Starting tomorrow I’ll be travelling until October 5: the Grand East Coast Tour from Washington D.C. to Boston. I’ll be writing as often as the muses and my online access allow, but my trusty pinch-bloggers Greg Mayer and Matthew Cobb will also be posting. And yes, the Caturday Felids will still appear.
UPDATE: This isn’t an academic trip: I’ve been stuck in Chicago all summer, so I’m going to visit folks and have some good noms.
Any chance you’ll be stopping in Philadelphia? I’d love to go to one of your lectures.
Are you going to be giving any public talks in DC? Do tell…
This is not really a place for comments, I know, but I should like to add to what was said concerning that Catholic ‘consultant geologist’ Doumit: the way he talked about ‘the Church’ as interpreting things and as being in a position to do so, and as being in a position to put science in its plac. You see this same mystification of agency in the writings of the now beatified – and before long to be sainted (unless things go very wrong, and, say, some betraying letter to a male lover is discovered)- Cardinal John Henry Newman, as well. Of course, it is not ‘the Church’ that interprets or decides upon anything; it is a set of powerful people within the Church who do so, a set of people who differ both in their persons and in their opinions at different times. And they do so – the Roman Catholic Church being a bureaucratic organisation – in certain agreed and bureaucratic ways, via certain committees, conclaves, etc. But it is, I suspect, thought poor strategy to make this process too explicit: so instead believers, like Doumit, are presented with this personified ‘Church’ that somehow independently of any particular people, and in a manner that is quite beyond any factionalism, provides proper interpretations of things and comes up with far-reaching decisions that believers are required to accept. Newman is full of this mystifying nonsense (but he of course believed that nations, too, could be regarded as persons – or spirits – that took decisions of themselves, decisions that – it follows – were independent of any particular temporal configuration of political powers). It is very much a Roman Catholic characteristic, one that derives from the belief in the Catholic Church’s authority deriving from God (who, as we all know, moves in mysterious ways). They are wholly sincere in their belief in this mystifying nonsense – which makes them more dangerous. And they need to be called on it: it is not ‘the Church’ that is now making decisions about,say, the use of condoms, the impossibility of women priests or the objective disorder that is homosexuality: it is Pope Ratzi and his boys, and this mystification serves their purposes all too well: it aggrandises them and prevents criticism.
You should have some nice views this time of year. Enjoy!
Will you be giving a talk in Boston?
Yeah, where in Boston? (although I will be in Florida 25th thru 29th).
Send us a postcard!
Some of you may like to look at the big puddy-tat sculpted by artist Mark Coreth for the WWFs tiger campaign which was in London recently –
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2w4xyxn
Will you be stopping anywhere in Connecticut?
The leaves have begun to turn in some areas, though we’ve got at least a couple of weeks until the really good stuff starts (http://www.yankeefoliage.com/live-fall-foliage-map/).
Have fun! And don’t eat any pake.