Just had to offer this update: It was wonderful hearing James Randi speak. A bunch of people swarmed him following his remarks for questions, but that's not my thing. As he was leaving, I got to shake his hand and tell him how much I appreciated his work, and he was gracious. Really nice guy.
Met some other neat people as well -- some folks I'll be hanging out with, hopefully. It's funny how infectious some superstition can be to our language -- how much we use it without thinking. I entered a raffle for a couple of prizes -- one of which was a plush doll of James Randi in handcuffs (I know, sounds silly -- they were, but cute, too!) -- and wound up getting in a flirty little tiff with a lovely young woman who was vying for the same item. Long story short, both unwilling
and unable to retract my entries for that particular raffle, I wished her luck. She turned and said, "There's no such thing as luck!" And true enough -- 'twas the silliest thing to say on a silly day.
😀
Plus, Friday the 13th turned out to be not so "unlucky" for me... I wound up winning the highest-valued of available raffle prizes: A Bible signed by Michael Shermer, professional skeptic, Editor of
Skeptic magazine, and regular columnist for
Scientific American.
Apparently, the organizer of this branch goes to
The Amaz!ng Meeting every year and gets a Gideon's Bible signed by one of the guests (yes, they're a bit on the irreverent side -- being a collection of atheists and agnostics in a nation where one religion has had such influence will tend to make one so). Shermer
didn't just sign this one, though -- he provided an alternate version of the book of Genesis
over the course of nine pages in the back. His handwriting is horrendous, so I'll stop short of transcribing the whole thing, but offer the beginning and the end...
From "Genesis Revisited" by Michael Shermer:
"In the Beginning, out of the quantum foam fluctuations, God created the Big Bang, followed by cosmological inflation and an expanding universe. And darkness was upon the face of the deep and so He created Quarks, and therefrom He create Hydrogen atoms, and there He commanded the Hydrogen atoms to fuse and become Helium atoms, and in the process to release light. And the light maker He called the sun, and the process he called fusion. And He saw the light was good, because now He could see what He was doing, so He created Earth. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
(Shermer goes on in the following "days" to discuss how the Earth was actually made in 4004 B.C. and then all the ways that God went around making things look older than that, and creating questionable situations like species with 98% genetic similarity to hominids, and fish with homologous skeletons to mammals, "Lucy", and propogating stories about Eve being made from Adam's rib, and knowing it was all very confusing, He created various scientists, theologians and mythologists to figure it all out. It's really rather funny.)
After the sixth day, he wraps it up thus:
"By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, 'Thank Me it's Friday', and He made the weekend.
It was a good idea."
Just thought I'd share. Hope all's well with you, my friends. And enjoy your weekend -- it's a good idea.
😉
