Yesterday, I toured the Tower of London (among other things) with Larry Moran. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s one of the more ferocious combatants in the evolution-creation wars—he does not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. He ended up in a few of my photos, in a disturbingly appropriate way.
I call this series, “Larry Moran contemplates armaments”.
Come in from the cold and say something.
There is a tradition among the regulars of the usenet group talk.origins to have occasional gatherings, usually at some major locus of evolutionary activity, and accompanied by beer. Such an event will be happening this Saturday, in London.
We’ll be meeting on these steps at 2pm:
That’s the Natural History Museum here in Kensington. Look for the bearded nerd with a black computer bag and a camera hanging from his neck; that’s me. I’ll be there with a distinguished and professorial science nerd scholar*; that’ll be Laurence Moran. We’ll hang about the steps for a while, gathering together any fellow science geeks, talk.origins regulars and readers of Pharyngula, and then take a brief tour of the museum. Afterwards, we’ll depart for some local pub. If you’d rather skip the dry old bones stage of the festivities, you could meet us at the steps at 4pm, because that’s when we’ll find a nearby watering hole for the wet work.
After a few hours in the pub, we might go looking for food…you’re welcome to hang with us all that time, too. We can stretch out the festivities for as long as people are willing to talk.
*He denies being a nerd.
Where else could I go but to the only respectable church in all of Christendom? It was most cool to step out of the Tube station and look up and recognize this rather huge, ornate building.
Get cosmic in the comments.
I have confirmation from both my son (who was there) and Eva that Patty Wetterling did address the question about whether ID ought to be taught in the schools in a recent debate. Here’s what she said:
We need to teach the truth about science. Evolution is scientifically accurate. We can’t let our science curriculum to be based on religious beliefs.
Exactly right. That’s not hard to say, you know.
There were a few comments in that prior thread that were trying to argue that, since the 6th district has a conservative population, Wetterling was a bad choice to run there—that the DFL should have tried to find a conservative Democrat for a candidate.
I think that’s insane.
Wetterling is running a good, hard campaign. She’s putting up a fight, and she’s made it a competitive race. Why in the world should the DFL ask good, progressive candidates who are willing to work a district to step aside? She stands for our values. We ought to be pushing that, rather than looking for some proxy Democrat with Republican values to run.
Just curious, but when was the last time you saw Republicans arguing that they ought to be fielding moderate candidates anywhere? Far right wingnuts seem to be happily seized upon as perfect choices to forward the Republican agenda, and the arguments always seem to be about how to get money and support to their people. (Katherine Harris seems to be the rare exception. There are limits to the insanity and incompetence Republicans will endorse, which is good to see.)
It seems to me that putting up strong opposition to Republican extremists is exactly what we ought to be doing. Make ’em have to struggle and bleed a little to win when they put up kooks like Bachmann; better yet, make ’em lose to liberal candidates. Let the Republicans look at these races and decide that they need to field a moderate to get a lock on the district. Make them shift a little closer to the center, rather than always ceding that the Democrats must shift a little closer to the right. That’s how we win in the long run. That strategy of always forcing the races rightward and making the Democrats chase after them is how the Republicans have been winning.
One funny thing about that strategy is that it will even make some Republicans happy to see their extremist fringe kicked in the tush a few times. The voters who would switch to a conservative/moderate Democrat would probably prefer to see the nutjobs who are leading their party marginalized and replaced with centrists—and that would be a net gain for the country.
Steve Sailer, of course.
While I’m out of town, my introductory biology students are getting a lecture on species concepts and systematics from one of my colleagues, and it fits in perfectly with that link, too. In my absence even, freshman college students are smarter and better informed than Sailer.
I’m wandering off in the UK, and I have no idea how much net accessibility I’ll have…so I’ll just set up an open thread and let you all chat away. If I can, I’ll try to put up travel photos now and then.
Eva sent me a link to a wingnut’s account of a debate between some 6th Congressional District candidates: Patty Wetterling (Democrat), John Binkowski (Independent), and Michele Bachmann (Rethuglican). It’s not a very good transcription—for one thing, the wingnut’s commentary is all tangled up with the words of the candidates, making it hard to tell who said what—but there’s one part of interest. They were asked the ID question.
