I like to say three of the men I admire most have long white beards: Charles Darwin, Santa Claus, and James \u201cThe Amazing\u201d Randi.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll never be able to visit with Charles Darwin, since he\u2019s dead, or Santa Claus, since his existence is unproved (my childhood investigations using milk and cookies yielded inconclusive results, and probably suffered from poorly designed protocols). But every year I get to spend some time with Randi, the brightest light in organized skepticism for decades.<\/p>\n
This time next week, I\u2019ll be packing my bags for my fourth trip to the South Point casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, for The Amazing Meeting<\/a>, put on by its namesake through his James Randi Educational Foundation<\/a>. It\u2019s the biggest annual event (that I know of) in organized skepticism. Guests this year include Bill Nye, Eugenie Scott, Donald Prothero, and many other scientists, writers, and investigators in the world of science and skeptical thought. For four days attendees will rub elbows and listen to talks and panels examining the world from a skeptical perspective. Each TAM has a theme, and this year\u2019s is \u201cSkepticism and the Brain.\u201d For people who have attended Dragon Con in Atlanta, TAM may be thought of as Dragon Con\u2019s Skeptic Track, if the Skeptic Track were its own convention, and held in a much larger room. Many of the same speakers come to both events, in fact; Evan Bernstein and the Novellas from Skeptics Guide to the Universe<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller hosts an annual Bacon and Doughnuts party (officially unaffiliated with TAM, but its ballroom is right across the hall from TAM\u2019s, so, you know). In addition to 1,200 Krispy Kremes and a correspondingly large amount of Hormel bacon, it features a performance by Penn\u2019s rock band.<\/span><\/p>\n Randi\u2019s always there himself, and always very involved. He speaks from the stage, he strolls the halls, he meets and hugs and talks with everyone he encounters. If I\u2019m ever an 80+ year old cancer survivor, I hope I can still be so active and engaged. He\u2019s a marvel to behold.<\/p>\n Writing about skepticism can be a lonely business. I guess that\u2019s true of any writing; forget I wrote that. Being<\/em>\u00a0a skeptic can be lonely, since we extol critical thinking in a world that seems determined to reject it wholesale. Everywhere I look I see credulous, irrational acceptance of fringe science, alternative medicine, paranormal phenomena, supernatural occurrences, and Republicans.<\/p>\n Las Vegas itself is a city founded on a disbelief in the laws that govern the universe. The odds are stacked in the house\u2019s favor. Over time, all gamblers who come to casinos will lose money. Everyone knows this, and yet still they come. They think they\u2019ll win because they\u2019re lucky, or because they have a \u201csystem,\u201d or because they think they\u2019ve figured out how to defeat a particular game\u2019s rules or machine\u2019s algorithms.<\/p>\n They\u2019re wrong, of course. Gambling isn\u2019t a skeptic\u2019s hobby or vice\u2014not a good skeptic\u2019s anyway. We know better. As I said, this is my fourth TAM, and I have yet to gamble even a cent at the South Point. I know better.<\/p>\n The irony in hosting a skeptics\u2019 conference in a gambling Mecca isn\u2019t lost on me. One year, during his keynote, Randi observed wryly, \u201cthis building wasn\u2019t paid for by the winners.\u201d<\/p>\n Wherever it\u2019s held, and whatever presentations are offered, the main appeal of TAM, for me, is simply having a few days a year when I\u2019m surrounded by people who mostly share my understanding of the universe and how it works. That\u2019s very refreshing, and it helps to sustain me through the rest of the year.<\/p>\n I hope to blog daily while I\u2019m at TAM. That\u2019s the plan, anyway; it didn\u2019t go off so well last year. I will at least be tweeting often to<\/p>\n @RedVelvetCakes<\/p>\n Give me a follow, won\u2019t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I like to say three of the men I admire most have long white beards: Charles Darwin, Santa Claus, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,31,9,32,25,15,10,11,27,30,26,16],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conspiracies","category-conspiracists","category-consumer-products","category-cosmology","category-cryptozoology","category-laws","category-media","category-natural-selection","category-objects-from-space","category-quacks","category-risk-management","category-scams","tag-tam-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}