Right. Before I head out to ANOTHER meeting of skeptics, here’s the run-down for the first day – Saturday 17th November.
Time frame: leave home at 11.30pm, fly across the country – arrive at 8am the next morning. Head straight to the conference with a lot of coffee in me, where the streets are a mixture of Kobe (high density housing of various vintages), Fremantle (the coastline) and Melbourne (the broad roads).
Turn up JUST as they’re about to begin and sit at the very back. Gave a wave to Barry Williams, who looks like the Santa you wished really existed. See Richard Saunders up the front and to the side, as focused and busy with setting up the filming gear as he was in Melbourne… so focused that he ran up NEXT to me, filming away, and didn’t even see me gazing bemusedly at him from a distance of ten centimeters. Guess he’s used to women checking him out or something… 
So, the conference begins! FANTASTIC opening address by Sir Guy Green, a man who was so into the proceedings that there was barely a speaker who didn’t rate a question or comment from him during the conference, which was really flattering. ‘Dogma is the insidious threat to the advancement of science – which is corrupted by ANY ideology or belief system, such as socio-political doctrines‘ – Lysenkoism as an excellent example of this. Gave the brilliant example of how the non-existence of Pseudonovibos spiralis was used as a way of holding back environmental development and how the need for Ockham’s razor, the parsimony principle, is the only way to deal with such challenges.
Garth Paltridge – with the analogy of the eddies of the cigarette plume and the averages found in climate change. Questioning the accurate use of data and encouraging questioning whether data is ‘real data’. Then morning tea, where I finally got to say hello to Richard, who kindly let me stay next to him for the remainder of the conference – where I played with the pigasus-es as I listened and passed notes as I tried (did try, whether or not I was much use is another question) to help with the filming. We occasionally raised eyebrows at each other about the sound quality, the odd feedback from the back left of the room and the annoying turning-off-of-lights that hopefully won’t influence the final DVD too much. For all of that, his professionalism in dedicatedly recording both the speakers, the introductions and general audience reaction was paramount and only reaffirmed how much energy and passion he has.
Oh, I’ll have to include the song he ended up prompting me to write about Pigasus, amongst the occasional silly notes he passed, at the end of these entries. Maybe. It was silly.
Other speakers that I enjoyed included Professor Barrie Cassileth and Professor Ray Lowenthal, who gave details on the efforts of integrative oncology to use medicine that works, which acknowledges what herbal remedies do have a benefit and feature on the site www.mskcc.org/aboutherbs. I’ll be referring people to that, for certain. Lowenthal added www.nccam.nih.gov and www.naturaldatabase.com to the list, which helps support the best in the mainstream and the tested alternative remedies that are actually evidence-based. Since there is clearly a plethora of internet drugs for sale that have either been banned or taken off the market, such sites and promoting them is important. I also enjoyed the talk by Professor Jim Allan, who gave a summation of the philosophical origins of skepticism (it was a little like a first-year Philosophy lecture and reminded me of how much I enjoy the subject.
The Saturday Convention Dinner. Had the joy of meeting Richard’s wife and taking this crew of Sydney skeptics to the dinner, where we talked over the top of each other in excitement, growled at each other for bending spoons, giggled at really, really bad jokes and topped it all of with my trying not to cry as I admitted that I really, really should thank the inspiration of my students and thus nearly knocked over the inspirational Loretta Marron in a photo shoot where I’m certain I never looked the correct way even once and probably had my eyes shut for nearly every shot. Considering last year, that might be my trend for photo shoots at skeptics’ conferences. I think I’ll have to write something for the magazine on exactly WHAT I won it for, which I have outlined in an earlier blog entry.
I remember the skyline. I remember being a total goof with Steve. I remember getting vertigo and desperately trying not to swoon at the top of a hill and not frighten everyone with my fear of the height as I was the driver of the car… I remember German puns on street names, cryptography stories, practically everyone at the table having a computer-science or military or secret service background and more Monty Python and piggy tune than a sane person could handle.
Odd, after that night, “Imperfection Perfection” makes me smile rather than roll my eyes. Well, just a bit.
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