I’ve known the skeptic, musician, and bepated bon vivant podcaster George Hrab for many years now, and it is truly an honor to call him my friend. He’s smart, wise, a natty dresser, and very, very funny. His music is brilliant, which you already know if you’ve heard it.

And hey! Here’s your chance now: Geo’s throwing a concert! He’s calling it "21812, A Gneiss Night Out", and it’ll be on February 18, 2012 (hence the name) and it will be in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

But he’s had concerts before, I hear you thinking. What’s so special about this one?

Well, for one thing, he’s recording it so he can release a complete DVD of the whole thing, which is pretty cool. And for another, he has invited a special guest, someone so amazing and awesome that no one could possibly resist buying tickets! Sadly though that person couldn’t come so he invited me instead.

That’s right! I’ll be there (w00t!) and we’ll be doing his song "Death from the Skies" (based on my book) live on stage. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, perhaps this will help. This song will change your life, or at least make you cringe for fear of it.

This concert will be epic. Seriously legendary. Tickets are on sale now. You should come. I’d love to see lots of BABloggees there!

Image credit: Terry Robinson’s Flickr Photostream

… are something you won’t be getting from me with this post.

Instead, here’s a video of George Hrab and me watching a shark balloon at Dragon*Con earlier this year.

Because why not?

Perhaps you’ve seen the video of George Hrab and me performing his song "Death from the Skies". And perhaps you’ve seen my own show, "Bad Universe".

Now, thanks to Dana Peters, you can see them together:

After all, these are the real ways the world will end.

When I was at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) in April, my epidermically bepated pal George Hrab and I performed an acoustic version of his song "Death from the Skies", based on my book. We actually did it twice; once at a bar where Geo was playing with his trio, and again at the conference to close the whole thing out.

People seemed to like it. Geo certainly did, so much so that he wanted a nicer version to release. He therefore did such a thing and made it available to you, the science-loving throng out in the vast BA sphere of influence. He included the song in Episode 212 of his Geologic Podcast, and the skeptilicious^TM MsInformation put it into a feed of its own for you to download and keep in your digital music storage device.

I love both the original version of the song with its funky beat, but I also love this new version. The tongue-in-cheek lazy Sunday feeling of the soothing music coupled with me talking about the statistics of getting wiped out by a gamma-ray burst appeals to my sense of irony. Hope it does yours, too!

And go buy his album. It’s great.

Image credit: Terry Robinson’s Flickr Photostream

Last weekend I was in NYC attending the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, aka NECSS. It was a lot of fun, as I kinda figured it would be. Skeptic conferences usually are! And of course it was a chance to catch up with a lot of old friends.

Attendees are writing their opinions of the meeting all over the place (like here, here, and here for starters). I’ll spare you the recap, which would boil down to how awesome my talk was, and cut to the chase which is to thank Michael Feldman from the New York City Skeptics, and all the folks from the New England Skeptical Society for inviting me and throwing such a fab conference.

I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t include this little bit of funnery. Skeptical singer songwriter and BA friend George Hrab was at NECSS. On Geo’s last album, "Trebuchet", he wrote a tune called "Death from the Skies" — based on the brilliant book of the same name. He plays the funky beat, and I read statistics of getting killed by various astronomical events. We performed this song live both at Paddy Reilly’s, a bar where Geo had a gig, and to close out the ceremonies.

Here’s the recording of the latter, which is pretty laid back considering how many octillions of Joules of energy I’m talking about:

And what the heck, here we are at the somewhat more rambunctious bar the night before:

See? If you go to skeptic meetings you can experience stuff like this live. It’s way too much fun.

There are photos of NECSS popping up all over the place (search Flickr), including for example a nice set by Bruce Press. I also like this shot of Geo and me taken by Brian Engler. Apparently I had just stubbed my toe.

NECSS really is a terrific event. I hope to see you all there next year!

The critical thinking meeting season is about to kick off, and the first big one in the US is NECSS: The Northeast Conference for Science and Skepticism. It’s from April 9 – 10 in New York City, and has a pretty cool list of speakers. I’m honored to be giving the keynote address, and there are lots of fun extracurricular activities planned as well.

Still not convinced? Then listen to the smooth basso of my pal George Hrab in this promo he put together for NECSS. He’ll be there too, and I bet we can convince him to do a song or two from his latest album.

Registration is now open, and there’s an event page on Facebook if you’re into that sort of thing too.

UPDATE: George just let the cat out of the bag on this, too: we’ll be doing a live performance of his song "Death from the Skies!" Saturday night at the reception. Here’s a taste of what you’ll get:

My friend, Daniel Loxton, is a skeptic, a writer, and a deep thinker. He has a habit of taking contentious issues and wrestling with them, then writing them out in enough detail that an interesting discussion can ensue. We’ve tussled over one or two topics before, but in general I find myself agreeing with his stance on things.

He’s written a good two-piece article on skepticism. They were inspired by an article written by a believer who is a friend of the skeptic musician George Hrab (Geo’s a friend of mine too). This believer attended a meeting George was at, and wrote a lengthy piece about how he saw the skeptic community. The author said he finds he loves his faith, and while he sees some merit in skepticism, he doesn’t think he’ll ever become a skeptic. He may be right… but I wonder. While some people dismissed his article as being just another mushy-headed piece on faith (some people on Twitter said as much), I actually found his thinking to be heartening. He is just the kind of person who might actually turn to critical thinking given the chance. At the very least, he’s not prejudiced against skeptics, thinking we’re all a bunch of curmudgeonly nay-sayers. That’s a necessary first step.
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