JAMES \o7RANDI\f7, a retired magician, is surprised at how well his 5-year-old skeptics conference has been received here in semi-delusionary Las Vegas.
"It seemed strange [the first years], because I don't much care for Vegas," said Randi. "It is populated by the mathematically inept -- people who just don't understand how the laws of chance work and hope they can get lucky, whatever that means. Vegas is saying, 'For every dollar, I'll give you back 92 cents.' The Strip is built entirely by losers."
Every January, "The Amazing Meeting" comes here offering a convention that is more of a brain show than a trade show. "The Amazing" Randi annually leads this convention of doubters for a conference that serves to benefit the James Randi Educational Foundation, best known for offering $1 million to anyone who can produce evidence of the supernatural or occult.
Unlike the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show that brought 150,000 to Vegas last week, TAM 5 will break a record if registered attendance tops 1,000. But among those coming to the Riviera Thursday through next Sunday to participate in TAM 5 will be magazine editors (Onion, Scientific American and Reason), creators of television shows ("South Park," "MythBuster"), professors presenting papers, and Christopher Hitchens, the journalist, who in previous years became a TAM favorite by spending a great deal of time just hanging around and talking with participants (drink and cigarette in hand).
"Just sitting across the table from Christopher Hitchens is a full education," says Rio headliner Raymond Teller of Penn & Teller. In fact, TAM 5 has found a niche with its panels and events that mix entertainers such as P&T among the more standard happenings at traditional academic conferences. According to Teller, "What excites me is the collection of interesting and startling people that you get who think there is a real world out there and it is possible to find out something about it." Of course, Las Vegas probably held more appeal than an Ivy League campus to participants such as former "Saturday Night Live" regular Julia Sweeney and "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
Still, there is a certain oddity of a Vegas Saturday night followed by hearing a researcher deliver a Sunday morning paper titled: "Digital Darwinian Evolution Produces Irreducible Complexity." But if previous TAMs are any indication, the attendees will show up to hear about such complexities. In past years members of the skeptics Internet discussion forum, for example, have gone directly from an all-night hot-tub party to panels engaging heady topics.
