All right; in fairness, I’m not good about blogging. I don’t know that the content of my blogging is all that good and, on top of that, I almost never get around to it. Heck, the last blog post I wrote wasn’t even on this blog. It was on that of the International Society for Science and Religion. You can see my post, which is about my new book, here. Of course, if the quality is low, the fact that I don’t write much is a feature not a bug. Nevertheless, in my own way I keep at it. I’d say persist, but that now-hallowed word should be used exclusively for real work–good work, world-saving work. So, I just keep at it.

And I’m hoping that over the next five months that means blogging a bit about my work, which returns me to India. I’m on sabbatical this year (thank you Manhattan College!) and I’m a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar (thank you taxpayers of India and the U.S.!). I’ll be living in Bangalore, affiliated with the National Institute of Advanced Studies. From there, I’ll be working on a project about India’s craft cultures, especially the folks working to produce or distribute ethically-sourced sarees.

But first, I’d like to call attention to the video I’ll be showing on day one of my Religion and Science class from now on: Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson on religion, faith, and whether or not we should be hoping that robots will take over the world. What I love about this video is that it: includes a misconception about faith (that it rejects evidence, though they don’t have time to really engage this interesting issue), rejects the idea that religion and science are necessarily at odds (though they certainly can be), suggests that environmental catastrophe and AI are among the political issues of our time (both are a part of my religion and science class), and remains funny.