I recently had the good fortune of participating in the Bad Ad-Hoc Hypothesis Festival or “BAHFest”. It’s sort of a humorous take on scientific conferences . . . actually I’ll let the organizers explain it:

“The Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses (BAHFest) is a celebration of well-argued and thoroughly researched but completely incorrect scientific theories. Six speakers take the stage and present their theories to an illustrious panel of judges in front of a packed house.”

Basically you go up and make a short presentation that uses science in a humorous way. I got into it because I’m a big fan of a webcomic called Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal whose author co-founded BAHFest with his wife, a professional scientist.

To my delight, I won! Got a nice little trophy to take home with a statue of chemist Hennig Brand boiling his own urine to make phosphorus.

The organizers are supposed to post a video of my winning presentation but they’re taking their time about it. In the meantime if you want to see my presentation,  there’s a recorded livestream of the event, start watching at about the 13 minute mark. Or watch the whole thing, the other presentations are great too!