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About Me
Name:
Lee Graham
Location:
Ottawa,
Ontario,
Canada
Interests
Artificial
Intelligence,
Evolutionary
Computation,
Artifical Life,
Evolution,
Skepticism,
Atheism
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TAM5 Photos
 | The Riviera
This is the conference hotel as it looks at night. Like everything on the strip, it's bright, multi-coloured, and flashing. |
 | James Randi and me
I can't believe I met James the amazing Randi. By the way, I'd like to add, he's really a very friendly guy - it's just that right before this picture was taken I specifically asked him to put on his grumpy face, just to make an interesting shot. |
 | Michael Shermer
This is Michael Shermer, president of The Skeptics Society, writer of the Skeptic column for Scientific American Magazine, and founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine. He gave the first presentation of the conference. He talked about some of the connections between evolution and morality and why humans, as social animals, have built-in moral instincts. |
 | Neil Gershenfeld
Neil Gershenfeld, from the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms gave a very interesting talk on his group's "Fab Labs" that have been erected in remote places around the world to give communities access to means for fabricating their own technological designs. |
 | Ron Bailey
Ron Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason magazine. |
 | Adam Savage
The great Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame came to the conference along with Tory Belleci from the Mythbusters build team. Adam was very enthusiastic and happy to be at the TAM. He brought along several items from the show to be auctioned off, and we were all very pleased that both he and Phil Plait pledged to continue coming to future TAM meetings for as long as Randi and the other organizers want them! |
 | Matt Stone
Matt Stone is the co-creator of Southpark, one of the best skeptical television shows out there, and one that reaches a huge audience. |
 | Trey Parker
Trey Parker is the other co-creator of Southpark. Both he and Matt went on stage to be interviewed by Penn Jillette, but mostly took questions from the audience. |
 | Richard Wiseman and Jim
Richard Wiseman is a psychologist and author. Despite severe technical difficulties beyond his control, he still managed to give us a great presentation on his search to find the world's funniest joke. Here he is with Jim. |
 | Richard Wiseman and me
I loved his presentation on the TAM4 DVDs. It was such a thrill to meet him in person. He was super friendly, as was everyone at TAM. |
 | Jim and Phil Plait
Phil Plait is an idol for both Jim and me. When he heard that we were Canadian he was gracious enough to end his sentences with "eh" and call us both "hosers". |
 | Me and Phil Plait
Okay, it's not the greatest photo, but we only took the one shot. I'll just assume that that's his skeptical look. |
 | Jerry Andrus and me
Jerry Andrus is a magician, inventor, and master of optical illusions. Here he is explaining to me about how he rigged his computer keyboard so that the thumbs were not wasted on pushing just the spacebar. He placed several keys atop his spacebar so that the thumbs could be better utilized when typing. Clever guy. |
 | Robert Todd Carroll and Jim
Bob Carroll created The Skeptic's Dictionary which is a tremendously useful internet resource for skeptics. I attended a workshop at the conference that he put on with both Diane Swanson and Ray Hall, on the topic of getting critical thinking into the classroom. Here he is with Jim. |
 | Jim and Penn Jillette
I never did get to meet Penn Jillette, unfortunately. While I wandered off somewhere, though, Jim found him and nabbed a photo. |
 | Jim and Teller
Both Jim and I ran into Teller at the conference, but at different times. Jim nabbed this photo, and I got Teller to sign an insult in my copy of creationist Michael Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box". |
 | Jim and Trey Parker
Another couple of people Jim managed to meet and I didn't: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the hilarious cartoon Southpark. |
 | Hal Bidlack and Jim
Hal Bidlack worked tirelessly at both keeping the conference organized, and playfully insulting Phil Plait. He was the primary M.C. for the conference and he did a great job. |
 | Hal Bidlack and me
Hal Bidlack also put on a show at the conference where he impersonated Alexander Hamilton and took questions from the audience in character. Alas, I didn't see that performance, but I did get a chance to wish him good luck as I passed him in the hallway in costume. |
 | Me and Jamy Ian Swiss
Jamy Ian Swiss is a famous close-up magician, lecturer, and author. He was a very interesting guy to listen to. He showed Jim, and me several different card tricks while discussing sleight of hand techniques with fellow magician Greg Winslow. |
 | Ray Hall
Dr. Ray Hall is a physicist, and like Greg Winslow, was a paper presenter at the very first TAM. Since then he's been in charge of organizing and refereeing the paper presenters at TAM. He did a great job and was very friendly despite the fact that I shamelessly went overtime on my talk. He was also one of the organizers of the workshop I attended on getting critical thinking into the classroom. |
 | Harriet Hall, M.D.
Harriet Hall was the first presenter during the Sunday session. She talked about her frustrating experiences trying to bring skepticism and critical thinking to non-skeptics. |
 | Kylie Sturgess
Kylie Sturgess was the second presenter during the Sunday session. She talked about the importance of objectively testing the effectiveness of teaching critical thinking in the classroom. She also gave me a CD copy of her materials, which may help shape my next mini-course this May. |
 | David Green
David Green is a fellow Ottawan (Ottawanian? Ottawanite? whatever). He works for the patent office here in Ottawa. His talk was about the structure of the patent application system in Canada and why patents for perpetual motion machines and the like are not so hard to obtain despite the fact that patent examiners like himself know full well that such things violate the laws of physics. |
 | Me
My presentation was about my Web Applet that uses a simulated process of Darwinian evolution to produce irreducible complexity. |
 | Skepchick
Rebecca Watson's talk was on how to become a C-list internet celebrity in just 30 days. She attempted to film the audience taking part in the blasphemy challenge by denying the holy spirit and all sorts of other supernatural stuff indistinguishable from things that don't exist. It seems the camera didn't function properly. It was probably an act of God. |
 | Ginger Switzer
Ginger Switzer presented on the topic of wordsmithing and how the proper choice of words can have a big effect on how ideas are received and understood. |
 | Benjamin Radford
Benjamin Radford is the managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and author of Media Mythmakers. During his presentation he showed us a very comical video poking fun at the nature of television news and content. |
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