Ed Brayton is the latest amazing speaker to join the lineup for the Rock Beyond Belief. He currently blogs daily at Dispatches From The Culture Wars blog, hosted on ScienceBlogs. It’s tagline is: ‘Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture’. So it’s an obvious and natural fit for us. His recent post about us is responsible for us hitting Google News.

I’m a fan of his daily ‘Dumbass quote of the day‘ series (and the slightly less often ‘Badass quote of the day‘).  You should subscribe to his posts if you are up on that RSS stuff. Or you can just add a bookmark and stay in the 1990′s.

From his bio:

He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda’s Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Ever since TalkOrigins announced the Panda’s Thumb blog, I’ve been hooked. TalkOrigins had a big impact on my personal deconversion story, but I’ll spare you guys that one. It’s still a great resource for debate, and for exploring the history of the evolution denier controversy. Panda’s Thumb is a superblog that combines the talents of many of the world’s leading scientists into one neat little package (with pretty pictures too).

I have received word from a mutual friend that he is also a former stand-up comedian (: We can’t wait to hear him speak!