Now Blogging With Me: My Son James

Last month I enjoyed attending my first TAM (The Amazing Meeting, for the uninitiated) in Las Vegas.   Not only was it a great experience to finally manage to attend this centerpiece of the Skeptical world, but it was made even more enjoyable as I was joined there by my two sons, Ryan and James.  Ryan is a professional magician in San Francisco, and James is a student of molecular biology at UC/Santa Cruz, so an environment that was rich in both magicians and scientists was very much to their liking.


Anyway, we left the conference with lots of ideas about how we might communicate our thoughts and ideas about science, magic and skepticism, and in the very near future we will launch the website Skeptic and Sons, where we will do exactly that. In the meantime, my son James has penned the thoughtful piece below about some new advances in video game technology and what they might mean for us in the future.


Enjoy!

Guest Blog: A Program Within A Program

Although I don’t really put stock in it as an explanation of our universe, I’ve always been rather interested in the idea that our universe might be a simulation in some giant supercomputer.  It’s probably possible, depending on your view of the world.  If your belief is that the “soul” is separate from the physical world constructed of atoms, then this is probably not a thought experiment for you.  But if your belief is that the correct arrangement of atoms taking the form of a human makes that human sentient, then there’s no reason why a collection of programmed atoms in the same formation should not produce the same result.  Of course, if this were the explanation for our universe, that presupposes another universe that requires an explanation.  Supercomputer simulation perhaps? A program within a program…

Anyhow, I just found an article and demonstration (http://www.consolelink.com/2011/08/next-gen-visuals-will-be-made-of-tiny-atoms/)  describing a new technology that is going to revolutionize the gaming graphics industry.  Euclideon (http://www.euclideon.com/home.html), a gaming technology company, has new software that they call “Unlimited Detail” that allows game designers to use an almost infinite amount of tiny “atoms” when creating landscapes and objects.  The idea is that you can create (with the right artistic flair) flawless in-game graphics.  Unlimited Detail (the Australian company’s only claim to fame) would render polygon-based graphics obsolete. 

This is a far cry from a fully functioning artificial world though.  All this engine can handle right now is keeping track of where these “atoms” are at a given moment.  In order for any truly real simulation to occur, meaning creating “matter” that behaves exactly the way matter in our universe behaves, several more details would have to be added.  The obvious one is that the atom isn’t the smallest unit of matter, so the program would have to go smaller than that.  Subatomic particles have to be programmed with the same constants as in our universe to give atoms the same properties.  Once an atom behaves exactly as an atom should, the only thing left is achieving enough computing power to handle it all.    The correct behavior at the atomic level will make everything else right as well. 

Obviously this doesn’t mean that in the near future we will see a booming new market of universe synthesis, but this kind of technology (if it works well) would be one step towards a future where we can try.  Personally, I think it would be an interesting experiment even if it doesn’t work.  

By James Scott Horsfall

Big Sur, Art and the Cosmos!

I’m not really much of a nature guy, by nature. I like my creature comforts, my HDTV, my air conditioning...by and large I’m comfortable not forcing myself to confront the wild very often. After all, it’s called “the wild” for a reason, right?

But every now and then I take advantage of opportunities to experience the awesomeness of nature. This past weekend was one of those occasions. I was in Monterey, California, and, having some free time and a new camera I wanted to try out, I spent several hours on Saturday driving down the Coast highway through Big Sur and back. I’ve been there before, seen it before, but every time I make that drive I am awed by the majesty and sheer creative power of nature.

I know that many people see something like these incredible cliffs as the hand of God in action, but I’m awed knowing that they were created bit by tiny bit over a vast, nearly unfathomable span of time by the powerfully artistic hand of nature. And I marvel that we, as humans, have evolved over vast millenia ourselves to a point where we can see, process and appreciate something like a Grand Canyon or a Yosemite Valley or a Big Sur as the things of beauty that they are.

Driving back I had my ipod playing random music through my car’s sound system when I had one of those serendipitous moments that the randomness of life provides. Tim Minchin’s “Not Perfect” played just as I was driving along one of the more scenic stretches of my journey, and somehow these lyrics seemed to fit the moment perfectly:

This is my Earth
And I live in it
It’s one third dirt
And two thirds water
And it rotates and revolves through space
At rather an impressive pace
And never even messes up my hair
And here’s the really weird thing
The force created by its spin
Is the force that stops the chaos flooding in
This is my Earth, and it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect, but it’s mine

This then reminded me of another impressive bit of art - a poem written by a young man named Victor Harris. He shared it as part of a art in skepticism panel at the recent SkeptiCAL conference in Berkeley, and I found it really inspiring.  Victor posts his poetry at the Mad Art Lab website, and you can find this particular poem, entitled Weird Science, here.  I particularly like this section:

...I am left breathless by the understanding
that my continuance is an example
of the improbable versus the impossible,
and despite what some might think
this gives my life more meaning,
makes each day more precious,
brings into sharp contrast
the importance of each interaction,
lends weight and reality
to the precious actuality
of each person I allow into my life...

I try to remind myself to feel that way - to remember that we’re just tiny passengers on a vast cosmic vessel that has been churning and moving and evolving and creating great art for longer than I can begin to fathom. And that’s truly awesome!

20,000 Views!

On Monday, viewings of my music video The Skeptic in the Room hit the 20,000 mark - a milestone I would have acknowledged prior to this, except that I had to leave for a business trip to Washington DC that morning, and have been too busy to write a blog post. I’ve been looking forward to to this meaningless and arbitrary milestone for some time. I had hoped I’d reach it in time for the Amazing Meeting 9 in Las Vegas two weeks ago but, alas, I was still about a hundred views short at that time.  Still, I’m pleased to have reached it now, and I thank the thousands of skeptics, free-thinkers, atheists and other disturbed souls who have taken the time to watch my video, the 109 people who have commented on it, and the 424 who have, as of tonight, “liked” it on YouTube (hell, I even thank the seven cantankerous souls who ‘disliked’ it!).

As I said, this is an arbitrary and largely meaningless milestone, but in the spirit of good pseudoscience, let me try to imbue it with some kind of meaning.  20,000 views of an eight-minute video means that people on this planet have spent 160,000 minutes, 2,607 hours or 111 days watching my silly little song about being the skeptic who confronts people about their silly beliefs. That’s a lot of lost man-hours and, for that, I humbly apologize!  

On the other hand, its only 2% of the time people have spent watching this video of a cute kitten, so perhaps I have nothing to apologize for!

Thanks again, everyone, and I’m glad you enjoyed the song!

And Three TAM9 Complaints

Yesterday I posted my top ten list of TAM9 memories.  Herewith, three things I didn’t much care for:

Technical Glitches. Starting with the unfortunate disruption of George Hrab’s musical medley that started the conference, and running through nearly every presentation and panel, technical glitches were a constant part of the proceedings. They disrupted the flow, disconcerted the presenters and confused the spectators. Not only were there constant problems getting videos and slides to appear, whoever was running the A/V constantly switched from views of the presentations to the presenters and back again, making it difficult to comprehend what was going on in the slides (and don’t get me started on the awful, awful, AWFUL slides used by so many presenters. If your audience can’t comprehend what’s in a slide, DON’T USE IT!)

A Disappointing Dawkins. One of the things we were most excited about was seeing and hearing Richard Dawkins. My son James and I have both read virtually everything the man has written, and I’ve seen him speak passionately and so articulately via YouTube so many times. But I thought his speech at TAM was flat, passion-free and, let’s face it, a bit boring. Maybe he was worried about repercussions from his ‘contributions’ to the previous week’s kerfuffle, but he didn’t do much in the way of inspiring the next generation (although the illustrations in his forthcoming book look way cool).

Coffee! OK, I drink way more coffee than I should anyway, but why oh why did the coffee service keep disappearing from the room?  I mean, come on, we’re in Vegas, we’re all sleep-deprived, but we have this awesome non-stop lineup of presenters - all we need to keep awake and focused is a steady influx of caffeine. That's not too much to ask, right?

All in all, the good outweighs the bad by a huge margin. Hopefully they’ll get those technical details worked out for next year!

TAM9 Top Ten List!

I’ve just returned from The Amazing Meeting 9 in Las Vegas, my first TAM.  And it was everything I’d heard it was. It was particularly satisfying for me to attend it in the company of my two sons, Ryan and James. Ryan, a professional magician in San Francisco, and James, a student of Molecular biology at UC/Santa Cruz, both found much to engage their particular areas ofinterest during the four days we were in Vegas.

What follows is a highly subjective and personal list of my top ten memories of TAM9. This is a list of those individual moments that I’m certain will live with me for years to come as I reflect on my first TAM.

1. First appearance of The Amazing Randi, to a loving and thunderous standing ovation. While I have issues with the 'hero worship' culture at TAM, those reservations do not apply to the venerable head of the movement himself. The man is an inspiration and a national treasure. And, given Randi's recent health problems, his appearance that first morning was moving, I think, even for TAM veterans who have experienced it before. For a newbie like me, it was an amazing moment!

2. George Hrab's opening medley. George Hrab’s performance as MC throughout the three days was brilliant. But nothing topped his opening medley of songs written for and about the event (even the unfortunate technical glitches didn’t derail its impact). From the impressive way he worked every speaker’s name into the song, to the hilarious “Too Many Novellas” interludes, to the song imploring questioners to “make sure your question’s a question,” the whole thing was perfect.

3. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's keynote. There were several great speeches, and Bill Nye deserves at least an honorable mention here, but Tyson really rocked the house. He knew his audience and delivered what we all came to see and hear - a passionate, insightful and enlightening look into his world.

4. “Say hello to my little friend.” At their second live show, the SGU crew presented a short video of prominent skeptics delivering famous lines from movies. The hilarious capper to the video came when Mr. Deity delivered Al Pacino’s famous line from Scarface "say hello to my little friend," then swooped menacingly past the camera to reveal Randi standing behind him. The Amazing one then deadpanned De Nero's classic "you lookin’ at me?” line as the crowd went crazy.

5. Future in Space panel smackdown. All of the panels were great, but this one featured an incredible lineup of experts (Phil Plait! Neil deGrasse Tyson! Pamela Gay! Lawrence Krauss! Bill Nye!) getting into real debates about important issues where there were legitimate differences of opinion. In particular the face-offs between Tyson and Krauss were exhilarating and had the crowd in a near frenzy. I wanted to hit reset and run the whole thing over and over again.

6. Chuck Norris. OK I never actually saw the guy, but when Chuck Norris showed up in the hallways outside the meeting, the Twitterverse erupted with a slew of improvised Chuck Norris at TAM Jokes*. When Richard Dawkins, who was speaking at the time, quipped "I’m afraid I don't know who Chuck Norris is,” he got arguably his most positive response to his entire speech.

*Although I’m biased, my favorite Norris tweet was posted by my son Ryan (@horsfallmagic), who offered this bit of clarification to Dawkins: “for future reference, Chuck Norris is the end result of evolution.”

7. Skeptics guide video. OK, so admit it, the percolating subtext to this year’s TAM was the elevatorgate debate that had been echoing around the blogosphere for the previous week or so. And, while the powers that be obviously (and rightly) agreed to not let that become a topic that would derail the good feelings and positive energy of the conference, there was one unexpected and hilarious reference.  At their Saturday afternoon live taping of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, the SGU presented a funny and creative faux trailer for a Goodfellas-esque mob movie. One of the ‘celebrity blurbs’ featured was this quote ostensibly from Rebecca Watson: “I would hate to encounter those guys in an elevator!” The place erupted and, in a real sense, that little off-hand joke seemed to deflate the whole issue.

8. The Million Randi Challenge. Well, if not a million, at least a couple hundred skeptics in Randi beards posed for a group photo with the man himself.

9. Speaking at the speed of Hecht! Jennifer Michael Hecht's talk on the Philosophy of Skepticism was memorable both for the rapidity with which it was delivered, and for the memorable line: “I know when and why God was made up...because I'm a historian.”
10. Bacon, Donuts and Rock ‘n Roll. While the Penn Jillette bash fell a bit short of the level of decadence seemingly promised by the famed magician, it nevertheless fully delivered on the bacon, donuts and rock 'n roll!

Honorable mentions:

• The Phil Plait/Richard Wiseman duality. Jokes about how much the two skeptical celebrities look alike never got old (until they did).
• George Hrab's listing of fake accomplishments during introductions (Steve Novella is working on his third opera and created his own language!)
• The diversity panel fiercely debating how aggressively the skeptical movement should take on social issues.
• "Obama's Elf...don't wanna be...Obama's elf, anymore."

And much, much more!

Nearing 20,000 Views!

A few months ago I posted the video of my song "The Skeptic in the Room" on YouTube and was thrilled to see how positively it was received in the skeptical community. And now, with TAM9 fast approaching, viewings of my video are just a hundred or so shy of 20,000*. Help me reach this totally meaningless and arbitrary milestone by watching it again (or, if you haven't seen it yet, for the first time!).


Thanks!

*I figure 20,000 viewings of an eight-minute song has to be the equivalent of a million or so views of a video of cute kittens, right!