This large squid, Taningia danae, has been caught on film, and it’s amazing stuff. It swoops in on its prey, arms splayed wide, using its luminescence to disorient the target. It’s beautiful!
Greg Laden was there, and has a nice blurry picture of me picking my nose.
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.
Many thanks to Shanai Matteson, the sparkplug who keeps Cafe Scientifique going in the Twin Cities.
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.
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.
I’m going to be driving to the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown this afternoon. It’s time for a Café Scientifique on the subject of “Understanding Evolution” at 6:00 this evening. We have a 3 person panel, with Mark Borello of UMTC talking about the history of evolutionary thought, Scott Lanyon of the Bell Museum describing evolutionary patterns, and me saying a few words about public misconceptions about evolution. It should be fun.
One word on what to expect, though: this is Café Scientifique. It’s not just us three babbling at you; we’re each going to give a 10-15 minute overview, but the main objective is to get the audience talking and asking questions. So show up, but be prepared to contribute!
I sure hope time straightens out the race for the presidency, since I find myself unimpressed by the entire field. John Edwards has just moved to the bottom of my list of acceptable Democratic candidates, after Hillary Clinton (after Hillary! That’s pretty low) since he has just allowed Amanda Marcotte to resign. I am unimpressed by the lack of loyalty he’s shown to his employees; I’m not an absolutist on that point, since I think loyalty can be carried too far, to the point of stupidity (case in point: GW Bush). But what pisses me off is that he failed to support her in the face of genuinely vile, trumped-up slanders from his right-wing opponents, people who’d never vote for him no matter how much he sucked up to them. That’s gutlessness, an even more unforgivable sin in a presidential candidate than disloyalty. He got his first Swift Boat attack — actually, more like a slow, leaky canoe — and he collapsed like a frightened rabbit.
So now I look at the slate of Democrats, and to my dismay discover that Obama is currently at the top. How depressing.
What cheers me up, though, is looking at the Republican field. I am perversely looking forward to 23 February, when John McCain promises to address the Discovery Institute. Watching the ‘maverick’ rip out his brain and hand it to the theocrats as his oath of fealty will be entertaining.
An atheist goes for a walk and is accosted by a couple of Christians, and he defends himself…no, more than that, he goes on the offensive. It’s great to watch. This is what we all have to do: no more appeasement, no more making excuses for the foolishness of others, just smack down their yapping noises aggressively, confidently, without compromise. And he laughs good-naturedly at their crazy ideas. Perfect!
The NYT has a nice article on Carl Sagan’s new posthumous book—it was put together by his widow, Ann Druyan, and she makes a few good points:
In the wake of Sept. 11 and the attacks on the teaching of evolution in this country, she said, a tacit truce between science and religion that has existed since the time of Galileo started breaking down. “A lot of scientists were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it anymore,” Ms. Druyan said over lunch recently.
I’ll say. It was a stupid truce, anyway, entirely to the benefit of the old guardians of mythology.
Lynch finds a strange argument against climate change.
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people’s minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what’s going on. (Dear Lord Jesus…did I just open a new pandora’s box?) Yeah, I said it. Do you honestly believe God would allow humans to destroy the earth He created?
Well, actually…let’s think this through. At least the guy has made a discrete argument, that there are certain phenomena that are incompatible with the god hypothesis. He’s got it backwards, trying to fit the data to his hypothesis, but I prefer to think of it this way: if a god would not allow humans to destroy the earth, but humans are destroying the earth, then there must not be such a god.
Hey, didn’t that guy Augustine say something about pegging your faith to issues of science?
