FtB Party!

One of the best of the godless skeptic conventions is Skepticon (also one of the cheapest, at a registration price of $0), and it turns out that a huge number of FtB bloggers will be there: me, Aron, Jen, Stephanie, Brianne, Matt, Richard, traitorous ex-FtBer JT, etc. So Ed Brayton has announced that there will be an official FreethoughtBlogs party on Saturday, 10 November, in the Farmers Gastropub, a most excellent venue.

Everyone is invited, even JT (although he will be expected to grovel and beg admission). I should warn you, though, that Skepticon has a sensibility to it: it’s marvelously synthetic, bringing together hard-nosed skepticism, fiercely open atheism, and humanist optimism in one great celebratory mish-mash. Assholes don’t fit in very well, so if you’re one of those, you might have to miss our big party.

Three bad arguments

I just got back from the Texas Freethought Conference, which was excellent — lots of good speakers, great conversations, and a particularly dense day of brain fodder. In Texas! Maybe stereotypes aren’t universally true.

But I’m an atheist, and you know what that means: I’ve got to carp about my grievances. In the vast assortment of good talks, there were three bad arguments that peeved me, so I’m going to address those right here.

Oops, they got a little long and were so different from one another that I broke them into three separate posts.

Bad argument #1: The Mormon exception

Bad argument #2: No more Poes

Bad argument #3: Science says what?

Again, let me emphasize that the conference was great, but I’m just one of those obnoxious people who has to pick at the exceptions.

A terrible, terrible confession

I’m flying off to the Texas Freethought Convention in Austin tomorrow night. I see on the schedule that I’m delivering the Saturday night keynote, and that I’m in the company of Richard Dawkins and Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty and Jessica Ahlquist.

My personal schedule lately has been raging chaos with obligations piled on top of responsibilities teetering on a foundation of work, and…

and…

Jeez, I haven’t even had a moment to think about what I’m going to say! In two days I have to give an hour talk that will make it worthwhile to hang about in an auditorium rather than going drinking. I am a bad, bad person.

But I’m really good at throwing a talk together on short notice. So I thought that what I would do is put it out to the Pharyngula commentariat: if you were in Austin on a Saturday night, and you had to listen to me talk, what would you want me to talk about? What subjects in freethought and/or science get you wound up, and would have you either pumping your fist or throwing beer bottles at the speaker (either extreme works)?

Leave suggestions. I’ll make up my mind so I can get the talk assembled on the plane.

Travel madness continues!

Life? What life? I’m too busy flitting about. Last week it was Duluth and a long stint in Washington DC; today I’m in Murray, Kentucky; next week I’ll be in Austin, Texas, and the week after that, in Nashville for CSICon. And then I get a little break. After that, though, I wanted to plug Eschaton 2012, because it’ll be your last chance to see me before the end of the world.

Oh, wait. I’ve just been informed by the conference organizers that the world probably isn’t ending, so I guess you don’t have to go.

THE WORLD IS PROBABLY NOT ENDING.
NOW STOP WORRYING, AND CELEBRATE REASON!

Come to Ottawa for a weekend gathering of scientists, philosophers, authors, academics, skeptics, rationalists, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers, where you can see presentations and join discussions on science, skepticism, gender issues, theocracy vs secularism, godless ethics, parenting beyond belief. Featured speakers include blogger PZ Myers, author Ophelia Benson, philosopher Chris DiCarlo, science education activist Eugenie Scott, and many others. You can even participate in a live recording of Canada’s skeptical podcast, “The Reality Check” (trcpodcast.com).

Saturday evening we present our gala “Night at the Musuem” (held at the Canadian Museum of Nature), which includes a reception, talk by PZ Myers, and late night special events, with exclusive access to the Fossil Gallery and Earth Gallery.

The price of $275 ($225 for CFI members) includes access to the Friday night plenary session, a choice of 2 daytime tracks on Saturday and Sunday, lunches and snacks, plus the Saturday evening gala. (A limited number of volunteer discounts are available – email [email protected] for more information.)

November 30-December 2
Ottawa, Canada

website: eschaton2012.ca
twitter: @eschaton2012
facebook: facebook.com/Eschaton2012

Oh my gosh, I’m part of a gala! I’m going to be doing a science talk on chance and coalescence theory and the failures of prominent creationists to grasp essential concepts, which sounds a bit somber for a gala. Maybe it will help if I dress all in motley?

Mark your calendars, desert folks

The California Desert office of the National Parks Conservation Association is sponsoring a series of free talks on desert environmental issues, especially as they relate to climate change, and they’ve asked me to present one this month. Here’s the description from the NPCA’s email alert:

Tuesday, September 25, 6 p.m.

In the Old Growth Desert
Join environmental journalist and natural history writer Chris Clarke on a journey through the California Desert’s old growth! In this presentation, Clarke weaves striking photography and decades of scientific research to convey a stunning fact: millennia-old plants are all around us in the desert, lining freeways and reigning over vacant lots.

The venue will be the Palm Springs Public Library, 300 South Sunrise Way off Baristo, Palm Springs, California. Come on by and say hello.

A freethought conference in Dallas

On 15 September, you could attend the Feminine Faces of Freethought Conference in Dallas for only $20. Check it out!

Women of Reason–Dallas presents Feminine Faces of Freethought, a conference featuring women speaking about topics that affect the freethought community as a whole.

Join us for a day of talks by

Panels include

  • Secular Parenting,
  • Diversity in the Freethought Movement,
  • and What Atheist Women Really Want.

We welcome people of all genders.

Childcare will be provided. Please reserve childcare while purchasing your tickets.

Maybe it will work!

This sounds so familiar. You notice a bias in the speakers at a meeting (an obvious bias that everyone notices), and so you start suggesting to conference organizers that maybe it would be a good thing to do a little more outreach, get a little more diversity. I was doing that to atheist meetings 5 or 6 years ago, or perhaps longer…it’s been a longstanding issue. So now in 2012:

So here is a plea. Next time you are involved in organizing a meeting – make some effort to have a strong representation of diversity of speakers and participants. For example, if you invite lots of women for example and all say no – try to figure out why and see if you can fix the issue. Offer travel fellowships for students. Offer child care or child activity options (even if you cannot pay for it – at least make it easy for people). Make sure to advertise/promote the meeting to groups/institutions with a high representation of underrepresented groups. Don’t give up if your first efforts don’t work. Sometimes it can be difficult to make sure diversity levels are high. But keep trying … it will help make the conference better and also will help the field in general …

That’s Jonathan Eisen, talking about genomics meetings. I hope it works out for him. I can say that atheist meetings have gotten much, much better at representing more women (the race issue, not so much, but it is slowly improving there, even).

The next stage after that success, however, is pushback from the white men who had previously been the sole kinds of faces on the stage. They can’t quite start screaming at the women to get off the stage — that degree of bigotry is a little too naked, usually — but they will aim their fury at the people who brought them to the sorry state of having women equally represented with men.

The only answer to that, of course, is to keep on fighting.

Are you going to Skepticon?

All the cool kids are going to Skepticon, so if you’re not, you’re not cool. If you’re waffling, the organizers are having an IAmA on Reddit right now, for a few hours. Go pester them with questions, requests, and demands.

They’ve already answered a question about whether they’re wearing pants with photographic evidence. I think it’s safe to say you really can ask them anything.