Author: Ophelia Benson

LAX SUCKS.

LAX is a fucking pit.

They don’t make information about flights and gates readily available and clearly understandable, they don’t have helpful people readily available, the terminal is dirty and smelly, the facilities suck, the Wifi sucks, all the people who work at LAX suck – everything about it sucks.

The indicator board for flights and gates was far away from the arrival gate. When I found it it said the gate for my flight was “T3″ – which doesn’t even sound like a gate, and there was no indication where it was. The airport cop I spotted didn’t know. All the lines were too long to hang around waiting to ask. (Further annoying details omitted for brevity.) Someone who seemed to know told me T3 is Terminal 3 (then why have it under “gate” on the board?) and to go to gate 44 and go down the escalator and take a shuttle bus – but when I got there there was no mention of T3 or Terminal 3 on the signs so I went back up, and after much struggle and repeatedly nearly falling over people’s fucking wheely bags when the people were struck by a thought and abruptly stopped moving along with their wheely bags, I found someone else to ask and he said yes, take the shuttle bus at gate 44, ask the people there – so I went back and the person there told me I had just missed the bus for T3 and it would be 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes of listening to her scream at everyone who came along (further annoying details omitted for brevity), I was enabled to leave that portion of hell in order to step into another, to wit, the shuttle bus, which drove all over the airport, crossing runways and taxiways with gay abandon, past myriad signs chirpily suggesting “watch for aircraft.” We arrived at the back of a vile warehouse or garage sort of place and sat still for several minutes breathing the refreshing jet fumes while the driver sat motionless and silent – then she opened the door and said we’d arrived, pointing at some stairs and saying the terminal was at the top. So we climbed about 3 stories worth of dirty metal stairs with our baggage. One rather large woman stopped after about ten steps, looking warm.

This sounds like a joke or parody but it fucking isn’t. I’m not kidding. The bus comes only once in 20 minutes; it traverses the whole airport in among the moving airplanes; passengers are dumped out and told to climb 3 flights of nasty stairs with their luggage; no one offers to help or says “sorry for the inconvenience” or “thank you for taking the shuttle bus with us today” or “was that a vision of hell or what” or “have you ever been in a worse piece of shit airport in your life?”

This is apparently something to do with the fact that Alaska has taken over some of American’s business. I surmise that the arrangement is recent and they haven’t quite figured out how to make it go smoothly yet. I could give them some advice.

[I’m writing this on the plane now. I wrote the first part in the inferno where I waited for the flight to Seattle, and I’m continuing it on the inferno that is the plane.]

I could give them some advice. They could put big signs up at the arrival gates telling hapless passengers that their connecting flights may be with Alaska AND THAT THEY HAVE TO GO TO A WHOLE NEW TERMINAL AND THAT IT’S A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. They could also give the essential details of how to begin the life-cheapening process. They could hire someone for The Shuttle Bus Waiting Room From Hell who wouldn’t see her job as screaming at everyone who makes the mistake of turning up. They could hire someone to drive the bus who would act like a human being. THEY COULD APOLOGIZE ABJECTLY FOR THE STAIRS and explain what they are planning to do about them. They could warn people about having to carry their luggage up – honestly, it was ok for me, though I made a great show of struggling up because I was so furious, but it was not ok for the large woman – it was not ok physically and it was totally humiliating. Jesus. I’m getting pissed off all over again. I think someone did go down to help her, but not before standing at the top of the stairs gazing down on us. Yes really: they did. Two employees of that (this) stinking airline – the one that used to hand out prayers, you know – stood at the top of those 30 or 40 stairs watching us climb. When I got to the top they were just getting around to deciding that one of them should do something about the large woman, at least I think they were – who knows, maybe they were just pointing out that she seemed to be finding it all somewhat tiring.

They could do all this, and they could apologize often and in detail for the whole thing. That would be a start. They haven’t done any of it. I would like to line them all up and kick them on the shins.

Now, to continue the joke, I’m on the flight from hell to boot. I’m in the very last row, row 30. I couldn’t get a window seat (even though that’s what I asked for a month or two ago – I’ve got to learn that when other people book a flight for me they ignore my window seats request), so I’m in the aisle. We are having the worst turbulence evarrr – so I can’t get up and stroll around, but other people feel that they can, and they keep pitching into me on their way to the toilet which is about 6 inches from my left elbow. There are eleventy seven children and babies. There are two children in the row in front of me – being “good” but making steady, relentless, busy noise. In front of them is a baby who roared and screamed for the first hour. I think it’s now dead.

I mean, could it be any worse? I suppose there could be a talkative missionary next to me who also smelled bad, but short of that…what’s missing? Ah the toilet just flushed. What fun this is.

Oh hooray! The two children and their mummy are now treating their seats as a trampoline – the mummy just leaped out of her aisle seat and slammed herself down in the window seat, shaking all three seat-backs and nearly catapulting the remains of my orange juice onto this blameless little notebook. The guy next to me has his elbow resting comfortably on my arm, despite the fact that I am holding it well over on my side of the armrest. The flight attendants, a few inches behind my head, are partying away as colleagues should – I can hardly hear myself think. Whee – bumpity bumpity! More turbulence.

Ah well. It’s so awful it’s funny, at least it is once I start turning it into a blog post.

The baby is alive. It’s roaring again.

Back at airport. There’s a non-stop to Seattle boarding right now, but it’s not mine…alas.

I take it you’re bored with conference chat. I’ll revert to normal posting for a couple of days – then I’m off to Manchester.

I did my talk this morning, on the panel with PZ, Liz Cornwell, Bill Cooke, Vic Stenger, and Anthony Pinn.

I scored a very excellent souvenir! I noticed a name tag on the speakers’ table in front of me, about where Pat Schroeder was sitting yesterday, so I picked it up all casual-like before anyone could snatch it out of my hands, and covertly turned it over, and sure enough…

I totally have Pat Schroeder’s name tag!

The conference next year is in Seattle, and Tom just invited me. I’m holding him to it.

Awards banquet last night. Stephen Law got one, Jessica Ahlquist got one, Dan Dennett got one.

Everybody stands up when Jessica takes the podium. We can’t help it. I usually don’t like it when people leap to their feet, but I don’t object this time. I bet Jessica finds it cringe-making, but it can’t be helped.

I have 8 minutes on this computer and anyway it’s time for the banquet…

But it was a fun day. Outreach talk this morning – Jessica rocked the house.  A talk-lunch, lunch, at which I talked to Dave Silverman, and Ellenbeth – she and I share an online stalker. Seriously. Russell Blackford on secularism. Pat Schroeder!!! this afternoon. She too rocked the house.

Gotta go.

So I saw Dennett arriving and then I went on into the bar area and plugged in my notebook and posted that I’d just seen Dennett. That took fifteen minutes or so – it’s not my notebook after all, it’s the horrible connection, everyone says it’s horrible. Well that plus reading up on the latest exploits of the Harvard Humanists took about 15 minutes. Then I packed up and was about to go wander around a little to see if PZ had arrived when PZ turned up in front of me, having just arrived. We went over to the bar and joined Tom Flynn and Dennett and Liz Cornwell and Debbie Goddard to schmooze.

Lots of good talks yesterday. Ellenbeth Wachs on nightmare stuff in Polk County and the way they tried to shut her up. Dave Silverman on the importance of not losing law suits. Rita Swan on getting rid of religious exemptions to laws mandating medical care for children. Lionel Tiger on women ruining everything. Stephen Law on the evil god. Harry Kroto on lots of things – education, science, Murdoch – he’s terrific.

More later.

I was just walking through the lobby and there was Daniel Dennett arriving. No one else around, just Dennett.

Reception thingy last night. I met Melody Hensley and Simon Davis, and Lauren Becker, and Ron Lindsay, and Jessica Ahlquist, and Russell Blackford and Jenny Blackford, and Stephen Law, and then after we’d been turfed out of the ballroom or whatever it is, Paul Fidalgo arrived after a delayed flight. All fun. Also Tom Flynn and Debbie Goddard, but I didn’t meet them, because I already had.

It’s slow work, typing on a tiny keyboard – I keep making typos because the keys are in unfamiliar places.

I will continue to be quite brief and boring for a few days. But I promise I’m being fascinating in real life!

So this little notebook laptop I got for emergencies and travel turns out to be deathly afraid of the internet; it either freezes in panic or faints dead away whenever I ask it to do anything. Therefore I have to proceed with caution, so posting will be mostly link-free for a few days.

I see where Rush Limbaugh called a college student who testified to Congress about the need for insurance to cover contraception a “slut” and a “prostitute.” I think it’s bad that he did that.

I don’t think much of Hemant Mehta’s post yesterday on how Chris Stedman is just misunderstood, but Rieux (in comments there) and Crommunist (on a post at his place) have said good things about that.

The sun will soon be setting here in Florida.

Orlando is very flat. The view from here is of flatness all around with a few tallish buildings visible on the edge of the frame, spaced widely apart (like, two due north, one northwest, none due west, etc – it looks quite random). It’s interesting. I’m not accustomed to flat. Where I live is very lumpy.

Ok that’s a little better. The bar emptied out some so I have an armchair pulled up to a table, and there’s less noise of chatter.

The trip itself was interesting, I must say. I’ve never flown Seattle to Houston before, and it’s all mountains for a long long time. Very cool.

Also very puzzling in spots – weirdly geometrical in appearance in what appears to be mountainous wilderness – straight lines where straight lines make no sense. They don’t seem to be roads, because of the wilderness thing.

One item in particular has me absolutely stumped, and kind of fascinated – a set of rectangles abutting each other, like squares on a quilt. About six. Like farms, in farm country, but not in farm country and WAY too big to be farms – and above all, what separated them from each other was snow/no snow. Now I ask you – even if they were huge ranches of a rectangular form – how could one ranch be bare of snow while adjacent ones are not?!

Very weird. I’ll probably never know what they are.

Then in Texas (I think) – lots and lots of circles. Anybody know what those are? They look agricultural, but the sizes vary a lot, and anyway why circles? They’re certainly not in wilderness though, so they’re not mystifying the way the quilt is.

I saw some fantastic meanders (in rivers, you know) – twist twist twist – like a hairpin road. Also some thrillingly BIG rivers.

I’m a huge window geek.

Now I’m at a different airport, the one in Orlando. Unfortunately my room is on the wrong side to get the airport Wifi, so I’m sitting in an armchair in the lobby when I would much prefer to be sitting at the desk in my room. Ho hum.

Anyway I’m here. I’ve seen Tom Flynn and said hello, and he says Stephen Law is around somewhere, and that’s all I know so far.

I want to join in the quarrel with Hemant Mehta, but I have to catch up with it first.

So here I am at the airport. I got nothin to say except that I’m at the airport.

I’m at SeaTac’s fancy sitting-area place, which faces a giant window – from the table where I am it’s acres of grey sky with a little scrim of airplanes and runways at the bottom. Quite nice.

Lawrence Krauss says a necessary thing. He starts from a campaign argle-bargle by Rick Santorum saying that higher education is bad because it kills faith.

Mr. Santorum views this apparent facet of higher education as a danger, and his proposed solution is simple-less higher education and more faith.

As a faculty member at an institution of higher education, and as a scientist, however, I question the basic premise that loss of faith is a bad thing. If it is true that those who are more educated have a greater tendency to question their religious faith, shouldn’t we consider that this might be telling us more about religious faith than about how harmful getting a college degree can be?

Yes, we should. (more…)

I’m off to Orlando in a couple of hours, to help with (or get in the way of, as the case may be) Moving Secularism Forward. I may do a pointless post from the airport, saying I am now at the airport.

Opinionista has a fantastic post, reminiscent of Greta Christina’s reasons atheists are angry: “Over It” – The rant of an angry, Agnostic, British, Indo-Pakistani woman of Muslim heritage.

I am over the complete ignorance by Muslims and non Muslims (particularly UK politicians and media) alike of the fact that “Muslim communities” contain non religious, spiritual people like me, as well as Atheist people and Agnostic people.

…

I am over UK politicians thinking that they will find out what I want by speaking to only bearded self appointed “community leaders”, headscarf donning women (defined only by their modesty or “Muslimness”) or the Sayeeda Warsis of the world who are homophobic, misogynistic and anti-equality. I am not defined by the faith I was born into, nor am I represented by demagogues who wish to win support for their incompetent party leader.

I am over being told that my views are Islamophobic, particularly when I come from a Muslim family, have  a Muslim name and am profiled at the airport every time I fly because of it, regardless of the fact that I’m Agnostic.

I am over being told that my views are offensive. I’m offended by my community’s homophobia, misogyny and racism. This doesn’t mean that I have the right to start burning effigies or chanting “death to ______” or blowing stuff up. Yet people like ME are the ones being called “militant” secularists. When’s the last time a secularist blew stuff up? Secularists do not stunt critique by bursting into Mosques and telling DIY Imams to “be quiet because you’re offending me”. Even if we desperately wish that they would stop spewing their hate.

Read the whole thing!