Later in July, Warner Brothers will release a movie that is already eliciting serious concern among adoption groups and other child advocates. “Orphan” presents the story of an adopted child who is “damaged goods” and is dangerous to her adoptive family while appearing sweet and innocent to others. Superficially charming and friendly, she secretly menaces those who love her.
This movie is a regrettable homage to the myth that adopted children are emotionally disturbed.
It’s shortly after 4:00 p.m. Phil Plait is either speaking in the conference room or just finishing up, and I’m missing it to type this. I feel bad, but that’s the way it goes here—you can’t take a bathroom break without missing something.
TAM is a pretty remarkable thing. We were ready for record-breaking numbers—we were perfectly prepared accommodate 1,000 TAMmers this year—but we passed that once-unimaginable benchmark a long time ago. The registration desk ran out of badges yesterday and I got lost in Vegas trying to find more. (Random educational aside: it is possible to traverse the entire Las Vegas strip, south to north, without once finding an opportunity to take a legal U-turn.)
After four hours of much needed sleep, I find myself at the bar of the Cornado Café at South Point in Las Vegas. It is 6:00am, and I am eating alone. I find this experience odd, not because I'm up this early, but because this is likely the only time today that I will be left alone with my thoughts.
We've had a tremendous couple of days at TAM. Despite the expense in this challenging economy, we've managed to bring over 1000 people from all over the world into the desert to talk about science and skepticism. It's nearly impossible to express how important this is.
Webcam chat at Ustream As an experiment, we're live streaming TAM 7 on Ustream. We'll try to keep it live as long as possible. Come watch and be a part of TAM! You can also watch at this URL http://bit.ly/1BmU3E.
Jeff Wagg will try to be in the UStream chat room as much as possible to answer any questions you might have..