Yesterday registration started for The Amazing Meeting 8. The latest installment of the James Randi Educational Foundations annual conference. It will be held from July 8th to the 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Every year The Amazing Meeting (TAM) features a fantastic lineup of speakers, table discussions, workshops, and this is only half the fun at TAM. It is a fantastic opportunity to meet and hangout with other skeptics. Considered by many to be the unofficial International Skeptics Conference, no other skeptics conference attracts so many great speakers and attendees, and this years conference maybe its best.

This years event will have many familiar faces from past TAM’s such as Phil Plait, Penn Jillette, Teller, Adam Savage, Michael Shermer, and the Amazing One himself, James Randi. This years key note speaker is Sir Richard Dawkins (I knighted him) and he is backed up by many new faces like CFI founder Paul Kurtz, Daily Show writer David Javerbaum, Author Carol Tavris, Paranormal Investigator Joe Nickell,  enemy to all British chiropractors Simon Singh, and many more.

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Sacramento Area Skeptics February Newsletter

In this month’s newsletter:

Bad Month for the Anti-Vaxxers

Proposed Changes to NASA

Oprah Sweat Lodge Guru Charged with Manslaughter

The Amaz!ng Meeting 8

Wars Breakout Over DSM-V

The Sacramento Coalition of Reason (SacramentoCoR) has gained some local attention today with a Sacramento Bee article about the organizations ten billboards that have emerged from Rocklin to Davis, as a member organization this article also mentioned the Sacramento Area Skeptics. SacramentoCoR is an organization comprised of the agnostic, atheist, freethinker, humanist, and skeptic organizations in the Sacramento area. It is not an independent organization, rather a single source meant to promote such related groups to the general public. SacramentoCoR is doing this through it’s website, sacramento.unitedcor.org, and through its billboard campaign.

SacramentoCoR is a local chapter of the national organization, United Coalition of Reason, unitedcor.org. Its website states that:

The primary focus of United CoR is local. As such, it doesn’t compete with other national organizations, and its local work is geared toward fostering the success of existing groups, not changing their nature or adding new groups or an additional organizational level to the mix. A central goal is to help unaffiliated nontheists learn about local activities and, ideally, get involved.

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Sacramento Area Skeptics January Newsletter

Thanks to the many skills of fellow Sacramento Area Skeptics Organizer Catherine Osborn, starting this month the SAS will produce a monthly newsletter that will be distributed at our monthly Drinking Skeptically events. It will then be posted to this website on the subsequent Monday in PDF format. Enjoy!

Sacramento Area Skeptics December Newsletter

It is not a new phenomena for movies to claim that they are based on a true story even though they are just as accurate to an event as any other movie, or as Roger Ebert states “Remember, even in a movie ‘based on a true story’, nothing before the actual end credits needs to be true.” Introducing a movie as being based on actual events is an easy way to get potential moviegoers to see the film and for those who see it, more into the film. This is especially true in the case of horror movies, since the goal of the movie is to scare you, it makes it that much easier if you believe that what you are watching had actually once happened. This has been the case with some paranormal based horror films recently. They have tried to advertise or imply that the movie was more or less based on actual events; however, further research into these stories shows other more likely explanations.

Some movies have been filmed in such a way that it gives off the impression that it was real, such as “The Blair Witch Project” or the much more recent “Paranormal Activity”. Making it seem as if it had been filmed mainly on hand held cameras by the characters themselves, giving the sense that it may have actually taken place.  “Paranormal Activity” even went as far as having no introductory or closing credits just a note (SPOILER ALERT) dedicating the movie to the two main characters. Aside from the occasional rumors that these movies may have been real, any research or a quick run to the internet movie database will show a list of actors and production crews involved. Other movies however, have chosen to advertise there films as actually based on true events.

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