My TAM4 report (long)

[TriangleMan]

Here is what turned out to be a very long TAM4 report. As I was writing it I found that so much happened that there was no way to keep it short.

This report isn’t so much for the people who went to TAM (you were there so you had a pretty good idea what happened). This is for all of those people who thought about coming but didn’t, who sat on the fence and maybe would have gone with a little extra push. There is more to TAM than just watching the guest speakers from afar -- meeting all of the people both forum and non-forum, going to the after-events that were organized, chatting with some of the guest speakers either at the conference or in many cases at one of the parties, or going out and having fun in a truly cool city. It is an experience that you will always remember.

In compiling this I realized that I met so many people that I was having a hard time sorting out just who I met where. Gaps in my memory, mostly induced by tiredness, alcohol, or both, are indicated by ???. If you were there be sure to help fill in the blanks.

Wednesday 25th – Wandered around Wynn, Venetian & Mirage on my own during the day before heading back to the Stardust to find some fellow forumites and figure out what to do for the evening. Around 6pm I wandered into the lobby and found Hutch, Kittynh, Kitten, Patricio and Brown. We went to dinner at a steak place at the Palace Station casino that had pretty decent food. Then we went back to the Stardust and found a lot of JREF people at the lounge near the check-in, including Renata, Jeff Wagg, Exarch, Stimpy, Rebecca, JK, Treble Head, Illegal Argument, Antique Hunter, Jas, Bug Girl, I think Phil and Loon were there as well, and about eight others (???). Sat around for a few hours chatting (including a half-hour discussion with Renata about insurance & reinsurance, a field we both work in) before I went to the tables to lose some more money playing cards.

Thursday 26th – went down to the buffet breakfast where a lot of JREF people had met up and I sat down to breakfast at a table with Loon, Bug Girl and ???. Because many of us were showing up at various times the waitresses at the buffet were starting to get annoyed and said something to Renata about how we couldn’t be doing this on Friday or Saturday because it would be really busy. I still don’t know exactly what their problem was.

I played some cards until registration time, got my package and because I hadn’t registered for the workshop that afternoon wandered around to the Rivera and Frontiers just to check them out. Got changed into a suit & tie for the reception but as I walked into the conference area Illegal Argument called me over to where CF Larsen and a few others were waiting. Apparently the Friday dinner at Lotus of Siam had to be moved to tonight so we got into cars or taxis to go to dinner. I think I was riding with vbloke and ??? and we apparently climbed into a cab that was in the middle of a taxi line-up, which got the cab driver of the first cab in line all pissed off so he yelled at our driver “What the hell are you doing?” to which our driver told him that we obviously didn’t want to take the other guy’s cab and we sped off. I guess cab drivers are pretty competitive in Vegas.

Dinner at Lotus of Siam was great. I think there was 16 of us at one long table and I sat near vbloke, Mr & Mrs. Roadtoad, Lost Angeles, Mike (can’t remember your forum name!) and ??? from the cab. The food was good and everyone passed around the various dishes that we ordered so that everyone could try them. The green curry Mike had was the hottest thing we ordered but it was still flavourful. We all left just in time to make it back to the Stardust for the Texas Hold’em tournament organized by Antique Hunter. (This also meant that I missed both the JREF reception and Mac King show so I don’t really know how that went).

My experience at playing Texas Hold’em was for naught as I was the first one out (arrrrrgh!). I threw away too much money going against Todd Robbins(?) because I didn’t have him for a three of a kind until the last minute, which meant I folded a high 2-pair after betting almost 2/3 of my chips. Next hand I made a pre-flop all-in call with a pair of 10s but ike42 stuck with me with suited runners and he managed to catch the flush on the river to knock me out. At least I was immediately able to make my entrance fee back at the blackjack & pai gow table before going back to watch the end of the tournament. It looked like Antique Hunter had it locked up but Liam McDaid and MLynn took him down. Liam eventually won, congratulations Liam! The atmosphere at the poker tournament was great, there was 15-20 of us at the sidelines watching and cheering/clapping during good plays or when someone got knocked out. Other people in the casino started wandering by to figure out what the fuss was about – I wound up talking with at least three people about who we all were and what the conference was about. After the tournament ended I watched Phil play some 3-6 limit Hold’em for awhile before going back to the tables to play some more blackjack. I managed to win about $200 but overall I was still down as I had lost more than that the previous two nights. I spoke with Phil the next day and it turns out he won a good chunk of change as well so we both had a good evening gambling.

I told you this report was long! Tune in later for Friday's report.

 

[TriangleMan]

Friday 27th – First day of TAM presentations: I will briefly give my opinion on the various presentations:

Christopher Hitchens – His talk on Thomas Jefferson and religion was good but nothing like last year’s talk. This year he seemed to me to be tired, or perhaps ill, as he lacked the energy and caustic wit that he had at TAM3. At times his voice tapered off so it was difficult to catch some of what he said.

Michael Shermer – He read from his recent booklet “Soul of Science”, reading it from beginning to end. I found this disappointing – I could have read the book myself Michael! Even worse I had to leave part-way through to go to the washroom so when I got back I had missed enough that it took me a while to figure out what he was talking about.

Murray Gell-Man – I thought his reminiscences on the various presidents and how they treated their science advisors/organizations was interesting and worth listening to. His was my favourite talk that morning.

At lunch I met up with TQuilla, her husband Gizm0 and their friend Sally, whom I met last year at TAM3. We also chatted with someone from an organization promoting secularism in America who gave us some pamphlets about her organization. (I later gave mine to someone at the conference who saw it in my folder and asked about it. I’m not American so I figured it would be better off with someone who is.)

Stanley Krippner – a hard-hitting talk on skyrocketing AIDS rates in areas where war and strife prevent AIDS education from reaching people. He also presented data showing the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only educational initiatives, which a lot of US aid is tied to, demonstrating that comprehensive education on AIDS, including condom use, is necessary to help prevent the spread of the disease. I found the talk pretty interesting but as I had been following the issue in the past there wasn’t much new to me.

James Randi – an amusing talk about testing the French-scientist Benevides which showed to what links some people, even scientists, will go in an attempt to prop up their beliefs. What I found the most interesting was the steps Randi took to prevent tampering of the tests or attempts by Benevides’ staff to access documentation which showed how Randi labelled the samples (and Benevides did try to access it!). I couldn’t believe how poorly Benevides had set up his experiments.

Penn Jillette – Penn did a Q&A about his show but did not have a lot of time as the other talks had gone overtime. Penn is great, he has a lot of energy and is quite funny. It was a shame that he didn’t have more time as he had the crowd laughing.

Nadine Strossen – gave a very interesting and detailed talk about current and upcoming cases that the ACLU is dealing with, including the recent Dover ID case that resulted in a spectacular ruling for the plantiffs and against teaching ID in science class. The battle is won but the war goes on! In some ways I am still surprised at the caliber of speakers that JREF can get to speak at TAM, I’m not American and even I had a pretty good knowledge of the ACLU, they’ve been attached to many of the most society-altering cases to ever go before the Supreme Court, and yet here is the President of the ACLU taking time to talk to the TAM audience.

Panel discussion: For some reason I don’t recall much about it, except when someone in the audience asked a question as to why the skeptic movement appears to be liberal and there are few conservatives, to which pretty much everyone in the panel disagreed (and rightly so). Just like woo-woos can be found on both the left and right (i.e. New Age vs. Religious Fundamentalism) one can be a critical thinker and hold political views that are either liberal or conservative. Just one look at the Politics forum could show you that. But I digress . . .

After the panel I met out in the conference lobby where Loon was organizing people for a buffet dinner at the Bellagio, rumoured to be the best in Vegas. Many were interested but when it announced that it costs $35-40 per person many had to bow out as it was too pricey. About nine of us went for dinner, and Rikzilla and his daughter joined us for the trip to Bellagio to wander around the place and check out their spectacular fountain show. I caught a ride with a couple from Phoenix (not forum posters) and another lady (???) and we got a table close to Loon and the others. The choice of food at the buffet was spectacular, I recall having roast buffalo, truffle strudel, beef Wellington, mahi-mahi in a citrus sauce, and the Kobe peppercorn steak I think they even had vegetables there as well but I quickly passed that stuff by – I didn’t pay $40 for some broccoli! The desserts were really good as well, but I limited myself to two as by that time I was stuffed. Afterward we caught up with Rikzilla and we went back to the Stardust.

I got back to the Stardust in time to catch Todd Robbin’s show, but I think others may have gone to either the Skepchick Pajama Party or to the “Geek-fest” that was organized so that people could play RPGs or other games. Todd’s show was great, he explained that he was a “carnie” and most of his act consisted of eating light bulbs or driving a long nail into his nostril. This was not a show for the squeamish! He also grabbed four people from the audience, including Mythbuster Adam Savage and had them form an interesting square supporting one another (this is hard to describe, there are definitely pictures of this somewhere in this forum so check them out).

The show ended around 11:00 and so I decided to go to bed early since I had a cold, and on my way to the 24 hr store in the Stardust to get some NyQuil I ran into TAM poker champion Liam who was playing some video poker. We chatted for a while before wandering over to the tables to see if we could get in on some blackjack or something but the tables were packed. I threw down $20 on a game of pai gow to show Liam how it worked and got a lousy hand and lost, thus showing Liam how to throw away $20 quickly! I didn’t want to stick around chasing that money so we left and I decided that now would be a good time to go to sleep.

I'll cover day two of TAM tomorrow.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Panel discussion: For some reason I don’t recall much about it, except when someone in the audience asked a question as to why the skeptic movement appears to be liberal and there are few conservatives, to which pretty much everyone in the panel disagreed (and rightly so). Just like woo-woos can be found on both the left and right (i.e. New Age vs. Religious Fundamentalism) one can be a critical thinker and hold political views that are either liberal or conservative. Just one look at the Politics forum could show you that. But I digress . . .

The best observation was by Murray Gell-Mann, which agreed exactly with what I have been saying for years, and that is you have to define the terms "conservative" and "liberal", and that the people who are most commonly identified as "conservatives" these days (Rush, O'Reilly, Pat Robertson, Hannity, etc...) aren't conservatives at all - they are whacko right wing extremists.

 

[TriangleMan]

Saturday 28th – Second day of TAM presentations

Richard Wiseman – things started out with a bang as this was the funniest presentation of the conference. Wiseman went over some optical illusions, did an overview of a psychology experiment where about 20% of the participants didn’t notice that when the person giving them a form to fill out ducked behind a desk to get something a different person appeared. It was at this point that Richard went offstage to get some water and the Bad Astronomer came out in his place (check out the Bad Astronomy Blog, www. Badastronomy.com, to see how similar the two of them look). I don’t think anyone who knows BA was fooled but many were, as soon as BA came out a bunch of us starting laughing and clapping but the people sitting next to me asked why people were laughing!
Richard did a great show.

As a side note, Richard ended with the magic square routine that he did in TAM3. I noticed that the ‘magic square’ Richard did have an error in it and didn’t work for the last two calculations but it went too fast for me to be sure. A couple of days later Phil brought the transparency to breakfast and we were able to confirm that he had made a mistake! Don’t try to sneak wrong numbers past accountants Richard!

Daniel Dennett – Did a very interesting talk on the development of religion and how it evolves to survive amongst humanity, similar in ways to a biological organism. Since I’m an atheist I didn’t have a problem with the analysis but I wonder what some theists thought about the presentation. The talk made strong inferences that religion is essentially a parasitic organism, something that may have not sat well with deists but to be fair when I talked to people about the presentation no one seemed insulted by the talk.

Carolyn Porco – The topic sheet that was handed out noted that Dr. Porco would be about Saturn as well as how the President’s “Vision” will affect future NASA missions. The presentation had a ton of great pictures and discussion of Saturn, its rings, and the various moons orbiting it, but I don’t recall much in the way of political discussion. Now I love astronomy, in fact I came to the JREF board via Bad Astronomy, so I loved the photos from the Cassini mission and her discussion of what they discovered. If you weren’t big on astronomy and was instead looking for in-depth discussion on politics and how it affects NASA/scientific exploration then I’m not sure she delivered. Anyway, I loved her talk.

(So far I liked the Day 2 morning presentations way better than the morning presentations for Day 1, which had been somewhat disappointing. I was glad for that because after Day 1 I was concerned that the presentations were going to pale in comparison with the excellent ones at TAM3 but Day 2 had been great so far)

At lunch I chatting in line with Liam and a guy who was taking photos for Skeptic, I think his name was Peter. Also chatted with a non-forum couple from Michigan who was avidly following the ID controversy (one of them was a retired biology teacher). They were concerned that ID would continue to make inroads in America despite the Dover outcome and were grateful that organizations like JREF and the ACLU were trying to stem the tide of creationism.

Paul Provenza – Paul did a very funny comedy routine that focused on religion, especially Catholicism, as well as related a couple of stories about how some of his performances would be picketed by fundamentalists. I could see how some Christians could be offended by his routine – he didn’t pull punches – but this was his way of fighting against religion. I seem to recall that he in no way felt that his routine would turn a die-hard believer away from Christianity, but at the same time he was not going to be stopped from using his comedy to focus on the problems and hypocrisy he saw evident in religion.

Ellen Johnson – Head of the American Atheists, her talk was a detailed biography of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and the battles she fought in the 1960s through to the 90s in support of atheism and the separation of church and state in America. I was shocked at some of the things Ms. O’Hair went through during that time, (like cops breaking into her house without a warrant and when she resisted they charged her with assaulting 14, yes, 14 police officers), but I was unclear as to what the overall message in the presentation was. Perhaps it was intended to inspire by showing the kinds of struggles people on the forefront of the atheist movement had to endure to get the US Government to uphold the principle of separation of church and State.

Unfortunately the presentations were running overtime and I had signed up to go to the Gun Store at 5:00 to shoot guns for the first time. The store closed at 6:30 so we couldn’t wait for Hal Bidlack’s presentation nor the panel discussion afterward so Hutch, Brown, Mattfn, Krash, myself and a few others (???) headed out to the Gun Store. Sure enough you got there and they had two walls, and a number of display cabinets, chock full of guns that you could try out, anything from pistols to machine guns! All you did was point out what gun you wanted, paid for some ammo and a target to shoot at (I got a 9mm pistol and I think it cost $30 for 50 rounds) and an employee took you to the firing range in the back and showed you what to how to load and fire the gun. Hutch got a Thomson machine gun that looked mighty impressive and after he went through his ammo I let him fire a few rounds out of my pistol. Surprisingly he told me that the pistol had far more recoil than the machine gun, but when I think about it now that makes sense, if the machine gun had a lot of recoil you’d never be able to shoot more than two or three bullets at once without the gun pointing upward. Anyway shooting the pistol was a lot of fun, and my aim improved greatly after a while. I’m still not thinking of getting a gun though – all guns are illegal here at home.

We got back just as the panel discussion was ending and apparently we missed a great talk by Hal and an interesting panel discussion but you’ll have to take a look at other threads here to get the details. I met up with Cave Dweller and Kochanski and we went to Tony Roma’s where we heard other forumites had gone but the line up was long so we went next door instead, had steaks and chatted for a while. After dinner it was time to get ready for the Forum Party and Chocolate Challenge at the hospitality suite (although it wasn’t actually just for Forum people, an announcement had been made that day at the conference inviting everyone to attend if they were interested).

The party was great, people brought chocolate, alcohol and other beverages and I had a great time chatting with various people and munching on chocolate (what chocolate won by the way, does anyone know? I recall there was some homemade truffle-chocolates that were amazing). Someone, I assume Jeff Wagg, brought a maple vodka from Vermont that turned out to be excellent, which surprised me since “vodka from Vermont” didn’t have me expecting much. Everyone at the party seemed to be having a great time and while I don’t remember everyone I talked to I recall chatting with bignickel, Imaginal Disc, Renata, Mr/Mrs rikzilla, Illegal Argument, RandFan, KingMerv (I’m still not sure he was old enough to be drinking -- I don’t recall seeing his I.D. when I was tending bar ), Beleth, a philosophy student from UNLV, Murray Gell-Mann, and a few other non-forumites whose names escape me.

If you’re lurking and were at that party, come register and introduce yourself!

After the party was over I went to the tables to gamble for a while, probably not a wise choice since I was tired and had a lot to drink but I stuck with pai gow which doesn’t take a lot of thought. I would up winning a bit of money in the end, something like $20. It took me a while to get ahead too, I think I lost a lot of money right away so had to take the time to make it back up. Be careful how much you drink when gambling folks!

Coming up - the paper presentations and a tour of Red Rocks!

 

[WonderfulWorld]

Christopher Hitchens – His talk on Thomas Jefferson and religion was good but nothing like last year’s talk. This year he seemed to me to be tired, or perhaps ill, as he lacked the energy and caustic wit that he had at TAM3. At times his voice tapered off so it was difficult to catch some of what he said.

Hitchens was in fact thoroughly exhausted. He came in tired, and by the time he left (immediately following his speech) he was beyond help. But I thought the speech was excellent.

Dinner at Lotus of Siam was great. I think there was 16 of us at one long table and I sat near vbloke, Mr & Mrs. Roadtoad, Lost Angeles, Mike (can’t remember your forum name!) and ??? from the cab. The food was good and everyone passed around the various dishes that we ordered so that everyone could try them. The green curry Mike had was the hottest thing we ordered but it was still flavourful.

"Mike" is known around here as WonderfulWorld. Great guy! <grin>

Mike.

 

[TriangleMan]

"Mike" is known around here as WonderfulWorld. Great guy! <grin>

Oh, well than that couldn't be the Mike I'm thinking of. (kidding, kidding)

 

[TriangleMan]

Sunday 29th -- Paper presentations

All the late nights, and the cold I still had, were starting to catch up with me. I was getting so tired I had to duck out of a couple of presentations lest I fall asleep during them. There were twelve papers divided into two separate sessions of six papers each. I went to Session I primarily for the Palkovich paper (sorry RSL!).

James Underdown -- Start your own investigations group

James summarized steps that one could take to form a skeptic group, taken from his experience in forming Center for Inquiry-West, a skeptic group in LA. He had some good ideas that I hadn’t considered, such as organizing fun field trips to haunted or paranormal sites. I’ll probably be moving jobs (and countries) soon but I might send him an email if where I move to doesn’t have a skeptic group. Bermuda could do with one.

Ann Palkovich – Science, Race and Politics

Ann discussed research on race, primarily in the early and mid 20th century but also discussed how even today governments and other organizations attempt to classify people by race, primarily by skin colour. She presented global charts showing the distribution of certain characteristics (skin tone, straight/wavy/curly hair, predominance of certain facial features, etc.) and from this demonstrated that there was no significant overlap in the distributions, thus discounting using certain features to classify a person as being of a particular “race”. I still have to look up the web references she gave (www.racesci.org, www.pbs.org/race) to look at this issue further, but I doubt that defining people into classes such as Caucasian, African or Hispanic based on physical characteristics, will be going away anytime soon in science research.

David Richards – Supernatural and the Movies

A straightforward analysis showing how Hollywood movies are emphasizing supernatural or paranormal phenomena far more often than they did in the past. He reviewed the classic age of cinema and discussed how more often movies about haunted houses would wind up having more mundane explanations for the supposed paranormal events, as opposed to today’s movies which appear to emphasize that the paranormal elements are real. Unfortunately his talk went overtime so he had to rush in the end, I don’t recall any specific recommendations from him for action.

During the break I was talking to Loon and a few others (???) about critical thinking in non-science fields and someone recommended reading All Marketers are Liars by Seth Goodan so I wrote it down on my schedule but I don’t recall what exactly we were talking about. If anyone knows anything about this book let me know!

The last three papers were pretty much a wash for me, I was getting tired at that point so I spent most of the time hanging in the conference centre lobby, chatting with some people. There was a bit of drama as some obnoxious drunk guy wandered into the convention room, but Jeff Wagg and SkepticScott charged in after him and escorted him out. It’s a shame that I missed Deutsch’s presentation on cholesterol as it appears he was challenged by a physician who says that the research on cholesterol does not support Mr. Deutsch’s claims. That physician has now started a thread on this topic here.

At 1:00 I headed outside to go on the tour of Red Rocks, led by Kitten (a geology major) and Slick (a geology professor from the University of Ohio). There were about 30 of us, more than I think Kitten expected, so if anyone had a car they were asked to drive it and take others with them. I think in the end we had seven vehicles, making for a modern-day caravan. I was in Hutch’s mini-van with Hutch, TJ Stough and his wife, Thad (a software engineer) and his wife Stacy, and a sixth person (who’s name I can’t remember). After a quick lunch stop we headed for the Red Rock Canyon where we had a few stops and Slick and Kitten would point out and discuss the various layers of rock and how they were formed. At one point we got out and a group of us wandered down a trail near Turtlehead Mtn. and amongst the strikingly red rocks. When I first heard of Red Rock I figured the rocks would be “reddish” but these rocks were red, like Ayer’s rock in Australia. I found the tour really cool, and I loved the walk amongst the rocks. Check out the pictures that people have posted, especially TJ’s, they’ll give you a good idea of what it was like. After a slight delay (we had to backtrack a bit to get to a trail to take us to where the vehicles were waiting) we got back to Vegas before sundown.

Most people seemed to be heading over to the Peppermill for dinner but Thad, Stacey and I decided to check out the buffet at the Wynn. Just as we were leaving we met Emrys and Jim, who work for Skeptic and Skeptic Junior magazine, who recognized us from the convention and asked if there were any events tonight. We told them about the Peppermill and that they were welcome to come to the Wynn with us so they joined us and we went over to the buffet. It was as pricey as the Bellagio, around $38 per person, and had various cuisines available such as Italian, Chinese, Indian and sushi. I liked most of the food except the Indian food which wasn’t that great. Their desserts were awesome though so it was a toss-up between the Bellagio and Wynn as I felt the selection was better at Bellagio but Wynn’s desserts were better. It turned out that Emrys and Jim were from Victoria BC, which wasn’t too far from where I grew up and the five of us had a great time chatting at dinner. Emrys and Jim were surprised when they asked Thad and I how long we had known each other and we replied “since this afternoon”, I guess they figured we had known each other longer than that.

Since Thad and Stacey were staying at the Aladdin rather than the Stardust, and Emrys and Jim hadn’t been to Vegas before we slowly wandered down the strip and I showed them around some of the casinos. We wandered around the Wynn, Venetian, Caesar’s Palace and saw the fountains at the Bellagio. After we reached the Aladdin and said goodbye to Thad and Stacey the three of us wandered back up the Strip to the Stardust and briefly met back up with TJ who was sitting at the bar near the check-in.

By now it was around 1:00am, I was tired, sleep-deprived and had to be up early to check out of my room and catch the Hoover Dam tour that Hutch had organized, although I didn’t know exactly what time it left. So this was a good time to . . .

Go to the tables, drink beer and play Blackjack! (Geez, what the hell was I thinking?)

Needless to say this was not the wisest move, it sure looks like all of that critical thinking at the conference hadn’t rubbed off on me yet. After playing for about an hour I had about $135 in chips but then I realized that I couldn’t remember what I started with. I absolutely could not remember. Was I up or down?! That’s about when my brain finally kicked in that it was seriously time to go to bed before I start gambling stupidly, or at least more stupidly than I was. I take comfort in that I’m sure that if I lost money it couldn’t have been more than $60-70 as I couldn’t have had more than $200 in my wallet at the time. Don’t gamble when exhausted everyone!

Monday 30th

I stumble out of bed around 9:15 and I have to check out by 11:00 so I dash downstairs to get some food and find Hutch. I see Exarch and Chaos and Exarch informs me that the Hoover Dam tour left at 8:00! (Whoops, sorry about that Hutch!) Exarch tells me that a few people are meeting at 10:00 at the buffet for breakfast so I go upstairs, pack my bags, check out and leave my luggage in the luggage room before heading over to the buffet. There I meet up with Exarch, Rebecca, Sid, the BA, and Phil. BA handed us some cool NASA/Hubble postcards showing various nebula and galaxies (thanks BA) including a couple of neat 3-D ones that Rebecca kept. After breakfast Phil headed back to his room and the rest of us went across the street to find an internet connection with printer for BA and also would up wandering around a kitschy souvenir store for a while. My favourite item was the personalized ashtrays that said _____’s Butts (such as Phil’s Butts, etc.) but they had one for Jesus which I thought was pretty funny.

BA had an afternoon flight to catch so he went back to the Stardust while Rebecca, Exarch, Sid and I spent the rest of the day wandering around the Strip, seeing the sights and chatting, eventually winding up in an Irish pub in NewYork NewYork for a couple of drinks before touring around MGM Grand and seeing the lions there. Rebecca suggested we head to the Bellagio to have dinner at their buffet as I had mentioned that the food had been good there. Once again I loaded up on buffalo and Kobe beef but the buffalo wasn’t as good as the last time. Oh well, there were plenty of other things to load up on at the buffet so the meal was still great. Exarch and I had to catch flights this evening so we made our way back to the Stardust.

At the Stardust we sat around the bar until it was time to leave while Exarch looked around to see if Hutch was nearby so that we could thank him for all the rides he gave us during the conference. No luck unfortunately. Exarch and I said our goodbyes to Sid and Rebecca and we grabbed our luggage and caught a cab to the airport.

I caught the redeye to Toronto thus ending my TAM4 experience. I miss it already, being home and working seems so mundane now (and look where I live)!

For those of who unsure of attending TAM5 all I ask is that from this long series of posts remember this - there were so many events that I couldn’t attend all of them, everyone was so friendly that I ate dinner with different people every night, and there were so many attendees that there were many from the forum that I never got around to meeting. It was a wonderful time and I don’t regret the expense for a minute. Try to get out to TAM5! We would all love to meet you.

 

[easycruise]

and that the people who are most commonly identified as "conservatives" these days (Rush, O'Reilly, Pat Robertson, Hannity, etc...) aren't conservatives at all - they are whacko right wing extremists.

I strongly disagree. Hannity and Rush types are hardly extremists. I enjoy both of them, especially when they point out faulty liberal thinking and liberals adherence to a failed ideology proven by facts and evidence. I think of them as the conservative, political version of Randi. You would too, if you had a open mind. Take it from a former Democrat!

 

[RSLancastr]

I went to Session I primarily for the Palkovich paper (sorry RSL!).

Well, I attended all the paper presentations in Session II, primarily because I was too relieved after presenting my own paper to even remember that there was another room to go to!

So, here's a quick summary of the Session II papers:

Robert Lancaster - Stopping Kaz: One Skeptic’s Experience Using the Internet to Debunk a Religious Con-artist

I talked about my experience with the www.StopKaz.com site.

David E. Thomas - The Bible Code: Data Mining for God

A pretty straightforward explanation of what the Bible Code is, with many examples showing how you can use this technique to find after-the-fact "predictions" about almost anything in any piece of text of sufficient length.

Thomas then used the Bible Code to predict the winner of the Superbowl. If memory serves, he predicted the Steelers by six.

He ran out of time at the end, and so was not able to do some impromptu biblical data mining as he had hoped.

Frederick V. Malmstrom - In Close Encounters, We Mostly See Ourselves

Malmstrom theorizes that the description of propotypical UFO occupants may be based on an imprint of our mothers image as viewed through infant's eyes.

He showed pictures of women of child-bearing age, put through some filters to approximate what an infant would see with its limited vision. The images, with their large dark eyes and nearly non-existant nose and mouth, were similar in many respects to the "typical ET."

The information in the presentation can evidently be found in an article in a recent issue of Skeptic magazine. I hope to find that issue, as there were many things he had to skim in order to fit this into 20 minutes. For example, I would be interested in finding out how they decided what an infant actually can see.

Benjamin Radford - The Stupendous, Spectacular Failure of Psychic Detectives

The title pretty much says it all.

Radford discussed the fact that there have been no documented cases where a so-called "psychic detective" provided information which lead to the finding of a missing person or a dead body.

Again, he had more than would fit in a 20-minute presentation, but did a good job of condensing it down to the crucial points.

Daniel Samber - Tuning Your Technological BS Detector

Samber compared actual scientific technology with pseudo-scientific, showing how both use technical jargon which make it difficult for a layman to judge which is legit.

He gave some basic rules-of-thumb to use when trying to discern the scientific from the pseudo-scientific, but was careful to say that none of them were absolutes (eg: an invention having a patent is not an indication that it is legit, but one lacking a patent is a red flag).

I would like to see this presentation expanded upon. Having a hierarchy of questions to ask when investigating a new technology would be a handy thing.

Ray Beiersdorfer - The Failure of Paranormal Methods to Predict Natural Disasters

Focusing mostly on earthquake prediction (Beiersdorfer is a geologist), the presentation examined several of the paranormal/perinormal means which have been attempted for predicting natural disasters.

One of the more memorable failed techniques examined was correlating newspaper reports of lost pets with earthquake activity. This corresponds to the urban legend that animals behave "strangely" in the days/hours leading up to earthquakes. Not surprisingly, no real correlation has been found.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I strongly disagree. Hannity and Rush types are hardly extremists. I enjoy both of them, especially when they point out faulty liberal thinking and liberals adherence to a failed ideology proven by facts and evidence. I think of them as the conservative, political version of Randi. You would too, if you had a open mind. Take it from a former Democrat!

They are, in fact extremists. And you'll note that they fail to point out their own faulty logic. They regularly have holes in their "logic" large enough to drive a truck through. I would destroy either of them in a debate.

Unlike you, I have an open mind.

And I was never a Democrat or a Republican. Only an idiot would identify with a political party these days.

 

[TriangleMan]

So, here's a quick summary of the Session II papers:

Thanks for that RSL.

 

[Mattfn]

Not mentioned above was Mythbusters Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman and Kari Byron after lunch and after the auction on Saturday afternoon, which included two Mythbusters test apparatus that were very successful fund raisers. They were interviewed by Penn Jillette.

They started by speaking a bit about what the show is about: using science and it's methods to test urban legends and fallicies to see if there's any truth to them, in the most entertaining way possible. They each described some background, and how they came to work together at Jamie's shop M5i, and then for the show.

Like Penn's Bullsh*t show, Mythbusters does a ton of research and consults many experts, yet is still very open to the fact they will not get everything right, just like real science. They are stymied by the fact they aren't scientists, are limited for time, and often must work within one shot deal constraints for the fantastic situations they find themselves testing. They consider their fans to be part of their "peer review" in the science they do.

The audience was very appreciative of the work MB does in bringing critical thinking onto the airwaves. They delighted in the blooper reel (prefaced with a very approprate warning for content from Penn!), explainations of how the show is filmed, and the many stories of the situations surounding past and upcoming episodes.

And in the same vein as many of the TAM presenters past and present, Jamie, Adam and Kari setup shop to sign autographs and take pictures with every single person who wanted one, as they had been doing since arriving the evening before. Like Penn & Teller, this is what MB does at every talk. I hope you got to speak with them......very classy thinking people.

Mattfn

P.S. Sorry so long, but they were onstage for a hour twentyfive!

 

[Chaos]

"Mythbusters test apparatus", huh?

Well, I guess it sounds better than "bottled farts"...

 

[TriangleMan]

Not mentioned above was Mythbusters Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman and Kari Byron after lunch

Geez you're right, I left the Mythbusters out of my report! How the heck did that happen? Guess I don't need to add it now, your report would pretty much be what mine would look like (except that Kari was staring at me lovingly the whole time she was on stage - I swear!)

 

[TJ]

Guess I don't need to add it now, your report would pretty much be what mine would look like (except that Kari was staring at me lovingly the whole time she was on stage - I swear!)

Oh stop it. You KNOW she was looking at me.

 

[TriangleMan]

Oh stop it. You KNOW she was looking at me.

Evidence shows that since Mrs. TJ was sitting next to you the whole time AND that Kari is still alive so Kari could not have been staring at you throught her TAM appearance.

QED -- she was obviously staring at me.

 

[TJ]

Evidence shows that since Mrs. TJ was sitting next to you the whole time AND that Kari is still alive so Kari could not have been staring at you throught her TAM appearance.

QED -- she was obviously staring at me.

*downcast eyes*

Damn. The biting truth of evidence...

 

[easycruise]

They are, in fact extremists. And you'll note that they fail to point out their own faulty logic. They regularly have holes in their "logic" large enough to drive a truck through. I would destroy either of them in a debate.

Unlike you, I have an open mind.

And I was never a Democrat or a Republican. Only an idiot would identify with a political party these days.

I like their "logic" much better than any liberal Democrat's on most policy issues. Since you don't present any facts or evidence, I'll just presume that you are trying to find a way to discount and cheapen the factual evidence that they do present on those same policy issues.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I like their "logic" much better than any liberal Democrat's on most policy issues. Since you don't present any facts or evidence, I'll just presume that you are trying to find a way to discount and cheapen the factual evidence that they do present on those same policy issues.

I have to admit I do like your avatar of the heroic rescue of kidnap victim Elian Gonzalez!

 

[Mattfn]

I had the opportunity to take a survey after the Mythbusters' talk, and the fact is that Kari was looking lovingly at no less than 100 gentlemen in the audience.

A very surprising result, as the majority of the pictures had her looking at Jamie or Adam as they spoke. It seems very few actually managed to take pictures when she was speaking......hmmmmmm, wonder why that was.

Mattfn