More events, plenty of hosting opportunities

If you're paying attention, thanks! Drop me a note sometime so that I know you're alive.

I've just added several new events to the calendar. There's only one of them I'll be able to host (you'll see a posting about that soon), but I hope you'll still take an interest, and those of you on Meetup consider organizing a group to attend and discuss afterwards.

These look particularly good, (see the calendar and click through for details):

* November 15 (tomorrow, as I post this!) a talk on environmental justice at Rice (Rice's calendar item)

* November 22 (2:30 in the afternoon, ugh), Elaine Ecklund talks on "Gender Differences in Elite Academic Science". Let's hope she does a better job than with scientists and religion. Rice's calendar entry

* December 4, "Neuroscience and the Future of Justice" -- actually, I *am* hosting this one, through the Priestley Lecture Task Force. See here for more details.

Two events in November!

We have two actual meetups in November:

Carl Sagan Day (hosted not by me, but by Emily of Houston Atheists)
November 9

Phil Plait of Bad Universe speaks on "Death From Above"
(heading over to Valhalla for beverages afterwards)
November 14

That's two opportunities to enjoy science and meet people.

(Click through our agenda to the right or calendar at the bottom for more details.)

This weekend: more than science

This weekend's Texas Freethought Convention is not limited to just the facts of science, but has so much good stuff about the relationship between reason and society, including talks by famous scientists and atheists PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins (among many others). See the full schedule at

http://www.texasfreethoughtconvention.com

Meetup Group

I've created a Meetup group for organizing groups to attend events. Still very rudimentary, and I'm not yet sure the best way to make the two calendars work together.

Houston Science Events on Meetup.com

Water focus at HMNS and Houston Garden Center

Note the two events on the calendar in one evening, August 8, around Hermann Park:

* Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, a talk by anthropologist Brian Fagan, Ph.D., of UCSB, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, 7 p.m.

* Water Collecting & Water Conservation, a panel discussion at the Houston Garden Club, right next door to HMNS.

With just a bit more coordination between neighboring organizations, this could have been way more powerful.

We're back... hoping to ramp up

Hello local lovers of science,

A recent outing with the Houston Secret Science Club to TX/RX Labs (a.k.a. Houston HackerSpace) prompted both renewed excitement about organizing science outings and optimism about getting collaborators for this site.

All we need are volunteers and groupies.

Volunteers to mine the big shared calendars (universities, convention & visitors' bureau, those links at right) for interesting events suitable for the public. Yes, some of this needs to be done by hand, but there's also a team that will be parsing pre-formatted calendars and publicity e-mails for automatic posting. Either way, contact me via "havlak" on Gmail.

Groupies to actually attend the events. The more the merrier. Other sites (such as the science club) will be places to organize events, with discussion and support for RSVPs.

This posting, by itself, isn't really the beginning of new life here. It's a sign that things aren't as dead as they seem, that the drought may be ending. With rain, and some cultivation on your part, a hundred outings may sprout.

More power to you all,
Paul

Bayou tours!

Making a new set of updates to the calendar, I found this:

http://www.buffalobayou.org/boattours.html

Unfortunately, the every-Friday schedule of bat-colony tours has been cut way back :-(, and the November tour is sold out. But they still have history tours on the first Saturday of every month.

Yes, a thread of nature survives even through the middle of downtown Houston. Thin and frayed, but don't miss the perspective of seeing this car-centric burg from the water.