Thursday, July 24, 2008

I love this country!!

Simon Conway Morris presented this morning. If you don't know, he worked on the Burgess Shale, which is tons of fun biologically. He gave a brilliant presentation, and I may have a new hero.

In other news, a couple of us were taking a back alley/road (they are hard to tell apart here) last night to the pub, and who should be getting in/loading into a van right in front of us but Stephen Hawking. So yes, I saw him, he crossed the street right in front of me.

Speaking of the pub, the pub we went to (The Eagle) was where Watson and Crick dreamed up the double helix form of the DNA molecule. It's also where they announced it to the world. I didn't have such a brain wave, though I tried to think of one while I was there. I did, however, have a fantastic and far too long talk with Dean Zimmerman, our philosophy expert at the conference. Definitely a cool guy, who likes Flight of the Conchords and old slasher movies.

Today is "evolution/biology" day, so I'm actually coherent on the issues being presented, which is really nice. Unfortunately, the pseudo-theology being presented was horrid, but so they've only been tag-ons to excellent scientific work presented by scientists. The theologian is up next, so let's hope it is good. I'll let you know.

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