TAM so far

Not Totally Rad posted a summary of TAM so far (lucky bastard!). Apparently, Neil deGrasse Tyson's keynote address was absolutely superb. His talk was

built around the central theme of the close relationship between the scientific literacy of a population and the intellectual and creative health of their nation. Tyson gave a vivid account of the role of rising religious fundamentalism in the fall of the Islamic intellectual empire around 1100 CE -- a disaster from which the Islamic scientific community has never recovered. Parallels drawn by Dr. Tyson between this disaster and the current U.S. decline in scientific literacy were quite chilling. One hopes that the next administration can begin to repair some of the great damage done in the last 8 years to U.S. scientific research by the current administration.

(Via Podblack Cat).