Category Personal

Taking a Vacation from Unreason: the TAM 2013 wrap-up

As hopefully all of you know, the James Randi Educational Foundation put on their annual conference this past week, The Amazing Meeting (TAM). I was privileged to be able to attend this year as a “first TAMmer” (there were buttons if it was your first time, which I thought was great ) in a couple of different capacities (which I’ll get to in a minute). I didn’t have a chance to blog any during the weekend, but I did put up quite a few tweets under the #TAM2013 hashtag, which was very active (and I recommend going and scrolling through them to get a general feel for the conference).

Star Wars premieres in the Navajo’s Diné Language

This past week, on June 30th, the cast and crew of the recently completed version of 1977’s classic film Star Wars that had been dubbed into the Navajo language, or Diné Bizaad, gathered to celebrate the release. This is a monumental occasion, as this is the first major Hollywood film to be translated into an Native American language (Star Wars has previously been translated into over 30 other languages). The film opens in a public release on July 3rd, but you can catch a couple of other key scenes below.

Oh my (American) God(s)!

(Fairly relevant image, and also really fun game)

Since I was fairly young (pre-teens, certainly, although I can’t put an exact date on it), I have been fascinated by mythologies of all types. The earliest ones I was exposed to were the Greek and Roman myths, quickly followed by Egyptian stories and Norse sagas. Thanks to growing up in Oklahoma, I also got lots of early exposure to Native American stories, particularly ones from the Kiowa tribe. Reading stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh and learning more and more about comparative mythology was a critical step in my road to embracing a naturalistic worldview.

Book Covers

New Books on Mental Health from Caleb Lack!

In exciting news, I just published two short texts on psychopathology. One is on anxiety disorders, while the other focuses on mood disorders. Both are now available for the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and in paperback (links below).