When we're out testing the seagliders in Puget Sound -- which requires an awful lot of hanging around on the beach monitoring laptops while the gliders do their pre-launch procedures -- we often get approached by people. Usually it's families with young children and senior citizens out for a stroll, and they generally understand that we're working and appreciate the time we take to answer their questions about the "underwater robots," Puget Sound, and oceanography in general.

Usually.

Today we had a drunk come up and stare at the glider, his beer bottle momentarily forgotten in his hand. That wasn't a problem -- I told him it was a robot we used to monitor the ocean and asked him if he had any questions, and I suspect the whole difficulty of maintaining a conversation in that state was too much for him to stand, so he wandered off with a brief "wow."

It was Mr. Sunday School who was the problem. A guy who kept bothering us with questions about what we were doing, and wanting to lecture us on how "it's all a miracle" and "someone oughta tell Al Gore" and "God made the plants, you know, because there's a reason for everything, I mean, why else are they just out there in the middle of the ocean?" It's an awkward situation, because as a representative of the university and the lab, I don't want to just completely blow this guy off, and as a scientist, I have a duty to share what I know with the community at large. I'm also well aware that not all scientists are atheists, and it would be incorrect of me to tell someone "I'm a scientist, therefore I don't agree with your strict biblical world view."

However, I am a scientist... and I can't help but notice the people who say "Nature is a marvel of God" are often also the ones who also say "He had a reason for making it this way, so we don't have to do anything or learn anything about it, and it's all going to be OK because He Said So." Faith is no excuse for ignorance.

So there he was, getting in the way -- and unlike the drunk, Mr. Sunday School didn't take the hint. I ended up doing what you do with any troll: after polite chatting for 5 minutes, I turned around and got back to work. The midwestern in me is all like "that's so ruuuude!" and the rest of me is all "nowhere near as rude as he was being to us."