Welcome to Part 6 of my 24 part series, “Better Know a Speaker.” Today’s speaker just happens to have the misfortune of being engaged to me, so please welcome Julie Lada, the fighting fiancee!

Julie Lada is a 26-year-old Purdue student who will finish her Bachelor’s of Science in spring of 2010 with a major in Animal Sciences and pre-veterinary medicine. Julie has held a position in nearly every level of the animal care industry. She has been a kennel staff worker at her local Humane Society, a veterinary assistant, a rescue volunteer and foster mother for exotic animals, volunteered her time working with zoo animals, and is currently a lab animal care technician for Purdue’s research and teaching animal housing facility. Her particular area of interest is in biologically-appropriate diets that follow a natural, wild conspecific model for domestic animals and preventative medicine that addresses metabolic disorders before they start.

Julie’s presentation is titled “Vet Recommended.” It will be a look at how commercial pet food companies abuse phrases such as “vet recommended” to exploit public trust in order to sell their product. It will also contain a brief examination of how much regulatory power organizations such as the AAFCO, FDA, USDA and Center for Veterinary medicine actually have over the quality and safety of commercial pet foods and snacks.

Check back here soon for part 7!

–Speaker Conjurer Don

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Hello and welcome to Part 5 of my 24 part series “Better Know a Speaker.” Today’s speaker: Jamie Bernstein, the fighting Bernstein!

Jamie Bernstein is a graduate student at the University of Chicago studying public policy. She is originally from San Diego, CA and did her undergraduate degree in public management and policy and international business at the University of Arizona. She believes that by using economic theory based on lab and real world data to predict human behavior, it possible to optimize policy decisions. During the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, Jamie gained brief internet fame by making YouTube videos talking to and interviewing many US presidential candidates and making comedic videos poking fun at the election that only she thinks are funny. She finally quit making videos when she realized that she really hates politics. Although Jamie has been a skeptic movement lurker for many years, Skepchicamp is her first time being actively involved in community skepticism.

Jamie will be speaking about human irrationality. Classical economics makes the assumption that humans are rational and always try to optimize their utility. However, experimental and real world data have shown that humans are not always rational, and in fact can act irrationally in systematic ways. By the end of her talk, she’s going to prove that you sometimes think and do things that are stupid, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Jamie’s presentation is (tentatively) titled “Human Irrationality: Why You’re All Stupid.” She thinks she can get away with insulting all of us because, and I quote, “I’m so adorable =)”

I think I speak for everyone, Ms. Bernstein, when I say “We’ll just see about that…”

Check back here soon for more speakers to better know!

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It’s time now for part four of my twenty-four part series “Better Know a Speaker.” Today’s speaker is CFI Campus Organizer Debbie Goddard, the fighting campus organizer!

Debbie, as I said, is a campus organizer for the Center for Inquiry Transnational. She spent many years volunteering for them and other freethought groups in and around Philadelphia as well as internationally. In addition to community and campus organizing for freethought, she is (and has been for many years) involved in church-state separation activism and the GLBT activist movement.

Debbie’s talk is titled “Diversity and the Freethought Movement.” She’ll cover the general demographic (older white males) and discuss the lack of general diversity and what we can do about it. Sounds like a perfect fit for Skepchicamp…

See you back here soon with part five!

–Supreme Speaker Conjurer Don

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Hello and welcome to part 3 of my 24 part series “Better Know a Speaker.” Today’s speaker is Adam Slagell, the fighting CISSP!

CISSP, of course, stands for Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Adam is a computer security researcher and analyst at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the author of “Collaborative Computer Security and Trust Management.” He is also the security architect of the world’s largest supercomputer for open science research, which might be one of the coolest jobs ever. He is currently developing the security program for GENI, the National Science Foundation’s test bed for the next generation of Internet technologies. His recent research has focused on privacy and anonymization to enable data sharing and collaboration.

Some of you might remember Adam from TAM7, where he gave the presentation “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt: The Pillars of Justification for Cyber Security.” It was well-appreciated at TAM and this March 6th, anyone who couldn’t make it to the big event will get to experience it firsthand as Adam delivers it to a rapt audience at Skepchicamp. The presentation covers the way fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) are used to justify security measures in and out of cyberspace, and recommends practical, evidence- and numbers-based security practices.

I know I’m looking forward to hearing it (I missed it at TAM) and I hope you are, too. See you next time for part 4 of “Better Know a Speaker!”

–Supreme Speaker Conjurer Don

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Welcome to part 2 of my 25 part series “Better Know a Speaker.” Today’s speaker is Dr. Jen, the fighting doctor!

Since Dr. Jen was nice enough to write up a long form bio for me, I’ll let her tell about herself in her own words…

“A kind, generous, loving, sesquipedalian, impactful, purple, thoughtful, creative pediatrician, Dr. Jen toils her days away playing with adorable babies, joking with wise children, battling anti-vaxxer nonsense and teaching parents that homeopathy’s ‘remedies’ simply don’t hold water…or rather, they do…lots of water…probably entirely water. Or sugar. But not medicine. But kids like sugar. They’re pretty neutral on water. Which is appropriate.

Her route to medicine was not a straight line. She grew up thinking that she would be a doctor (influenced, in no small part, by her experiences as a cancer survivor at the age of 3 in 1972—thank you, Children’s Memorial Hospital!). That plan carried her through the vast majority of her life until college physics…it just wasn’t engaging her brain. She got a physics tutor, but his answering machine message said something about being unable to answer the phone because he was in a hexadecahedral dimension or something, which she might find funny now, but then just made her think he was weird and likely creepy. The tutoring with this bushy-bearded gent lasted all of one useless session. Jennifer dropped the class. Therefore, she wouldn’t fill pre-med reqs, so she knew she couldn’t apply to med school, hence started exploring other areas. Thus. Wherefore. Thereunto. Hither, thither and yon. QED. Et cetera, et cetera. And all that.

Becoming a psych major, she took amazing classes like “The Psychology of Mind Control” with Phil Zimbardo (Stanford Prison Experiment guy), “Decision Making and Judgment” with Amos Tversky (would have shared in a Nobel if he hadn’t died too young), and Patricia Ryan’s Improvisational Acting classes.

After graduation, Jennifer tried to stay in Northern California, grabbing a sales job at Macy’s (lasted a week…had no idea what blackwatch plaid was…she knows now), looking at various insanely priced rentals, then heading back to Sweet Home Chicago to family and friends…she’s quite sentimental, you know. She soon landed a job as a mutual-funds analyst. Being part of the financial world by day, taking classes at Chicago’s Player’s Workshop and Second City by night, she was living it up! Time passes…things change…gets to that important question: “What am I doing with my life? What do I want to do with my life? Why aren’t those things the same?” A little bit of this, a little bit of that, she took her premeds, which included a great intro physics class by excellent science teacher and communicator Art Schmidt at Northwestern (this time Jen topped the class!!), went to med school in frigid (and she doesn’t use that term lightly) Minnesota, then returned to complete the circle by coming back to Chicago.

Jennifer (Dr. Jen, Niffer, Fennifer, Jen…whatever…just not Jenny) plans to talk about medical communication and how she almost fell into the trap of throwing out a pile of data at every parent question or concern when that’s not always what they want or will absorb. If you have the evidence behind you, and are able to pull it out as needed, is it really so wrong to start with an anecdote? And is the occasional ad hominem against the anti-vaxxers that great a sin against skepticism? Well, maybe…it might slip out.

In her spare time, Jennifer is one of the organizers for the Chicago Skeptics Meetup group, has helped bring George Hrab to Chicago, and is working diligently at setting up a general Chicago Skeptics website and Facebook page. Ok…the diligently thing is an outright lie. But it’ll happen. Probably.”

Thank you, Dr. Jen! See you back here next time for part 3 of Better Know a Speaker!

–Supreme Speaker Conjurer Don

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Welcome to part 1 of my 25 part series “Better Know A Speaker.” Today’s speaker is Elyse Anders, the fighting Anders!

Without our Fearless Leader and Skepchicamp Queen Elyse, none of us would be here today planning what is sure to be the hottest event in Chicago since that cow kicked over a lantern that one time. Elyse, it must be known, is a big fan of booze. She enjoys making cocktails, but likes neither Pina Coladas nor getting caught in the rain. That happened on her honeymoon in Mexico, and it was rather unpleasant. Speaking of honeymoons, Elyse has been married to Skepchicamp’s official slave Brian Anders since 2003, the year of the fateful rainshower. Four years into their undoubtedly joyous union, in August 2007, she gave birth to a beautiful baby Moose. The Anders family, still not complete, has another child on the way in May 2010, which will be named either “Voltron Adelbert” or a name chosen by the rigorous method of randomly pointing at items on a tapas menu. Once she has enough strangely-named children to justify it, Elyse plans to purchase a minivan with flame decals and twenty-two inch dubs so kids will think she has a sick ride.

Skeptically speaking, Elyse has been writing for Skepchick for two years under the watchful eye of Rebecca Watson, her boss and girl-crush. She’s also available to write for anyone who asks and has a few bucks to throw around, because she does not have a few bucks to throw around. Come on, folks, hire her! She’s funny and awesome! She has been on The Chicagoist podcast as well as “Beer, Brains, and Bullshit.” Her personal claim to fame is that she has caused people to respect Headset Vince, that silly Shamwow guy, after she alerted people to his anti-Scientology crusade. She had nothing to do with his subsequent altercation with a “lady of the night,” if you will. Her skeptical passion is vaccination, and as soon as she becomes rich and contracts a strategist, she will save the world through effective vaccine promotion, though, she takes pains to point out, she is not, in fact, a doctor.

Elyse’s talk is titled “Growing up Skepchickally: The Myths of Daughterhood,” where she will likely bust, confirm, and find plausible a number of myths surrounding the life of a young girl with parents.

Elyse likes cupcakes, worships Twitter, and bedecks herself with as many Surlyramics as will fit on her body. She is the proud owner of an iPhone and really does read Playboy for the articles, just like every man everywhere. She hopes to be a superhero when she grows up.

She has never eaten a human baby, but she’s still young, so there’s still time. Oh, yes, there is still time.

Check back within the next few days for another exciting installment in “Better Know a Speaker!”

- Supreme Speaker Conjurer Don

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