‘Looking for the perfect gift for the skeptic in your life, but all you find on Ebay are acupuncture needles, feng shui manuals, and pieces of the One True Cross?
Then look no further! The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is auctioning off a poster from The Amaz!ng Meeting 4 with all the guests’ autographs!
Yes! You’ll find such signatories as Michael Shermer, Julia Sweeney, Carolyn Porco, Penn & Teller, Adam, Jamie, and Kari of the Mythbusters, and, of course, the Amazing One himself. Oh yeah, I’m on there too*. Proceeds go to the JREF, who tirelessly fight nonsense, balderdash, hoaxes, and flim-flam. So not only will you have a fine poster with collectible autographs, you’ll have done some good, too.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:14 am
How do I know it’s genuine? I can’t just take signatures like those on faith!
(-:
April 19th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Well, I got my own flyer for the meeting autographed by many of the guests (of all the stupid things, I sat next to Shermer for half the conference and totally forgot to get his!) and the sigs on my mine appear to match those in the image on Ebay. So I’ll vouch for Randi. This time.
April 19th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Wow, they even mention you on the eBay site. “and more” Impressive!
April 19th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
That’s thoroughly weird.
Aren’t we skeptics supposed to be too jaded to muster up any enthusiasm for people’s autographs?
April 19th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Hey, you mean there’s pieces of the One True Cross for sale on eBay? Where do I sign up?
April 19th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Kim:
I refer you to Carl Sagan’s comments in The Demon-Haunted World about the “marriage of skepticism and wonder”.
As for myself, I have a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading in which I collected all the autographs I could during college. Neil Gaiman, Freeman Dyson, Mario Molina and a half-dozen others. The one I really regret not getting is Mariette Hartley, who taught Spock to eat meat in the penultimate episode of the original Star Trek.
At the end of June I’m going to a conference in Boston, where the speaker schedule promises us James Gleick, David Brin, Ken Wilson, Ed Fredkin (who did all the work that Stephen Wolfram takes credit for, so I hear), and John Nash. My brain is already starting to bubble out my ears. =)
April 19th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Hey, as a fellow “and more” person on the poster, I can support the kindly Dr. Plait’s claim to have signed the posters. We both did. Unfortunately, Phil kept signing as “MeeMee the WonderChimp.” I signed as “phil plait,” so it all balances out
April 19th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Don’t let Hal fool you, BABloggers. He signed with a sloppy X.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Can we use the signitures to forge cheques ?
I’ll like to see the reaction if “Phil” donated $100 to the ID movement
April 19th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
So you took a perfectly good poster and defaced it? How rude!
April 20th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Hey Nige, You not only ‘sign up’, but you have to sign down, sign right and left then sign center…… but I’m not Catholic, so I may have that in the wrong order. Could also be accused of Religious Intolerance.
Ivan
April 20th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Darn, the “One True Cross”? By my count, to have sold sooo many pieces over the last 2000 yrs., it must have had a mass of about 100,000,000 tons(metric).
No wonder Christianity had such an impact. Just imagine the sound, when it was brought down to retrieve the Mans bod,,,
Gary 7
April 20th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Phil,
I’m glad to see that this even looks somewhat legit. I enlarged the poster on Ebay and matched your signature on it to a stack of “Bad Astronomy” books I still have. Close, very close!
Bob
April 20th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
The one true cross…I’d settle for one of Carl Sagan’s teeth.