Next week, on Tuesday the 24th at 6pm in the Common Cup Coffeehouse, Sylke Boyd will be telling us all about “The Evasive Northern Lights”. I’m hoping she’ll tell us how to catch them. Come on by, it’s all open to the public.
I approve of Kim Stanley Robinson’s message: interstellar travel, and interstellar colonization, are almost certainly impossible. He breaks the obstacles down into 5 categories, physical, biological, ecological, sociological, and psychological (wait, since when is ecology not biological?) and explains how unlikely we are to overcome them. We’re part of Planet Earth, and nowhere else.
This may sound like terrible news to people weaned on Star Trek and Star Wars, but I prefer to think that closing off the fantasy alternatives helps us focus on the realistic ones.
Oh no! For some people this is a disturbing and deeply pessimistic conclusion to come to. Then when you combine that new judgment with the recently discovered problems concerning the plan to terraform and inhabit Mars (presence of perchlorates and absence of nitrogen), and we come to an entirely new realization about our species: there is no Planet B.
Earth is our only home.
Oh no again!
This conclusion, startling to some, obvious to others, has ramifications that are worth pondering. If it comes to be a generally agreed on view, it might change how we act as individuals and a civilization. These changes in behavior might turn out to be crucial for our descendants. So although this entire discussion consists of speculations about hypothetical futures, which is to say, science fictions, still they are worth thinking about, as useful orientations in our sense of our own history as a species.
I like that. It’s not a bad thing to take a sober look at what we’ve got (which is a pretty danged sweet planet) and maintain and enrich it, rather than neglecting it for a dream of building a hermetically sealed dome on a hostile planet far, far away.
Something else I like: Robinson has just written a novel about…humans colonizing a planet around Tau Ceti, titled Aurora
Right now, the usual trolls are doing their best to lie about Skepticon: they’ve seized on that one incident in which Mark Schierbecker was unfortunately given a slot to speak as an excuse to rant about how Skepticon hates autistic people (nope), how Skepticon called him a racist (nope again — that was what his own publicist said), that they were abusing an “autistic kid” (no way — he came to Skepticon fresh off interviews on Breitbart and Fox News), and how evil SJWs are. I saw people calling in biased outsiders like Milo Yiannopoulos, Thunderf00t, and Sargon of Akkad to contribute to the propaganda, and I’m sure we’ll see more noise from them soon; it was also somehow magically tied to #gamergate and the standard anti-feminists.
I thought about writing a rebuttal, but decided the best thing to do was just present the views of a few black people who have a genuine interest in this matter.
Skepticon has released a video of the interview to, I presume, shut down all the stupid claims by people who weren’t there.
It didn’t work. This is the kind of response I’m seeing on Twitter now.
@RealSkepticon Wow. Watched the video and the participants at Skepticon should be ashamed by their behavior.
— Zerilos (@Zerilos) November 15, 2015
@RealSkepticon Wow. Watched the video and the participants at Skepticon should be ashamed by their behavior.
I was there for the first half of the talk. I’ve now watched the whole video. Skepticon has absolutely nothing to apologize to Schierbecker about: they gave him and his publicist a time slot at the last minute, they allotted him 25 minutes and he went on for an hour and 15 minutes instead, and the audience was calm, made reasonable points, and asked difficult questions. And now their videographer worked extra hard to make the whole talk available on YouTube!
It seems the racists on Twitter want Skepticon to apologize for questioning a white man.
Since the World Fantasy Awards announced that they will no longer give out ugly statuettes of HP Lovecraft, the racist fantasy writers are feeling a bit miffed. Fortunately for them, Counter-Current Publishing has announced that they will be giving out a new fantasy award to white authors who honor the principles of National Socialism, named after HP.
As the Left continues to hollow out and destroy institutions, corrupt minds and culture, and denigrate white greatness in art, science, statecraft, and the culture at large, Counter-Currents and other New Right organizations will construct new institutions and honors to carry forward the greatness of European man.
White Greatness! The Greatness of European Man! Let us all bow before the amazingly confident bigotry of White Men everywhere.
Reddit and the usual clueless suspects are stirred up again over that misstep at Skepticon, so once again I’m getting inundated by messages from people who weren’t there telling me how awful I was for mistreating those poor white people at the meeting. It doesn’t matter that I am not an organizer or volunteer at this conference, just an attendee who had no influence over decisions, good and bad, made here: Skepticon has been ‘taken over’ by SJWs, led by the nefarious PZ Myers.
I wish I could take any credit at all for the excellent talks here, but I have to be honest: I have had zero influence. Sorry, conspiracy theorists, but I am not the mastermind you’re looking for. I’m also disappointed that the Illuminati keep refusing to take my calls.
But at least I have “Terry Dean, Nemmers” AKA Comma sending more letters on my behalf!
It got ugly for a while. There was a last minute addition to today’s schedule: a “panel” to discuss the recent events in Missouri, specifically the university resignations in the face of endemic racism, and the efforts by students to exclude journalists from a meeting place on campus. Good idea, I thought: we’re in Missouri, this is a major topic, it is entirely appropriate to discuss the problems in racism and in the efforts to oppose racism.
Only it turned out to be very badly handled. The event was simply an “interview” with a white photojournalist/student, Mark Schierbecker, who was the one who captured that viral video of the students and a faculty member blocking another photojournalist from taking pictures, getting questioned by Danielle Muscato.
Evil as I am, I had a wicked plan for #Skepticon. I am not speaking this year, so I was going to sit in the back of the room and roll my eyes at the weak lineup and regale everyone with tales of how it was so much better in the good old days, when they had the good taste to invite me. That’ll teach ’em.
And then, dammit, all of the talks so far have been different and awesome and interesting. It kicked off last night with Sikivu Hutchinson, who set the tone…but then, I’ve heard Sikivu speak before, so I knew what to expect. Then somebody I didn’t know, Nathanael Johnson, a journalist for Grist, talked about the science of feeding the world. It was good! I learned things! And lastly, Jamie DeWolf, another person with whom I was unfamiliar, did a spoken word and video set. He’s the great grandson of L. Ron Hubbard, used to be an evangelical Christian, and he was ferocious and eloquent.
My plan has failed. The Skepticon without me is shaping up to be the best Skepticon ever.
This morning, Muhammad Syed of the Ex-Muslims of North America is speaking, which is perfect timing. Later today we’re getting a Q&A with a videographer, Mark Shierbecker, about the Missouri protests. Relevance and matters of importance all over the place!
There’s also fun: last night was a gaming night for all of us nerds (I played some game called Slash…I will say no more), and tonight is Skeptiprom.
I am so impressed. A conference that doesn’t just line up the Usual Suspects and has a lot of new names and diverse topics works phenomenally well. Why aren’t you here? Are you coming next year?
I’m getting bits and pieces of the dreadful coordinated terror attacks in Paris while socializing at a meeting — I don’t have much to say, and the news sources I’ve checked all seem to reflect a state of chaos: at least 100 dead, at least 6 simultaneous attacks, France has closed their borders, and who knows where this is going to lead.
Talk among yourselves. I’m going to be checking the news at every break myself.
Headline news in Springfield, Missouri! There are atheists in our midst!
It’s actually a reasonable and fairly accurate article, and there are only a small number of comments yet, but so far, those are fairly calm and rational, too.
