July was all about The Amazing Meeting, both prep work and posts which related to the convention.
There were a couple of non-TAM highlights for me this month too. One was I discovered that back in March, IBM received a second patent in my name (US #8,141,157) on work I did for a subsidiary of theirs over a decade ago.
But the biggest one was the creation of a Wikipedia biography page for me by Susan Gerbic. Thank you so much, Susan, it looks great!
If you missed TAM, or if you were there and wanted more info from one of my presentations, here’s a way to catch up. Below are links to the content I’ve been involved with in the last month. It includes this blog as well as the material I post on other blogs, my podcasting activities, my best posts on Twitter as well as key shout-outs or mentions elsewhere.
I’m also trying to document on a monthly basis what my contributions are to several skeptic-relevant crowdsourcing projects. This ties in with both the workshop and plenary presentation I gave at TAM.
Read on to see what you might have missed…
Blogging
Here were my blog posts this month.
- July 6: JREF blog: Skeptic History: Scientology’s Summer of Hell?
- July 13: #TAM2012 Skeptic Crowdsourcing Workshop links
- July 14: #TAM2012 In Memoriam slides
- July 16: #TAM2012 You Are The Future Speech – Links and Tips
- July 19: JREF blog: TAM In Memoriam Presentation (cross-posted)
- July 22: You are the Future of Skepticism on the Internet – the script of my TAM2012 talk
Mentions and links on other blogs:
- July 9: Wikipedia: Tim Farley– Susan Gerbic’s biography of me. Thanks again!
- July 15: The Mad Skeptic: Modus Operandi: Ad Hominem – Myron comments on the Twitter reaction to my TAM plenary speech.
- July 22: curious blog: TAM 2012 Review – Thursday Workshop day – Talks about my workshop at TAM.
- July 22: Skeptical Science: Notes from #TAM2012 – some nice links, thanks David
- July 22: Tuscon Citizen – Politics: The Internet is for conspiracy theories – Mark Evans plugged this site, even if he doesn’t seem convinced
- July 23: The Skeptic in the Room: TAM 2012 – a Few Memorable Quotes – Eddie Scott liked my speech
- July 24: Skeptic Wire: 30 Seconds Of “Work” From You Could Help Save Lives – taking my advice from TAM2012 to heart!
- July 29: Skeptic North: TAM2012 – Kim Hebert named my talk as one of her TAM highlights. (Thanks!)
Podcasting & Video
I contributed segments to these episodes of Skepticality:
- July 3: #186: Walking with the Psychic Blues – My segment was the history of The Amazing Meeting plus preparations for TAM2012.
- July 31: #187: The End is Nigh? – My segment was about the Mayan armageddon versus TAM2012’s vision of the future
- July 17: YouTube: The Amazing Meeting 2012: Tim Farley I am interviewed by Christopher Brown of the “Meet The Skeptics” podcast, watch it below:
- July 24: JREF: Consequence #3: Bonnie vs Christian Science – Bonnie found out a terrible family secret via my site What’s the Harm! (And then told me about it at TAM). She tells the story on this podcast and I give some background about similar cases.
Social Media
I posted on Twitter:
- 268 regular tweets, including:
- 20 “What’s the harm in…?” stories
- 32 daily skeptic history facts
- 22 #TAM2012 tips
- 55 retweets of other people
- Plus 211 replies to other Twitter posts for a total of 479 tweets
Here are highlights, the tweets that were retweeted the most.
(20 retweets)
(17 retweets, 2 favorites)
(10 retweets, 6 favorites)
(12 retweets, 1 favorite)
(13 retweets, 4 favorites)
(7 retweets, 6 favorites)
(10 retweets, 1 favorite)
(8 retweets, 3 favorites)
(10 retweets, 3 favorites)
(13 retweets, 3 favorites)
(34 retweets, 9 favorites)
(4 retweets, 6 favorites)
(11 retweets, 1 favorite)
(14 retweets, 1 favorite)
(13 retweets, 3 favorites)
(9 retweets, 3 favorites)
(11 retweets, 5 favorites)
(19 retweets, 4 favorites)
To get these as I post them, you should follow me on Twitter here.
Crowdsourcing Contributions
Here were my contributions to various projects this month:
I contributed 19 edits to Wikipedia.
I rated 20 sites on Web of Trust but left no new site scorecard comments.
I made 2 edits to the Skeptic History database. It still has 1,423 items, same as last month.
I added 6 new rebuttals to RBUTR
I added 133 items to Lanyrd, some were last-minute schedule changes but mostly ‘coverage’ of TAM2012. (Pro Tip: well over 3,000 photos here to look at, plus much more).
And now I’m going to try to rest a bit before Dragon*Con (Skeptrack).
Damn you Tim Farley. I sat down to read this blog, and ended up following one story, which led to another and then to another and then the next thing I know an hour had passed. I’m still not done reading all the things I missed. Kind of like reading Wikipedia pages, you keep clicking and an hour later you end up in some crazy place.
I got stuck on the $cientology articles. I finally subscribed to that newsletter so I could stop reading for the moment. Now I have to go and read about the creationists being pissed off over skeptics editing Wikipedia. I got things I’m supposed to be doing… curse you.