jewelisms

jewel June 24th, 2008

My husband and I just got back from Vegas where we attended our very first TAM! Wow. We’re both still processing all of it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what to write. Man o man, it was just amazing.

We got into Vegas on Wednesday night and got checked in and stuff and were even able to get a semi good night’s sleep. We were both awake at 5am because we were still on east coast time and that was great for us because we got to have a leisurely breakfast and wander around a bit and get our bearings.

I’m going to try to get to the real highlights of TAM 6. This is going to be hard, there were so many, but ok, here it goes, in no particular order:

• James Randi - Lets face it, he is the reason that TAM was started and continues. He really is Amaz!ng. He is one of the nicest, most gracious humans I have ever met.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson - He rocks. Plain and simple. His talk was called ‘Brain Droppings’ and he did talk about a wide variety of things. He is an amazing speaker. He went way over time, which no one minded, in fact we all cheered him on to keep going. I’m sure I am not the only one that would have loved to see him keep going all day long.
• PZ Myers - I knew his talk would be good, because I read his blog. When Hal was introducing him, he said that PZ’s blog was the greatest science blog on the internet (or something like that), which, of course Phil Plait couldn’t pass up, so he gets up and gives Hal some money, so Hal revises his intro saying PZ has a pretty good science blog…Phil gives more money and Hal then revises “apparently, he has a blog”. It was LOL funny. PZ didn’t talk about squid. Hard to believe, I know. He talked about bats. And threw a few jabs toward Phil, who gave it right back the next day during his talk.
• Phil Plait - Phil is the reason I became interested in the skeptic movement, if you will. I read his blog throughout every day and I rather like astronomy, so I knew I would love his talk. He talked about all the weird stuff we find in our solar system that we don’t know much about. The universe is a crazy, weird place. There is so much we don’t know yet and so much to learn. So why, when we have all this real weird stuff going on that we can learn about and maybe even figure out, do people insist in making stuff up? As it turns out, humans are a kind of crazy breed, too. Also, Phil gave it right back to PZ in spades. Heh.
• Adam Savage - I’m hoping I managed to contain the fan girl moment I was having in my head when I met him. He is a super nice guy, by the way, and really took time out to make sure to interact with as many attendees as possible. I admire him even more than I already did. He talked about his obsessions with making the perfect Maltese Falcon replica and it sounded like he was having a lot of fun with it. Then, of course, he showed a video of gratuitous explosions (w00t!). Also he brought 1000 of the ping pong balls that they used to lift a sunken boat on the show. Oh, and he signed a good many of those balls. He went out of his way to sign them for as many people as possible that wanted them. He rocks. And, at the special dinner on Saturday night, we got to sit with Adam! He is so much fun.
• Banacheck - He ran a workshop on Thursday about memory, which was phenomenal. I can still remember that grocery list.
• Dr. Art Benjamin - Showed us all how to do complex math calculations in our heads. This one is going to take some practice, for sure.
• Richard Wiseman - Showed us all how to bend spoons. In fact, he brought with him 800 spoons so that he could film everyone in the audience doing the spoon bending trick at once. Look for it on YouTube soon.
• The Skeptologists - We got to see the pilot episode, which rocked! I really hope a network picks up this show. I want to see more.

I know that there is so much that I didn’t put in that list that should probably be there. Like I said, there was so much and it was all pretty damn wonderful. Also, we met many attendees that we really liked. Shout outs to Arjen and also the foxhole atheist Geoff that was at our dinner table on Saturday. We met many wonderful people and I do have to admit, it was pretty neat being in the same room as 900 other skeptics. Can’t wait for TAM 7 (or maybe even 6.5!).

TAM6 Gallery June 2008

edited: I had spelled Geoff’s name “Jeff”, so I wanted to correct the spelling

• education , science , skepticism , travel
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