We’d like to thank everyone who worked so hard to make this dream come true.

We recently made the startling discovery that we are not alone!

Since 1996 we’ve traveled to the Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man festival, and have been quite active in the local Seattle burner community for about as long as that community has existed. And for the past few years we’ve also attended the Amazing Meeting, an incredible gathering of critical thinkers and skeptics.

If you drew these two things as circles in the Venn diagram of the Peterman life, I would have told you that they simply did not overlap. As much as I enjoy the overall Burning Man experience and the multitude of friends it has provided me, I’ve often bristled at the preponderance of woo-woo nonsense that is embraced by so many people prancing across the dusty playa. From astrology to reiki to energy healing to homeopathy to balancing your third eye’s sacred chakra crystal, it’s all out there and can sometimes be difficult for a skeptic like myself to stomach. Hey, I think it would be wickedly cool if any of these things were real; but if someone is going to claim they can violate several laws of physics by waving their hands over someone, then I think it’s incumbent upon them to offer some verifiable proof in a controlled setting. That’s all.

Like I said, I thought these worlds had no overlap other than Carol and myself… lonely little inhabitants in our tiny Venn intersection. But then an odd thing happened in 2006: while at the Amazing Meeting, we ran into someone who camps in our village at Burning Man! Suddenly our intersection grew a tiny bit larger. Then, last fall we discovered that two other burner friends were going to be attending the 2007 Amazing Meeting in January, making a grand total of five of us in our special little world! The capper came when a couple of us at the meeting made a stray Burning Man comment while in the elevator at the Riviera, and a guy from the back of the car popped out and said that he was one of us, too!

That was all I needed. With six identified Burning Skeptics, it was obvious that we needed our own email list so we can plot our eventual takeover of the entire Burning Man festival. Sure, we’re currently outnumbered 39,994 to 6, but at the rate we’re growing we’ll be in the majority in no time.

So, if you happened to arrive at this page because you made a hopeful search for “burning man + skeptics” then let me be the first to welcome you to our exclusive club. Please click here to sign up for our Yahoo email list, and let the takeover begin.