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As you read this post, I’m at TAM 7 shmoozing with skeptical people and trying to get this Skeptologists off the ground and running. If you are at TAM, please step up and say hello. That’s me in the picture at left. I despise name tags, but I suppose I will have to conform.
If you are not at TAM, you have to ask yourself …..why?
This video is a brilliant piss-take on holistic healing. We are quite lucky the Brits evolved such a fantastic, dry wit. This kind of programming would never make it on US television for fear of offending an advertiser. Found via Boing-boing and Cory Doctorow.
Manga Guide to Physics
That certainly applies to me. Although I like to flatter myself with the term polymath, “jack of all trades” is perhaps more honest. I know just enough to be dangerous on too many subjects, and wish I knew more about all of them.
That’s why I was so excited about (cue the cheesy TV commercial music) the Manga Guides, from No Starch Press. Having grown up with Space Cruiser Yamato and being a hardcore Robotech fan, I’m more than willing to give an anime or manga guide to anything a fair shake. (continue reading…)
So Texas had its brief shining moment of light when the state Senate rejected creationist goofball Don McLeroy’s bid to once again head up the Board of Education. McLeroy was the guy who famously said, "Someone has to stand up to experts!" when talking about the science advisors contacted by the BoE to advise them on, y’know, science.
And even in that very post I said that this win was at best temporary, since the same Governor Rick Perry who picked McLeroy in the first place would pick his replacement.
(continue reading…)
As I work away on all my various production projects and try to get things settled for a few days away the end of this week, one thing is in the back of my mind… The Amazing Meeting is this week! Hooray!
TAM7 as we affectionately call it is the largest yearly meet-up and conference of skeptics in the world. Brought to us by The James Randi Educational Foundation, and headed up by none other than fellow Skeptologist and SkepticBlog contributor Phil Plait. He’ll be the M.C. at the event which will bring together I’m betting easily over a thousand skeptics from all over the US and the world. (continue reading…)
In last week’s post I mentioned my trip to Santiago, Chile, for a conference on evolutionary economics hosted by Alvaro Fischer, in conjunction with the year-long series of celebrations of Darwin’s 200th birthday.
The three main speakers at the conference were Ullrich Witt, a liberal economist from the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany (part of the old Iron Curtain East Germany), Kevin McCabe, a conservative economist from George Mason University, known for its free market leanings (unlike most universities and colleges in America), and myself, a “radical for liberty” (pace Ayn Rand’s self-description as a “radical for capitalism”). Our talks were formal, professional, and technical, but the lively action was in the table talk over meals. I very much enjoyed hearing the opinions of these learned economists, even while vehemently disagreeing (mainly with Witt). Since McCabe and I mostly agreed on everything, I’ll briefly summarize Witt’s lecture, which I think explains how he and I differ on the issue of the collective v. the individual. (continue reading…)
A recent spat between journalist Steve Conner and science blogger Ben Goldacre brings into focus the rapid changes journalism is facing. Conner, a science journalist, heard about a Skeptics in the Pub meeting that Ben was holding to discuss why the “mainstream media’s science coverage is broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly.” Conner, apparently, took exception to that discussion.
Ben gives full details here, including a nice response to Conner, but here is Conner’s best rant:
But their arrogance is not new. Medical doctors in particular have always had a lofty attitude to the media’s coverage of their profession, stemming no doubt from the God-like stance they take towards their patients. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say their profession is broken, dangerous, lazy, venal and silly – not yet anyway.
Ben took great pleasure in pointing out that while Conner was being defensive about criticism aimed at lazy journalists – he got the date of the meeting wrong and falsely assumed that the three speakers were all doctors when only one was. It is also interesting that Conner appears to have nothing but contempt for a profession that he covers as a journalist.
Finally after over twenty years of admiring and wondering about his work, I had the privilege to meet world renowned photographer and ghost hunter, Simon Marsden. It was a watershed moment for me, as I had conjectured about what his position on the believer spectrum would be for years. Knowing about the world of woo that circulates around anything that looks even slightly ghostly, I had expected to hear long-winded tales of confrontations with ghosts and all manner of newageness that I felt would be put up onstage during his talk, even if he didn’t actually believe in the existence of spirits. We all know (at least in America) that’s how to sell books. And Simon has sold a ton of them. A casual look at his archive www.marsdenarchive.com reveals a world few people can compete with for dark shivery images. His work has a haunted quality that’s impossible to deny. But what does he really think about ghosts? (continue reading…)
The Boy Scouts of America are notorious for acting like a public institution when it’s time to collect Federal money, and for enjoying the freedoms reserved for private institutions when they feel like being bigots. Whenever the mood strikes them, they eject members regardless of their performance and their service record, for anything from being gay to being something other than Christian; and they make no excuse for it, happily citing religious discrimination as the reason. And still they continue to rake in Federal donations.
I received the following email from reader Neil Polzin: (continue reading…)
Are you an exhausted antiscientist? Has railing against the mainstream science paradigm got you down? Making up "facts" is tough, and it’s tiring CONSTANTLY TYPING IN CAPITAL LETTERS, using different color fonts, and don’t forget all those exclamation points!!! Not to mention comparing scientists to Hitler and Himmler, and yourself to Galileo and Einstein.
And of course, your mind is soft and not used to real work, so you need to take constant breaks.
(continue reading…)
