Upcoming Events - Dragon*Con & Archon

This year has been an odd year for me as far as conventions go. So far I've only been to two, Ohayocon and Naka-Kon. I seemed to have missed all of the local and other nearby ones this year.

But there's a good reason for this. I've been saving up my time off to finally attend Dragon*Con this year! I've been saying I intend to go every year for the past several years and just never quite made it. But this time it's settled. Funds are set aside. Tickets are bought. And if we're going to go to one of the biggest and best conventions, I might as well do it right, and jump on some panels!

So far I've been confirmed for 4 panels. As usual, I'll be doing my Anime Mythbusters talk. I'll also be joining a discussion panel entitled "Facts, Figures, and Google - Is Teaching Dead?" which looks to explore how technology is changing the classroom which will be on the Science Track. As a joint talk between the Science and Skeptics track, I'll be joining a panel on "Creationism and Intelligent Design - Debunked Ideas that Just Won't Die". Somehow I've gotten thrown on this panel with Massimo Pigliucci and Dr. Michael Shermer, so this should be a fun one. Lastly, I'll again be going through my talk on Why Everything You Know About Quantum Mechanics is Wrong. For readers of this blog, you may fare better than the average con-goer, but this talk explores how sci-fi and metaphysicists abuse quantum mechanics and what it's really about, when you get right down to it.

I'll also be returning to Archon this year. Since Archon shares a demographic with other regional conventions, I always try to do something new for them. Although I haven't gotten confirmation, I've suggested two new talks that I'm currently working on. The first is entitled "Modern Astronomy: Reading Our Cosmic Library". This talk is meant to explore how, since the beginning of the 20th century, our understanding of nearly every aspect of astronomy has been rewritten with a focus on the events and evidence that shaped our current understanding. The second is "The Top 10 Misconceptions of Big Ideas In Science". It's obviously going to be heavily weighted towards physics and astronomy topics since that's what I know best and what tends to irk me the most. Anime Mythbusters will likely get a showing there too.

Overall, the next few months will be quite busy for me, with a lot of my free time going towards preparing these new talks, although I'm excited to be doing them.