Yes, I know that Texas is full of goddies and Republicans, but somehow when I enter the state I always get a warm feeling—and it isn’t the 100-degree temperature today. Texas is big (880 miles across!); full of oil wells and friendly, no-nonsense folk; there are ranches; there are cowboy boots; and there is BARBECUE—of which I intend to partake copiously.
Anyway, after two pleasant days on Linda Calhoun’s goat farm-cum-dairy (pictures to come), I crossed the state line this morning into Texas, where I’m currently ensconced in a Motel 6 in San Angelo. (They left the light on for me.)
Tomorrow it’s on to Austin, where I’ll visit Matt Dillahunty, famed for the popular public access TV show The Atheist Experience, and for his numerous debates against religionists and creationists. I’ll also have my final pair of boots made.
I’m much looking forward to making Matt’s acquaintance: I met him at the Imagine No Religion meeting in Vancouver in June, where he did his Unholy Trio performance with Aron Ra and Seth Andrews, but we didn’t get to talk much. As you doubtless know, Matt became an atheist after being raised as a Southern Baptist and studying to be a minister. Disenchanted, he never made it to the pulpit, and the rest is history. I’m eager to hear about his experiences and his views on Christianity.
Here’s my official entry into the state:
As for footwear, I’ve waited five years to get to the top of Lee Miller’s list for custom boots. In March, 2010, I visited Lee’s shop out of curiosity: he is, I think, the best custom cowboy-boot maker in the U.S. (and therefore the world), but at the time of my visit, which I documented in a post, he wasn’t taking new customers. When I returned to Chicago, I sent him a copy of WEIT out of gratitude for taking the time to show me his operation (I drew a cowboy boot in the book). Lee’s wife Carrlyn, who runs the business end of the shop, wrote me shortly thereafter and said that Lee would be delighted to make boots for someone who could write such a book.
That was way cool, so I got on his list. I’ve now moved to the top, and on Thursday will visit Lee’s shop for the hour-long process of measuring my feet, and the even longer process of choosing the leather, the boot design, the toe shape, heel height, and so on. It’s a complicated process. (Have a look at the link above to see what he’s capable of. Suggestions welcome.)
Here’s a video of his operation that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:
Now y’all will kindly pardon me while I find the best local barbecue. It’s brisket country!
__________
Postscript by Grania
Jerry asked me to add some clips of The Atheist Experience show, I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. The Atheist Community of Austin also does a podcast called The Non Prophets which differs from the TV show as it is aimed at an atheist audience rather than a Christian one.
A classic Jeff Dee exposition rant about why he takes offence at the Christian belief in hell.
Jeff & Matt on a question about the who “caused” the Big Bang
The good people at the Bronco Crossing Country Store can probably help you find some good barbecue.
“my final pair of boots” – that sounds ominous.
Is that the pair you plan to be buried in?
Suspect he may mean “the first and last pair of boots to be custom-made for me.”
In any event, also suspect this is likely the best remuneration to have come from WEIT, the book, yet.
Also re. “final pair of boots” – does this mean you’re making your retirement run, son?
I kinda got the impression that he’s managed to acquire pretty much everything he’s wanted to acquire, save for this pair.
b&
Boots with cats! 😉
yes!
Just last week they aired a reportage on German TV with a segment about Lee Miller. The German TV team visited his shop, showing the georgeous boots, and Lee talking enthusiastically about the fine art of boot making. The reporter was somewhat disapointed when she learned that the wait was 5 years.
I thought wasn’t that the boot maker Jerry was talking about some time ago… yep, I remembered correctly.
yee-haaaaa!
Should be able to get some pretty good Mexican food down there in Austin. However, you may be a little worn out from Arizona. Austin, Texas is growing so fast it is hard to imagine.
I will have to say I’m pleasantly shocked that the bootmaker likes WEIT.
He’s from Vermont, and I believe he’s of Jewish ancestry. I believe you’re extrapolating from his location and perhaps his profession.
Indeed I am. It’s unfortunately the way to bet, just as I would bet that a farmer in western PA would not exactly appreciate WEIT. Stereotypes are often there for a reason.
I spent five months in San Angelo a few years ago. There’s a place called “Zentner’s Daughter” which makes great steaks.
I grew up in San Angelo and went to school with Suzanne Zentner, who I think was the “daughter” the restaurant was named for.
I’m posting this comment from near Haskell, TX, having crossed that same Texas border about three hours ago on my way home back from Ruidoso NM.
Boots! I’m jealous. Heck, I’m even in Texas.
It’s a great story, and I’m sure you’ll have several more chapters to come. I hope.
Looks as if it rained recently up there by the state line. Bring some of that this way, please – we’re baking under a ridge of high pressure at the moment!
I vote for a subtle design of cryptic animals stitched into the shafts of your boots: lizards, owls, roadrunners, grasshoppers, moths, and of course nightjars.
That could work well I think. Would have to include a Drosophila though. And a cat!
My advice on barbecue: the Luling City Market. A little bit of a drive from Austin, but not too much, considering.
I’ve been there several times and had a friend ship me stuff from there. I consider the City Market in Luling to be the best BBQ joint in the US, and I’ve been to most of the highly touted ones. Their sauce is simply incomparable on their brisket.
I’m a big fan of the sausages.
Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart, off Hwy 183, is also quite good, and closer to Austin than Luling. I like my chopped beef sammich on white bread, with BBQ sauce, yellow mustard, and dill pickles. I was led to understand that’s the Foat Wuth way of fixin’ a chopped beef sammich, but who knows. It’s tasty, in any case.
I was already planning on taking him to Black’s…it’s less than 30 min from my house and is #1 or #2 on my BBQ list. 🙂
Excellent!! Definitely envious here.
Fun Texas fact: if you’re in El Paso, you are closer to the Pacific Ocean than to the Gulf of Mexico.
And going due south will get you to the Pacific faster than going due west.
I didn’t know that!
But only by a very small amount, and only because due west misses the end of the Gulf of California by *that* much.
South-west is by far the quickest.
cr
My all-time favorite moment from The Atheist Experience:
https://youtu.be/WrfWs52Kjk0
(sorry about the embed! I only posted the link… honest!)
Check item 15 in Da Roolz!
Linking to videos. Don’t embed them directly unless you have something really special to show, for it makes the comments unwieldy. If you just paste in the http:// address of a YouTube video, for instance, it will put the entire video in your comment. Occasionally I will let this go, but sometimes readers insert multiple videos. To avoid this, and create a link, use the following html formulation:
LinkText (note space after first “a”)
accident!
No problem. I have no problem with embedding this video, and accidents happen!
two things, one, clicking on the highlighted LinkText takes me to a Not Found page.
and two, take pity on those of us who, when it comes to computer literacy, are on equal footing with 3 year olds learning to speak. I haven’t the faintest idea what html formulation is. I can’t speak for ladyatheist, but I’m sure I’m not the only one. cheers.
C’mon, George, ladyatheist’s distress obviously demonstrates that she’s aware of this rool. Your post was particularly unhelpful, given the broken link.
On the plus side, though, it demonstrates how annoying that html command is.
No biggie. Happens to all of us. Who’d expect that just posting a link would result in an embed?
Word Press automatically turns what you think will be just a link into an embed. To prevent this, remove the https:// from the link. WP will add it back on but it will now appear as a hotlink, not an image.
Even those of us who know this forget sometimes…
Their caller was obviously from the William Lane Craig school of philosophy.
I like the bald guy’s comment – “I was a better Christian than you when I was a Christian and I still am”.
cr
Have you ever been to Barton Springs Pool? Best place to cool off in Austin!
Likely already known by Dr Coyne and many: mighty finest deals on banjo and guitar bundles as well as the perfect keys of harmonicas obtainable here in its brick ‘n’ mortar store of Austin: http://www.austinbazaar.com/about-us
Blue
Any chance you’ll be on the show? Or are you and Matt just having a casual get-together? Either way, enjoy 🙂
The boots too. I wear nothing but and really enjoy seeing your occasional boot-post 🙂
Re: the atheist experience (best bits): it was pretty funny, but I note with some dismay that at about 3 minutes in they perpetuate the claim that we aren’t descended from monkeys (but from a common ancestor with monkeys). I wish that one would go away.
Of course everyone here knows that we are indeed descended from monkeys and in fact still are monkeys, right? Mantra: once a fish, always a fish.
Yes. We are apes; we are monkeys; we are primates; we are mammals; we are tetrapods; we are vertebrates; we are annelids (or something similar); we are metazoans; we are eukaryotes; we are terrestrial organisms.
Almost everybody, including the very religious, is okay with the classifications of, “mammals,” and, “vertebrates.” The last two typically pass muster, too — at least, if definitions are supplied.
It’s the rest that usually make people go apeshit.
Cheers,
b&
It was only recently that I learned about clades, and even more recently how the word is pronounced. The latter was thanks to Aron Ra and his Ace of Clades website. I like to think he chose the title in part for that teaching moment.
Want to really get them upset? Tell them we wouldn’t even be able to play baseball if it weren’t for our arboreal shit flinging monkey ancestors.
Unfortunately, the “them” in that particular clip are the atheists.
Yes, but ‘they’ aren’t the ‘them’ in the comment I replied to.
Also, their reply is perfectly valid in the context used by creationists who are referring to monkeys that are here today, descended without change from the first pair of their kind that were named by Adam.
Simiforme is the term used for the monophyletic clade that includes Old and New World monkeys and humans. Rather than go into such detail with someone capable of saying things like “Then why are there still monkeys?” or “I ain’t descended from no monkey”, I prefer to tell them that their many greats-grandparent that both they and monkeys are descended from would have looked very much more like a monkey than a human to them.
we are Placentalia, Boreoeutheria, Euarchontoglires, and Euarchonta. thems’ fancy two-dollar words I done learned recently from the Tet Zoo bl*g post called The Refined, Fine-Tuned Placental Mammal Family Tree.
Reading that site often makes me uncomfortably aware of how much there is to know about zoology and how little I know of it.
on a side note on the ape-monkey-human descent thing, I’m sad that Dawkins’ term “concestor” failed to catch on (apparently not internet worthy like “meme”) to describe last common ancestor.
oh, and I forgot a new favorite term, Scrotifera, meaning, hehehe, the presence of a scrotum.
and yes, I’ve got the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy.
“on a side note on the ape-monkey-human descent thing, I’m sad that Dawkins’ term “concestor” failed to catch on (apparently not internet worthy like “meme”) to describe last common ancestor.”
Oh, not I. Dawkins is fond of coining new words that just jargon up the field and make it less comprehensible to every one.
Remember ‘designoid’? (Pronounced
‘design-oid’, not ‘desig-noid’.)
Oh jeeze, yes. But thankfully it doesn’t seem to have caught on. (Great book, though, of course.)
One thing I was thinking of was from a tour of his a few years back, when he was lecturing on “archaeo-purpose” and “neo-purpose.”
Going up from vertebrates, we’re chordates (because notochord and spinal cord, but NOT because of the spine. Not all chordates had spines as adults, e.g. the tunicates. Next step up is to group us into a superphylum with, surprisingly, the echinoderms. The arguments are involved with arcana of embryology which I can’t remember now, but they were solid before the genetics came along and independently agreed. Then finally, we (including our starfish cousins) are deuterostomes – anus before mouth, unlike the annelid and I think almost all other “worms”.
I’m trying to remember where the lophotrochozoa fit in now.
Thanks for the expansion and clarification. Never would have guessed a close-ish relationship with starfish….
b&
It was a surprise to most people. Given the evident seriation in vertebrates (vertebrae ; ribs) you’d maybe think that some seriated worms would be closest relatives. But, no. Reality trumps expectations, again.
We’re back to the topiary again.
I think that objection ignores the commonly-accepted layman’s view of monkeys, which pretty much equates to modern species as seen in zoos (and, for the more knowledgable layman, excludes ‘apes’).
In other words the ‘common ancestor’ description conveys more to a layman, and more accurately, than the taxonomic explanation would. Getting into the ‘we are fish as well’ territory just muddies the water completely. The point is we are NOT descended from modern-day monkeys.
cr
Yes, exactly. I’m a primate, but not a monkey.
Of course you’re a monkey. Evolutionary biologists these days are big on monophyly. You can’t have a monophyletic group (a clade, or a group consisting of all descendants of a common ancestor) that includes both baboons and howler monkeys without including humans and other apes too. And that’s what it means to say you’re a monkey.
I don’t know why people — and I’m not talking about creationists here — have trouble with this, when they are quite willing to accept that you’re an ape because you’re more closely related to a chimpanzee than to an orangutan. Nobody says “no, you aren’t an ape; apes and humans are just descended from a common ancestor”, and nobody says “we are not descended from modern day apes”; and yet it’s exactly the same situation.
This is an example of technical terms being potentially confusing. Think “force” in physics (or “energy”). Similarly, “ape” and “fish” (to the extent that they are used at all still) are both ordinary language terms *and* biological terms. The latter use of “fish” includes us; the former is vague but does not – we’re not aquatic! Are we an ape in ordinary language? Likely not, since apes in that sense would be in most cases characterized by enumeration.
Quite so. There are multiple definitions of many terms, and context is important. I don’t object to using “ape” or “monkey” in the colloquial sense to refer to an enumerated group of species or a group with particular characteristics (hairy, no tail; hairy, tail). What I object to is rejection of the cladistic sense when it’s brought up in the proper context.
In other words, I know “monkey” can mean several things. I just want my preferred meaning kept on the list. A bit more than that, I would like to have my definition used when we’re talking about evolution. It may take a little explanation, but the explanation is a valuable tool for illuminating what evolution is.
“I don’t know why people — and I’m not talking about creationists here — have trouble with this…”
I don’t have trouble with that. I just think it’s a bit of a smug conceit when some insist on it above all other senses. And I’ve got news for you–scientists use the “colloquial” sense of monkey, fish, etc. I’m quite sure I could find thousands of published articles that do so. (No to mention, “birds.”)
“This is an example of technical terms being potentially confusing. Think “force” in physics”
Good example. Periodically, some pedant tries to insist on using ‘mass’ for everyday objects instead of ‘weight’ – e.g. my car has a ‘mass’ of one ton – and tries to insist that ‘weight of one ton’ is wrong. On earth, for all practical purposes, the two are exactly the same. Bridges still have ‘Weight limit 10 tons’ written on them, though it really should be ’98 kN’ or something – nobody would understand that.
cr
I understand that the pound and the ton (not the tonne) actually *are* units of weight, whereas the kilogram (for example) is a mass unit. (I think the mass unit in “imperial” is called the slug.)
@Keith
Yes – to a purist.
However, if you buy an old set of Imperial weights, they will have “1 lb”, “2 lb” etc engraved on them even though they are, technically, masses.
Similarly, the ‘weight’ of my car is quoted in kg or tonnes, and the weight limit on a bridge will be signposted in kg or Tonnes (not kiloNewton). So long as ‘weight’ of car < weight limit of bridge (in kg), all is well.
For all practical purposes, on the surface of the earth, a mass of 1kg weighs 1 kg weight, and a pound weight is generated by a mass of 1 lb.
It's far easier to regard mass and weight as equivalent (in a static situation) – which is what the general public intuitively do anyway – and worry about the difference in the far-less-common dynamic situations if and when they happen.
cr
I tried to school some folks at The Guardian website on precisely this the other day, and they weren’t having a bar of it.
My sympathies.
If we are descended from our grandparents how come there are still uncles? eh? eh?
Professor Ceiling Cat, you DO know how to roadtrip!
Welcome to Texas and to our little island of blue known as Austin.
I believe Aaron Franklin’s barbecue place is in Austin, Texas. I live halfway across the world (Southeast Asia) and I am salivating at the thought of actually devouring authentic Texas smoked beef briskets and short ribs! Yum!
Personally, while I thought Franklin’s was great, it’s probably #3 on my list for BBQ in and around Austin.
The bigger problem is that you can’t eat Franklin’s unless you stand in line for hours and get lucky…the hyped reputation causes a lot more attention that it might deserve.
The reputation isn’t totally undeserved, but I just don’t find it as good as the availability would suggest.
Ah, I see. I only know of Franklin since he’s the one who gets international press. You have an embarrassment of riches there. Over here we can only look forward to “Texas-style” BBQ. I sure haven’t tasted the real thing.
What with boots and all you have your priorities set for your time in Austin but I hope you have time to go and see the free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) emerging from the Congress Avenue Bridge at dusk. As I live on the wrong continent I have never seen it myself but I believe it is a wildlife spectacle to rival any.
I’ve seen them before–an amazing sight. But I may go again this time. Anyone who goes to Austin has to see the Congress Avenue Bridge at dusk.
Jerry, are you going to be able to swing up to Tulsa to visit Seth, by chance?
Been to Austin, twice, and am a bit jealous, would love to travel there again!
*** The boot design is going to be most interesting, will it combine your passions — made from leather of a nommable creature, decorated with cats being stuck in Darwin’s tree of life that grows out of a rotten Bible? 🙂
*** Matt’s a likeable person, with many good presentations. I’d love to hear more what he thinks on current matters. However, in my mind he represents like nobody else the “silent majority” of US secularists who have supported the anti-pluralistic, anti-intellectual, anti-Enlightenment wing of mainstream US secularism (aka the Social Justice Warriors). Unlike the esteemed host and too few others who have found clear words towards certain characters and trends (e.g. no-platform and trigger warning culture), Matt Dillahunty only ever came out in support of them and their ideas and has never acknowledged “the problem” — and if he doesn’t see one, he’s as they would say “part of the problem”. Hope that Matt Dillahunty can walk the walk and found time for some introspection.
I generally enjoy the Atheist Experience.
The hosts are quite good. Usually Matt Dillahunty does a good job, though you can pretty much set your watch for most calls on the fact Matt will end up shouting or losing his temper. This can be fun when they have silly callers. But occasionally they get a caller who has some philosophical chops, who make some relevant points, and it gets irritating when Matt ends up shouting them down, as if his conclusion was so obvious the other party must be an idiot not to see it, without having properly addressed the points brought up the by caller. Then I get quite frustrated listening.
But, hey, they do a far better job than I would ever do in front of the microphone.
BTW,
Matt D. did a terrific job in a debate against Christian Presuppositionalist Sye Ten Bruggencate – a fun debate to check out.
(Though Matt apparently has had it with ever debating Christian Presuppositionalism again).
Waiting for the cries of outrage from Argentinian gaucho boot makers.