Tag: skepticamp

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geology skepticamp

Have I mentioned that I hate public speaking?

Because I do. I really, really do.

For this internship, I’ve had to give four presentations, in front of rooms filled with people I don’t know that well, many of whom seem to delight in asking really hard questions. I guess it’s one of those sink or swim things. Even better, for three out of the four presentations, I had to go first out of my group since it was my responsibility to set up the background for the larger presentation.

So much anxiety.

I think the secret is acting. As in, acting like I’m not someone who is utterly terrified. It seems to be working for me. To the point that statements like, “You know, I wish I could answer that question but I can’t remember at the moment because I’m scared out of my mind,” get treated as laugh lines rather than a pathetic truth. Or maybe everyone just sympathizes.

Also, ostracods. Why can’t I remember your name when I’m actually trying to give a presentation, yet it comes popping back into my head the instant I sit down? This has happened all three times I’ve given this presentation. Enough is enough.

I’m grateful that at least I’m no longer paralyzed with vomit-inducing terror when it’s time to give a talk. I can fake being a normal human being who can communicate without looking like she’s about to get strapped into the electric chair.

I think Skepticamp’s helped me with this a lot, actually. It’s one of the few places I’ve ever willingly given a talk, and several times at that. Even if I am, as usual, absolutely terrified while I do it. Though I seem to mask my fear well enough with enthusiasm, from what I’ve heard. My desire to nerd out about something geology-related is apparently enough to get me over the pant-shitting prospect of a room full of people I don’t know who might ask me a question for which I have no answer.

Skepticamp is also where I cemented my bad presentation habit of just throwing slides on the screen and bullshitting at them. Everyone else in my team wrote exhaustive notes to themselves on their slides. I… don’t. Ever. I just make my slides, go through them a few times so I can remember the approximate order (even I know it’s a bad, bad thing to be surprised by your own slides), and then figure if I know the subject well enough, I’ll be able to talk through it just fine when the time comes. So far it’s worked out okay for me.

Except the damn ostracods.

Anyway, I’ve survived the intern forum, which means I’m home free! I have another two weeks at work, but no more presentations, thank goodness. I shouldn’t have to stare Powerpoint in its stinky, evil little eye again until it’s time for me to put together a presentation for my Masters thesis and AGU. (Ah, AGU. I will begin dreading you now so I can pace myself.)

At least there are no ostracods in the Bighorn Basin.

DAMN YOU OSTRACODS!!!!
Categories
bbcp skepticamp

Clarion Blog Post Up! And Skepticamp!

New post of mine up over at the Clarion Blog. I talk about my seven days of drilling in the Bighorn Basin, this time from the perspective of what the experience felt like.

Skepticamp Colorado Springs was today, and it was awesome and tons of fun. This one was split into two rooms, which put us all in the unfortunate position of having to choose between speakers – but also meant there was more variety. There were a lot of fun talks. As always, I loved Bryan and Baxter, Karen Stollznow, and Stuart Robbins. John Rising did a great job organizing the event, and also did an interesting talk on the history of ghost photography.

We also had a couple of guys from the Airforce Academy: Dr. Carlos Bertha and Dr. Barry Fagin. Dr. Bertha started the morning with an interesting talk about Fideism, which is basically the position of unreasoning “because I said so” faith. It was enough philosophy to be interesting but not so much it made me want to tear my hair out, and it was generally interesting. And it was a good explanation why sometimes, you just have to give up an argument and agree to disagree, because no amount of logic will really penetrate. Dr. Fagin I had more mixed feelings on. He gave two talks, actually. The first in the morning was basically a libertarian ranty rant about how we should be skeptical about politics, where he said he’d be goring his own ox as well but didn’t really. He said some things about economics that I desperately wish Mike had been there for, since I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Mike say bitchy things about just those things in the past. But Dr. Fagin’s second talk was absolutely awesome, about how skepticism brings with it a rich inner life. It was extremely well done and was a nice end cap for the day.

I did a talk as well, about the basics of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project, what we’re hoping to find out about the PETM, what the PETM and ELMO are, and why this is an important topic to discuss. I moved my talk so that I could see Stuart’s entire topic. This meant that I actually gave mine at the same time our local global climate change denier was giving his. Which I think was probably for the best, or we might well have just been heckling the crap out of each other during our respective talks and never would have gotten anywhere. I feel like my talk went pretty well. I was nervous as hell. I always am about public speaking, and this I was trying to talk about some basic isotope ratio stuff, and I still get so turned around with those at times. But apparently I didn’t sound nervous at all, and I was enthused and interesting, so go me! I think that teaching has helped my public speaking, to the point that I at least manage to not throw a lot of garbage “uh” and “you know” in, even if I’m nervous.

Correction from my talk: I got on an excited roll and said something about there being a rainforest of some sort in Antarctica. Let the record show that this was a mistake on my part, where I confused two separate and interesting things in my head. There’s evidence of a very high-latitude (80N paleolatitude) seasonal rainforest in Arctic Canada during the middle Eocene1. And there’s evidence that during the PETM, Antarctica had a subtropical humid episode – so it got a lot warmer and a lot more humid than today’s Antarctica2. So there was season rainforest that moved up into the Arctic, but I have no idea what the vegetation might have been like in Antarctica during the PETM. I tried to do a quick and dirty paper search and didn’t come up with anything, so it could be that we just don’t know. Antarctica isn’t the most hospitable place to go searching for fossilized pollen. But if you don’t believe me about the proto-Potomac, read this cool paper.

Boy, is my face red.

Anyway, my parents came to Skepticamp! It was their first one. Though I’m sure it wasn’t at all intimidating after going to TAM. But my parents are super awesome.

Afterward, we all went to Jack Quinn’s, and I drank two ciders despite the fact that I had no business drinking anything stronger than water after the Evan-induced beer binge last night. (Though I somehow managed to escape my richly-deserved hangover this morning, so who knows.) I had some excellent bangers and mash.

Where will the next Colorado Skepticamp be?

1 – Jahren, A.H., and Sternberg, L.S.L., 2003, Humidity estimate for the middle Eocene Arctic rain forest: Geology, v. 31, p. 463-466.

2- Robert, C., and Kennett, J.P., 1994, Antarctic subtropical humid episode at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary: Clay-mineral evidence: Geology, v. 22, p. 211-214.

Categories
skepticamp skepticism

And Then There Was This Skepticamp Thing

Which I really should have posted about before I went in to full-on Loki fangirling mode yesterday, but what can I say. I must be true to my inner fangirl.

Skepticamp Colorado (the sixth?) happened on Saturday, and I made certain to be there from the start. The event was at CU again, though this time we used one of the business school buildings, which I’ve never been in before. It was nice, and new, and there were pop machines that took credit cards, which I’ve never seen before.

The event was a lot of fun, as usual. The individual talks that stand out most in my mind were:

– Kim Saviano on the science of intersex. In her presentation she said that she has a blog, but I haven’t been able to find it and can’t remember the exact title – so if you recall or have the link, please let me know. Anyway, this was a very interesting talk and definitely a new topic for our Skepticamps, and Kim got some extremely good audience response. She made a lot of good points and had a lot of good, basic information in her presentation, but her point that struck me the most was: “We’re all assigned a gender at birth.”

– Karen Stollznow on Braco the Gazer was just a lot of fun. I’d only heard of this joker in passing (since he was mentioned in a meetup), but the more Karen talked about him, the more absolutely ridiculous it got. Braco supposedly heals people with the power of his gaze, which amounts to him standing on stage and blankly staring at adoring crowds for minutes on end. It’s hilarious, and also a bit scary because people really do buy this, and he seemed to be making a tidy living. Braco (pronounced more like “Bratzo”) also is now the default toast for the Denver skeptics. Blame Rich Orman, because it really is his fault.

– Bryan and Baxter from Rocky Mountain Paranormal were absolutely hilarious, as always. I’m not going to say too much about their presentation since they will hopefully be releasing some awesome video in relation to it soon, but it did involve Joe Anderson with a pornstache at one point. And Rich Orman. And Froot Loops. And that’s all you get for now.

– DR. Stuart Robbins did an overview of physics for skeptics, which was useful – particularly since he tried to explain some basics of quantum mechanics. And I just love Stuart to bits anyway.

– And Shawn Yasutake finally did a presentation! Yay Shawn! He did a slide show about his trip to a low-budget Creation Museum in California, which was another funny but also sad thing to see. My favorite bit from his presentation was the museum sign that claims thermodynamics is God’s punishment on the world for sin. I swear I’m not making that up!

This year’s event was smaller than last year’s, I think – we were all just in one room for the day. I think that was nice, though, since it meant not having to choose between speakers. I also noticed that this was definitely the most argumentative year yet, mostly with the audience going back and forth with speakers about either logical fallacies, or the definition of energy. This occasionally caused some audience squirming, but I think the interaction is also sort of the point… if it can be conducted in a less squirm-inducing way. Though Joe, monkey suit and all, did his best to keep things from becoming completely derailed. But being able to address disagreements directly is valuable, since it’s too easy to get into a lecture mode where you just sort of absorb what you’re told by a speaker, whether it’s right or not.

I didn’t speak this year, mostly because I just wasn’t motivated enough to get my shit together in time. I will be signing up for sure next year, since I’m going to want to do an awesome “What I did over my summer vacation” slide show about the BBCP and paleoclimate change. So we’ll see how huge of a presentation that ends up being. And if I get to pick a fight with anyone in the audience when the time comes.

Can’t wait for next year!

Categories
skepticamp

Colorado Skepticamp is dead – long live Colorado Skepticamp!

Well, the good news is that we’re still going to have a Colorado Skepticamp this year, dangit! By hook or by crook!

I’d been a little bit worried about this. You see, months and months ago there was an organizational meeting for the event, where I volunteered with my buddy Micah to be the scheduling czar. Micah and I hashed out a bunch of ideas for improvements over some of the problems at last year’s Skepticamp, then hunkered down to wait for someone to tell us when the event would actually be, along with other little details – how many rooms we’d have, for what times, yadda yadda. Because it really is impossible to do anything for scheduling at an event if you don’t have dates and times.

And we waited, and waited, and waited… attempts at poking resulted in no response. And I admit, I’m also not such a go-getter that I wasn’t willing to do more than a bit of gentle poking. Because frankly, I’ve got a wedding I’m planning, and that’s more than enough for me to deal with right now. But I did wonder what the fate of Colorado Skepticamp would be, if the planning had apparently fallen apart, in a sort of vague “Oh shit I have to meet with a lady about flowers this weekend” kind of way.

Well, we got back on track last night with a reboot meeting, thanks to Rich and Reed and the many others that showed up. Since we’re trying to whip something together on fairly short notice, it’s going to be a leaner, meaner (okay, not meaner) deal than what was discussed at last year’s planning meeting. And I’m frankly okay with that. Something like poster sessions, or a video room starts sounding convention-esque, and that’s certainly more fancy organizing than I could handle. (And, apparently, pretty much everyone else involved could handle.) Bells and whistles also do seem to be a bit contrary to the last three Skepticamps we have known and loved.

Hopefully the crack squad that’s set on hunting up a location will have things settled soon, and we’ll have a date. I’m pretty excited.

I’ve also decided that this year, I’m definitely taking a rest from speaking. I did a presentation at the first Skepticamp and the third, so I really ought to give it a rest and let other people have the time. Which is also easy for me to say, because I don’t think I could put a coherent presentation together in time anyway, since we’re aiming for before TAM. For about five seconds, I entertained the idea of seeing if I could come up with some kind of light-hearted wedding skepticism thing, but no. The route I’ve gone has minimized my exposure to evil vendors (so unlike Kat, I haven’t had anyone try to convince me that my lifelong happiness hinged on an ice sculpture) and my close family and friends are sadly lacking in the charming yet crazy superstitious person department. And at this point in the game, I’m way too lazy to do research.

My life. It is hard.