Today we got to the part of the conference where a number of delegates were invited to put forward their own cosmological models. Most of these were fairly flaky; many were incomprehensible. Only one seemed to come from someone who knew what he was talking about, but even then it turned out he had made a major error in his data analysis which probably invalidated his whole theory. Some of the debate got rather heated with the Russian participants in particular feeling that their theories were being denigrated.
The majority of the delegates appeared to have written books outlining their personal cosmological theories, some published as real books and some in electronic form. Clearly they must have had trouble in shifting their stock, since many of them had brought along copies of their opus to give away to other delegates. I now have a suitcase full of books about way-out cosmological theories - enough to send me to sleep for many nights to come.
In the evening we had the conference 'banquet', which was not particularly notable, and we even had to pay for our drinks! The first part of the evening's 'entertainment' consisted of the local tour operator giving a talk about the history of Port Angeles, including an epic tale of how they raised the town out of the tidal mud by sluicing half a hillside down into the town (see picture of mural illustrating this episode). The second part of the show turned out to be our tour guide from Sunday giving us an hour long Mark Twain monologue. Many delegated decided that the pub was a better option. Unfortunately I had to stay clear of that as I was presenting the next day.
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