Up next was Nadine Strossen:

Law Professor Nadine Strossen is president of the American Civil Liberties Union. She is the first woman and the youngest person ever to lead the ACLU. She also sits on the Council on Foreign Relations. No stranger to public speaking, she is the featured speaker at The Amaz!ng Meeting 4.

Her topic was:

“POLITICIZING SCIENCE: THE WAR ON CIVIL LIBERTIES”

In her debut TAM appearance, Ms. Strossen will express her views on the current politicization of science, and how it has undermined numerous civil liberties, including academic freedom and other First Amendment rights.

OFFLINE due to cease and desist.

Here’s an rss/podcast feed for you to subscribe to.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4

Up next was Penn Jillette’s Q&A:

Penn & Teller defy labels, and at times, good taste. They’ve performed together for more than 25 years; skewering the genre of magic, their sold-out audiences, and themselves — very often all at the same time, within one mind-boggling evening. Their Showtime series Bullshit! is currently in its third season.

OFFLINE due to cease and desist.

Here’s an rss/podcast feed for you to subscribe to.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4

Up next was James Randi and his special guest, astronaut Ed Lu:

James “The Amazing” Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world’s most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

James Randi presented some anecdotes from his years of testing supernatural claims, and did a brief Q&A with astronaut Ed Lu.

OFFLINE due to cease and desist.

Here’s an rss/podcast feed for you to subscribe to.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4

The fourth speaker was Dr. Stanley Krippner:

Dr. Krippner has conducted workshops and seminars on personal mythology, dreams, hypnosis, and/or anomalous phenomena in over a dozen different countries. He is a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and has published cross-cultural studies on spiritual content in dreams.

His topic was:

“RAPE, WAR, and AIDS: Rational and Irrational Beliefs about the AIDS Pandemic”
This presentation will document the way that the three dozen ongoing wars around the world are responsible for spreading AIDS, and how the combatants are given little or no preventive education. It will also document the irrational and erroneous data about AIDS provided by folk healers in Africa, the Roman Catholic Church, and the U.S. government, especially in its subsidy of “abstinence” programs in public schools. This will be a hard-hitting presentation that names Names and provides solid data. There will be something in it to offend virtually everyone!

OFFLINE due to cease and desist.

Here’s an rss/podcast feed for you to subscribe to.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4

Sadly one of my favorite speakers won’t be represented here. I’m not sure what happened with the recording, but aside from the first minute of his intro, the rest of the hour is mysteriously silent. If anyone has audio of Prof. Gell-Mann’s talk, I would love to have a copy.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4

The second speaker was Dr. Michael Shermer:

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Director of the Skeptics Society, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, columnist for Scientific American, and producer of the TV series, Exploring the Unknown. His many books include: The Borderlands of Science, How We Believe, and Why People Believe Weird Things.

Here’s the talk info:

“THE SOUL OF SCIENCE – Bootstrapping Meaning, Purpose and Spirituality”
How can we find spiritual meaning and purpose in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond our selves. There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. Dr. Shermer shows how.

OFFLINE due to cease and desist.

Here’s an rss/podcast feed for you to subscribe to.

Defined tags for this entry: TAM4