Muchas gracias to Bill for hosting a party in his backyard tonight. I had a great time, and met many nice people. Before that, I swung by Union Square Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Barbara Campbell’s new novel (her first) Heartwood, so that I can have her sign it at her Book Launch Celebration tomorrow. (And for those keeping score at home, this Barnes & Noble stocks one signed copy of All the Rage This Year.)
I also wandered the street fair up on 7th Avenue. For a while, there was a woman walking ahead of me holding a large poster that read: “Extraterrestrials Have Left Us a Message. They Created Us In Their Image.” And, “Science Replaces Religion.” (It’s reassuring to know, in this culture seemingly awash in soft-headed nonsense masquerading as fact, that someone is standing up for science.) The poster depicted a flying saucer beaming a giant DNA double helix down onto the earth, and then a swirl of species representing human evolution, though I wasn’t sure about the progression. Don’t hold me to this, but I’m not sure that camel -> butterfly -> chimpanzee -> human is precisely correct. The poster also listed a website.
Trailing after that woman came a small, agitated man repeatedly shouting, “Science replaces religion? Hmph. Go home! Go home!” and exhorting passerbys “Don’t look!” (At the woman’s poster.) “Don’t look! There is no message!” (from Extraterrestrials). This was proving to be a startlingly ineffective strategy for getting people to not look at the poster.
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