I would be happy to bless your animals.

– Renowned biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins to his audience at Duke University today. He was responding to a comment following his lecture that the upcoming Q & A with the audience would end at 3:30 sharp since the Chapel Quad was hosting the annual Blessing of the Animals at 4:00.

That lousy cell phone photo is illustrating what I think was the very poor etiquette of two Duke students who clearly didn’t care much to be at this event. They must have been getting class credit or something. Like cell phones in a movie theater, laptop screens at this lecture, particularly screens that kept flashing between baseball scores, Facebook, and a variety of websites, are really friggin distracting if you’re sitting right behind them.