Weekly Round Up w/e 15 April 2011

A weekly round-up of things we liked that we think you'd like also.

We’re getting all arty this week.  Ever since Matt Lodder visited with his excellent talk “A sceptical view of western media perceptions of tattoos”, we’ve been interested in the tension between art and science and whether any actually exists.  This is explored in a couple of articles you can see below.  Also, top UFO expert Nick Pope popped in to talk to us this week.  A lot of new faces came along to see him and entertained us with their experiences of UFOs, the atmosphere was great as believers and sceptics all had their say without any ill will.  We’ve made sure a bit of UFO related stuff is in this weeks round up:

• Is there a rift between art and science?  Patrick Redmond explores this in his blog post The Art of Skepticism

• More on the so-called art and science rift here on scienceblogs.

• Now a bit of art for you, a lovely poem called What do atheists believe? on the Digital Cuttlefish blog.

• Would an extra terrestrial lifeform look like us?  Evolution helps us understand what aliens might look like

• Alcohol causes cancer? if you assume so, yes

• A.A. Gill takes a look around Kentucky’s Creation Museum.  He tells us all about it here in vanity Fair.

• German doctors have been advised to give out more placebos.

• We at Birmingham Skeptics have included a resource on this very blog for Skeptics in the Pub (SITP) organisers, visitors and those who wish to set up a SITP.  The link is in the link bar at the top labelled UK and Eire SITPs, but to save you looking all the way up there, click here.

• As always, XKCD get it spot on, this time with Significant.

 

This weekly round up was put together by Paul Bryant (@thebigyeti)