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pharyngula | August 2, 2007The place to go if you want to track the media responses to our Twin Cities bridge disaster is Minnesota Monitor. There are regular updates as new information comes in.
If you're looking to know where the responsibility is going to fall, Nick Coleman has the answers.
For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to…
pharyngula | August 1, 2007
I was nowhere near this disaster—I'm on the other side of the state—but I've been over this bridge lots of times when I travel from Morris to the Twin Cities campus; now it has suddenly collapsed during rush hour, killing at least half a dozen and injuring many more. I'm shocked. There wasn't any obvious cause, just boom, it fell apart.
An in-person account by someone living right by the bridge, with photos, is available.
pharyngula | July 29, 2007Here's a cool tool: Walk Score. Type in an address, and it uses Google Maps to look up destinations like parks and stores and theaters that are in walking distance of the place, and gives you a score out of 100 on walkability. A place like Manhattan will give you high scores; one of those desolate suburbs where you have to drive to get anywhere (like my old address in Pennsylvania) will give you lousy low scores.
Morris is middling: I get a 52.
There's funny stuff in the Google data base, though. It places a Donnelly grocery store a few blocks from my house and says it's 24 miles away;…
pharyngula | July 21, 2007Tomorrow, Sunday, at 1:00 in the Roseville Library, I'll be giving a talk on "There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief". Come on down and argue with me!
Now I have to get back to polishing this talk up. I suppose no more than ten powerpoint slides of equations is the limit? (Nah, not really—there's no math in this talk at all. A few pretty pictures, though…).
By the way, if you listened to the Horgan/Myers Show, there was an unfortunate characterization of atheist organizations as groups of people congratulating one another on how much…
pharyngula | July 18, 2007I've mentioned before that I grew up in Kent, Washington. It was a middling-sized town of 15,000 people way back then, and I rather like small town living, but I didn't like Kent, and I can trace my dislike to one specific event.
The town had a classic movie theater, the Vale. As a kid, I loved that theater: we'd go out of our way on our walk home from school to check out the movie posters, anticipating the shows we'd see on the Saturday matinee. It was not an upscale theater, and we got a steady diet of "B" horror movie features — stuff like Die, Monster, Die and Frankenstein Conquers the…
pharyngula | July 17, 2007It's never too early to start advertising: Skatje is starting up a new campus organization next fall, with another student, Collin Tierney, as co-chair. The group is called the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists - Morris Chapter, and if you're an interested UMM student, they'd like you to join the facebook group at that link. The plan is to start the fall term with a respectable number of potential members, have weekly meetings, and develop a plan for education and outreach and just plain having fun.
I think Skatje and Collin are planning to have open meetings, so you don't even have to…
pharyngula | July 11, 2007Leslee Unruh, witch-queen of the Dakotas, is in Minnesota for the National Abstinence Clearinghouse convention. Fortunately, we've got Jeff Fecke to document the atrocities. The question remains: who will fumigate and sterilize the Crowne Plaza Riverfront hotel afterwards?
pharyngula | June 28, 2007Academia is a strange little world—we're happy about this news!
The biggest winners from the University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting? The 1,900 students at the Morris campus who saw their tuition go down by almost $1,000.
We're an even better bargain than before. Now we just need to get more students to take advantage of us…so enroll at the University of Minnesota Morris! Send your kids here!
pharyngula | June 24, 2007I'll be speaking at the Minnesota Atheists on 22 July, on "There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations
for the Mind and Religious Belief". Michael Egnor is welcome to stop on by.
pharyngula | June 23, 2007Hey, Stevens County and all the residents thereabout: you can catch a performance of Inherit the Wind tonight at 7, or tomorrow in a matinee at 2, in lovely Barrett, Minnesota. I'll be there. My colleague in the biology department, Van Gooch, will be acting in the show, so UMM people should definitely go.
pharyngula | June 14, 2007In an unfortunate twist of fate for the former home of the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Church of Scientology is moving in.
The Church of Scientology has purchased the former Science Museum of Minnesota building in downtown St. Paul
Eric Rapp, a Welsh Cos. broker who marketed the space, said the church plans a major renovation of the building that once housed exhibits and has since been the home of the failed Minnesota Business Academy.
Rapp wouldn't disclose the sale price of the 80,000-square-foot west building of the former museum complex. The sale closed Friday. A number of financial…
pharyngula | June 13, 2007If you've ever wondered exactly what the weather is like where I'm at ("why, no, PZ, I never have, but you're going to tell me anyway, right?"), I've just learned that there is a little weather station directly above my head, accessible via the internet. This is good news, since it means I don't have to look out my office window before I go outside.
pharyngula | June 9, 2007The first of three potluck picnics sponsored by one of our regional godless groups is being held Sunday, 10 June, at noon, at Columbia Park—Skatje, my wife Mary, and I are planning on being there. Come on out and join the freethought community in the Twin Cities area!
By the way, it's weird how we've got all of these infidel organizations here — the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists at the University of Minnesota, the Humanists of Minnesota, the Minnesota Atheists, and the Atheists for Human Rights (who in this case aren't participating in the picnics). The Twin Cities has an…
pharyngula | June 3, 2007Hey, I've got this wonderful forum that's read around the world, so I'm going to use it to unload on one of our local idiots, Ted Storck. Storck is one of those insufferable self-important Christians who makes the whole religion look like a lobotomy ward. His wonderful contribution to the cultural life of Morris is that he donated a set of ghastly electronic chimes to the nearby cemetery. And he writes letters to the Morris Sun Tribune.
This Memorial Day weekend, the chimes will play more hymns and patriotic songs at the cemeteries here in Morris.
We hope the few who dislike chimes will…
pharyngula | May 24, 2007What are you doing this evening? Two big events:
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is opening at the Morris Theater tonight at 8! I was thinking of going, but Skatje works there, and she's got the inside scoop: people are already lining up. In Morris. I might wait a few days for the mob to fade away.
If PotC3 is too crowded, there's always Drinking Liberally—7:00pm at Old #1.
Who says Morris isn't a happening place?
pharyngula | May 10, 2007The regal old willow that has graced our front yard for longer than I've been alive, and which has sadly shown signs of advancing senescence, is scheduled for termination tomorrow morning. It's a beautiful old tree, but its habit of dropping a ton of log every spring has made it a hazard, so we've decided to end it quickly, rather than a slow death by yearly spontaneous lopping of limbs.
I've had several people ask me about this tree, and several have mentioned their sorrow at its imminent passing. If you'd like to pay last respects, tonight is your last chance. Feel free to step into the…
pharyngula | May 7, 2007As a small tremor in a bit of a staff shakeup at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, James Lileks got the axe — he's been demoted from a guy with a regular column to a beat reporter. It's about time.
He's not a bad writer, in the sense that he does have his own recognizable voice, but yeesh, he's such a banal writer, the epitome of Minnesota mediocrity. Some of his online writings are cranky-grandpa interesting, the rantings of a deranged 9/11 wingnut, but his newspaper column … dull, dull, dull. You only need to read one column in your life about a guy who goes shopping at Target and watches TV…
pharyngula | April 24, 2007Did you know that if you left Minneapolis right now, you could be in Morris in time for the last Café Scientifique Morris of the 2006-2007 academic year? Tracey Anderson will be telling us all about aquatic insects, as well as just about anything you might want to ask about arthropods. If you can't make it to this one, you'll have to wait until September for your next opportunity.
pharyngula | April 22, 2007Near as I can judge, Pharyngula is the third most popular blog in the entire state of Minnesota, as measured by traffic and inbound links. This is a good and distinguished place to be, and I'm both pleased and surprised that this obscure little collection of rants has ranked so highly.
Except…
It's a distant third behind the top two in the state.
The top two are right-wing kool-aid drinkin' blogs, Powerline and Captain's Quarters.
Whenever people refer to the Minnesota blogosphere, they get so boggled by the spectacle of lunacy in the top two that they never quite manage to count down to #3…
pharyngula | April 5, 2007
It's Thursday, 5 April, and you know what that means: today is the day of the Mutant Variety Show here in Morris! At 7:00 this evening, in the HFA recital hall, all of the local mutants will be exhibiting their bizarre phenotypes to the public. I'm very much looking forward to it, and anyone else in the region should swing on by.
Note: I am expecting mutants. I insist on mutants. If there are insufficient mutants to satisfy me* … well, I have an Illudium Q32 Explosive Space Modulator, and I'm not afraid to use it.
*Or at least a theremin.**
**I might settle for a kazoo. But that's rock-…