Richard, you were great. I just wish there could have been more time to hear more from you and some of the other great educators, such as Phil Platt and Eugenie Scott, who were also there. 90 minutes just wasn’t enough time… If I hadn't seen them at TAM II, I might not have known what I was missing.
One thing that struck me is that promoters of paranormal hooey, creationism, and alternative medicine will always be able to output more media than skeptics can since the hooey hucksters can just make stuff out of thin air, which takes a lot less time and effort. A simple example of that was the “metaphysical bookstore,†which was just around the corner from the library where the Bay Area Skeptics meeting took place. There are no “skeptics bookstores†in the Bay Area, but there are quite a number of bookstores dedicated to soothing psychobabble , wishful thinking and potentially dangerous alternative medical nonsense.
Being a responsible educator and proactive skeptic takes a great deal careful research and I’m impressed with what the Australian skeptics have managed to do in this regard. I’d love to find more about what I can do proactively in the Bay Area to promote science, but some of the most important people to have on board are the people with the credentials to be taken seriously, a number of whom were present at the meeting and who are doing a great job.
