For the next two days, I am attending the James Randi’s The Amaz!ng Meeting in Las Vegas. I’ll be reporting about this critical thinking/skeptic conference as often as I can.
I made it to TAM4! That’s the good news. The bad news is that my internet connection here can be charitably described as flaky. We’ve also been busy here, so I haven’t been able to write until now. Even now I have to hurry, as there’s an auction to raise money and I donated a copy of my book.
I would have written earlier, but I had to have lunch with Shuttle astronaut Ed Lu, and physicist Murray Gell-Mann (who is somewhat well-known, since he won a Nobel Prize for discovering the quark). Yes, I’m gloating. I’m also sitting next to Julia Sweeney during the meeting, and have been chatting with James Randi and Michael Shermer.
Such is life. Someone’s gotta do it.
This morning was a very interesting talk by Christopher Hitchens, a contrarian in nearly every sense of the word. He gave a fascinating talk about Thomas Jefferson and religion. Next up was Michael Shermer, who read from a minibook he’s written called "The Soul of Science". He make a lot of interesting points about the idea of a human soul, how we evolved a sense of moral responsibility, and how science is revealing why we are a moral species. I agree with many of his points, and a lot of entries in this blog will reveal that (search the category listing here for Rants and Piece of Mind).
Murray Gell-Mann talked about science and politics (which is the theme of the meeting); he served on several Presidential science advisory commissions over the decades, and had lots of funny stories about presidents, and how they take, or, more commonly, ignore scientific advise.
This connection is too slow to upload images, and I have to run right now to get to the auction. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some images and more insightful comments up later. Stay tuned!
January 27th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Ok, I’ll just wait here then…. eh… could you bring back some caviar?
Phil?… Phil…..?
January 27th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
What might the Amazing Randi make of this amazing “coincidence” astronomy?
January 28th, 2006 at 1:27 am
No fair.
I called dibs on blogging TAM4. You got to have lunch with the famous people.
I’m telling mom.
January 28th, 2006 at 9:44 am
[...] The Amazing Meeting 4 is taking place currently in Las Vegas. I did briefly entertain the notion of going, back in August, but that lasted maybe thirty seconds before I realised how much it would cost I’m very envious of those who are there, though. Guest speakers include James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Penn Jillette, Phil Plait…Searching on Technorati shows that there aren’t many people blogging. Jody Wheeler is working hard to blog everything, and Bad Astronomy has promised to update throughout the weekend. [...]
January 29th, 2006 at 5:39 am
Ha! I’m sitting here with a 10-megabit connection while you’re presumably using dial-up even though you’re meeting such luminaries. Who’s jealous now? Okay, I am…
January 30th, 2006 at 5:37 am
Hi again Phil.
TAM4 was great – sorry I couldn’t go on the Red Rocks tour, but I had to catch a plane back to the UK.
Hope to get you over here sometime soon to lecture at the Royal Observatory – I’d actually like to hear you speak again!!!
I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything.
February 1st, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Good luck in your work “or the next [b]tow[/b] days”. Fill in your own joke here.
February 1st, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Sometimes spell checker is not good enough, Dr. Plait.