Okay… so… as it turns out the recording by my friend Julia Rose (thank you!!!) did turn out okay. It’s definitely not very professional or fancy, as it was recorded on a phone, and this is my first ever public speaking engagement on skepticism stuff so I was rather nervous, and I’m probably going to regret letting you all see/hear the real life me (hidden behind low quality video as I am), but… to be honest, I procrastinated again, and don’t have anything better to put up this afternoon anyway. 😛
Enjoy!
Oh, and since it’s sort of obscured in the darkness but was the only thing salvaging my manic, over-gestural demeanor, here’s a picture of the incredibly cute dress I was wearing:
Yes that is an incredibly cute dress.
Decent video quality but the audio is a bit too soft.
Damn interesting talk though, guess I’ll just have to listen to it a few dozen times.
Oh and I covet your bone structure, bloby me wants yes we do precious.
To balance that bit of creepiness I need to say how much I love and value your blog here.
I wanted to post this video on the SGU boards. Is that OK or should I just link here? Or should I let them stew in their own juices?
Please don’t.
I can understand that. For future reference, can I SGU link
a) to the blog in general
b) to posts that talk about the skeptic community and its ups and downs
c) to specific posts that do not have your face
and what about from other sites, like Steve Jackson Games? Shall I remove the link which I put up to Transition the Boardgame over there?
I’d just rather SGU weren’t directly given things that work particularly well as ammunition to insult me, like videos / pictures. Other links and stuff are fine.
Was there a Q&A session after your presentation and/or did a lot of thoughtful discussion come out of this talk? Any highlights to share in terms of response to the content?
That is, in fact, a hella cute dress. I’ll watch the video when I’m not at work!
I hope your first public talk on skepticism went well. I also hope that it was the first of many.
I’ll listen more to the speech and come with an analysis of it.
That key around your neck… is that to the Vault?
Oh! I didn’t see the necklace. I thought it was the zipper. (Which I thought was pretty cool on a metaphor level)
W-what? The Vault? What are you talking about? The vault doesn’t use antique locks to secure it…
Quick! Change the locks before they locate the vault! *panic*
Oh, cute dress. May I ask where you got it?
Unrelated to your nice video, may I call your attention to a Kindle ebook I just noticed is free today (probably tomorrow too):
http://www.amazon.com/Gypsy-Moon-ebook/dp/B005KL7002
Gypsy Moon by Pamela Anders
It’s reached #344 Free in the Kindle Store now! That means thousands of people have downloaded it. And the author’s website doesn’t mention the current free promotion, but does mention another one that happened in early January that I hadn’t seen at the time; hopefully it was similarly successful then too.
Just downloaded Gypsy Moon from the UK Amazon store. Thanks. I’ll look forward to reading it.
I am 100% not qualified to comment on dresses. But it is very nice, for what it is worth.
I am very excited to watch your speech. Seems like watching speeches from FtB peeps is like 95% of my time (not really, but there’s some good ones out there!)
Thanks for the video. It’s always nice to put a voice to the person.
I liked what I could hear of the talk. Audio quality+speaker quality led to missing some bits of it. And I will add my voice to the chorus about stupendous cuteness of the dress.
Sorry but I can’t make out enough of the audio on the video to comment (though, from what I could hear, your presentation was spot on)
I will say that dress is super cute.
Thanks for sharing your talk with us! You definitely have an engaging stage presence that comes across even in such a noisy environment as a pub. I hope you get the chance to participate in more and more speaking engagements at atheist and skeptic events in the near future. 😀
And, yes, the outfit is cho kawaii.
I’m a tour guide, and I talk to small groups a lot.
That was a good talk. For a first public talk, it was DAMN good. You had something intelligent to say, and you said it clearly. I thought the gestures were a little OTT to begin with, but only a little, and they calmed down once you got going and felt a little more comfortable. Besides, large gestures are much better than my own habit of gabbling whenever I get nervous.
Please do more, and please post the videos.
My girlfriend has a similar dress, as a matter of fact. Very cute indeed.
Very good talk, I think. Very clear, and crisp, and concise. I have a bit of a different thought on the overall premise..I don’t think the atheist/skeptic communities have a unique sexism problem, I think that the reactions to the sexism problems that exist within society and cross into this particular domain are worse due to existing defensiveness among atheists/skeptics regarding moral blame and worth, and really hamstring our ability to deal with it.
I don’t think the strain regarding humanities studies/sociology is so much about being rational/non-rational, I think it’s more about being scientific/non-scientific. Not that I mean that as a slur against the humanities..exactly the opposite. I actually present Economics as a discipline that tries to be a science, but because the basic assumptions and the systems that it tries to study are so complex and so ever-changing, and it is things that are basically impossible to test and replicate, that to consider that it follows the “scientific method”, quite frankly is a joke.
That sociology by and large I think embraces the complexity that it’s dealing with makes it more useful.
I know you already gave us your outline, but would you be willing to post a transcript? I often rely partly on lip-reading or subtitles to hear properly, unless the audio is unusually clear (you spoke clearly, it’s just the phone recording). It sounds like you said some different things than in your outline, or perhaps were just more specific. Thanks!
Awesome video, you did an amazing job at public speaking! You had an intelligent idea, which you enunciated clearly and didn’t prevaricate about or go off on a tangent during. The hand motions at the beginning were slightly distracting (though much better than most nervous displays). The audio left something to be desired as to both volume and clarity, but it was a cell phone video, not much you can do. Love the dress too, btw.
Right now I’m my special kind of productive bored, and I want to put that to use writing a transcript for the video! I just need to know if that’s fine with everyone involved, and what to do with it when it’s done.
Yeah, if you want to do, go ahead. No worries. Just run it by me when you’re done so I can check for any transcription errors or anything that may have been misheard. I’ll think about what to do with it, I guess… it’s not all that different from the outline though, so probably not worth making a whole new post for. Maybe I’ll just attach it to next week’s “Lazy Sunday” post?
Actually, it’s fairly dissimilar to the outline. You cover the same general points, but in a different manner. I sent my transcript to your gmail address.
Have you seen her dressed in blue?
See the sky in front of you
And her face is like a sail
Speck of white so fair and pale
Have you seen a lady fairer?
She comes in colors ev’rywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
everywhere
She comes in colors