The 3rd Amazing Meeting is underway in Las Vegas, Nevada. It runs from January 13 to 16.
Organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation, "The Amazing Meeting" brings together dignitaries, academics, skeptics, entertainers, and the general public for a celebration of rational thought, while thoroughly trashing dogma, bigotry and ignorance. This year's featured speaker is the famous biologist Richard Dawkins. (Who apparantly cannot appear on an American talk show without being pelted by ridiculous and ignorant "challenges" to evolution by callers.)
Other speakers include Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer, who specializes in talking about the crazy idea that we didn't land on the moon), Penn and Teller (creators and hosts of the excellent Showtime series Bullshit!, Julia Sweeney, Michael Shermer, and many others.
It doesn't take a lot of graphite to move your pencil from the crazy anti-evolution, anti-gay religious-based zealotry we all scream about on these pages to the culture of fear and ignorance that seems to be fashionable in American culture nowadays.
We have to start fighting the underlying causes of the support for the political movements that treaten to literally destroy America. Education is so incredibly important to repopulating our country with rational human beings, and important battles are being fought right in your own neighborhood as we speak. If you're in an area where Intelligent Design is being discussed by the school board as an "alternative" to evolution, go to those meetings, and fight it. Don't let religious funamentalists tell you what books should be in your local or school libraries, or what TV shows will be blacked out by your affiliate. Your voice needs to be heard by others that do not hold legislative or government office.