Drinkin' With the Profs

Ok, so last night there was a little seminar for students in Dr. lamoureux's science and religion class to learn about evolution. For this special event, Dr. Michael Caldwell was called in to help explain some of the concepts to people who have clearly never had any biology in their lives. Brilliant people I'm sure, but just no biology. Some of their questions such as "so did it go fish then monkeys then us?" only go to support my suggestion that if I have to take calculus and chemistry and English as a Paleo student, then Math, Chemistry and English majors should be forced to take at least one course of biology and one course of geology. Biology for Beginners and Rocks for Jocks. I think that this teaching method alone will go a long way to clear up the widespread misonception that "there is no evidence for evolution." Furthermore, I think that if the anti-evolution comunity is going to be so outspoken and actively recruit followers, then the evolution community ought to do the same. By the way, this has absolutely nothing to do with my religious views, I don't have problems with people who are religious and accept evolution, I just think that ignorance is perhaps the largest stumbling block in the path of the biological sciences.
After the Seminar, the profs, a bunch of paleo students and one non-paleo student went out for beers. I'd didn't pay for a single beer the whole night, and that's all right by me. I look forward to the day when I have the financial freedom to do the same for some of my students. Lamoureux, Caldwell and I had some interesting religious discussion. Basically it boiled down to accepting that we three are men of very strong belief. Caldwell and I just believe in one less god that Lamoureux does.
I also greatly appreciated the opportunity to pick Caldwell's brain about the issues with improving the Paleo program here at the U of A. From what i gather, the biggest stumbling block there is insurance. Want to take students into the field for a field school? Well, if you have more than 15 students, you would need a bus with a certified driver. Under 15 people and you need a 15 passanger van, for which you need someone with a class 4 liscence. How about if you want to teach students how to manage collections or museums, or prepare fossils for study? Well there's a limited amount of time in the curriculum, and letting students with potentially no experience handle fossils is an insurance nightmare.
On another note, I also figured out that being a man of such strong convictions, and therefore a very high level of confidence, is sexy to women. Without going into too much detail, a young lady with whom I have history, and who is currently dating someone else, had no trouble expressing the fact that she still has feelings for me. Woot! Then I figured it out; on the previous occasion that she had expressed such feelings, I had engaged in intense discussion with someone on the subject of politics. I had suspected previously that the power of word and mind were the attracting force, but last night provided supporting evidence. Of course, she was pretty drunk on both occasions, so I think it's important not to read too much into things. Also, just for clarification's sake, although she expressed feelings, we didn't do anything as the result. I know that she's seeing someone else, and I have much too strong of a superego to allow myself to overpowered by the id. That is to say, I could not ethically do anything with her. Were she my girlfriend, I would not tollerate her expressing such feelings to other men. It's the whole catagorical imperative thing. Wow, who knew I'd actually use anything from my ethics class.