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As you may know, The Amaz!ng Meeting is just around the corner, one month from today (July 14-17). Even though today I am a secularist, I get the same feeling about TAM that I used to get about Christmas as a child, or religious Holy Days when I was in a fringe church as a teenager. This is because TAM is a time for my kind of people to gather together: skeptics and pro-science types from around the world convene in Las Vegas for four days of celebration — of science, skepticism and the skeptics community.

I know a number of my fellow skeptics who would bristle at seeing TAM this way. Leave religion for the religious, they'd say. And I'd agree, except for the fact that fellowship and community and the other social aspects of religion are not religion per se, but only happy by-products of it. And why would I want to give that up to religion, and not experience those social and human benefits myself?

Here are six reasons I am especially happy about TAM this year.

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The skeptic community often provides, most commendably, the calm voice of reason during periods of public scares (and outright panics) such as the MMR and vaccine ‘controversy’, fears surrounding fluoride, mobile phone and Wi-Fi usage, the perils of Facebook, overblown drug risks and the impending doom from microwave ovens. Although opposing false fears is admirable work, it is important that we don’t become blasé and, through habit, allow genuinely concerning public health issues to escape our criticism. By way of a demonstration I would like to share some genuinely alarming information that I recently discovered about a supplementary nutritional practice. It is conducted by a sub-culture of adults for personal use and by (presumably well-meaning) parents in an effort to enhance their children’s performance. It seems, that this has been happening for years and has as yet escaped critical examination, so in this brief time please allow me to present an overview 

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Recently, in comments on “A Note From Your Volunteer Managing Editor”, some of your fellow skeptics expressed an interest in reading more about people’s skeptical conversion stories. How did you become a skeptic? Do you have skeptical role models that helped shape your skeptical views? If you were always a skeptic, share stories of your upbringing and the influences that helped you grow up skeptical.

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Category: Newsflash
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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.

  1. The Amazing Henry Slade
  2. A Note From Your Volunteer Managing Editor
  3. Last Week at Science-Based Medicine
  4. JREF Hires New Field Coordinator