1996 National Convention

Melbourne

 Report by by Roland Seidel

What a great conference! I had a great time. All the little things that went wrong have faded into obscurity in my memory, swamped by the fabulous things that went right, the most amazing of which was the serendipitous appearance of Derek Freeman! He pretty much stole the show - a quietly riveting delivery on his long labour to bring light upon the darkness of the anthropological disaster surrounding Margaret Mead and ‘Growing Up in Samoa’. The inaugural Skeptic of the Year was awarded to Derek Freeman of ANU and the bent spoon to Marlowe Morgan.

I must make a big public wail of appreciation for the Victorian Committee. While I get the visible credit for organising the best conference we’ve ever had, the quality of it is due entirely to the work of the committee. In the last few weeks it developed a momentum of its own and I felt like a leaf in a storm. The Vic committee is such a strong coherent group richly filled with talented people. Adam Santilli, James Gerrand, Dave Davies, Greg Keogh, Vince Butler, Bob Nixon, Mark Newbrook, Tracy Reynolds, Kathy Butler, Grant Stevenson, Alison Dwyer, Steve Roberts, Peter Hogan, Steve Basser and Steve Colebrook: thank you.

Richard Dawkins was brilliant, of course. One of the reasons I joined the Skeptics was to meet such extraordinary people and I have learnt a bit about fame in the process. Fame is a brilliant light that comes before to blind those waiting and a swirling wind that comes after to confuse the teller’s tale. (Lyrical, aren’t I?) Plenty of people who had not met him opined that Richard was arrogant and it’s rubbish. We found him to be kind, considerate, patient and charming. His wife, Lalla, was marvellous as well and they were such an adorable couple that one could offer them as models of the best in human behaviour.

I think the illusion of arrogance comes from the fact that that he is running flat out most of the time, that he is an uncommonly smart man, and from the difficulties of fame. He speaks with a measured caution and seems to me to be constantly on guard against the seduction of fame that produces arrogance, and against the seduction of intelligence that deludes one into thinking one is just as smart in all fields. When we were riveted by Derek Freeman’s talk later, Richard made a particular point of acknowledging the privilege he felt - it was a genuine, generous and poignant response.

All the speakers were great: I found Lesley Vick was surprisingly illuminating on the state of public thinking, what’s bad about new age thinking and where improvement is possible (I was delighted to hear that science and the scientific method seem to be described in philosophy as ‘the Enlightenment’ - as a seeker of enlightenment, I can confirm that I only ever found it there and I’ve looked in many places); Andrew Gibbs was frighteningly illuminating on the state of the recovered memories phenomenon, Mike Ablett’s piece on making medicines was full of lots of information I had been looking for for ages; Annie Warburton was delightful as always and is to be highly commended as someone who is out there and doing it; and Karl Kruszelnicki was pretty amazing despite some difficulties. Karl’s piece is really the only one that struck trouble. He was heavily dependent on AV equipment and we just didn’t have the expertise to support it on such short notice. Sorry, Karl.

We had lots of interesting merchandise. The Darwin stuff went well - a brilliant design based on the creationist fish symbol with feet on the fish and ‘Darwin’ written inside. I had to import this from the US and the t-shirts, mugs and lapel pins went almost straight away, much to my surprise. We had Skeptics umbrellas, which I thought was a fabulous idea but they hardly sold at all. Books always sell but we still have plenty left for the post-conference bargain hunter.

Speaking of that, here’s the list of stuff you can still purchase. Drop us a line, or an email.

$10 T-shirts (XL, L) (last year-the brain one - ‘Use it or lose it’)
$15 T-shirts (XXL, XL) (this year - ‘the Cool hand of Reason’)
$5 Lapel pins (Koala or Aussie question mark)
$15 Australian Skeptics Umbrella

Dawkins books:

$14 River out of Eden
$35 Climbing Mt. Improbable (hard)
$18 Climbing Mt. Improbable (soft)
$18 The Selfish Gene
$21 The Extended Phenotype
$14 The Blind Watchmaker
$70 Software for Mac or IBM: The Blind Watchmaker (watch evolution happen)

Other books: (you can get these from Sydney [see the back of the magazine] as well but we have copies already in Victoria)

$17 Ian Plimer’s Telling Lies for God
$9 Harry Edward’s Skeptoon
$20 Harry Edward’s Skeptics Guide to the New Age
$16 Harry Edward’s Magic Minds, Miraculous Moments

 Darwin stuff: we only have plaques and stickers left but we can do another import if you let us know what you’re interested in.

$7 Plaque for the car
$2.50 Bumper stickers
$6 Lapel pin
$5 Fridge magnet
$12 Mug
$23 T-shirt

Tapes of conference talks: We can sell tapes of all talks except Karl’s (his includes copyright material). These prices are estimates to give you some idea, final price depends on how we do it, which depends on demand.

Audio tape: ~$10 per session
Video tape: ~$20 per session

 Contact Conference Sales at :
PO Box 1555P, Melbourne, Vic 3000
ph. 03 9850 2816
fax 03 9841 0581