SkeptiCamp St. Louis

On August 18th, we will be having SkeptiCamp St. Louis, a free conference where you can participate! SkeptiCamp is a grassroots conference where people from the local community give talks on topics like skepticism, science, philosophy, and religion. Everyone is invited to give a talk on a topic that they're interested in and the audience is encouraged to ask questions throughout the talks. You can find out more about SkeptiCamps in general here (http://skepticamp.org/wiki/Main_Page). We will have talks throughout the day from 9:45AM to 6:00PM. We will be providing a free light breakfast and lunch at 9:15AM and 12:45PM. We will have pizza for lunch, and will be doing a potluck for sides, so if you have a tasty recipe, we'd love to have you bring some to share. If your dish needs refrigeration, please see someone at the Skeptical Society table in the foyer. You should also stop by this table to pick up your info packet and if you want to purchase raffle tickets, T-shirts, or Skeptical Society beer glasses. The beer glasses will be $10 or 2 for $15 and the t-shirts will be $15 each. We will have Skeptical Society t-shirts as well as a Skepticamp t-shirt that we had made just for this event. We could also use some help with (wo)manning the table and with setup and cleanup, so if you'd be willing to spare a little time to help, please send us an email (skepticampstl@gmail.com).

This is just the first SkeptiCamp we've done in St. Louis, but it's looking like this might be the biggest and best SkeptiCamp ever, with a crowd of about 120 people. I hope to see you there.

Here's the schedule:

09:15AM-Breakfast
09:45AM-Introduction
10:00AM-Paul Harris: Why We Need More Skeptics
10:30AM-Alice Sanvito: Woo, Sloppy Thinking, and Language
11:00AM-Mike McKay: Time Traveling Porn: Fact or Fantasy
11:30AM-Break
11:45AM-L. Richard Feldenberg, M.D.: Evolutionary Medicine of the Kidney- How a fish messed up the design for your kidneys
12:15PM-Dr. Pamela L. Gay: Enabling Space Exploration: Crowdsourcing an Interplanetary Future
12:45PM-Lunch (Downstairs Assembly Hall)
After lunch there will be two tracks of speakers (feel free to switch between the two):

Track A (Upstairs Auditorium)
01:30PM-Ben Conover: Neuroscience of Belief
02:00PM-Lance Finney: Relationships Between Theists/Atheists
02:15PM-Gabe Harper: Extremist Ideologies as Religions
02:30PM-Ben Schuldt: Jesus was a Dick
03:00PM-Andy Semler: Increasing Accessibility to the Freethought Community
03:30PM-Dr. Christina Stephens: Acupuncture: Watch Me Stab Myself
04:00PM-Kwame: History of Atheism in the Black Community

Track B (Downstairs Hanke Meeting Room)
01:30PM-Reuben T., MD, MPH: 10 Medical Myths in 10 minutes
01:45PM-Dane Muckler: Why Intelligent Design Isn't As Crazy As You Think
02:00PM-Bob Sandheinrich: Bad Math and the Velda City Blues
02:15PM-Karl Wulff: Skeptical Finance: The Housing Bubble, What
Happened, Why, and What it Means for the Future of Home Ownership
02:30PM-Larry Lazar: Talking Science with Uncle Bob
03:00PM-Erich Vieth: Errant Decision-Making
03:15PM-Laura Hennefield: Developmental Psychology
03:30PM-Robert Ashton: Sauce for the Gander: Homosexual marriage and climate change - Do skeptics practice what they preach?
04:00PM-Michael Blanford: Those Meddling Kids...Skeptical Messages in
Children's Television Programming

04:30-Break
04:45PM-Phil Ferguson: Breaking the Cycle: Promoting Critical Thinking
in Children
05:15PM-David Peery: Superstition in Nursing
05:30PM-The Psychology of Magic: The Inner Secrets of the Art of Deception
05:45PM-Closing ceremony and announcement of raffle winners
06:00PM-Gather at Houlihans for a Skeptics in the Pub