Today is James Randi’s birthday, so happy birthday, O Amazing One!

It’s hard to believe that I’ve known that guy for over 8 years now. When I wrote my first book, my editor said we needed blurbs for the cover (the "This book cured my warts!" kind of thing), and we could use someone who was a big skeptic. Naturally I thought of Randi. I sent him a note, he agreed happily, and sent a great quote that immediately went on the back cover of the book. Shortly after that he invited me to talk at the very first Amaz!ng Meeting, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Randi is formidable, and as Carl Sagan said, "We may not always agree with Randi, but we ignore him at our peril." Sagan was a pretty smart guy.

Randi’s a pretty smart guy too, and does a lot of good for the world. Now, I’m not saying he’s 900 years old and wise, but the resemblance to Yoda can sometimes be uncanny…

Most of the time, so-called "alternative medicine" is treated very gently by television news. I don’t know if that’s because they don’t want to tick off their viewers, or the reporters don’t look into it properly, or if they believe in it themselves. But no matter the reason, it’s always refreshing to see a show really tear into something like homeopathy. That’s precisely what the Australian program "Today Tonight" did recently:

The report featured such noted skeptics as Simon Singh, Richard Saunders, and James Randi, and made it very clear that homeopathy is just very expensive nonsense. I’m glad they didn’t make the report "balanced" by giving a lot of time to promoters of homeopathy; that’s not balance any more than giving time to someone who believes in storks delivering babies in a segment about infant health care.

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Every year, the James Randi Educational Foundation picks the people or organizations who have done the most to promote antireality nonsense and get the public to believe in provably untrue silliness. This dubious honor is called the Pigasus Award after Randi’s official mascot, the flying pig, as in "XXX will be true when pigs fly" — values of XXX include homeopathy, faith healing, dowsing, etc. The awards are appropriately given out every April 1.

This year’s crop has just been announced. I was not surprised to see Richard Hoover listed there for his extremely shaky announcement of life in a meteorite. Hoover published his claims in the Journal of Cosmology, and while I was pretty clear in my posts about the extremely shaky nature of this journal, the JREF simply calls them "crackpot". Heh.

I do have a quibble with the awards this year though. Our old friend Andrew Wakefield — the defrocked, debunked, and discredited founder of the modern antivax movement — was given the "Refusal to Face Reality Award" for his ongoing (and wrong) claims that vaccines cause all sorts of health problems from gastric distress to autism. But it’s not clear he’s refusing to face reality at all. In fact, the point could be made that he may be simply cashing in on parents’ fears, in which case he is facing reality quite squarely.

But that’s merely a quibble. The important thing is that Wakefield’s ignominy is highlighted. And he’s just one of the five, so head over to the JREF site and read about the others who topped this year’s list of this year’s bottom of the barrel.

Image of flying pig is actually of a necklace pendant created by Skepchick Surly Amy, who has tons of great sciencey and skeptical accessories for sale.

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!

Homeopathy is very popular in America, Australia, and other countries. Thing is, it doesn’t work. There’s no medicine in it, there’s no science behind it, and tests have shown repeatedly and without question that there’s no medicinal effect in it beyond that of a placebo.

And yet, homeopathic sugar pills are being sold next to real medicine at pharmacies across the planet, including RiteAid, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens in the US. People take these non-drugs, spending billions — billions — of dollars on what is provably nonsense.

That’s why the 10:23 campaign started, to show that homeopathy doesn’t work. People all over the world are gathering this weekend to raise awareness of this. Homeopathy is not harmless. People are taking these pills instead of real medicine, in many cases making them sicker, and in far too many cases dying because of it.

James Randi made a short video to promote the campaign. If there is a local version in your area, go take a look and show them your support.

My friend Nicole Gugliucci (née Garvenflanargen) is a radio astronomer, and also a newly fledged skeptic. She wrote a post the other day on her One Astronomer’s Noise blog about her journey to becoming a skeptic, and it really struck home for me. Very few people, if any, are born skeptical. We’re hardwired to believe: to believe our parents, to believe our elders in general, to believe our peers. Turning all those thought processes around and starting to ask “Are you sure?” is really hard, and even harder to turn it inward. We’re all skeptical about something, but learning how to examine all your beliefs, all your thoughts, in a skeptical manner is a struggle.

Sometimes this conversion happens slowly, as it did for Nicole, or sometimes it happens in a flash of insight, but I’m guessing every skeptic has a tale to tell of turning from belief to evidence. And I’m just as sure any of us can write thousands of words about it.

So I got an idea. I want to hear these stories, but it would be impossible to read them all in their native narrative form. And skeptics are smart, right?

Right. So prove it! If you’re a skeptic, use that brain of yours to take your tale and boil it down to fewer than 140 characters.

Yes, you guessed it: I want you to tweet your skeptical conversion story.

I’ll collect the ones I like best and post them in a followup article on Friday. To make it easier for everyone to find them, use the hashtag #SkepticTale. And just to get you started, here’s my own SkepticTale:

UFOs. Telepathy. Clairvoyance. I believed them all… until my life got a little Randi. #SkepticTale

This is in reference to James Randi being a big inspiration to me when I was a teenager, and his work really fostered my own skeptical attitude. I’ve written about this in the past, but there it is in tweet form.

Can you do the same? Make it clever, make it poignant, make it whatever you want. But get it online by 9:00 p.m. Eastern time Thursday (02:00 GMT Friday) December 30 so I have a chance to go through them and post them on Friday, December 31.

What better way to end the year than to hear the stories of others who have made it here as well?

[UPDATE: The SkepticTale tweets are now online.]

Over on Randi’s site, they just posted this image of His Skepticalness and a familiar spaceship:

When I saw it, my first thought was, "I find your lack of faith… refreshing."

How would you caption this picture?