Comments on: The Controversy of Richard Dawkins. Rather routine, don’t you think?

By: hyphenate

hyphenate — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:10:23 +0000

You know, you guys crack me up. Every time I’m feeling a little gloomy over world events and the sad face of society, I come to scienceblogs and get a great pick-me-up. I’m quite serious about that! It’s like attending the old Boskones on a far more frequent basis, running into Spider Robinson, the master of all puns, or listening to some of the guys from NESFA doing the after-con party. I’m glad to see such dry humor still exists in the rest of the country, and while I’ve been away from fandom for awhile, you all make think of it ever so fondly. (Must go and see where WorldCon will be this year….)

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:27:49 +0000

brief works

By: tuibguy

tuibguy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:23:00 +0000

(Maybe I should be pseudonymous so nobody knows who I am.) Minnesota is a well-known liberal atheist state. Of course they weren't bothered by the idea of Dawkins speaking about evolution. It just fits the tenor of the place. Oklahoma, where the Real America is, values Academic Freedom, which is why they need to prevent Dawkins from speaking.

By: HP

HP — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:42:25 +0000

Oh, goodness. By “brief” above, I assume I mean “beef,” or some other word that might remotely make sense in that context. Who knows? I don’t even have homophones as an excuse. Feel free to engage in underpants-related humor at my expense.

By: HP

HP — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:07:22 +0000

Greg: Nope, not an alum. I have no brief with the CCE; I just now picked up the acronym from your post. I was having fun with the idea of people being “phased,” which I suppose in retrospect you might consider fun at your expense (homophone trouble, eh?), but then I got to giggling and typing at the same time, without a thought in my head or a care in the world for how my words might be received. Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!

By: freelunch

freelunch — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:56:51 +0000

One of the nice things about UM-Morris that I noted when my son was looking at colleges was that it would pay for the trip for a kid who was interested in attending though not for the parents. If I recall correctly, it was only Morris and the Twin Cities campus that tried to entice my son to head west from Wisconsin.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:50:06 +0000

Thanks John. And no, they also were not phased.

Oh, and there’s a couple of programs at the CCE that stand head and shoulders above most of the U’s programs. Don’t be so quick to close it down. HP: I suspect you are an alum from the 1970s or so, yes?

By: HP

HP — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:41:58 +0000

Considering that no one outside of the UM system or western Minnesota was even aware that there was a university campus in Morris (or even a place called Morris) before PZ became an international cause celebre, I can’t imagine that the university administration would be anything but pleased to milk that for all it’s worth.

I always wondered if applications to UMM increased after the Expelled-from-Expelled and Eucharist incidents.

(Also, I think it would be really cool to see the U’s CCE phased. I’m pretty sure they would turn invisible in polarized light. Oh, and they could walk through walls and stuff.)

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:27:17 +0000

Greg’s just saying that they weren’t shot with a phaser.

By: John S. Wilkins

John S. Wilkins — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:24:05 +0000

Fazed, not phased. The latter is when you are synchronised with something.