Update on things

Haven't posted for a couple of weeks so its probably time. I went to the Atheist Alliance International conference in Burbank, CA. First of all I had a lot of fun. I got to meet and in some cases talk to several people that I admire including Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, PZ Myers, Brian Dalton and some of the others from the cast of Mr. Deity just to name the top ones. Also got to see William B. Davis who was the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files. He gave an interesting talk about his non belief as well as some stuff from the X-Files, how he got the job and his refutation (though this wasn't as long as I though it would be) of Dawkins' criticism of the X-Files at promoting pseudoscience. Bill Maher also gave a decent talk, but more on him later.

Some of the other good speakers were Lawrence Krauss who gave a talk about how we know certain things about the universe (such as that its flat as far as its geometry (vs a sphere or an open universe), Mr. Deity doing some episodes live with the cast as well as his Mormon upbrinings, Carolyn Porco who does research about Saturn (and consulted for the movie Contact, and is also at least to a small extent the basis on Jodie Fosters character), as well as the big names I mentioned above. All the talks were good and I would like to go again. Sadly next year they are doing it in Montreal and the only reason I semi rationlized going this year was the fact that travel expenses were pretty low on account of not having to fly anywhere. Even beyond that issue it still cost me about a total of $700, as did The Amazing Meeting earlier this year, so I have already spent enough money on conferences for a while.

My only criticism is the food wasn't all that great (they provided the food through most of Saturday). On a side note, during dinner I was sitting next to a girl who was nice and friendly. She was also the only one at the table that ordered the vegan thing (you only got three choices at dinner; fish, chicken or some vegan dish). Now, I know there are generally two types of vegans. Ones who decide to be vegan for health reasons (though in general we are omnivores so I'm not convinced that pure veganism is healthy, but thats just me) and ones for ethical reasons. Only reason I bring this up is she was eating the food and apparently there was some cheese in it (which according to the original list of food, was not supposed to have cheese). Now whether it did or not (I'm honestly not sure how she could really tell as it was very little cheese if there was any) so she flipped out and decided to inform one of the waiters of this issue. She also didn't eat any of the bread as she was unsure if it had any egg product in it. She then flagged down another waiter and gave her food back asking for a vegan dish. So they gave her from the restaurant there spaghetti (which on a personal note pissed me off to a certain extent as I would have much rather taken that than the chicken I had). She then ate one bite and stopped (I'm not sure why). Still, a waste of time and effort and I'm not quite sure why.

Ill make a separate post about Maher and some other issues I had with the conference.