Monday, August 25, 2008

Moving day!

So it turns out blogger has a severe lack of features that are marvelous. There are very few marvelous features here.

So I'm packing my bags, pulling up stakes, and heading elsewhere.

Tune in to the new and improved Enemy Combatant Trail Mix Club and wait with bated breath and clenched fists for the second installment of "A Tale of Two Drunk Skeptics in Loon Town."

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Afternoon Delight, With the Discovery Institute

**Note: This really ought to have been posted weeks ago, when I was fortunate enough to in fact, have a little bit of afternoon delight at the Discovery Institute.. But I'm lazy as hell. So. Here we are. **

I don't know how many of you know what the Discovery Institute is. And I do mean what it is as opposed to what it purports to be. A quick refresher course can be found here.

If you're reading this, I'm going to assume, for the sake of brevity, that you've got a decent idea of how it is I might feel about an organization such as that. So, when my good friend, Cuddly Atheist ,
suggested that during her visit to Seattle, it might be fun to pay them a visit and see about a little tour, I, when done giggling madly, got right to scheduling the visit. Or attempting to. I emailed them to see about a tour, but never received a response. I'm not sure if that's because they are as incompetent at clerical duties as they are at debate, rational thought, and the interpretation of law, or if it's because my email address fairly well identifies me as a godless liberal. Either way, no response was forthcoming.

Fast forward a week or two, to the day of Kate's arrival in my fair city. I picked her up from the airport, proceeded to a bar (or two), and plotted. Or, at least, we plotted to plot. The furthest we got was, drink the rum, go knock on their door, see what happens. We were fairly certain that we would just collapse into giggles, pointing and asking for Michael BWAHA, instead of Michael Behe.
So. After a drink (or three), we made our way downtown, and after some searching, found the very small and discreet door that marks the entrance to the fabled Discovery Institute. Several attempts to open the door met with resistance, until eventually we spied an intercom mounted by the door.



Hold your breath for episode two, where you'll encounter the voice behind the door, why evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, the reason for the season, and even possibly such luminaries as the charming Casey Luskin.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

When Oregon was Burning

Look underneath the house when I’m gone. Look underneath the house, but only when I’m gone, and when am I ever not gone?

Look under the house, crawl into the tiniest spaces you can find, under the house, and try as hard as you can to see something that has meaning to you. I want to guarantee you it’s there, I want to paint pretty pictures of what it might be, tantalize you with the mystery of what I’ve hidden under the house for you, just for you and not really for anyone else at all. I can’t do that, but I want to. I want to always promise you whatever you want to believe in.

I want you to look under the house after I leave, and I want you to see what I’ve left behind. I want what I’ve left behind to be everything I wanted you to give me. I want to give you all those things I so desperately needed from you, I want to leave you a pile of understanding. If I could only give you a piece of what I was hoping for every time you gave me nothing, it would be enough. The foundation would buckle and your knees might give, looking at all the pieces of everything I had to go without for so long.

I want you to have all of those things. I want you to never be rid of them. I want you to look at them under the house and know that you have to pull them into the light, and display them on the highest and brightest shelves you have. I want to fill your rooms with these pieces of wholes that were never all that big to begin with, and I want you to look at them every day. I want you to have so many examples of what I needed from you that you have no room for anything else, and no time for anything else, and no energy for anything else.

I want everything in your world and mind to be how easy it would have been to give some of this. To give me some of this somewhere along the way. I want you to always know that giving just a tiny bit of what was needed could have lightened your burden considerably, but it has gone beyond too late now.

I want you to never dream again without my miniscule desire being what wakes you. I want you to be covered in night sweats and consumed by regret when the bits and pieces of need fall on your head from the overloaded shelf.

I want the end to never be the end, for you.

So look under the house when I’m gone.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Really? All of them?

I'm going to be posting at length about intelligent design, and my visit to the fabled Discovery Institute soon, I swear, but in the meantime, here's an actual sentence uttered by an actual human being at dinner tonight, on the topic of teaching intelligent design in schools:

"Well, all points of view are equally valid. No, they ARE."

...

...

...

I deserve a shiny gold enormous medal for not laughing so hard I did a spit take. That conversation had some lunatic moments, including but not limited to the statement made by one person that they trust science less than they trust the government, the inevitable invoking of Pluto in defense of that statement, and the repeated and ever more insistent declaration that all points of view about everything ever are equally valid and must be respected.

Seriously.

Kate and I spent HOURS making jokes about that this weekend, so I could hardly believe my ears when someone said it in seeming earnestness. Wow.

Onward and upward, friends.