As you’ve probably heard, Skepticon is looking for donations to fund this year’s conference. They’re just hoping you’ll plunk a few dollars into their coffers, and they’ll be happy. I don’t know about these Deep-Fried Freethinkers, though. They’re doing something dangerous.

They’re giving out chocolate dinosaurs in return for donations.

Becoming an atheist made it easier to cut those pernicious chocolate bunny rabbits out of my diet since I don’t do anything for Easter, but chocolate dinosaurs? Irresistible. Completely unfair.

Although they could be a useful tool in the War on Easter. I’ll have to think about that.

This is the time of year when people start plugging all the Dragon*Con skeptic events, and pre-events, like the Atlanta Star Party. And every year I am dismayed, because there is no way I can attend any of it — it’s the first week of classes. The week I am going slightly mad trying to get organized and get my students focused and get into the rhythm of the semester. There’s no way I can escape at all.

Clearly, the only solution is for Dragon*Con to change their date. Two weeks earlier or two weeks later, I could swing it. They’ll do that for me, won’t they? (“Who?”, I can hear them saying already.)

We’ve got a date. Start planning. If you’ve got suggestions for great new panels, leave them in the comments or mail them to the appropriate FtB bloggers.

We did have one final session, but it was mainly us getting punchy and giggling, so you can skip it.

Although, if you did attend FtBCON, you can do one more thing for us: fill out our survey. It’ll help us plan FtBCON 2: Electric Boogaloo, or whatever the heck we’re going to call it.

P.S. If you express an interest in volunteering for a panel in the survey, be sure to include contact information!

Hey, this FtBCON thing is fun and all, but it sort of sucked yesterday away from me — I’ve been on this cycle of an hour of moderating, an hour off (a chunk of which is taken up with setting up the next session), and then another hour of moderating. And it continues today, a little more lightly this time. Here’s a reprise of the events I managed.

Our first evening’s introduction:

The Right Way to be Wrong, with Kim Rippere and Monette Richards of Secular Woman:

Science Communication, with Bora Zivkovic:

Creationism, with Aron Ra and Lilandra:

Skepticon, with Lauren Lane, Micah Weiss, and Floyd Zamarippa:

Immigrants’ Rights and Social Justice, with Chris Schmidt, David Neale, Esteleth Squidly, and Jadehawk:

Science, Skepticism, and Environmental Activism with Chris Clarke, Jennifer Campbell-Smith (+bird), and Madhusudan Katti from coyot.es:

Today I’m moderating David Silverman again at 9am Central, the Immortality Debate at 2pm with Eneasz Brodski, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and David Brin, Neurodivergence and Skepticism at 5pm with representatives from Atheism+, and our closing event at 8pm.

I’ve been going back and cleaning up the video comments a bit. I left them on just to give the youtube commentariat another chance, and because I wanted to see if youtubers left useful input during the conversations (yes, I was watching the hangout window, the youtube comments window, and the IRC chat room window during every panel).

They were worthless.

We got a couple of categories of responses. Some were complimentary; thanks very much. There were a lot that were sneering variations of “I can’t comment on your videos, I hate you.” There were mindless eructations: “GAY!” “SHIT!” etc. And then, weirdly, a lot of trolls were obsessed with my hair color, accusing me of dyeing it. Apparently, dyeing it between sessions. Say what?

Anyway, lesson learned: I’ve now made disabling youtube comments the default on all my videos.

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And here’s Dave Silverman on blasphemy:

Here’s me, Eneasz Brodski, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and David Brin talking about immortality. This was great fun, and even after we ended the recording we kept talking for another half hour.

The neurodivergence and skepticism panel with Grimalkin and Kassiane:

We start up again in an hour at 8am Central with Secular Woman talking to us about The Right Way to be Wrong. I’m not participating, just moderating, which is a relief, because my brain chokes at the phrase “to be wrong”.

Check out the schedule at FtBCON.org or the Google+ events list — we’ve got stuff going on non-stop all day long. I won’t be done until 10pm!