The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories – Skeptics 2009

I’ve booked me tickets (as a posh pirate might say) for me trip to Wellington; Skeptics Conference 2009 here I come! Given the exclamation mark, a ‘thing’ I hardly like to employ in scribblings such as these (my pirate grammar is interfering with me normal speaky-writey transcription) it seems timely to post some more information about the when of the talk entitled ‘The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories.’

The presentation is on Saturday the 26th at the pleasant time of 11:45am ((I say “pleasant” because last time they had me on first thing in the morning.)). I’ll blather on for about half an hour, offending some people (one person quite deliberately) and amusing others, before the brief fifteen minute window for questions (most of which will be used up by people asking overly long questions and get short replies).

Here is the draft programme for the conference; the topic and speakers, on the whole, seem much more interesting than last year’s offerings; I’m quite happy to be on after John Robinson’s talk on unwarranted skepticism in regards to Climate Change, because it feeds nicely into my talk and might even lend weight to a section of it, if the audience reaction goes the way I think it will.

I’m willing to take bets it will.

I’m both looking forward and not looking forward to the conference; I’m not the biggest fan of the so-called sceptics called ‘Skeptics;’ a lot of them are just really big fans of Science who don’t really know how it works. Whilst I’ll enjoy the trip down and the reconnection with the friends I made last time I probably won’t enjoy the predictable, naive empiricist-style questions that will have to be fielded by the other presenters and me.

I should point out that I don’t tend to enjoy attending conferences but I do enjoy presenting at them. I look forward to a world where I can present hologrammatically.

More news as it comes to hand.

On holograms.

And the conference.

Comments

“I probably won’t enjoy it.” Where have I heard that phrase before?