11th
More DC Adventures
Part III: The Conference
The conference was great. I went to a bunch of sessions, including:
-a presentation on combating Indian charlatans (voodoo workers)
-a presentation on the state of humanism in Norway
-a presentation by Matthew LaClair on fighting preaching in high school
-a panel on humanism by several SSA affiliates
-a panel on the topic ‘is criticism of religion hate speech?’ (the consensus was no)
Basically I learned a lot and networked quite a bit as well. We also lined up a few speakers for this year, including Lori Lippman Brown, Hemant Mehta, PZ Meyers, and another one, which will be announced later (kind of a super-secret project at the moment).
Part IV: The Sightseeing
During breaks, we often ran out and caught a museum. I saw 5 museums in the Smithsonian: the Natural History museum, the Air and Space museum, the National Holocaust Memorial Museum (we spent 5 hours there), the African Art Museum, and the Sackler gallery (the current exhibition was asian art from before 1400). It was nice to be inside, seeing as it was hot and humid the entire time we were there.
Part V: The Trip Home
We flew from DC to Atlanta to MSP. Nothing exciting, except that we had excellent Mexican food in the Atlanta airport (if you’re ever there, eat at Moe’s in the C Councourse). We got back a little before 1 AM, meaning that I got home around 2 AM.
All in all, it was a memorable trip. And it’s probably just about the end of my long-distance traveling for the summer.