The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine




Join us January 17–19, 2015 for a
Tour of the Central California Coast

ON THIS WONDERFUL THREE-DAY TOUR highlighting the central California coast, we will take the Grand Rooms Tour of Hearst Castle, a tour of La Purisima Mission, see hundreds of elephant seals at a rookery on the beach including huge bulls weighing up to 2½ tons, massive clusters of monarch butterflies sheltering in the eucalyptus trees, and sea otters in Morro Bay. We will visit the San Andreas fault zone at the iconic Wallace Creek site on the Carrizo Plain (weather permitting), the oil fields of the southwestern San Joaquin Valley (including the outstanding West Kern Oil Museum), and tour the spectacular geology of the Coast Ranges. Each night we will stay at the Best Western Shorecliffs Hotel in Pismo Beach, where you can walk down to the beach or stroll through this quaint resort town.

Sign up soon! This tour is already over half full!

Click an image to enlarge it.

A dramatic ariel view of the San Andreas Fault along the Carrizo Plain.
Northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) at Point Reyes National Seashore, California. By Frank Schulenburg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
A colorful jumble of various kinds of rocks, known as a melange, includes pillow lavas.
Best Western Shore Cliff Lodge above the beach. Every room has a balcony and ocean view.
The Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle boasts the actual facade of an ancient Roman temple imported from Europe.
The Hearst Castle dining room, filled floor-to-ceiling with rare museum-quality furnishings, (and used as a model for the dinning hall in the Harry Potter films), also featuring humble ketchup and mustard bottles on the table among the sumptuous settings.
A series of volcanic plugs known as the 9 Sisters ends with Morrow Rock which sits out in the bay at San Luis Obispo, California

Click to download a 4000 pixel-wide panorama of the 9 Sisters.

What’s Included?

Tour package includes: charter bus, all hotel accommodations, breakfast and lunch each day, guided tour narration and guidebook, all admission fees, and a tax-deductible contribution to the Skeptics Society of $100. Seats are limited to about 52 people on a single tour bus, so the tour should fill up fast.

Questions?

Email us or call 1-626-794-3119 with a credit card to secure your spot.

DOWNLOAD complete itinerary
and registration form in PDF


OUR NEXT SCIENCE LECTURE
Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?
A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain

Sun. Oct. 19 2014 at 2 pm
Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech

WITH THEIR ENDLESS WANDERING, lumbering gait, insatiable hunger, antisocial behavior, and apparently memory-less existence, zombies are the walking nightmares of our deepest fears. What do these characteristic behaviors reveal about the inner workings of the zombie mind? Could we diagnose zombism as a neurological condition by studying their behavior? In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, Dr. Bradley Voytek, a professor of computational cognitive science and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, applies neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Voytek shows how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works. Voytek draws on zombie popular culture and identifies a characteristic zombie behavior that can be explained using neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and brain-behavior relationships. Through this exploration he sheds light on fundamental neuroscientific questions such as: How does the brain function during sleeping and waking? What neural systems control movement? What is the nature of sensory perception? Order Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? from Amazon. A book signing will follow the lecture.


Missed Dr. Steven Pinker’s lecture?
Watch it free online (for a limited time)

WHY IS SO MUCH WRITING SO BAD, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do people write badly on purpose, to obfuscate and impress? Have dictionaries abandoned their responsibility to safeguard correct usage? Do kids today even care about good writing? In his latest book the Harvard linguist, cognitive scientist, bestselling author (The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature) and chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, Dr. Steven Pinker, answers these questions and more… Continue Reading.


Weekly Highlights

INSIGHT at Skeptic.com sheds light, offers critical perspective, and serves as a broadly accessible, evidence-based resource on mysteries of science, paranormal claims, and the wild, woolly, wonderful weirdness of the fringe. This week’s highlights are:

Barbara Drescher
The Logic of Causal Conclusions: How we know that fire burns, fertilizer helps plants grow, and vaccines prevent disease

Barbara Drescher explains in detail that while it is true that “correlation does not (always) imply causation,” correlation does nevertheless play an important and complex role in causal inference (inferring that X causes Y).

Read the Insight

Blake Smith
Who Invented Pasteurization?

Blake Smith examines the history of pasteurization as a case study in the accretive process of invention—and reflects on the extraordinary interconnectedness necessary to push the boundaries of human accomplishment forward.

Read the Insight


NEW SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN COLUMN ON MICHAELSHERMER.COM
Infrequencies

Michael Shermer is often asked if he has ever encountered something that he could not explain. In his October 2014 ‘Skeptic’ column for Scientific American, Michael recounts an unexplained experience so mysterious (which one might call the supernatural or paranormal) that it shook his skepticism.

READ THE POST

FOLLOW MICHAEL SHERMER ON TWITTERFacebookInsight

MonsterTalk # 90
The Robot Apocalypse

When the robots take over, will we all be forced to speak bocce? Author and robotics engineer Daniel H. Wilson visits MonsterTalk to discuss the nature of robots and the risk of a robot apocalypse. Steven Spielberg has purchased the rights to produce a film version of his New York Times bestseller, Robopocalypse.

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