There Are Four Lights

Nokia Responsiveness video: As mentioned in the previous post, my Responsiveness Campaign video for Nokia has been posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YewnVH_JQEQ.

Skepchick, one of the top skeptic blogs, noticed and posted about it the video here.

Dr. Phil Plait, aka Bad Astronomer, posted about me as well on his blog over at Discover, Bad Astronomy.

Anime News Network picked up the press release from Skepticality about their interview with me on episode 127: mp3 download, itunes. You can also find info about it in Skeptic Mag’s eSkeptic for April 21st, 2010.

My first post as new contributor to the Canadian blog, Skeptic North, was posted: The (unofficial) Manga Guide to Woo Arguments.

Live Science and Newsarama also posted an article about me, written by Jeremy Hsu.

The second day of TED started off with Session 4 “Reason”. In Palm Springs, some TEDActive folks wore PJs to the morning session. This session included Michael Specter and Sam Harris—-giving the audience a healthy dose of skepticism. Michael Specter talked about the dangers of anti-vaxxers and confirmed what Sheldon told Penny in an episode of The Big Bang Theory; vitamins and supplements are “expensive pee”. Sam Harris is always a dream to listen to. He speaks calmly, doesn’t mind pausing to form a thought and is always quite witty. He spoke about science and values and argued that we should use evidence-based thinking when it comes to morality and human suffering.

As the day continued, my photo documentation pretty much came to a stand still. But I recently came across my fellow TED’09 Fellow, Tino Chow‘s amazing blog. Go check out his great TED posts!

Tino Chow’s TEDActive Flickr set

I’m currently spending a little time in Los Angeles, away from my lil’ hobbit hole up in Canada. Unlike when I’m in Canada (where I stay in my hobbit hole, have no adventures, and eat second breakfast), since I’ve been here I’ve been heading out to events and cool places—-and meeting cool people.

A couple weeks ago, I was invited out to the Magic Castle by Richard Wiseman, psychologist, magician, and author of The Luck Factor, Quirkology, and his newest book 59 Seconds. My man, Q, and I had a lovely time at the castle with everyone in our group and key lime pie and cosmopolitans were had by all! (ok, just me).

The Magic Castle is, guess what, full of magic! We had a blast and Q and I are actually headed back in October for his birthday. All of the photos can be found on my Flickr page, here.

I found out about Richard and his new book while listening to an episode of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe a few months back. He was being interviewed about 59 Seconds, which lead me to buying the book and then tweeting about it. His @reply of thanks and mention of my TED attendance was the beginning of our twitter friendship!

Twitter was also responsible for our outing yesterday to our first Caltech skeptics lecture. I caught Michael Shermer‘s tweet about Dr. Jeff Schweitzer‘s talk “Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life In A Random World” and Q was nice enough to take his nerdy gal out to Pasadena to be with skeptics and endure all that sciency-stuff he doesn’t like, awww~!

Well, since I’m a TED Fellowship member, I couldn’t waste the opportunity to introduce myself to another TEDster! Here’s a pic of Michael Shermer and I from after the lecture, when everyone met up at a nearby restaurant. Unfortunately—-as you can see—-I’m back to my usual ‘no makeup + nerd vision + ponytail’ look…

Welcome to my new blog!

I wasn’t sure I needed another place on the web to ramble; there’s the Secrets of Sorcerers news blog, as well as the update blog found on the main SaraMayhew.com site, and blog spaces on myspace, facebook, and my new deviantart account. However, I decided I wanted a space where I could write about a wide range of topics that interest me and in a setting that won’t mix with my work. I’d like to keep the blog spaces on my work related sites relevant to news and updates about my manga series and professional work.

Hopefully, this space can serve as a place to write about my interests–anything from astronomy and other sciences, to the wide range of geekstuff I enjoy. I’d like to combine my little manga doodles and have a sort of sketch blog here. I’m sure there’s plenty of anime fans and manga readers out there that also enjoy sci-fi shows like Star Wars, Trek, and other geeky stuff…but, I’d like to also bring in my interest in science and critical thinking. My experience has been that the stereotype for creative artsy types is that they tend to believe in new age, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. This is my little place on the web to show that I’m a skeptical anti-pseudoscience mangaka.