Last Sunday I came home from attending The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 in Las Vegas. I have been wanting to go to the JREF's annual skeptics convention for many years and can hardly believe that I actually got the chance to go. I spent most of the time awestruck and tongue-tied. The whole thing still seems surreal. I met so many fabulous like-minded people. The over 900 person attendance was the highest ever and it has been touted at the best TAM ever.
I think the conference was a catalyst for this blog. I just needed an outlet for my skeptical thoughts. Somewhere where I wouldn't be offending anyone and being called a cynic and bubble burster. Maybe I still am but I doubt many people will be reading this.
The speakers at TAM were fantastic and I feel that I learned a lot. The keynote speaker was an astrophysicist. How cool is that? So many intelligent, brilliant people can't be wrong. I was in awe of how they continue to try to teach critical thinking to the masses even though the odds are so very against them. Adam Savage was there, I love him to death and he is a special kind of crazy. His brain moves faster then his mouth and even though he spent 45 minutes talking about making himself a replica of the Maltese Falcon, I enjoyed every minute of it.
Penn & Teller made an appearance but instead of having something to talk about, they just did a Q&A session. I think I would rather a presentation then listening to Penn's bizarre political rants, but it was cool to get my picture with them nonetheless.
I met many of the forum members that I sort of interact with through the JREF forum. I'm generally a pretty shy, self conscious person so I spent most of the time just hanging out with various groups of people and just listening in on the conversations. So many, many folks much, much smarter than I. I'm very glad that I got to meet them all and put faces to names as I read their posts. Hopefully next year I can interact on a more personal level having met them once already.
There were too many highlights to list but I can tell you that I won't be missing next year if I can help it.
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