Snapshots from the Reason Rally

I was really hoping to get more pictures of signs, but it was so rainy that most people had to stow them pretty early.  I’ll give more substantive thoughts soon, but right now I’m running late to the American Atheists National Convention, which is also this weekend, so you’ll get a double header.

The night before the meetup rally, I went to a dinner where I met up with Jen of BlagHag and Adam of Daylight Atheism.  Last year I did a stint guestblogging at Daylight Atheism, but I hadn’t gotten to meet Adam in person up til now.

At the rally proper, my favorite guest was Tim Minchin, since I love the above song (“If I Didn’t Have You”) so gosh-darned much.

I appreciated the advice you guys gave about possible signs.  The Bayes sign above turned out to be the best way to meet people.  I got to discuss Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (new chapter Tuesday!) with a couple people who saw the sign over the crowd and came over.  Plus I got to explain the difference between Bayesian and frequentist statistics to a bunch of other people who came over to ask what the heck I was holding up.  Every moment is a teachable moment!

This was my second sign.  My goal was to strike up philosophy discussions and talk about what we do believe in addition to what we don’t.  The rain really limited this, so I’ll have to bring it out again at a future meetup.

At the dinner afterwards, I finally got to meet my fellow Patheos blogger Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist in person.  His day job is teaching math, so I had to share my Bayes Theorem sign with him.  The sign is also how I met Jesse Galef, the communications director of the Secular Students Alliance who also blogs at Measure of Doubt.  He spotted the sign while I was talking to Hemant and turned out to be a big Less Wrong fan.

And I closed out the night at a friend’s belated Purim party where there was a dramatic reading of the Book of Esther.  The hamantaschen were calling.