…and this is a 
I've been neglecting you, O Readers! It's been a busy couple of days out here in sunny Arizona — they keep telling me it is a surprisingly cool weekend, which I take to mean it is a blazing hellhole most of the time — and I've been having a grand time attending talks and deferring any worries about what I'm going to say tonight. Here are a few of the highlights:
I had a very nice dinner with some weirdos from ASU, and also had a well attended meetup at Rúla Búla. The Trophy Wife and daughter attended for the first time, and they were clearly baffled by all those strange people who wanted their photograph taken with me.
I very much enjoyed a talk by William Lobdell, author of the book Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It was one of those very humanist talks — lots of empathy for the religious, but pulling no punches at denouncing their problems.
Barbara Forrest gave an excellent talk on a familiar subject: how intelligent design creationism really is built on a purely religious foundation. It was very tightly argued — you can see why the creationists fear her. (Buy her book(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)!)
They had musical entertainment for Friday night: Roy Zimmerman. I coulda swooned. Too bad he didn't play this one for Lynch's benefit.
John Lynch asked "Was there a Darwinian revolution?" Like a typical history/philosophy science nerd, his answer was yes and no, but mostly no. It's very annoying that I've been finding myself progressively more sympathetic to historical and philosophical questions that I had to agree with him. Darn it. Anyway, you can see his presentation slides, or even watch a podcast of Lynch in action. I think he's trying to become King of All Media.
Norma Ramos gave a powerful speech on women's rights and the trafficking in women. This was not comfortable or cheerful, but it was important stuff that needed to be said.
The Rev. Barry Lynn gave one of his usual great talks — how to tell if you might be a right-wing fundamentalist. Seriously, if you ever have a chance to attend one of his lectures, don't miss it…he can find the humor in the most horrific excesses of the religious right, and he's hated by them even more than we atheists are.
OK, now I have to get back to meeting stuff and thinking about what I should say tonight. It's been a very good conference, so there is some pressure not to be a let-down here!
Comments
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 6, 2009 8:04 PM
Hmph.
I've been listening to some podcasts with Dawkins (the Open U one, for example), and he certainly sounds pretty sure that Darwin and Wallace brought about a huge and revolutionary change.
Of course, I am not sure that everything that Dawkins says is correct, so there's that.
Oh, well. I'll give the opposing viewpoint a listen.
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 6, 2009 8:09 PM
Oh, and looking at the slideshow, I see that a related presentation by someone calling themselves "darwiniswrong", which is titled "Darwins Evolution is technically impossible!"
Lovely.
Posted by: MadScientist
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June 6, 2009 8:14 PM
A preacher hated even more than the atheists? Now that's something I'd pay to see!
Posted by: MadScientist
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June 6, 2009 8:40 PM
PZ: The Rev Barry Lynn link is no good. :(
Posted by: Ophelia Benson | June 6, 2009 8:44 PM
Sounds like fun, I'm jealous, I wish I were there too.
Posted by: Leighton | June 6, 2009 8:46 PM
The correct link for Dr. Lynn is .org rather than .com:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Posted by: The Duck Man | June 6, 2009 8:51 PM
Non sequitur;
Does anyone else read the word 'Phrayngula' and think that it would make a great battle cry? Is it just me?
"PHARYN-GULAAAAAA!"
Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 6, 2009 9:03 PM
PZ, you have a copy-paste error in your second bullet.
:)
Posted by: bobxxxx | June 6, 2009 9:07 PM
The Rev. Barry Lynn gave one of his usual great talks — how to tell if you might be a right-wing fundamentalist. Seriously, if you ever have a chance to attend one of his lectures, don't miss it…he can find the humor in the most horrific excesses of the religious right, and he's hated by them even more than we atheists are.
From wikipedia: "Reverend Barry W. Lynn has been the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State since 1992."
Of course the theocrats (about half the population of America) would hate somebody who defends our constitution.
Posted by: Warren Terra | June 6, 2009 10:00 PM
I just thought I'd mention that in his speech at Omaha beach today Obama once again went out of his way to include "people of no faith" - an inclusion that he has frequently made, and that I don't recall any previous president making. I can't imagine that he derives any great particular political benefit from such mentions - anybody averse to religiosity will have run screaming from the Republicans long ago; I assume he does it because he means it, and because he was raised by a great woman who happened to the an Atheist.
Obama has disappointed me in all too many ways, especially on detainee rights, but some things he does, even small things, could be a transformative change.
Posted by: Warren Terra | June 6, 2009 10:20 PM
I just thought I'd mention that in his speech at Omaha beach today Obama once again went out of his way to include "people of no faith" - an inclusion that he has frequently made, and that I don't recall any previous president making. I can't imagine that he derives any great particular political benefit from such mentions - anybody averse to religiosity will have run screaming from the Republicans long ago; I assume he does it because he means it, and because he was raised by a great woman who happened to the an Atheist.
Obama has disappointed me in all too many ways, especially on detainee rights, but some things he does, even small things, could be a transformative change.
Posted by: badrescher | June 6, 2009 10:31 PM
Sounds like a great time. I LOVE Roy Zimmerman! My favorite of his isn't a "skeptic" song, though: "If the Beatles Were Irish"
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | June 6, 2009 10:37 PM
Not really. During July, August, and September it's a steamy hellhole, and the "blazing" only applies while the sun is up. So since it's pretty decent during part of December, January, and February, steamy during July, August, and September, and not blazing at night the "blazing hellhole" only applies for a bit over half of the time during a bit more than six months of the year.
That's about 30% of the time, so it's not "most."
Posted by: Ian | June 6, 2009 10:40 PM
The Lynch podcast links to some proprietary iTunes crap. What a bitch, he loses many internet.
Posted by: Newfie | June 6, 2009 10:59 PM
..um... didja get Roy's autograph for me?
I found that Dallas in late February was nice... as opposed to San Antonio in June.
Posted by: Clarie | June 6, 2009 11:26 PM
I got Lobdell's book yesterday, and read the whole darn thing. Coming from a fundamentalist background myself, I found it to be very interesting and a good read.
Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 6, 2009 11:36 PM
It's rare to see PZ compliment a reverend.
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 6, 2009 11:57 PM
I just went looking, for the nth time, for something that would allow access to itunes for Linux. I finally realized that the right keywords to search for included "podcast" -- the link isn't to something for sale; it's just so as to interface with the itunes jukebox player.
Anyway, while I agree that it's sucky to make a podcast available in a way that locks out those who cannot or will not run the itunes program itself, someone did make a script available that parses out the xml from an itunes link.
Thus, when you download this:
http://blizzard.dnsalias.org/itunes-url-decoder.py
and feed the itunes link to it, you get this ordinary rss link:
http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/rss/general.xml
Which I am sure can be fed to your favorite jukebox program or parsed directly for the media link urls.
</nerd>
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 7, 2009 12:00 AM
I just went looking, for the nth time, for something that would allow access to itunes for Linux. I finally realized that the right keywords to search for included "podcast" -- the link isn't to something for sale; it's just so as to interface with the itunes jukebox player.
Anyway, while I agree that it's sucky to make a podcast available in a way that locks out those who cannot or will not run the itunes program itself, someone did make a script available that parses out the xml from an itunes link.
Thus, when you download this:
http://blizzard.dnsalias.org/itunes-url-decoder.py
and feed the itunes link to it, you get this ordinary rss link:
http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/rss/general.xml
Which I am sure can be fed to your favorite jukebox program or parsed directly for the media link urls.
</nerd>
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 7, 2009 12:04 AM
(GODDAMIT STUPID FUCKING SCIENCEBLOGS COMMENT REFRESH TIMEOUT) I DID NOT MEAN TO HIT POST TWICE JUST NOW.
[...]
And now for something completely different — Python! :
http://xkcd.com/353/
Posted by: ymberlenis | June 7, 2009 12:10 AM
Live up to? For what it's worth, I enjoyed your speech most of all the talks I attended today. There were some great ones, so I'm trying to really say something here. Congratulations, and thank you for all you do.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | June 7, 2009 12:27 AM
I met William Lobdell when he gave a talk to the Boston Skeptics a few months back. His book-pimping speech was good enough that I bought the book right there, and I read it through in a single sitting. Quality stuff.
(I just got back from a night out with several of those same Boston Skeptics, and I don't trust myself to type much further. Hopefully all this screaming about "LOVE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES, NO NATIONALITIES, OR GENDERS!!!" will make sense tomorrow.)
Posted by: Chris Tucker | June 7, 2009 12:46 AM
Wow! Who knew PZ had a British accent, wrote poetry and made them into performance art?
http://www.wimp.com/stormpoem/
Posted by: BlueIndependent
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June 7, 2009 12:48 AM
OK, I simply must know where that tree of biology that looks like an eye on slide 62 came from. Is there a link to that?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | June 7, 2009 1:13 AM
Here's a good one:
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/tree.pdf
Posted by: Owlmirror | June 7, 2009 1:23 AM
In addition to what Sven linked to, here are some interesting artistic interpretations of the tree, including some nice tattoos:
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/faculty/antisense/DownloadfilesToL.html
Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 1:28 AM
Owly @ 19,
Full functionality only with Wine atm,some say Tangerine can load itunes songs,but not sure.
Did he behead anyone?
Posted by: Mick | June 7, 2009 2:03 AM
PZ,
I'm so jealous that you visited the University of Arizona and didn't visit my university. How about I organize a place/time for you to make a speech in Davis, California, at the University of California, Davis, and speak here!
Plus we could drink coffee and make fun of this one old guy that always walks around campus with his bible in hand...
Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 2:24 AM
You dont seem to know PZ very well,Mick.
Posted by: Ken McKnight | June 7, 2009 2:34 AM
I saw the Trophy Wife (and the Trophy Daughter)!! With my own eyes!!! They were both disappointingly devoid of tentacles.
Congratulations on your well-deserved award, PZ. Thanks for signing my screenshot of your Expelled blog entry. I hope you'll be signing your book for me next time.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | June 7, 2009 2:37 AM
Chris Tucker, Tim Minchin has a notably Australian accent,not British at all. This is because he is, in fact, Australian.
And Storm rocks, of course.
Posted by: Chris Tucker | June 7, 2009 2:42 AM
Cath, my apologies!
I am, after all, an American, and, as such, know of the Mysterious Land Down Under only from Monty Python sketches and songs with the word, "Vegimite" in the lyrics.
Posted by: Hai~Ren | June 7, 2009 3:16 AM
There's creationists posting and commenting over on Wiley's Non Sequitur strips over at Gocomics.com. Which is really very ironic because the comic strips in question are taking a none-too subtle dig at their way of thinking.
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/06/05/ (and also 1st and 3rd June)
Registration is needed to comment, but there's so much nonsense being peddled in the comments, and I hate to see one of my favourite comic strips being besmirched by creationist arrogance... methinks they need a good ol' dose of education from other Pharyngulites.
Posted by: «bønez_brigade»
|
June 7, 2009 4:06 AM
PZ, your book links for B&N and Abe are fucked every time (tested w/ FF, IE and Chrome, to be sure). Here are the correct links to the aforementioned books:
Losing My Religion
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0061626813
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=0061626813
Creationism's Trojan Horse
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0195319737
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=0195319737
Posted by: Michael Kingsford Gray | June 7, 2009 6:20 AM
~35°C?
=Balmy.
Cancel any plans to visit Oz in our summer!
No, on second thoughts don't.
We Aussies would love to see you and hear your rationally soothing thoughts over here. :)
Simon Singh is coming here** next month to wax logical on many a topic as a participant in Adelaide's Festival of Ideas.
http://www.neilwardpublicity.com.au/2009Release.html
(As will be Pat Churchland, amongst a veritable host of others)
_______________
** Adelaide, South Australia
Posted by: Emmet, OM
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June 7, 2009 6:35 AM
Only God.
Posted by: Rorschach | June 7, 2009 6:40 AM
Does that count ???
:-)
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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June 7, 2009 6:55 AM
Decapitation is so 18th Century. Nowadays, the anti-revolutionists are taken to the wall and shot.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | June 7, 2009 8:21 AM
Exactly. Normally runs about 40 this time of year, but hits 45 a fair bit of the time. Record is 50 even. (This is in town, mind; get into the outback and we have a few spots that get a fair bit warmer.) Come July we get the summer rainy season. The temperatures don't come down to speak of, but the dew point goes up into the 15-20 range.
Posted by: Heather | June 7, 2009 8:45 AM
#28 - University of ARIZONA? In TEMPE? No, never! Arizona State is in Tempe, U of A is in Tucson. And they're not really friendly towards one another.
I wish I could have been there, but the family doesn't really get into that sort of thing and I doubt my husband would have been pleased at me taking off for something totally unrelated to any of my jobs. But it would have been interesting.
And you did luck out - it's a beautiful weekend. Not even in the 100's, an oddity for June. Heck, we even turned off our a/c for the night! Maybe you should come back in August. It's be toasty then.
Posted by: Diana | June 7, 2009 9:22 AM
I think we should stop calling them "Creationists" and call them what rhey really are - The Flintstones. Dinosaurs and humans exist together and Fred works on the back of one that has a little saddle.
Posted by: emote_control | June 7, 2009 3:40 PM
While I'm interested in reading William Lobdell's book, I really can't imagine what must have been going through his head. The Amazon review says that he lost his faith as part of the realization that Christians were no more moral than atheists.
Well, duh.
It seems to me that anyone who has been alive for longer than a decade should have noticed that religious people do terrible things all the time, and justify it with religion. He seems to have had the hypothesis that people become religious in order to lead a moral life. But he's got it backwards. Most people are naturally moral. They don't need religion for that. Religion is for two people: first, the sort of person who wants to be good, but lacks the strength of character to actually do it without the threat of punishment always looming. Second, the person who wants to be immoral, but whose conscience prevents it. If that person's conscience is overruled by a religious commandment, then they can behave as they desire.
He believed the unbelievable myth that atheism is equivalent to immorality, and had to waste years of his life to figure out what every atheist already knows.
I'm sure it will be satisfying to read about him coming to his senses, but only in the way that it's satisfying to see an athlete win a race after a terrible injury that almost left him crippled. You feel happy for him, but you'd rather he never had the injury in the first place.
Posted by: Gridman | June 7, 2009 6:19 PM
Yes, it has been a suprisingly moderate couple of days, and yes, it is a hellhole... in June.
Try coming in February... if you can get the roads, cars, planes and runways de-iced enough to leave Minnesota. :-)
Posted by: Dan Casey | June 7, 2009 6:49 PM
The next time you are at ASU, you need to look up Jewell Parker Rhodes, who is an English professor there.
She taught me many moons ago when she was an assistant professor at the University of Maryland. Never before, or since, have I been so engaged in a class or learned so much in one. She is amazing....