magic is about honesty
everything here is true
except for the bits I made up
This is deeply nerdy but still oddly fascinating. AronRa gave this talk at DragonCon about how to fit the dragons of literature and film and fit them into modern cladistic taxonomy.
AronRa is a giant of a human who is physically intimidating and has this astonishing knack of churning out these 45-60 minute talks at an alarming rate. There are tricks that I've had in nearly every show I've ever done for over a decade and I don't think I've ever seen him give the same talk more than once.
Last night at the OISE auditorium downtown, Jerry Coyne, the distinguished professor of evolutionary biology from the University of Chicago, gave a talk on his latest book, Faith Vs. Fact: Why Religion and Science are Incompatible. And there are purdy pictures:
I finished the book the night before the talk and must say I enjoyed it very much. While parts of it (at least to my liberal Canadian eyes) have a distinct "well duh" aspect to them, it was still wonderful to read such a complete across-the-board support of reason and science when many thinkers seem to feel the need to hedge, waffle and pay lip service to "other ways of finding truth".
My only regret is that I didn't get my copy of the book signed. But that's probably for the best since I've been trying to cut down on the number of physical books I buy and if I got Professor Coyne to sign the screen of my iPad, it would make checking email that much more difficult.
