpy.” It’s terrible. I need an image makeover. I’m looking for suggestions, and here are a few ideas:

  • Hire James Earl Jones to dub over everything I say.
  • Eyepatch. Pegleg. Hook. Parrot.
  • Get tattoos, wear black leather, arrive for appointments on a Harley.
  • Develop maniacal laugh, cackle horribly at inappropriate times, acquire reputation for unpredictability.
  • Vomit blood occasionally.
  • Get elocution lessons from Lewis Black.

Stay tuned for the Miller-Myers show

I’m going to be interviewed tonight by Karl Mogel for his Mindcast podcast. I’m not sure how this is going to work; I think it’ll just be made available at some later date. Maybe he’ll pop in and explain how you can listen to it. I do know you can find past episodes in the iTunes store.

He promised me he’d ask some hard questions, and also some hard questions of his other guest, the illustrious Ken Miller. We won’t be on the same segment, sorry…there could be some vigorous argument if we were, and poor Karl might not be able to get in a word edgewise. It is an interesting combination, though: the extremely helpful and well-regarded speaker and biologist who is also an apologist for religion, and the pirate evilutionist with a knife between his teeth who brooks no compromise in his war against religion. We’ll have to see what Karl does with the possibilities.

ConFusion 2007

Yes! We made it home! The plane was a few hours late, the weather was awful, and we didn’t pull into our driveway until 3AM (my brain is not exactly humming along right now, I tell you what…), but it was a great weekend at ConFusion.

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Skatje, me, John Scalzi, and Matt Arnold

I have to thank a few of the people who made this a most excellent event.

  • The con organizers, who made the whole experience completely painless for me. I’m very impressed with the amazing art of con organization.

  • Matt Arnold, who was my GoH Liaison, and was most pleasingly obsequious and servile. I scarcely had to lift a finger all weekend, and I ate very well. Skatje wasn’t too keen on the sushi cafe we’re at in the picture above, but but I think even she enjoyed herself.

  • The smart people with whom I shared some panels: Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Schneier, and Karl Schroeder. We argued…intelligently! It’s great fun to sit down with people who have thought through opinions on science and aren’t afraid to wield them.

  • The attendees who showed up at all those panels. They argued, too—it was like leading the best kind of discussion sections at the university, where the students have all done their homework and don’t need to be coaxed to contribute.

  • The younger set at KidFusion, who also were pretty darn vocal. Who knew that the best way to hunt giant squid was with a fighter jet?

By the way, John Scalzi also has a ConFusion wrap-up, and it’s mostly true. Mostly.

Everyone should go next year. Go ahead, surprise the organizers, and let’s have 2,000 people register. It’ll freak them out.

A busy day

I had sushi with John Scalzi (some guy), Skatje (some girl), and Matt Arnold (a Pensacola Christian College graduate) last night, talked with people for a long time, hung out with noisy nerds, and stayed up later than I usually do. Today is my big day of scheduled panels: alternate patterns of evolution at 11, an evidence for evolution Q&A at 2, Squidblogging at 3, and we’ll attempt to answer the question of where the aliens are at 4. Then it’s partying all night long.

Who knew skiffy geeks could be such wild and crazy party animals?

So I just stepped off an airplane and…

¡Hola, amigos! I’m posting this from sunny, tropical…Michigan??!? Wait a minute, I thought January trips were supposed to be to some place with warm beaches and drinks with umbrellas and bikinis, not Detroit. This is more of a lateral shift, a change in longitude, rather than latitude.

There must have been some terrible ConFusion in my travel plans…

I have good news, and I have bad news

I’ve hinted before that I’ve been puttering away at a book, and the latest hint is that there is a possibility of some very serious interest in it—no promises yet, merely the whisper of potential, but still…this could be a big step. At the same time, that potential comes with things like serious pressure and deadlines of some urgency and a great deal of work thumping down on my head abruptly. I’m also, of course, plunging into a new term, and the first few weeks (and the last few weeks!) are always the most work, so I’m facing a traumatic time-crunch. And there’s a new Seed column due in a few weeks.

So, the blog. Hmmm. It takes up time I can scarely spare right now.

I’m going to have to re-prioritize for some indefinite time in the near future, and unfortunately, Pharyngula has been pushed down in the stack a ways. Don’t worry, I’m not going to pull a Bérubé and yank the plug on it; I have a grand time with it all, and it’s not for a lack of interest that I’m going to have to cut back. I’m also counting on bouncing back up once the howling maws demanding my time are sated, and I won’t be able to resist occasionally indulging in a little substantial blog-writing. I just need to be able to say now and then, “I will not even look at the interweb for this 12 hour period of time, because I need to write eleventy-seven thousand words right now.”

It seems a shame, because there’s this great big audience coming here every day (you know this, you’re part of it), and I know you’re a fickle lot and if I’m not constantly throwing out bloody bits of raw meat you’ll just wander away, won’t you, and find someone else to pay attention to your appetites. Well, I’ll help you.

I’ll keep throwing new material up, as long as you send it to me. I already get lots of links in email; I’ll try to be more assiduous in dumping those links in short posts to the blog. If you don’t have a blog, but you’ve got some wonderful rant you’ve written up and would love to post in a prominent place, send it to me, and if I like it, it’ll appear here, with your name. Just keep on sending the stuff to me, and I’ll use the soapbox to plug your ideas. Maybe my current audience will stumble over to your site as the next Pharyngula (do come back someday, though!). Just to help me out a little further, you might try letting me know the general subject in your subject line, and you should be aware by now of the Big Three topics I tend to favor: Biology, Godlessness, and Creationism.

This will be temporary, and I’m not going to go cold turkey on the blogging business—just be sympathetic while I hammer away at some rather important behind-the-scenes intellectual infrastructure here.

Victory is sweet

You may recall a ferociously hardfought battle between myself and the Bad Astronomer over the Weblog Awards a while back—a battle I won easily, of course, by the overwhelming majority of approximately 1%—and that we had bet each other various horrendous penalties if the other was the victor. Phil has begun to pay up with a new article on astrobiology, and this coming weekend he’ll be singing my praises at The Amazing Meeting (anyone else here planning to attend? Make sure he does a good paean, and report back to me).

What is it with this weekend? I’m attending ConFusion, Phil will be at The Amazing Meeting, and the science blogging conference is going on at the same time. Is there something magical about this particular weekend that everybody had to schedule something for it?