"Confessions of an Asshole Skeptic" finds a life of it's own

Previously in this blog I did an entry about my thoughts on "Asshole Skepticism" and when I was at TAM I found myself in a number of conversations about the idea. It was an interesting mix of views. Some of my thoughts were echoed, some were expanded upon, some were recieved with caution and others were refuted - occassionally with a vehemence that was an ironic display of, you guessed it, Asshole Skepticism.

It was a very interesting experience and I continue to roll the ideas around in my head. Developing the ideas on my own and hopefully with some well needed 'peer review' from others in the skeptical community.

Asshole Skepticism is definitely alive in the world. It presents itself in many ways and it's not a notion that will allow itself to be summed up with concision. It's hardly my sole domain - not even close - but I do intend to take it on as mine for exploration. To ask myself the questions of "how is it defined?", "who are it's biggest practitioners?", "what is it's place in the movement?", "how is it best wielded?", "when is it best set to the side?", "who is best equipped to practice it?" These questions hardly exhaust the possibilities. The term itself is deliberately provocative, but don't mistake - it's not my intention to set out to be an asshole, it's merely an acceptance of the condition that many of us find ourselves in - we are better suited for broad and brash provocation than a universally gentler version of activism. I'm even going to go so far as to say that the gentler version is almost certainly more effective in most circumstances - and there are definitely many situations where the asshole approach is a VERY bad idea - such as when dealing with friends.

I have created a new blog Confessions of an Asshole Skeptic as my working document on the concepts. I could have simply continued using this blog for that purpose, but it seems to me that it's a specific enough subject that it needs it's own intellectual playground. I will be retiring this blog once I've finished talking about TAM (an effort that may still take months at my current rate). I will post occassionally in the Asshole Skeptic blog as reasons arise, and then once my work is finished here I'll focus my skeptical blogging over there.

On Becoming a Skeptic

I figured that this was a personal story and that it would be better suited for a (rather long-winded) video diary. I had to put the process to the test at some point, better now than at TAM.



It's a quick overview of how I became a skeptic.
Despite what I say in the beginning of it... I really hope I can get better quality down the line. YUCK!

A Platform for Experimentation

In ten days time I'll be leaving Vancouver for Vegas to attend TAM7 - a.k.a. The Amazing Meeting.

Over the past few years, like many people, I have accumulated a metric fuck-ton of media devices. Well... perhaps 'fuck-ton' is an exaggeration. The fact is that I can carry everything relatively comfortably in a small backpack. In theory I could operate as a one man crew to do a variety of low-rent multi-media diarizing (is that a word?) on you name it.

I have yet to try this for a couple of reasons. For starters I've been busy as heck producing a feature film, The Beast of Bottomless Lake, but that is another story... although it DOES intersect a bit. But at least as important is the fact that previously I've really only considered the possibility of doing such a thing in the abstract.

Anyhow, I figure that my trip to TAM is an excellent opportunity to test out the capabilities. I've also never tried blogging with wordpress, so I'll add that to the mix. (EDIT June 30th, 14:02 - Yeah well... that part didn't last. All of 16 hours later I'm back on Blogger and WAY happier. What the hell is the big deal with Wordpress? Embedding video was a pain and audio was a complete disaster. Even exporting back here seemed deliberately troublesome. Ridiculous.)

So, we'll see how this goes. I expect that I'll fall crazy behind and spend weeks 'catching up'. But it is my intention to post a schwack-load of pictures, audio and video as well as my own musings from the TAM weekend.

It's going to be pretty exhausting I expect, but it'll be fun too, and hopefully when all is said and done it'll be an interesting resource (or at least a fun read) for someone other than myself. Who knows, maybe before I'm done I'll have decided to give this blog a lifespan that extends far beyond the time it takes to tell the tale of TAM7.