CVAAS Newsletter

Welcome to the December edition of the CVAAS monthly newsletter. We have a lot of events going on this month, and CVAAS is now gearing up for the new year. If you would like to sponsor a CVAAS event, please let us know. You can ask questions, make suggestions, or volunteer to sponsor a CVAAS event by sending an email to info@cvaas.org.

If you are reading this newsletter online and would like to receive it via email instead, you can click on the "Subscribe to CVAAS News" link at the top of this page.

This event starts at 11:15 a.m. and ends at 1:30 PM. Our new venue is Carrows Restaurant, on Blackstone and Ashlan, located at 4280 N. Blackstone Ave. (Click to see map).

Darwin's discovery has become one of the foundations to the way that we now understand biology. Sure, it's an important theory, but why would anyone spend a year celebrating it?

There is an organized movement against the teaching of biological evolution through natural selection. Those opposing evolution have spread a tremendous amount of misinformation. Also, efforts to reduce the teaching of evolution have left many people without a quality scientific education.

The primary motivation behind Darwin Day is to give more people a better understanding of evolution. Additionally, we seek to remind ourselves and our communities how important responsible scientific inquiry and education is to both our understanding of the world and our well being.

The Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art & Science is hosting a traveling exhibition, "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight".

We will spend an afternoon learning about dinosaur evolution, including the evolution of feathers, and why feathers would be a useful advantage for dinosaurs.

The fossils are brought to life through a series of stunning life-size sculptural restorations by world renowned sculptor, Stephen Czerkas. The exhibition contains 25 exquisitely preserved fossils, mostly dating to 125 million years ago, from the famed fossil quarries of Liaoning, China, models, large informative graphics, beautiful photo enlargements of the fossils, and original educational movies on large screen monitors.

The origin of birds and the evolution of flight have been among the greatest scientific mysteries since the first ancient bird, Archaeopteryx (which lived about 150 million years ago), was discovered in Germany in 1860. The beautiful new fossils reveal valuable information about these ancient creatures, as Liaoning’s fine lake silts preserved them in intricate detail. Bearing remnants of skin, scales, and feathers, and conveying important anatomical details of bones and teeth, these fossils have changed our understanding of the origins of feathers. The recent finds also address some questions about the evolution of birds, including how feathers evolved, and when feathers began to be used for flight, leading to a fuller understanding of the relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

We will gather at the front, and go in at 1:10 p.m. If you come late, you'll need to catch up!

CVAAS now has several new ways to distribute information. If you would like to get CVAAS info from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or on your cell phone - we can do that.

We are also experimenting with ways in which you can get information sent to you via a regular telephone call.

Here is what we currently offer:

Facebook - Do you have a Facebook page? Then click here to become a member of the CVAAS Facebook group. If you would like to sign up for Facebook, you can do so here.
Myspace - If you have a Myspace account you can click here to become a Myspace friend of CVAAS. You can sign up for a Myspace account by clicking here.
Twitter - Twitter is the best tool of the newest craze in micro-blogging. Short messages sent to Twitter members who follow their friends online. Click here to sign up for a free twitter account and then click here to follow CVAAS on Twitter. You can also find interesting tools to download that will make it easier to receive Twitter messages online. (I recommend Twitterfox if you use the Firefox browser.)
Messages to your phone - if you have a cell phone you are probably already familiar with the SMS text message service. For those of us who remember a time before cell phones, the telephone tree may be more familiar. CVAAS has a three methods to both send a text message, and deliver a voice mail. Here's how:

Method 1 - If you would like to receive both voicemail and text messages to your cell phone, then all you need to do is use your cell phone to send a text message to sign up. Just send a text message to the number 68398, with the text JOIN6639Y as the message. This is a service from Tatango, and is supported by advertisements which will be appended to any text or voicemail that CVAAS sends out.
Method 2 - If you would like to receive only text messages to your cell phone without the advertisements, you can do so through Twitter. Once you're following CVAAS on Twitter, turn the "device updates on" from the CVAAS twitter page. You can now click here to add your phone number and turn on "device updates". Now all CVAAS messages posted to Twitter will also be sent to your phone.
Method 3 - If you don't own a cell phone, you can still receive voice messages through the Tatango service. You will need to sign up online though. Click here to sign up from the Tatango CVAAS page.
Note: None of these methods will give your phone number to CVAAS. Your phone number will be stored in the database of the service provided, and you have the option of making that number public or private.
Frequency of messages: This is an important question - how often will you receive messages via phone?

CVAAS will restrict messages through Method 1 to once or twice a week, or less.
Method 2, based upon Twitter, will result in many messages per week, depending on events. However, you can set your Twitter profile to restrict when these messages will arrive.

CVAAS has other online locations that we will be using to keep in contact. These services will include Flickr, and QIK among others.

We've purchased the equipment to do a Podcast. We have yet to make our first official recording.

A podcast committee will be needed in order to create a podcast. If you're interested in becoming part of this, please send an email to info@cvaas.org.

The intent of this podcast is to be a local voice for the secular and rational people of the San Joaquin Valley. We intend to investigate locally, but report "globally" in that everyone in the world will be invited to download and listen to our podcast.

Subject matter that we hope to deal with will include the impact of religion on local politics, the impact of pseudoscience in the Valley, and the advancement of the uses of science and critical thinking.

We would like to be able to interview local people in order to understand these stories, and we want to give everyone a fair chance to speak their minds.

What we don't have is a name for our podcast. We are leaning toward calling it, "Rational Horizon", but we are still accepting suggestions. If you've got a good idea for a podcast name, please let us know at info@cvaas.org.