As long as we’re confessing…

In response to this crazy attempt to smear Mitt Romney with the sins of his fathers literally, a few people are disqualifying themselves from future runs for the presidency with similar confessions. I have to admit there’s a skeleton in my family tree, too: apparently, one of my ancestors was hanged as a witch in 17th century Massachusetts.

No one will be surprised at that, I suppose. Especially since if your family can trace its roots in this country back almost 400 years, you might well be related to her, too.

Thursday at the Bell

Since somebody asked, I will confirm that I will be at the showing of Flock of Dodos tomorrow. That’s going to be at 7:00pm in the Bell Museum auditorium ($7 admission). Randy Olson won’t be there (rumor has it he’s busy flitting from showing to showing, but Minneapolis just isn’t good enough for him…too far from the ocean or something), but Steven Miller, the executive producer of the movie, will be—so really, you’ll be able to ask in-depth questions about what went into making the movie. It’s a great opportunity. Argue with him, too! A movie and a discussion about how to communicate science; how can you pass it up?

I’m also not doing my usual zip in, zip out routine this time—I’m spending the night in the Big City. That means that if anyone wants to collar me afterwards and force me to listen to your objections to my evil stridency, you can do so! If you buy me a beer, at least.

Aftermath

Cafe Scientifique was great fun last night, although I admit that I’m feeling it this morning: I didn’t get home until after 1am, and I still had to get up at 6. It was a huge crowd, we got lots of questions and discussion. There were a few criticisms, too: we got one comment that there wasn’t enough evolution presented (these open discussions always get sucked into the culture wars issue), and there were a few criticisms that I was too harsh on religion. What? Moi? I think the people on the panel covered the full range of reasonable rational thought, from an atheist who was accepting of some degree of religious expression (Scott) to an agnostic (Mark) to the atheist who regards all religion with some degree of contempt (guess who).

Here we are. You can see that the Varsity Theater is a wonderfully funky place for these kinds of discussions—we had a beat-up couch on the stage, and the audience had tables and a bar at the back.

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Many thanks to Shanai Matteson, the sparkplug who keeps Cafe Scientifique going in the Twin Cities.

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Also thanks to John Ward, who took the pictures. I saw a few familiar faces there—any other Pharynguloids want to comment? My perspective was obviously skewed.

A valentine

Our biology club has a fundraiser tradition: for Valentine’s Day, they’ll take your picture with our resident snake and print it out as a card (what is it about big snakes and romance, anyway?) Of course I have to participate, so here I am, fondling a big reptile with an even bigger dead reptile in the background.

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Darwin Day party coming right up!

The Myers household is going to celebrate the day in half an hour — we’ve got the cake, we’ve got the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, we’ve got the hot chocolate — and we figure we’ll party by watching CNN at 8ET to see if Dawkins and Hitchens are going to go on a rampage. I hope they do, but I also sort of expect that they’re being set up by the theidiots at the Zahn show. I’ll report back on how (and if) the show goes.

Hey, the CNN show went well! Dawkins was good, emphasizing the positive aspects of atheism. The panel consisted of Ellen Johnson of American Atheists (good work, getting an American representative), Rachel Maddow of Air America, and a deranged dimwit priest named Jesse Lee Peterson who made the godless look damn good. You know we’re on the winning side when the resident theist resorts to protesting the way atheists seek to impose their evil lifestyle on Americans in exactly the same way those wicked homosexuals imposed their lifestyle on heterosexuals (that was a real “WTF?” moment). Ellen Johnson was also clear and assertive, and got the most time on the panel; Maddow was also strong in stating that freedom from religion is exactly what the Constitution guarantees us.

I’m relieved. I was worried about a hatchet job, but our secular representatives made an excellent show.

OneGoodMove is sure quick—the complete segment is available here already, in case you missed it.

That’s more like it

While it’s nice to have the Dilbonians* still whimpering and howling in frustration and fury, here’s an even better testimonial to my talents:

PZ, I’m sorry I slighted you. I now have seen the light. You lull your victims into a false sense of security by manifesting as a mild-mannered biology prof, but in reality you are an unspeakably hideous hybrid of Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, living in a shadow lair beyond time and space, called Minnesota. You suck your victims’ brains out through their eye sockets and gorge until sated. You are the very embodiment of evil.

I am well pleased. I shall let him live a little longer, although I may have to sup on his bandwidth a bit more.

*What I’m finding amusing right now is all the Dilbert fans who are showing up in the comments and complaining that I’m obsessed and that I need to stop picking on poor Scott Adams…5 days after I wrote the post. I wonder; do they think the post goes away when they don’t look at it, and I’m busily retyping it over and over again so it’ll be there when they look a second time? Peek-a-boo is cute when played with 2 year olds, but I expect people who know how to use the internet to have mastered the concept of object permanency.

It’s me again

I only mention this because it infuriates the wingnuts and religious ravers, but if you go to my university’s main web page you might see an article about me (I say “might” because only 4 are shown at a time, and which 4 is random). It’s awfully hard to get across to the critics, but the university supports me despite not necessarily endorsing my every opinion, and despite individuals in the administration feeling a little uncomfortable with some of my views, because there is this principle of academic freedom—it’s part of the job of an academic to make people uncomfortable. If you want vacuous pablum, that’s what the right-wing think tanks are for.

I don’t visit the main page much, so I wouldn’t have noticed this except that Larry Moran brought it to my attention. I should have made sure the photo accompanying the article had been properly credited, with something like “Photo courtesy of Larry the Camera Guy” across the bottom.