Another busy day ahead of me: yesterday I met Alex and Bora, shared a dinner table with James Randi, and saw swarms of other people I have to meet today … so off I go to another series of random encounters.
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Here follows a brief account of my sojourn in the Galápagos Islands, just to give you all a rough idea of what I was up to all this time. I've tossed in just a few pictures to illustrate what we experienced; I'm planning to dole out the rest a little bit at a time, each week. I took a lot of…
About 20 Science bloggers and readers met at the North Carolina Zoo yesterday for a day of animals and fun. Minnow was the youngest, but not the only, child in attendance. And I think she was quite happy to meet some other children-of-bloggers, particularly the 22-month-old son of James Hrynyshyn.…
OK, so a bunch of us sciencebloggers went to New York City this weekend. This is something that we were trying to do for almost a year now. Sure, many of us Sciblings have met one-on-one on occasion, but this was an opportunity to get many of us together all in the same place at the same time, to…
I'm at The Amazing Meeting London, an Old World instance of the skeptical conferences organised by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (Or more correctly, I am waiting for breakfast at my threadbare Bayswater hotel, where I sleep in a basement closet.) I came to London Friday night and started…
Now that's a dinner I would pay money to be at. PZ and James Randi. ::sigh::
Can you prove Randi was there? I'm offering one American dollar to anyone who can prove the existence of James Randi. I personally find Bora more interesting than Randi, but figure the MacArthur money went to his ego.
Cheers,
Dave
Why, oh why, am I getting an image of three orcs and a beholder playing bridge around a random encounter table....
How's Randi survived his heart surgery last year? I hope he's fully active again.
I'll also offer a dollar to anyone who can prove the existence of Randi. Preferably by delivering him to my address.
The purported existence of James Randi is a satanic hoax intended to usurp the god-given gullibility of believers everywhere.
"The purported existence of James Randi is a satanic hoax intended to usurp the god-given gullibility of believers everywhere."
Nonsense, you simply lack faith in the Rand-man!
Bora has a picture of Randi with Prof Steve Steve up this afternoon...immediately preceding Martha Stewart! (Yes, that Martha Stewart.)
Who cares PZ?
When are you actually going to do some SCIENCE?
For anyone wanting to know what foo-camp is all about, Kara Swisher has a nice video summary that can be found HERE
Abel @8 - thanks for the link. Randi looks a little frail but in good shape for someone who'll be 79 next week!
PZ, be sure to look up Chris Adami, of the avida/artificial life research.
--titus
Did you meet Penn & Teller yet?
You mean you ate a whole one just between the two of you?! ;-)
Aw, how romantic.
Hey "grad student", why don't you go blog about science sometime, then?
a little off subject, but I was just over at UTI and read an article there about the atheist "A"... Well, the link led to a "Brownback for President" website. Looks like that site wants to claim victory for Pharyngula posting the "Scarlet Letter A"... I think this is where I should roll my eyes.
He ba-aaaack! That doofus from Harvard is at it again.
Atheist Tracts
God, they're predictable.
by Harvey Mansfield
08/13/2007, Volume 012, Issue 45
[snip]
There was an Epicurean atheism in the ancient world quite different from ours today. That atheism also uncovered tyranny behind the mask of religion, but it was content to point out the power of injustice. Injustice in this view was the way of the world, and there was no remedy for it. The only recourse for a reasonable person was to stay out of politics and live a life of pleasure, seeking calm, watching storms of the sea from ashore, and suppressing one's indignation at injustice.
Today's atheism rejects this serene attitude and goes on the attack. In its criticisms of God it claims to be more moral than religion. But it cannot do this without becoming just as heated, thus just as susceptible to fanaticism, as religion. Today's atheism shows the power of our desire for justice, a fact underestimated by the Epicurean pleasure-lovers. But it ignores the power of injustice, which was the Epicurean insight. Atheists today angrily hold religion to a standard of justice that the most advanced thinkers of our time, the postmoderns, have declared to be impossible. Some of those postmoderns, indeed, are so disgusted with the optimism of atheism that, with a shrug of their shoulders, they propose returning to the relative sanity of religion.
Heehee! Harvard's only idiot professor has spoken!
#17: why do you hate my brain? What did it ever do to you?
Now how do I get that drivel back out?
I am insanely jealous...but that has nothing to do with this post ;)
I had dinner - at home - with my wife & kids today, which makes it a red-letter-day for sure! I think I'll order a t-shirt with a big red 'D' for days like today.
(backstory: I'm usually traveling during the week, and weekends are busy, busy, busy - so we most often eat out)
Geez, you get to hang with Neil Stephenson AND Randi AND Freeman Dyson? But WTF is Martha Stewart doing there? Showing y'all how to tastefully drape lab equipment in batik cotton? Other than her, I'm jealous.
I think this is where I should roll my eyes.
-Scott
parody: noun. a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it.
;-)
I don't want to wish ill of anyone, but after what Dr. James Kennedy has just said about evolution on the TV, he can ---- in a ---- of ----!
And he's re-showing "Darwins deadly legacy" later this month!
I think I'm going to plotz.
Tough
Re #4, I have it on good authority (the president of the Swedish Humanist Association, actually) that not only did Randi survive his surgery, he has it on video and gleefully shows it to those who will watch.
Having dinner with him and PZ would be ... extraordinary!
Aaah! Wait! Disregard that comment. It was Dennett's heart surgery my boss got to watch. I'm such an airhead. Well, at least they both got ... beards.
Everyone should read James Randi's weekly updates. His first tid-bit for today, "BLATANTLY SUPPRESSING SCIENCE". A story about a Netherlands broadcasting corporation removing referrences to evolution from the series "The Life of Mammals" presented by David Attenborough.