The Amazing Meeting 4

07:29 AM PT, Jan 10 2006

One of my favorite annual events is fast approaching; The Amazing Meeting 4 is being held January 26-29 at the Stardust. TAM 4 is a skeptics convention that benefits debunking magician James Randi's Educational Foundation. Rio headliners Penn & Teller are big supporters of the Foundation and have been instrumental in bringing the convention to Vegas. Though it may seem odd that a town drenched in superstition and built on an irrational belief in luck would host such a conference, the truth is that Las Vegas is the perfect place to deliver the warning to people not to be suckers and to look askance at things that appear too good to be true. The speakers this year range from Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann to comic Julia Sweeny to political gadfly Christopher Hitchens.

Last year at TAM 3 among my favorite moments was watching a fake medium talking to the dead. Way cool. The absolute highlight was the pony-tailed guy doing the sound and running about organizing everything. I overheard someone call him Kramer and mention that he had some compact discs available for sale. And, that is when I realized that Kramer was THE Kramer. No, he was not the Seinfeld character, but a childhood hero of mine; a member of the band Bongwater and founder of Shimmy-Disc, one of the essential tiny independent labels that documented the 80's underground music I love. Among the artists who Kramer has worked with in the studio: King Missle, Galaxie 500, Urge Overkill, Fred Frith, Gwar and Palace Brothers. Kramer it turns out now works full time for The James Randi Educational Foundation. As he told me at the time:

I was attracted to the notion of doing something more meaningful than producing records. I am convinced that the only hope for critical thinking and humanism and a world without dogma and ancient superstition lies in educating people and in particular our children. I am convinced I am doing something more meaningful now. I still have the hope I can convince the self-deluded that their belief system is so severely flawed as to be impractical and useless and a waste of one's existence.

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