Sorry for being so lax on reporting from Briskepticon. Have been listening to the talks, which are excellent by the way, and have been focusing on live reporting via twitter. There is a fairly decent back channel going on.

What I did want to report on sooner rather than later is the announcements from the dinner last night.

The Awards

The Bent Spoon award is "presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle". The recipient this year was, for a number of us, completely expected. Meryl Dorey and the Australian VaccinationAnti-Vaccination Network.

The Fred Thornett Reason Award (The Fred) was given to Toni And Dave McCaffery. Toni and Dave lost their daughter to Whopping Cough(Pertussis which is a preventable disease. Dana died before she was old enough to be vaccinated and the level of vaccination was insufficient to achieve heard immunity. Toni and Dave took their story to the media in an effort to educate others about the value and need to vaccinate.

The Big News

The next National Australian Skeptics Convention is going to be an international event. TAM Australia was announced as an official event with full backing from the JREF!