Being a Better Speaker

Immediately after saying I probably won't post much, lookit! A post!

I have a really bad habit of leaving tabs open in my browser. Some will stay there for months. I've gotten somewhat better as I've started using Pintrest and just shove a lot of things in there, but sometimes there's tabs that just sit there.

One in particular that I need to close out comes from all the way back in October. The post is from the TED blog, and is on how scientists and engineers can be better speakers. While I don't think it's a bad post, I certainly don't think it's a good one.

First off "Be aware of your audience". Really? I don't think I'd ever heard that before. No. Certainly wasn't something that I've had hammered into my head since elementary school on every topic in which communication was being discussed.

Sarcasm aside, I think it's a fair point to make, but it's also one that should be so obvious that it doesn't need to be said. What needs to be said, is how to find the right level for your audience. And that's not something that can be reduced to a platitude. Fortunately, the author of the post does do some good at that by at least saying that scientists shouldn't "dumb down" the science. This is something I've definitely done in my history as a speaker. In my most popular talk, I've never shied away from bringing out calculus in front of a crowd that's mostly high school students or people that aren't mathematically inclined.

Why? Because sometimes, the details aren't important. One of my focuses as a communicator of science is to remind people that science isn't a collection of facts; it's a process. And even if people don't understand that process, they need to understand it's there. Hiding it away and skipping straight to the conclusions because your audience won't get every detail changes how our culture perceives science. And pseudoscientists play on that. Think of how many times you've heard the Creationist ruse that scientists supposedly engage in circular reasoning when they "date fossils by the rocks and date rocks by the fossils". That's not at all how it works. We don't just make up a paradigm and engage in that sort of specious reasoning. There's a lot more to it. Reminding people of the complexity makes those sort of over simplified strawmen of science be seen for what they really are.

The second point is also a trope. "Show the Relevance". While again, I don't think it's a bad idea, it's really not necessary. Again, pointing to my Anime Mythbusters talk, there is absolutely no relevance to any of it. I can't justify why you need to worry about the UV exposure someone will receive from a fictional Pokemon. Because you really won't need to. And you shouldn't.

Additionally, I think there's a serious issue with the demand that science always be immediately rationalizable. Most of the biggest discoveries, advances, and inventions haven't come because people were out to discover the particular thing they did. To put it another way, science doesn't progress as a series of "Eureka!" moments. It progresses as a series of "WTF?" moments. Stating that science always have a clear purpose with obvious and immediate application betrays the way science works. Ben Franklin was not experimenting with static electricity to power light bulbs.

So what's the take away? Science doesn't need to be relevant. It needs to be interesting. I'm willing to bet that most readers here can think of at least one scientific subject that's wholly boring to them, either because it's just not big enough for them to care about, or they know it so well that hearing it again is sleep inducing. But with the right person telling you about it, their passion becomes infectious. There is beauty in all nature. It just takes a skilled speaker to make people recognize it. But that doesn't mean it's relevant.

The third point is for speakers to "Paint a Picture". This is definitely good advice, but what the author doesn't mention is that it's a double edged sword. While giving a broader picture can help people find those points by which they can connect and apply their prior knowledge, it's also a potential way to lose an audience. It's quite easy to get lost in a picture.

For the past four months, I've been reading Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms. It's been a pretty awful experience. The author is constantly giving details that do nothing to convey the primary information. It's stories about the hosts he spends time with and then the bus ride to a remote location to look for ancient organisms. The amount of time and detail put into the irrelevant bits swamp the relevant story.

Finally a really smart comment that's all too often overlooked comes in fourth. "Make Numbers Meaningful". Hell. Yes. This is especially important in astronomy where the scales are so large, that the only way to communicate them is with scientific notation. Unfortunately, on scales that large, there's not a lot that you can do. Our human experience doesn't allow any comparisons that are going to be meaningful. But on smaller scales, it's entirely doable. Returning to the example of the UV exposure from a particular Pokemon, the answer ends up being best expressed in scientific notation, but by converting it to a ratio to compare it to typical exposure from the Sun, and then discussing how long it would take a pasty white guy like me to burn, it suddenly coverts a meaningless figure, or worse, a scary figure (since so many people are mathphobic), into something they can appreciate!

Cliches return for the fifth point on "Banishing Bullet Points". It's one that I'm not opposed to but I generally disagree with. The problem isn't bullet points. It's people using them incorrectly. Bad speakers essentially turn an outline into a bulleted Power Point and then use it as a crutch when they present. That's a problem. Rather, the speaker should introduce the information first, and then display the bullet point. As you do this, the audience will realize that what you're putting up isn't new information and as such, they won't tune you out trying to read them.

But if it's not new information, why have them? There's a very good reason. Leaving thoughts on a screen allows you to show they're still relevant. You're hanging on to them because you're going to return to them in a moment. Then, when you're ready, you can point back to a previous point you've left floating there.

Putting them into a bullet list also is a way to organize the information visually, often showing it as a point that falls below a heading which is the general idea. It solidifies the points as being hierarchical in nature. Which is great when you have things that are. And that's a lot in science. For example: Hypothesis, list of evidence. The author even suggests an "Assertion-Evidence" model for slides, but then seems to ignore that not all evidence is presented in the form of "charts, graphs, images, equations, etc". Sometimes your evidence is a list of points.

Another common bullet point mistake is display all of them as once. It's information overload. Instead, as I noted above, each one should be introduced independently and information layered on. When viewed retrospectively it isn't daunting. Especially when each one is introduced verbally.

When should bullets be dumped? If your information isn't linear, you probably don't need them. Flow charts are cool. Consider them. If you're not using it to hang onto a collection of points, you probably don't need them. If it's going to take an excessive amount of time for each one and you don't have anything else interesting going on, you can probably do something else.

A good example of navigating this is my Sexism in Anime talk. During the introduction I introduce 3 categories of a patriarchal society. Under each one I give several specific ways these the general categories are manifest. This is hierarchical information, so bullet points make sense. However, I then want to discuss each of those points in detail as they are exhibited (or not) in a particular series. At that point, I switch over to each individual point as a heading, and examine it with images from the series as my evidence (as shown in the preview image on the above link). When I need to summarize everything, I revive the bullet point and show the information as a collection. It's very effective. While people have a tendency to ignore events because they can't see it all listed in front of them, presenting how badly this particular (and very popular) series fails at representing women as worthwhile characters, it's harder to rationalize the events individually. In that sense, having that bulleted list is entirely appropriate and I wouldn't trade it for any other format.

The last point is very true, but also entirely unhelpful. "Deliver Dynamically". In short, the author says to have an enthusiastic, energetic, but natural style. Easier said than done for many people. So what should speakers concentrate on to pull this off? Hopefully, if you're giving a talk to a more general audience, it's because it's something special. Hopefully, you're not having to report the results of a 10 year study that failed to find any evidence for your hypothesis. That'd be a bummer and hard to find that enthusiasm for. So we'll assume it's something special. Enthusiasm should come naturally.

Similarly, natural shouldn't be a problem. I find it a somewhat annoying that so many people telling people how to speak think being "natural" is an intelligent comment. The reason is that humans are very diverse, even within a single individual. There's times when we're all somber. But there's also times when we're exuberant. Both are "natural" for us. There's very few people I've encountered that I suspect of being dryer than Ben Stein all the time.

But on the off chance that you are one of those people, there's still ways to play it. In particular, being that flat makes even the small variations stand out. One of my professors did have Ben Stein beat for dryness, but every once in awhile, he'd sneak in a joke. They were pretty awful* but they were worth paying attention for.

So in my mind, it's not that doing these things will make you better. You're likely already doing them, but other things are getting in the way. The largest is stage fright. Without realizing it, nervous tendencies will easily take over and pervert or destroy the enthusiasm that would otherwise be apparent. Excited about what you're talking about? Good, says the scumbag brain. Now you're talking too fast without having a dynamic vocal range!

It's hard to get over stage fright. One of the things that I've always reminded myself is that, at almost all of my presentations, I have an audience that's on my side. They're interested in the subject. Otherwise they wouldn't be there. That's something I use to my advantage. Instead of trying to forget the audience is there so I can concentrate on what I'm doing, I try to make sure I'm feeling the audience. Quite early on, I'll always drop something that's going to get a reaction.

In my Anime Mythbusters talk, it's discussing the depressing state of science education that gets disapproving *tsk*s from the audience. I follow that up with a big full slide warning. "This panel contains: Algebra, Graphs, Scientific Notation, Inequalities, Exponents, and Calculus." I say this at a clip of someone reading the fine print on a used car commercial and get cheers for it. I know the audience's energy is behind me, and I take that energy and ride it. Don't be scared of your audience. Use it. Get a good start and it puts you on the right path.

This is a double edged sword of course. If you're reading the audience's emotions and they turn sour, this can take the wind out of your sails and compound the issue. But after all the speaking I've done in the past 5 years, I've yet to have that happen.

I don't know how many of my readers here do much public speaking, but for those that do, I hope this offers something more useful than the cliche advise I've seen so many places.

* - Saturn has a density of 0.687 grams/cc³. This means that if you had a bathtub large enough, it would float. Of course, if you let the water out, it would leave rings.

Welcome to 2013

It's a new year now. Judging by the general trends on other blogs, I think that means I'm supposed to look back over 2012 in a reflective manner and make some goals for this year.

As a blog, I did pretty miserably last year. I've been dropping pretty heavily every year lately. Every year I tell myself that I'm going to write more, but the drive to do so has been pretty much gone. I've grown pretty burnt out on even my pet topics that were the foundation for this blog, which were Creationism and skepticism. It's not to say that I don't think Creationism is a worthwhile topic to discuss anymore. It's just that playing whack-a-mole with idiotic Creationist arguments gets old and causes migraines.

It's not to say I don't think skepticism isn't important either. If I did, I wouldn't attend Skepticon annually. But I've definitely hit a turning point with that too. A few weeks ago I got into a religion debate with a friend of a friend on facebook. He insisted that my arguments were irrelevant because I was talking about how people used to think about religion, but there were all these fancy pants new religious scholars that changed everything and if I'd only read a pile of books, I'd understand it.

In years past, I'd probably have done some research on each book and responded, but as he was making that argument, I had one of the strongest flashbacks I can remember in my life. I remembered an argument from way back sometime around 2006 in which I was still tearing Creationism apart left and right. On one particular occasion I had someone tell me that my arguments were invalid because some fancy pants new researchers had amazing new evidence for Creationism that was changing everything. I'm pretty sure they were trying to point me to the Institute for Creation research or some other such gibberish factory.

And here we are six years later now, and the ICR, AiG, the DI, and all the other Creationist "think tanks" (scare quotes obviously since there's very little actual thinking that goes on there) still haven't come up with a new argument. At best, they slap new names on things, but there's been nothing new.

Suddenly, engaged in the facebook debate, I realized that this was the same argument. I was supposed to buy into something because it was about to be big. And if you believe that, I'd like to sell you some serious stock in my patented wibblets because everyone's going to want one. I promise.

Or not. I've gotten tired of that type of debate tactic.

The Skeptic community tires me too, but for pretty much the exact opposite reason. Whereas debating idiots has turned into a dull monotony, the skeptic community has exploded in the past year or two and is going so many directions at once, I just don't have the energy to get excited by all the directions it's going.

To use another analogy from 2006, I went to San Diego Comic Con. There were so many things to do and the crowds so large, it simply became overwhelming. It was one of the first 5-10 I'd been to and I didn't know how to manage it. Instead of really enjoying the convention as I would do now given that I have a lot more convention experience under my belt, I just sat in the dealer's room for the bulk of the con.

That's about how I feel with the proliferation of topics the skeptic and secular community has been taking. I've grabbed my new pet topic, and I stay pretty up to date with that one, but while I recognize the others are important, I can't summon time time and energy to truly engage in them.

The topic that does occupy the vast majority of my time now is running Naka Kon. This year we're making some big changes, and due to some bumps we've hit along the way (such as a server crash without any sort of backup and several people having to step down for personal reasons without leaving any sort of plan or information for people stepping into the role), we've been doing a lot more work than should strictly be necessary. The majority of my past 3 days has been working on convention planning.

Overall, 2012 was a lighter year on the convention circuit for me. As I've attended more conventions, my expectations have continued to increase and many of the smaller ones lack sufficient programming I care about to earn my attendance any longer. I obviously attended Naka-Kon but also managed to get to Tokyo in Tulsa and Archon. But typically I also attend several of the small St. Louis anime conventions. This year, I missed all of them.

Looking ahead to 2013 conventions, I'm already lined up to attend Ohayocon in Columbus, OH in a few weeks. I'll be giving three talks there. I'll be at Naka again this year. I'm hoping to get to Dragon*Con (although I've been saying that every year for 5 years now), and I'm sure I'll be at Archon again this year.

As far as the rest of my topics for this blog, well, I probably will continue not to write much. It will probably continue to be the epitomes of Creationist inanity that will get posts.

I'll certainly be keeping adding to my list of all the ways our government... I'm sorry, one particular party has been trying to limit womens' freedom and then denying there's any sort of attack going on. So if that's a topic that you care about, perhaps check in on it here and there.

I keep seeing really cool astronomy articles, but aside from bookmarking them for later, deeper reading (which quite often doesn't happen), I have been bad about writing anything on them. Most often because I don't feel that I have anything to add. In particular, I think astrobites has done a really wonderful job of summarizing most of the best arXiv articles, which is where I quite often got things to talk about. Good on them.

So really, I don't think I'm going to make blogging more any sort of New Years resolution. I'm too reality stricken.

Instead, I think my resolutions will be to 1) do a better job of not letting my RSS feed get clogged up (I keep ignoring it for a week and come back to find hundreds of blog posts to read skim). 2) Argue with less idiots. Really. I don't need the migraines.

We'll see how this goes.

Super Flares from the Sun

It's been a long time since I've written anything on super flares. My last year at KU, this was my research topic, in which I was looking at some really big flares on some stars very similar to the Sun.

The thing about those flares is that, in the 200ish years we've been watching the Sun, we've never seen anything that's even close. So can the Sun do anything like those, because if it can, we should be worried. Very worried. A coronal mass ejection or flare of that size would wipe out the entire electrical grid of the world in minutes.

The biggest solar flare we know about, was the "Carrington event" in 1859. This one was large enough to cause currents in telegraph wires strong enough to start fires on the desks of the operators. Even when the batteries that powered the system were disconnected, telegraphs could still be sent. With a much larger system carrying much more energy that is much more stressed today, we'd be in far bigger trouble if that happened again.

So ideally we'd like to know more about how the Sun acts over a longer timescale. The professor I was working with on this was Dr. Melott, and this week he released a paper that looks at a way to look through the historical record for signs that other flares may have hit us.

One of the effects we'd expect is that we'd see a sudden spike in C14, the isotope of carbon used for radioisotope dating. This is created when high energy protons from the sun hit our atmosphere. Usually this is pretty stable, since the Sun is pretty stable on longer timescales.

Drilling ice core samples and looking at the C14 in air bubbles trapped in the ice provide a way to see how much C14 was being created. It turns out that there is just such a spike around 774-775 CE.

While it can't be confirmed that this was absolutely caused from the Sun (a nearby gamma ray burst could similarly irradiate our atmosphere causing the formation of C14, but it highly unlikely), it's still a good bet. If it was the case, it would have been an eruption with some 2x10²⁶ J of energy!

This is still a bit shy of the super flares that were the focus of my research, but it's getting close. So it's not unrealistic that the mechanism that produced those flares could also happen to us. If so, it's not so much a question of if, but when.

Indiana Lawmaker Tries to Give Students Rights They Already Have

Over in Indiana, Sen. Dennis Kruse (obviously a Republican), recently failed to push through a bill to Creationism. I guess it's too much to expect that a guy that writes laws would know something about them. Like that the Supreme Court stated that teaching Creationism in public schools was unconstitutional in 1987. Fortunately, other people knew and that didn't get passed.

Not deterred, Kruse is trying a new typical strategy. It's been the ID/Creationist strategy ever since they got their asses kicked at Dover. They realize they can't teach the non-existent controversy, so instead, they try to get people to question evolution so they can push non-existent criticisms assuming that the teacher is sympathetic to Creationism, or if they're not, enough students can harass the teacher and disrupt the class that the teacher will be forced to give the section up due to the prohibitive amount of time it would take to address every single false "question".

The new bill basically ensures that students are free to question the teachers. Which in truth, they already are. Students are encouraged to ask questions. Teachers can and should be ready and able to answer them.

This bill is new in that the teachers would have to cite the research to support their answer. This is where the trick lies and takes it from simple questioning to harassment. It doesn't say, simply the "evidence", but the "research". So teachers would be forced to have a library of specific research that was done for every given topic. Which often is contrary to how science works, especially on the big topics.

See, the deal is that it is very rare that a single bit of research establishes an entire field. So saying "what piece of research proves common descent" is a question that a teacher can't given an answer to. Because it's not a "piece" of research. It's a body and teachers would now be required to provide, on demand, massive amounts of research.

Thus, all a student would have to do to disrupt an entire week of class, would be to ramble off a Gish Gallop of dishonest Creationist "criticisms" of evolution, and the teacher would now be required to answer every one of them, in detail. That's not conducive to teaching. That's not conducive to learning.

Which is precisely what Creationists want.

Things Like This

A lot of people don't seem to understand how male centered American society is. It's so pervasive that we take it for granted. Before really starting to "get" such things, I was always told that once you do, it will be everywhere.

Browsing reddit tonight, one example just smacked me in the face.

This particular image at present has 1384 upvotes. Apparently it's only guys that play video games and the entire goal of Target is to further what guys want (meeting girls). It couldn't be that women make up 40% of PC gamers. Because everyone knows that girls only care about makeup. Right...

The War on Women

I've been hearing quite frequently from right wing pundits that the "war on women" is a fabrication of the left, that it's a distraction from real issues. However, the Republican party's own record makes it very clear that it's not a side issue; it's one that they have been very focused on. So I've put together a list of recent attacks on women from the Republican party.

Keep in mind I'm limiting this list to just instances by official party members serving in the government. Not their advisers, not radio hosts, not congressional aides. If I did, this list would be much, much longer.

• In looking to solve the deficit crisis, the GOP has targeted the provisions in the ACA supporting women.
• North Carolina Republicans have put forth a bill that would incorrectly teach elementary school students that abortion causes pre-term birth.
• Missouri Republicans sponsored a bill that would allow hospitals to deny women contraception or other health services.
• Once again mangling basic science, a California Republican has declared that pregnancy from rape is rare.
• Indiana Republicans have sponsored a bill that would prevent abortions of fetuses that show signs of severe defects.
• Kentucky's senate recently approved a Republican sponsored bill that would end telemedicine and require unnecessary ultrasounds before abortions could be performed.
• Alabama Republicans advanced a bill to the full House that would force all abortion providers in the state to close by redefining standards of architecture and staffing to meet the requirements of surgical centers as well as having physicians with admitting privileges to a nearby hospital be present for all abortions. Similar attempts have been made in Mississippi and North Dakota.
• Arizona Republicans have attempted to defund Planned Parenthood including its heath care services to women, by attempting to defund any organization that also performs abortion. Fortunately this action was blocked by a federal judge.
• Wisconsin Republicans have pushed through bills introducing unnecessary hurdles to prevent women from having abortions early enough for them to be medically induced, effectively ending first trimester abortion. Similar bills have been introduced in Mississippi.
• North Dakota Republicans have introduced seven anti-abortion bills this year alone. This includes "personhood" bills and fetal heartbeat bills.
• Tennessee Republicans have sponsored a bill to require women to undergo ultrasounds before having an abortion.
• Republicans in Texas have filed a bill that would require abortion providers to meet the standards for surgical centers despite abortions not being considered surgery.
• Wisconsin Republicans have stated their priority to force medically invasive and unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds.
• Alabama Republicans have passed a hill in their House that would allow religiously affiliated groups to interject themselves between women and their insurance provider and deny women contraception coverage.
• South Dakota Republicans have proposed a bill that would extend the waiting period to get an abortion stating that women cannot use weekends or holidays to think over their right to have an abortion.
• Republican Clark Jolley of Oklahoma sponsored a bill requiring that insurance providers not provide coverage for contraception under the delusion that it "poisons their bodies".
• Indiana governor Mike Pence worked to introduce a bill that would require not one but two medically unnecessary and invasive vaginal ultrasounds from women seeking abortions.
• Arizona Republicans have sponsored a bill that would invade the privacy of women who use Assisted Reproductive Technology requiring that the government track those embryos.
• Arkansas Republicans passed a bill that would outlaw abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. When the bill was vetoed by the governor, they voted to override the veto and are working to enact an even more restrictive 12 week ban.
• Republicans in New Hampshire supported a bill reducing assault from a felony to a misdemeanor under the rationale that "a lot of people like being in abusive relationships."
• A Republican proposed law in New Mexico would criminalize abortions for victims of rape/incest as "destroying evidence".
• Republicans in Virginia have introduced a bill that would no longer allow for medicare to assist abortions in cases of "rape, incest, severe fetal abnormalities, or when the life of the mother is in danger."
• Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan has sponsored a bill letting rapists sue their victims for having an abortion.
• Republican Phil Gingrey of Georgia doubled down on Akin's scientifically inaccurate comments stating that women cannot get pregnant from rape.
• Republicans have blocked a bill that had broad bipartisan support (but not enough to keep other Republicans from stopping it) intended to help clear the backlog of rape kits.
• House Republicans ended 2012 without bothering to renew the Violence Against Women Act. The issue had come up earlier in the year (a Senate version was approved in April), but the House Republicans gutted it because they said it supported minorities, LGBT, and Native Americans too much.
• Michigan Republicans passed a package of bills that require unnecessary hoops to secure an abortion. These hoops include women prove they are mentally competent and that they haven't been "coerced". These additional steps do nothing but add additional and unnecessary expenses and wait times. The legislation also bans "tele-medicine" in which women can get a prescription for medically necessary abortions in rural areas. Legislators even admitted that the bill wasn't even intended to protect women but rather, it was "about protecting fetuses". Obviously at the expense of women.
• Former Arkansas Republican Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee blamed the Sandy Hook school shooting on contraceptives.
• A Michigan Republican voted for a bill restricting women's rights to procure abortions admitted he hadn't read it and then insisted the bill wasn't about women.
• Ohio Republicans have voted to strip Planned Parenthood of funding, once again putting the effort to unconstitutionally end abortion ahead of womens' health.
• Republican Rand Paul has again introduced a personhood bill to "end abortion once and for all", in stark violation of Roe v. Wade.
• Indiana Republican Richard Murdock says that abortions should be not allowed in the case of rape because those pregnancies are God's will.
• An Illinois Republican has claimed that women don't face medical conditions that put their life at risk due to pregnancies and as such, there is no reason to have an exception for abortion to save the life of a mother.
• In Georgia, Republicans passed the "women as livestock" bill. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks. It had originally contained no exemptions, regardless of whether the fetus was viable or posed a threat to the mother. It was given the nickname when one of the bill's supporters, Terry England, supported the lack of exemptions stating "if farmers have to “deliver calves, dead or alive,” then a woman carrying a dead fetus, or one not expected to survive, should have to carry it to term."
• A Kansas Republican, Tim Huelskamp, compared abortion to racism and thinks it's akin to slavery.
• Missouri Republicans overturned a veto on a bill that prevented companies or heath insurances providers from denying women access to contraception.
• Todd Akin once again opened his mouth and suggested that as a nation, we should be allowed to pay women less because of free enterprise.
• Kentucky Republicans sponsored a bill that prevents public funds from being used to provide abortions to scare voters into thinking they are. Only trouble is, that's already the case: No public funds can be used for abortion services.
• Rick Berg (R - North Dakota) has voted to make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape or incest, forcing women to choose to carry a baby from rape to term or go face prison.
• Joe Walsh (R - Illinois) pursued sexist tropes insisting a female Iraq war veteran only cared about what she wears.
• House Republicans sponsored a bill that would effectively prevent the removal of entopic pregnancies which will never be able to be brought to term but provide a high risk to the mother.
• At the GOP convention, they moved to include anti-abortion stances in their official platform with no exceptions for rape or incest.
• In Texas, Republicans are so desperate to stop abortions that they're cutting funding for anyone that's even associated with abortion providers, even if it's only sharing a name. This denial of services prevents the state from receiving federal funds, leaving over 50,000 women without routine services including preventative checkups, cancer screenings, and gynecological care.
• Senate hopeful Todd Akin (R-MO) states that restrictions on abortion don't even need to make exceptions for rape because women can't get pregnant from a "legitimate rape", thereby insinuating that if a women does get pregnant, it must not be rape. He was quickly backed up by Republican Steve King from Iowa who stated he hasn't heard of children getting pregnant from rape.
• While other Republicans were quick to distance themselves from Akin's comment, above, it has been frequently pointed out that his comments are very similar in nature to language by vice president hopeful Paul Ryan who worked on a bill to restrict abortions to only include "forcible rape" which was overwhelmingly supported by other House Republicans. When asked about it, Ryan marginalized the entire female population by trivializing the entire topic as a "side issue."
• Akin's comments were also defended by fellow Missouri Republican Sharon Barnes stating "If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it".
• Rick Santorum (R-KS) told women that they shouldn't have the right to abortion in the cases of rape and that they should "make the best out of a bad situation".
• Mike Huckabee seems to think the ends justify the means, stating that rape has produced some extraordinary people.
• Republicans block Sandra Fluke, the only woman on a hearing regarding birth control, from speaking.
• In Arizona, Republicans pushed through a bill redefining pregnancy to begin 2 weeks before conception.
• Also in Arizona, Republicans passed a bill allowing doctors to lie by omission regarding the health of their their fetus so women would be less tempted to choose to end the pregnancy of disabled children.
• Representative Pete DeGraff (R-KS) suggested that women should "plan ahead" for rape, comparing it to having a spare tire in case of a flat.

Archon 36 Recap

Archon has now come and gone for yet another year, although I'm still feeling it. My body's still angry at me from the lack of sleep.

I think all my panels went very well this year. Friday evening was my "Anime Mythbusters" panel which is always a fun time. I haven't changed it any since Naka-Kon this year, but I rarely look over it again once it's been put together. I glanced over the slides to remind myself what topics I'd included, but beyond that, did absolutely no preparation. Yet giving the talk, I felt perfectly comfortable and never missed a beat. One of my goals is to always know the talk well enough that I can say things before putting that information on the slide, so I don't have people trying to read the same thing I'm saying.

This is especially true for things where I'm doing math, where I want to walk people through what I'm doing, such as in segments like this one in which I'm deriving the geometry necessary to figure out how close the comet came to hitting the planet.

My intention was to be that well prepared for my new Quantum Mechanics talk I delivered Saturday morning. The challenge is even harder in this case since there's so much technical information that builds on itself. If I forget even a single sentence, often times, it will come back to haunt me since I rely on that information having been passed on later.

Unfortunately, that was too large of a challenge for me this time. Friday, as the con started, I think I only had the first 50% of the talk memorized perfectly, and about another quarter memorized in rough format. So I cheated more than normal and had my outline on notecards, as well as the full script downloaded on my Kindle. I had to pause a few times to figure out where I was again, but after the talk, people told me they didn't even remember me doing so. I'll take that as a sign that the rest of the material was of sufficient quality that it distracted them.

I'd meant to get a video of this talk, but left my camera sitting at home. I know a few segments were recorded, but I'll wait until I have the full thing before posting anything.

My last talk Saturday was the "Sexism in Anime" panel. For whatever reason, I feel like I prepare a lot less for this panel. Even the first time presenting it, I knew what I wanted to say, but I allowed myself to deviate far more than I usually do. Perhaps it has something to do with still being relatively new to this field. I have a lot of information still kicking around in my head that's all still shuffling around, trying to find a good and appropriate home in the talk. Until it does, sometimes it just jumps out at odd moments.

Archon is well known for its parties and this year was no exception. Since I just live across the river, I went home nightly, but I didn't make it to bed until Sunday morning at 4:30am. I did go back Sunday, but had no panels and was just saying goodbye to friends. I did meet a nice woman named Jackie, whose company I enjoyed greatly, and hope to work with in the future since she runs a skeptical radio show in Columbia, MO.

In the meantime, Go Cardinals!

Archon 36 and a New Quantum Talk

Archon 36 is less than a month away. It's October 12-14 in Collinsville, Illinois.

I gave a few talks there last year and got my telescope out for some public viewing. This year, I'll be back, this time as an invited Guest, and I'll be giving 3 solo talks as well as joining a panel.

My first talk will be my Anime Mythbusters one. I'm still touring the 2012 version (I debut each new version at Naka Kon), but since I was out of town for all of the St Louis anime conventions (with the exception of Kawa Kon which I hadn't planned on attending anyway), I didn't have a chance to do the panel in my home town this year. Archon seems to have been wanting to introduce more anime programming, so they went ahead and asked me to do it. This talk will be Friday night at 6:10pm in the Great Rivers Ballroom A.

My second talk is an entirely new one that I'm quite excited about. This past summer, I went to a meetup with the St. Louis Skeptics Society, to welcome Nicole Gugliucci to the region. While out to dinner, one of the other attendees started going on about mystical resonances that allow us to shape reality because quantum waves and resonance. I'd had a pretty stiff drink and didn't feel like debating quantum mechanics at the time, so I told him that until he learned to normalize a wave function, he really had no clue what he was talking about.

But the encounter was a good reminder that even people who are very interested in science frequently don't have the first clue about quantum physics. So I decided to put together a new talk looking at the use of "quantum" in pop-culture, from sci-fi to Deepak Chopra. I finished putting it together last weekend and will be debuting it at Archon, Saturday at 10am in the Great Rivers Ballroom B. The intro video is below.

My last talk is again an analysis of the anime genre, using it as a lens to explore sexism and feminism. I presented this talk at Naka-Kon this past February which had a fantastic discussion session afterwards, and also at Tokyo in Tulsa, where the audience was somewhat smaller. I'll be doing it again at Archon Saturday at 9:30pm in the Cahokian room.

Not too many people still play, but I'll also be hosting a CCG tournament with the old Star Wars CCG made by Decipher that's been out of print for a decade. That's going to be Saturday from 2:30 - 6:30.

There was some discussion about putting me on a discussion panel regarding the "Impact of Science on Society" but times for that haven't been finalized.

When not occupied otherwise, I'll probably have my telescope out again, although this year I'll need to remember to avoid sunburn.