. . .with my laptop on my knee.  The good folks at UA Tuscaloosa* invited me down to give two talks: one a lecture to the general public on the evidence for evolution, the other a departmental seminar on speciation in flies (my day job).  I’m donning Kevlar for the former: an announcement of my talk in the Tuscaloosa News has already spawned six pages of heated comments, much of it worried about whether I’ll spread atheism along with biology.

As is my habit (“will lecture for food”), I’ve asked to sample the indigenous culinary delights, said to include ribs at Dreamland (and I’m quite partial to banana pudding).  Now if they can just dig up a decent meat-and-three place. . .

In the meantime, until Saturday pm, Greg Mayer and/or Matthew Cobb will be filling in for me.

Fig. 1.  Ribs at Dreamland.  Do they match Chicago’s best?

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*From the Tuscaloosa Convention and Visitor’s Bureau web page: Tuscaloosa was the source of a joke in the 1931 Marx brothers film “Animal Crackers.” Groucho Marx discusses shooting an elephant and attempting to remove the tusks. “Of course in Alabama the Tusc-a-loosa, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying,” he quipped.