TAM is a yearly conference about science and skepticism, and has lots of panels and talks by scientists and the “big stars” from the skeptical community (those tend to overlap).

Day -1 (The trip)
Traveling from Norway to the west coast of the US is a major pain in the ass. I got on the airplane early as shit, having only about 2-3 hours of sleep, and only carrying my plastic grocery bag containing 2 tshirts, 1 boxer and 1 pair of socks, as well as my camera and charger (I decided to travel light). The aircraft rolls out from the gate, but something strange is happening. After a couple of minutes the captain announces that the computer system is refusing to start one of the engines, and they have to reboot the aircraft.. So everything is switched off, but rebooting the computer system of the airplane takes a long time as it has to do lots of tests and configurations at startup. After about 30 minutes the computer decides to start both engines and from there the flight to Amsterdam went quickly (about 2 hours), then I had to wait at the airport in Amsterdam for 4 hours. Not that I did mind, it’s a really nice airport, and I could listen to my favorite podcast for the whole time.

Traveling light

The flight from Amsterdam to New York went much better(quicker) than expected, never been on such a huge plane before and I’m sooo glad I paid the 10% extra to get economy extra seating (only 1 seat next to you, and more room for arms and legs). Can’t really remember much of the flight, except the vegetarian meal was excellent and the desert awesome (go KLM!). Spent the entire flight using the in-flight entertainment system, Think I watched ‘Battle Los Angeles’, ‘Ant Bully’ and some tv shows (Curb your enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and a few others).

However when I landed at JFK, the so far pleasant trip took a turn for the worse. I had done the whole ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) thing, so I expected to just walk trough the immigration area. So I stood in line for 1 hour, just to find out I had to do the paper version as well (which is just asking for exactly the same information again).. Back to the end of the line and wait for another hour. I make it through immigration, but for some reason the guy just stared at my passport without blinking for at least 45 seconds, and was starting to freak me out a little.

Now I’m trying to find my flight, but of course it’s not listed on the board. I go to the Delta place and after them trying to send me to another terminal, they finally locate the flight (apparently there was some mix up of the flight number between KLM and Delta) and I have to run trough the airport and literally get on the plane in the last minute. On the plane I get flabbergasted by some people from the Norwegian skeptical society that I somewhat know from online.

Flight to Las Vegas is like 5 hours and I was half asleep the entire trip. I land around midnight and take a taxi to South Point hotel and casino, where the conference is taking place. I make my way up to the room, set my alarm clock and go to sleep faster than you could say ‘snapple’.

This bed was a sight for sore eyes that had been traveling for 28 hours

Day 0 – July 13th.
My first day in the new world, I’m up at 6 am (2 hours before my alarm goes off), tired confused and looking out into the desert trough my hotel window.

It's the wild west, and I didn't bring a gun or a hat

I go downstairs and quickly gets something to eat from the hotel gift shop before I head into town:

Traditional american breakfast

I take a taxi into town to get some supplies (I came bringing only 1 carry on). So with a long shopping list I headed to the place where the american dream turns true: Walmart.

However right across the road from Walmart I found “The Gun store”, so I got to play with some weapons (AK47 and MP5) that it would be hard to get to try in Norway without joining the army.

Skinhead with beard and foreign accent rents AK-47

Certified Nazi Zombie killer

After shooting zombies, I bought lots of stuff at Walmart (luggage case, netbook, boxers, socks, tshirts, shirts and a couple of shorts, toothbrush, shower gel, deodorant, sunblock + food and snacks).

Can haz loot!

I have no idea what happened from noon to midnight, by looking at the photos from that time it appears I just went back to the hotel and did nothing (damn you sleep deprivation + jet lag).

Day 1 (June 14th) – First day of TAM
Fuck me, it’s 05:00 and I’m awake! I tried going back to sleep, but instead I ended up going out and taking pictures of the area around the hotel while waiting for the convention to start.

Las Vegas sunset	Desert! I am in you!	Flowers are purdy
Red and shiny car being all red and shiny	South Point hotel and casino	More desert, now with hills in background
A random building	yaaay,a crosswalk! this is awesome	South Point hotel and casio from the front side

Registration opened at 7:30, I got my badge and wandered around waiting for the first workshop. The workshop was about examining UFO photos, and faking UFO photos without using photoshop. After that I attended a workshop called “Investigating monster mysteries” which was about cryptozoology (Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, etc..)

After that I had lunch and I think I went up for a nap. I woke up in time for ‘The Rebecca Watson Game Show and Variety Hour’, which was really funny. After that I went straight to bed.

Day 2 (June 15th)  – Second day
Yesterday was kind of a slow TAM day, no panels, just the workshops.

This day however started with what I think was the highlight of TAM, a live recording of the podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. This was followed by the official opening remarks by James Randi himself.

The SGU crew

Following that was an awesome panel with James Randi, Richard Wiseman, Phil Plait, Joe Nickell and Michael Shermer

Panel about skepticism on TV

After that I wandered around a bit, got some lunch,visited the vendor booths and got myself a couple of pet Trilobites

at 14:00 I was back in the main hall for a series of great panels/lectures.

A skeptical look at aliens by Biologist PZ Myers.

A panel with Astronomer Pamela Gay from Astronomy cast

This was followed by an extremely awesome panel about our future in space, with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, Bill Nye (the science guy), and Lawrence Krauss with Phil Plait as a moderator.

This was immediately followed by Neil Degrasse Tyson’s keynote speech which was in lack of a better word, EPIC!.

I went to the Skeptics guide to the universe dinner at 18:00, and actually ate some real food. After that I was going to take a quick nap before the ‘Penn Jillette’s Rock & Roll, Doughnut and Bacon Party’, but dozed off and missed it

Day 3 (June 16th)  – Third day
This day there weren’t that many panels that I had to go to, so from I woke up at 7 (seriously, is jetlag supposed to last this long?) I headed into downtown and walked the strip and took lots of photos:

A hotel/casino with a rollercoaster, never got around to trying it	A casino/hotel that's a fucking castle!	Walking up the strip
Caesars palace! If this was Fallout 3 New Vegas I would go in there and kill everyone	Looks vaguely familiar	Yay, I got to see the Eifel tower without going to Paris
A place for the statistically illiterate	I rode the monorail! But saw no cat

I made it back to South Point and TAM just in time for the second half of the Skeptics Guide Live podcast event.

Steve, Evan, Jay, Rebecca and Bob

This was followed by the second Keynote speaker, Richard Dawkins. Again, the word Epic! comes to mind.

Day 4 (June 14th) – Final day
Day 4 had a few panels I wanted to see, but I had to make a flight to Los Angeles at noon, so left the hotel pretty early.

I’ll write about my LA trip in a while and put a link to it >>> HERE <<<

To sum it up, in 10 days the moon will be closer to the earth than it has been in 19 years.
The newspaper then goes on to list a bunch of conspiracy theory bullshit about several times when the moon has been at its closest to the earth, earthquakes/tsunamies/etc. occurred.

The moons orbit is not a perfect circle, so the distance from the moon to the earth varies between roughly 350’000 km and 400’000 km.

The moon’s effect on the tides is around 60-70% and the sun makes up 40-30%, so of course when the moon gets closer the tides get more extreme, and unless I made an error in the calculations below, the difference in gravitational force between the earth and the moon from when the moon is farthest away and closest should be 13.764%

= 13% difference

Update: It seems the formula I used above is the “shared” gravitational force between the earth and the moon, Phil plait comes up with a maximum 50% increase in the moons gravitational effect on the earth, which is a more useful number. Also he’s an astronomer, so I’d take his word over mine.. On anything but Star Trek trivia

When the moon is at it’s closest and at the same time line up with the sun, we get what’s called the Perigean spring time. In other words, a big ass tide

Earthquakes and statistics!

They also cited a professor in astronomy (they actually referred to him as professor in astrology, but later changed the article and deleted the comments pointing this out).

The paper suggests that earthquakes can be caused by the moon being to close to the earth (sounds like a 50′s sci-fi movie), but what I find quite surprising is the rather strange quote from the professor:
“I would be very surprised, if there was a really strong earthquake at this particular date”. and that while living in California, he witnessed an powerful earthquake on the day before a “supermoon”.

The USGS defines a strong earthquake as anything with a magnitude of 6.0 or above (Christchurch was 6.3). On average there 150 earthquake like this yearly.

So the chance for a strong earthquake to happen on march 19th, is 41%.

If we however include the day before and after, the chance increases to 79%.

If we where to include 2 days before and after, we’re up to 92%.

So it’s pretty certain that a big earthquake will take place on or around march 19th, and it’s pretty certain crazy doomsday nuts will say there is a connection between that statistically predicted earthquake and the evil moon. The chance of the quake hitting a densely populated area however is much smaller, so maybe the nuts won’t notice it

update 11.03.2011: As statistics predicted a large earthquake did occur. It did hit a densely populated area, and caused a huge tsunami that hit the northwestern coast of Japan causing massive damages and deaths

The newspaper actually takes this flawed thinking to a whole new level, posting a picture from a earthquake/tsunami in Indonesia, making the point that it “happened only 2 weeks before a supermoon” (oooouh spooky!!).

This is just moronic.. the chance of a strong earthquake being 2 weeks before or after a certain date is 99.999977369 %

Note: all my calculations are based upon dates of earthquakes being relatively evenly distributed through the year, as confirmed by USGS

Now I can have this handsome hunk of an astrophysicist watch over me while I work

The picture took about 10 hours to do, and is made from 8100 small plastic beads (perler). The picture itself is 45×45 cm, I wanted to have it much bigger, but when you have  a girlfriend you learn to compromise)

If you’re not already, you should follow him on Twitter (@neiltyson), he has very interesting tweets about science and astronomy.

Somewhat inspired by xkcd

Anyway, this was the best image I could find, but it’s kinda old, blurry so I fixed the colors, contrast, sharpness removed artifacts, etc.. in photoshop and I think the end result is pretty good considering my photoshop noobness. So if your looking for a large good picture of Carl Sagan (And let’s be hones, who would NOT want such a picture??) here it is:

original to the left.. shopped to the right (The improvements don’t really become visible until you view the large version)

Click to view larger

Hopefully some preliminary results can be released this summer

One thing that really surprised me was the funky graphics produced:

And the fact that they use VLC, the best video playback software ever made

The Minbari in Babylon 5 believes all life are manifested as a way for the universe to examine every piece of itself. This reminds me of two quotes from Carl:

“We are a way for the universe to know itself”

“We are made of star stuff”

Here’s a great video about the origins of the universe

And why not throw in a few more great quotes (ok, I had a hard time selecting, so it became QUITE a few)

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

“Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret”

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it’s forever. “

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct”

“For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise.”

“We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both.”

“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.”

“In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.”

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive”

“Credulity kills”

Memorial at mars (from Star Trek Enterprise)