Announcements

"Wonderfest" is an annual Bay Area science festival featuring talks and discussions about science. Held in the fall on adjacent days at Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley, the 2008 Wonderfest was particularly well attended. For those of you who were unable to attend, you now can see three of the discussions online. Go to www.wonderfest.org to see Does Anything Happen at Random? A discussion between Persi Diaconis, Prof. of Statistics & Mathematics, Stanford and Daniel Fisher, Prof. of Applied Physics, Stanford Will Genetics Allow Us to Revive Extinct Species? A discussion between Ronald Davis, Prof. of Biochemistry & Genetics, Stanford and David Haussler, Prof. of Biomolecular Engineering, UC Santa Cruz Are Dreams Psychologically Significant? A discussion between William Dement, Prof. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, Stanford and Sharon Keenan, Founder, School of Sleep Medicine, Palo Alto

--- Wednesday November 19, at 4 pm: "Your Fiction Science Defense Kit: Dealing with Astrology, UFO's, and Other Astronomical Pseudo-sciences" A non-technical talk by Andrew Fraknoi, Foothill College Harney Science Center, Room 127 University of San Francisco Physics and Astronomy Department Colloquium; free and open to educators and students. For a campus map, see: http://www.usfca.edu/online/gen_info/map_c.html (Please allow yourself time to park and find the room. Street parking around campus is not always easy to find.) An enormous amount of media attention has been given to some pretty amazing claims on the fringes of astronomy. These include the idea that your life path and romantic destiny are determined by the position of objects in the sky at the moment of your birth; that extraterrestrial space-craft have regularly landed on our planet (and kidnapped innocent citizens without being noticed); and that an ancient race left us a message on the planet Mars in the shape of a human face. In this illustrated talk, astronomer and popular lecturer Andrew Fraknoi will discuss the most famous "fiction science" claims related to astronomy, and provide the background and analysis needed to appreciate them properly. He will share some rece

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

FOCUS: Becoming better consumers of information

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics who live in various locations around the oblate spherical planet Earth.

Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday December 25, 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-8)

HOW: Online. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

SkepTalk

Ann Gibbons

WHAT: Lone Survivors: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Us

In the past decade, new studies of ancient DNA from fossils have shown that, until as recently as 40,000 years ago, our ancestors shared the planet with two close relatives, the Neanderthals and a mysterious group called the Denisovans. Both of those groups became extinct, but traces of their DNA remain in the genomes of modern humans. Meanwhile, researchers are discovering diverse types of human ancestors who were living at the same time in the same fossil sites millions of years ago, suggesting that we were never alone—that there were always other types of hominins alive in Africa and elsewhere on the planet until recently. Join us for a discussion with Ann Gibbons about new research that has changed perceptions of the Neanderthals, shed new light on the mysterious Denisovans, and our place in the human family tree.

WHO: Ann Gibbons is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine and the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, which was a finalist for the LA Times best science and technology book. She also has taught science writing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and written about human evolution for National Geographic, SLATE, Smithsonian magazine and other publications. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, she was also a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a science writing fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

She was awarded the 2019 American Geophysical Union’s Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism, the 2018 and 2013 National Academy of Sciences Communication Awards for best magazine/newspaper article; the 2014 Society of American Archaeology Gene S. Stuart Award; and the 2012 Anthropology in Media Award from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) for a decade’s worth of stories on human origins and evolution.

WHEN: Thursday January 9 at 6:30PM PT (GMT -8)

HOW: (details coming soon)

Bay Area Skeptics

Wonderfest Videos Available

Andrew Fraknoi talk on November 19th