That other well-known atheist from Minnesota

August Berkshire, prominent Minnesota atheist, recently awarded Minnesota Humanist of the Year by the Humanists of Minnesota, and long-time leader and organizer of the state’s atheist community, is on tour right now through the southwest and midwest. I’m belatedly making his schedule available — he’s been cruising for a while, so you’ve missed some of his talks — but here’s list of available events. If you’re in Topeka, you’ve got a half hour to get to the meeting!

June 13, Saturday, 11:30 a.m. – Atheist Community of Topeka in Topeka, KS
EVENT: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s).
VENUE: Celtic Fox, 118 SW 8th Ave., Topeka, KS 66603 (Separate back room)

June 13, Saturday, 5:30 p.m. – Columbia Atheists in Columbia, MO
EVENT: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s).
VENUE: Boone Tavern patio, 811 E. Walnut St., Columbia, MO 65201.

June 14, Sunday – Secular Coalition for America (SCA) meeting in St. Louis, MO

June 14, Sunday, 6:00-8:00 p.m. CDT – Rationalist Society of St. Louis (RSSL) in St. Louis, MO
EVENT: Presentations: “Intro to AAI” and “Intro to Atheism” by August Berkshire Go out for a bite to eat afterwards.
VENUE: Hoops Hall (RSSL building) 1806 Allen Ave., St. Louis, MO 63104.

June 15, Monday, 7:00 p.m. – Indy Atheist Meetup & CFI Indiana in Indianapolis, IN
EVENT: Presentation: “Introduction to Atheism” by August Berkshire
VENUE: CFI/Indiana, 350 Canal Walk, Suite A, Indianapolis IN 46202.

June 16, Tuesday 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. – Richmond Area Freethinkers, Richmond, IN
EVENT: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s).
VENUE: Fifth Street Bagel, 211 S. 5th St., Richmond, IN 47374 (765) 965-5427.

June 16, Tuesday, 4:00 p.m. – Taping for Public Access Fort Wayne Cable TV show, Freethought Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN

June 16, Tuesday, 7:00 p.m. – Freethought Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN
EVENT: Discussion about atheist groups and atheism.
VENUE: Main Allen County Public Library, Orientation Room, 900 Library Plaza, Ft. Wayne, IN 46802

June 17, Wednesday, evening – North Suburban Atheists, North Suburban Brights, Chicago Brights, Chicago Skeptics, Wheaton Atheists, and Fox Valley Atheists in Chicago, IL
EVENT: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s).
VENUE: Tentative: Exchequer Restaurant & Pub, 226 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60604

June 18, Thursday, 6:00 p.m. – SWiFT & Atheists & Agnostics of Wisconsin (AAW) in Milwaukee, WI
EVENT: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s).
VENUE: Spring Garden Restaurant, back room, in a Howard Johnsons, 1716 W Layton Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53221.

June 19, Friday, 5:30-7:30 p.m. – Humanist Union of Madison, hosted by Prairie UU Society in Madison, Madison Skeptics, Madison Brights, and First Unitarian Society (FUS) Doubters Group in Madison, WI
EVENT: 5:30 p.m.: Potluck supper. 6:15-7:30 pm.: Informal discussion of AAI and local group(s). Talk to be recorded for later radio broadcast on WIDE, a volunteer operated low power FM radio station in Madison and for posting on station and Humanist Union websites.
VENUE: Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society, 2010 Whenona Dr., Madison, WI

If you get a chance, check him out — he gives a very good talk.

Turkish futility

Some of you may have noticed that we got hit hard by a Turkish spammer last night: several hundred comments, mostly saying the same thing, all linking back to a farm of Turkish spam sites. It’s extremely annoying, and I’m in the process of cleaning it all up. Normally that wouldn’t take long at all, but right now Scienceblogs is seizing and sputtering, like usual, so I delete 10 or 20 at a time, get the stupid timeout message, and have to reload and restart the despammer tools…so it might take a little while.

And it is all so pointless. They get a few hours of their url on my blog, but what I do in addition to deleting their spam is pluck out urls and unusual keywords and tuck them into my automatic spam filter file…which, after a few years of this nonsense, is looking like a goddamned Turkish dictionary. That means that a lot of Turkish words and links get automatically rubbished if you try to use them here — there must be a lot of national pride over there in Asia Minor, where they’re doing a phenomenal job of making Turkish the pariah language of the internet.

The inanity strikes home sometimes

I got a very annoying announcement on our university listserv today. Among the usual community and campus events, it says:

Please mark your calendars: Don Bierle, PhD in Biology, polar explorer, and former skeptic, shares FaithSearch Discovery at Morris Area High School Sunday, September 27, 6:30 pm. This event is sponsored by Stevens County Ministerial and area churches.

This really pisses me off.

Our local high school has problems. It’s underfunded, it’s academically compromised in many ways, and we were immensely relieved to get our kids out of there. It’s a small school, with a total of two science teachers, and one of them is openly creationist and openly dismissive of evolution in the classroom. If you want a good science education, Morris Area High School is not the place to go right now. And this doesn’t help.

Don Bierle is a creationist, a certifiable liar for Jesus, an evangelical, fundamentalist wackjob who is coming to town to lie to the community and to our kids. This FaithSearch program is undiluted Christian apologetics, and it’s going to be presented in our school building.

I called the school, and they gave me a runaround about how it wasn’t during school hours, and the churches were renting the room. I assumed all that; it doesn’t matter. This is a group promoting propaganda antithetical to the educational message of the public school. They are going to be teaching lies to the Morris community, and the school doesn’t care that their facilities are being used for this ghastly purpose. If it were the KKK asking to rent a room, there would be squawks and rapid backpedaling…but because this group is sponsored by a mix of our local churches, it must be OK.

It isn’t OK. It’s just more evidence that our theistically inclined brethren are happy to corrupt education and spread more ignorance through the area.

Any locals who happen to read this: if the school promotes this at all, if it’s mentioned in announcements, newsletters, or flyers; if our dear little creationist teacher, Mrs. Franey, even whispers a word about this dishonest performance in her class, I hope there are a few of you willing to spread the word and pound on the school hard. This is not the way to improve the academic status of our community. I also hope a few biologists and biology students attend, if it goes on, and puts a little public smackdown on this pious phony.

I’m also a bit peeved that my university sees fit to promote this garbage to our faculty and staff.

It’s Loving Day!

It wasn’t that long ago that it was illegal in many states for black people to marry white people — this was the same kind of sentiment promoted by people who are defending marriage from gays nowadays, and I hope it will someday soon look as unbelievable as those old laws. Old laws? They were only overturned on this day in 1967, in the Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia!

Roy Zimmerman (with Laura Love, John McCutcheon, and Sandy O) has a song for this day, of course.

You can see the Lovings in this short news piece.

Aaargh! Obama screws up, very, very badly! I could forgive his religious leanings and vote for him, but denying civil rights to our citizens is not the kind of thing I can overlook. He must be hoping that the Republicans will nominate an extremely distasteful thug in the next election, so we’ll vote for him anyway.

Good news and bad news

A doctor in Nebraska, Dr. Leroy Carhart, has stepped forward and said he will train his staff to take over the important role lost when George Tiller was murdered. That’s courage, and I applaud what he is doing. I hope more doctors take on this essential task.

That’s the good news. The bad news? Look at what Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, a fellow who is obligated by his position to support the law, had to say.

I’m disgusted and I’m saddened, and I hate it that he’s here in Nebraska and I hate it that he’s in America. I mean, this guy is one sick individual.

I hate it that the people who enable murder can be found in positions where they are supposed to promote justice.

Another museum in danger

You can tell when the anti-intellectuals are in charge: they start throwing away investments in knowledge that took generations to build, all in the name of short-term economy. The latest instance: the state of Wyoming wants to shut down the University of Wyoming Geological Museum. It’s already been starved down to a minimal (well, more like inadequate) staffing level, and now the state just wants to erase it completely.

This doesn’t make sense. A museum is a repository of accumulated information — if you discard it this year because you don’t want to maintain it, you never get it back. It’s gone. You can’t decide at a later date when you’re more flush that maybe you’ll restore it, because you can’t, you have to start anew, and hope that future legislatures are a little more far-sighted than present ones. It frustrates me immensely to see academic infrastructure demolished because some bean-counter would rather throw away money on some waste of resources like abstinence-only education or locking recreational marijuana smokers in jail.

Read more about this travesty at Dinochick and Science Buzz, and sign the petition to save this resource.