Two of my favorite things in the world are Doctor Who and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™. So what could be better than a video combining them, and throwing in two giant Tesla coils and a Faraday cage?

I think I have nothing to add to this.

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has just opened registration for its annual skeptical extravaganza, The Amaz!ng Meeting!

TAM is arguably the world’s premier critical thinking conference, and certainly one of the most fun. I’m always torn between listening to the speakers and gathering with the friends I’ve made over the years — and meeting new ones. It’s fair to say the audience is a major reason to attend TAM.

The theme this year is "TAM 9 from Outer Space", and it’s obvious why with speakers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay (one of my favorite people on this planet), Bill Nye (The Science Guy), and hey, me. And the list keeps going: Carol Tavris (who gave a very popular talk last year at TAM), Jennifer Michael Hecht, Penn & Teller, Jennifer Ouellette, PZ Myers, Genie Scott, anime artist (and totally cool chick) Sara Mayhew, and, of course, the Amazing One himself, James Randi. The list goes on and on, so go check it out!

Did I mention the MC this year is the one and only George Hrab? Yeah. Awesome.

Also, as usual, there will be a ton of workshops, panels, and other extracurricular activities. I can’t stress enough how much of a blast this meeting is. It’ll be July 14 – 17, 2011 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Registration is now open. I hope to see you there!

I’ll be posting a quick summary of w00tstock 2.5.1 sometime later in the week. However, to give you a small taste, an apertif of this Nerdapalooza, I present to you My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™ on stage with Paul & Storm, performing… well, see for yourself.

Amazingly, this is neither the weirdest nor nerdiest thing that happens at w00tstock.

The good news: I’ll be performing onstage at two w00tstock events: this Friday, September 17 at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall and again in my hometown of Boulder on Saturday, October 23rd at the Boulder Theater!

Yay! I’m really excited about this!^*

IMPORTANT! There are specific things to keep in mind for these two events, which follow:

San Francisco

The bad news: tickets are sold out for the September 17th San Francisco performance.

The medium news: there may be tickets available at the door, but you’ll have to go there that night to find out.

The other other good news: there will also be a performance in SF the night before, on Thursday September 16, and there are still tickets. However, I won’t be there (I don’t know if that’s medium news or bad news, so I’ll leave it as is. It’s just news).

As usual, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul & Storm will be there, as will singer Molly Lewis and magician Jamy Ian Swiss. There may be more special guests too!
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I’ve told you about Geek A Week before: artist Len Peralta is interviewing one Alpha Nerd ever week, and drawing a cool trading card for each. I was honored to be included, and I also mentioned my friend Brea Grant was one as well.

Len recently interviewed two other friends of mine: Adam Savage, and Grant Imahara. Yeah, two of the Mythbusters! You can grab Adam’s interview here, and Grant’s here.

Grant’s interview was interesting to me because I didn’t know his history. Well, I do now after hearing him talk about it, and he’s done a lot of very cool stuff. I really enjoyed his interview; he has an attitude about a lot of things he’s done (and still doing) that I find simpatico. It was fun to listen to.
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I extremely nerded out and pleased and squeeified to announce that I’ll be at w00tstock! At Comic Con. On stage.

I know.

w00tstock, for those helplessly normal of you out there, is the premier nerd event in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. Hosted by singers Paul and Storm, Mythbuster and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™, and my long-standing and partially-requited nerdcrush Wil Wheaton, w00tstock is billed as "Three hours of geeks and music", which is apt enough. Everyone I know who has gone has raved about it.
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I am a big fan of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and I’m also a fan, bordering on a man crush, of the Mythbusters (Kari Byron, of course, is not a man, so my crush on her is purely — OK, mostly — platonic). Adam, of course, has been relegated to My Close Personal Friend™ status, but still.

As it happens, Craig is a big Mythbusters fan as well. When he came up with the idea of having a robot skeleton sidekick, he turned to the one man who could realize his dream: Miles Dyson. I mean, Mythbuster Grant Imahara.

Grant has been working feverishly on the auto-sidekick for weeks, and tonight it will be unveiled on the show! I’m really squeeing over this, and can’t wait to see it.

I love The Late Late Show for many reasons, but the biggest is Craig himself: he’s very funny, and extremely smart. He’s self-taught in many ways, and has had a rough life — he’ll be the first to say it was self-inflicted, but the bottom line is he’s pulled himself out of the muck and turned it all around. His humor is whip-crack fast, and he’s clearly a big fan of science, so of course I am powerless not to like him. Did you see his 5 minute rant about Copernicus (starting around the four minute mark)? I mean, seriously, Copernicus? Craig, I less-than-three you.

And as part of his Robot Skeleton Army — as he calls his Twitter followers — I am very pleased that he’s using this occasion to raise money for Lollipop Theater, a way to get movies and TV shows to sick kids. If you see the hashtag #lollipoptheater in my own tweets today, that’s why.

You can read more about Craig and Grant’s excellent adventure on NPR’s Monkey See blog (where I got the picture of Grant above) and in a great post by my friend Erin McCarthy at the Popular Mechanics site.

And check your local listings for Craig’s show tonight. It’s on CBS, and is usually at 12:35 a.m. (11:35 p.m. central) though it may be delayed by basketball. And remember: it’s a great day for America everybody.

Image credit: Grant Imahara.