In the midst of this Nerdvana,

skeptics have set up their own “track” where they host talks and

panel discussions about the topics near and dear to their incredulous

little hearts…

Have you ever attended your

local CFI event, Skeptics in the Pub talk, or Amaz!ng Meeting and thought

to yourself, “All this deep philosophical discourse is greatly enriching,

but couldn’t there be more Spandex?”

If you are now imagining Richard

Dawkins in tights, maybe with a corset and giant Final Fantasy-inspired

wings, you know that the answer is “no.” Spandex is never the answer.

These frankly horrific thoughts

occur to me in the aftermath of DragonCon, an annual gathering of sci-fi

and fantasy geeks who converge upon Atlanta in the tens of thousands

to meet Kevin Sorbo and buy goggles with extraneous levers and buttons.

I know that sounds like a sarcastic dig, but in fact I bought a pair

of those goggles and am wearing them right now. They are fantastic.

In the midst of this Nerdvana,

skeptics have set up their own “track” where they host talks and

panel discussions about the topics near and dear to their incredulous

little hearts. This year’s guests included Adam Savage, James Randi,

Joe Nickell, D.J. Grothe, Jennifer Ouellette, and other familiar faces.

There were also some unfamiliar faces since many DragonCon panels are

composed of fans and enthusiastic amateurs talking about the subjects

that interest them.

Some of the talks were very

well attended. Randi filled a large ballroom with his “I Doubt It”

presentation, which combined magic and skepticism in a way that somehow

made both palatable. Randi is eighty-two years old, probably under five

feet tall, and in the past year has battled intestinal cancer, but he

still had more stage presence than nearly anyone at that convention.

Yes, even more than Lou Ferrigno.

Similarly, anywhere Adam Savage

went he was mobbed by adoring fans, many of whom probably didn’t know

they were enjoying the SkepTrack. That is Savage’s superpower: he

talks about not trusting some bit of common wisdom, and no one knows

he’s talking about skepticism. Then he talks about testing that bit

of common wisdom using tight controls, and no one knows he’s talking

about science. Sneaky teaching is the best kind of teaching.

A few speakers who were less

well known to mainstream audiences were also popular, like Ben Radford.

The room was filled to hear his presentation “Behind the Scenes on

a TV Ghost Show.” DragonCon attendees love ghost shows, and talks

like that likely go a long way toward helping introduce otherwise credulous

people into the skeptical community.

The SkepTrack panels that focused

on entertainment also did well, such as George Hrab’s live performance

of his popular podcast, The Geologic Show. There were jokes,

songs, geeky references, and fake Ukrainian accents. Before you get

any ideas for your next presentation, please remember that, like Spandex,

fake Ukrainian accents are best left to the professionals.

But did other talks really

capture the attention of the sci-fi/fantasy crowd?

Jennifer Ouellette (one of

my favorite science writers) gave a talk called “Mathematical Modeling

Pitfalls.” While Ouellette was using words I’ve repressed since

eleventh grade, someone in the Science Track was discussing “How to

Raise a Mad Scientist.” How could a talk about calculus ever compete

with a talk about such gleefully creative child abuse?

I’ll buy Ouellette’s new

book The Calculus Diaries, by the way—I just won’t read it

while watching reruns of Dexter’s Laboratory.

I wasn’t immune to the problem

of too much competition, either, as evidenced when I was a last-minute

addition to a panel titled “Skepticism 2.0: Blogging.” At the same

time that we were discussing search engine optimization, other DragonCon

attendees were filing into a neighboring hotel conference room for a

session titled “Robot Battles.” I was overcome with the urge to

shout to our small audience, “Just type words and put them on the

Internet. Now let’s go watch robots fight each other to the death!”

Rarely do such distractions

occur at other skeptical events, and for that reason alone it may be

well worth the effort for SkepTrack’s dedicated volunteers to avoid

the typical and occasionally dry topics we see elsewhere and instead

cater to the ridiculous. Embracing DragonCon’s crazy, pop-culture–obsessed

energy will set the SkepTrack apart from other skeptical events while

allowing freethinkers to reach a new, interested audience.

That’s the tactic the Skepchicks

took when we teamed up with the Women Thinking Free Foundation to offer

free pertussis (aka whooping cough) vaccinations during DragonCon. We

weren’t allowed to set up our nurses at DragonCon itself, so local

Skepchick Maria Walters rented out a space in the neighboring mall,

and we created posters to advertise the event. Instead of pushing a

dry public-health message, we had artists (Jill Powell and Amy Davis

Roth) draw and color characters like Dr. Horrible, Star Trek’s 7 of

9, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all exhorting the geeky crowd to get

their booster shots and help stop the whooping cough epidemic.

It worked. In just two days,

more than 200 people were vaccinated and many more were alerted to the

fact that vaccinations are important for preventing the spread of disease. Skepticism, activism, and geekiness came together as one, and everybody

benefited.

That’s what DragonCon could

be at its best. There were about 35,000 people who walked past the door

that led to the SkepTrack. What can we do to get them to step inside?

How many are interested in what we have to say? How many are skeptics

who just don’t know it yet?

DragonCon is a lot of fun for

those of us who secretly love Spandex and stupid goggles, and the SkepTrack

room is a great place to meet fellow skeptics. I just hope that next

year it’s an even better place to meet the people who previously walked

past.