The second day of TAM 5, was the first day of speakers. It was quite a day.

Hal Bidlack opened the day, as usual. He informed us that people from all over the world were attending. A group of people from both New Zealand and Australia made it here. One gentleman spent three days flying from Kabul, Afghanistan just to be here.. As usual, Bidlack was funny and very comfortable in front of the crowd. He is now retired from the Air Force after twenty five years, and, as he put it, is now able to speak candidly about President Bush. Much laughter from the crown ensued.

James Randi made an unscheduled appearance next. The show is named after him, so he can pretty much do what he wants, and I mean that in the most respectful way. He updated the crowd on his health issues for the past year. He had a double bypass soon after TAM4, and spent much time recovering. There are two months of his life that he basically has no recollection of. He thanked everyone for their kind words and support over the year he was recovering.

Daniel Dennett, who was a speaker at TAM 4, also suffered some health problems this year and is still recovering. Randi read a quote from Dennet, where Dennett, thanks, not God, but goodness. “Goodness” is the help and support he received from doctors and well wishers. One need not thank god, for all the help people here on Earth gave.

Randi’s famous Million Dollar challenge is undergoing some revisions this year. The vast number of applications from people unable to effectively articulate what they can do, is swamping JREF resources. So to fix this, the Challenge is being revised. Also, the JREF would like the challengers to be more high profile.

In the future, applicants to the challenge must meet two requirements: 1) They must have a substantial media profile 2) They must have their claim endorsed by a qualified third party. In addition, the JREF will be issuing formal challenges to Uri Gellar, Sylvia Browne, John Edward, and James Von Praagh. There will be subsequent press releases to inform the public about the progress. Also, the JREF will be pursuing legal action against those who defraud the public. Expect class action suits.

Michael Schermer was up next, and his walk was on “Evolution Economics” and why it is okay to be a libertarian (small ‘l’), just like it’s okay to be an atheist. It was a very good talk, and I couldn’t keep very good notes, because I was so interested in the material. Schermer puts forth the idea that evolution and economics are analogous systems, both derived from the idea of complex adaptive systems. His new book on this subject should be very interesting.

I know Eugenie Scott from the Point of Inquiry podcast. I thought she was one of the best guests on that long time running podcast. Her talk was focused on the media, and how it reports stories She broke it down into the following categories: It’s gonna kill you, It’s gonna cure you, mad scientist story, bad scientist, anything having to do with religion or abortion. She focused somewhat on evolution and the recent story about a creationist book in the book stores of the Grand Canyon. She also gave a quick background presentation of creationism and intelligent design. One problem with the media, as she sees it, is that the media focuses on narratives and conflicts, and often times injects a controversy where none really exists. Scott was very interesting, and it was a good presentation.

James Randi came back on to tell us that he will be on Anderson Cooper tonight, and that Nick Gillespie and Ron Bailey from Reason magazine have been rescheduled until tomorrow.

I’ll continue in my next post tomorrow.

For the third time, I attended Jame Randi’s Amaz!ng Meeting. I was at the very first TAM in 2003, but missed TAM 2 and 3. Last year, as with this year, I attended with my brother Josh who generously donated his timeshare points to the cause.

We both flew into Vegas around the same time, both arriving a few minutes late. We rushed to the Riviera, where the conference was being held, and registered. I also picked up tickets for the Banachek show that night. We didn’t have time to stay for the opening ceremonies, but came back later for the Banacheck show.

My brother was not familiar with Banachek, and my only knowledge of him came from the Criss Angel show “Mindfreak” as well as reading about him and the Project Alpha hoax. It was an amazing show. Knowing that he possesses no psychic abilities whatsoever, makes the whole show more amazing. His first trick was to pick four random people from the audience, tell them to pick a card, and then guess what their card was. He guessed four out of four. The whole show was filled with amazing mentalism tricks that I have no idea how he accomplished. At some points, I thought that the audience members just had to be in on it, it was so well done. It was one of the most entertaining shows I’ve ever seen. A great way to start off the TAM experience.

I’m back from The Amaz!ng Meeting 5, but haven’t had time to write about it. I have lots of notes about it. For now, you will have to view my pictures (which are not an example of competent photography) in a photoset my wife Kelly did on flickr. A big update coming soon though.

Well, while the chances of me voting for John McCain were already in the slim range, this latest story makes it zero chance:

McCain Wants ‘Dialogue With Dr. Dobson

“Sen. John McCain said Tuesday he hopes to patch things up with conservative Christian leader James Dobson, who recently said he wouldn’t support the Republican’s presidential bid under any circumstances…”

So, yeah, uh, fuck you John.

Skeptico sums it quite nicely here:

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2007/01/hornbeck_browne.html

It hurts my brain to think that people can still take her seriously. She’s a piece of garbage.

Bleh…I’m too angry to type any more.

Do the world a favor, Sylvia, just go away.

My wife and I borrowed this movie from the library this past weekend, and after doing a check on RottenTomatoes, I was pretty psyched about it. Not many horror movies get such good ratings. It scored 84% on RT.

So we watched it last night, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was very well made, all the actresses were quite believeable, and I definitely got the feeling of claustrophobia just watching this move. X-treme sports junky I am not.

If you want to watch a genuinely suspenseful film, The Descent is a good choice. It is easily one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.

This morning, while looking at a stack of Dawkins and Gould books (a wonderful gift from my wife Kelly), I thought of the question I’ve been asked so many times: Why am I an atheist?. My pithy answer is usually “Because there is no God, duh!” which naturally makes people ask me “How do you know there is no God?”. I don’t have as pithy an answer for that, because really, there is reason for me to prove there is no God. It’s up to the religious to prove there is a God. We all know you don’t prove negatives.

However, that is never a satisfactory answer to anyone questioning my lack of faith. So after some thought I’ve concluded that the best response is simply this: Every god worshiped by human beings is a god of a religion borne out of ignorance of the natural world. With ignorance as the basis for religion, the whole “is there a god question” becomes a silly one. For if you are of a people unable to explain how thunder makes a sound, what gives you an infection, or where the Earth is in the Milky way, I see no reason to accept your “answer” of how the universe was created. You’re just not qualified.

My Christmas celebration with my wife was delayed a week this year due to the unfortunate passing of my grandmother on December 20th of 2006. Being that we’re atheists, the day itself doesn’t have any special meaning other than tradition. So, we ended up celebrating on December 31st.

The favorite gift I gave my wife this year, was this multi-purpose media box that I put together with some parts I had laying around and a couple new things I bought.

First, here are the basic specs:

1 Athlon 1800
1 GB memory
45 G hard drive
NVidia 6600 video card with S-Video out/512 MB
1 wireless Nic
1 Abit MicroATX motherboard

The case I found was made by Shuttle:

http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SN27P2.asp

Mind you I didn’t get the “barebones” package. I acquired just the case. The next key part was how to control the computer from the couch. I looked a couple basic remotes, but I thought that would end up being limiting. Sure I could use some software to build an “On-Screen Display” menu, but I think that would have limited the usefulness of the box. So I ended up settling on something I found on Ebay:

http://www.gyration.com/en-US/ProductDetail.html?modelnum=GC1105CKM&accshow=3

The mouse control is pretty good, though I could see how my arm might get tired after a while. It’s sensitive enough though, that you can just use a little wrist action to move the mouse around. The keyboard comes in handy when you need to do something quick that can’t be mapped to the mouse, such as mute the sound. The wireless receiver works well hidden in the back of the box.

The next step was installing software. I included emulators for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and general arcade games. I installed XaMp Studio so Kelly can listen to the online XM Radio feeds from the living room. The last thing I installed was Creative Media Source and mapped to Kelly’s mp3 drive, so she can listen to all her music from the living room as well. All via a wireless mouse remote and a wireless net connection.

The box hooked into my TV and stereo system smooth with RCA and S-Video cables. There is some initial noise upon bootup, but the machine runs as quiet as my Dish Network PVR box. Throw in some 10 foot USB extension cables, and you never have to leave the couch (once you power it on). Overall I’m really happy how it came out. I hope we get some real use out of it.