Weekly Round-up weekending 30/10/11

It’s weekly round–up time again for you lovely folks at Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub, and it’s another double helping; so welcome, welcome to the Halloween link fest, or as Frank-N-Furter would say “So come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab. I see you shiver with antici…pation.”

Podcasts, Communicators and Coventry Skeptics

A Blog Post by Patrick Redmond


This blog post is a shameless plug for the Birmingham Skeptics Podcast. I try to feature a range of people and subjects on the podcast from authors and scientists to some of the interesting people that I meet at the events that I go to. You don’t have to have a book out or a television series to have something worth hearing.


 A case in point is Lucy Harper who I talk to on the latest podcast. A scientist turned science communicator, working for the Society for Applied Microbiology, who, when her busy life allows, comes along to Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub. She works with scientists the world over helping them to talk to each other and to talk to us. Increasingly, groups like ours show that the divide between the white coated elite and the masses is narrowing as our public appreciation of science grows, and perhaps conversely as science’s appreciation for the public also increases.

You’ll find that interview sandwiched between some rather random sounding short interviews I did at Coventry Skeptics in the Pub inaugural talk with AndyLewis. I couldn’t get hold of Andy who was on a tight schedule with his train but his talk was brilliant. I’d had a few beers and the people I suddenly thrust a microphone at and asked to speak were a bit startled and shell shocked, but I think the sense of fun and excitement from the night comes across. If you live anywhere near to Coventry please support them, a great bunch of people and a great night out.

I’m not sure how many people listen to the podcasts and I’m hopeless at promoting them. I can’t do one every week as family and life are just too busy but they will keep coming. So please listen to them, let me know any thoughts you have and you can get the full back catalogue here and subscribe and get the last twelve from iTunes here.

Thanks

Patrick Redmond (@paddyrex) - Born in Stoke and moved the vast distance to live in Birmingham. He is one of the organisers of Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub.

Weekly Round-up w/e 16/10/11

The Weekly Round up is here and we’ve cast our net wide again, with past and present links featuring some big fish, little tiddlers, and some, quite frankly, we should have thrown back in as we ought to know better.

Let’s start with a fishy story that’s still causing a bit of a niff.

Weekly Round-up w/e 2nd October 2011

It’s that time of the week once more and we’ve had our resident link elf scour the magical land of interwebs again so you don’t have to. Here’s what he’s gathered together plus some additional interesting articles from the archives you may have missed. So sit back, tune in; insert into your ear your Psychic Sally Earpiece of Denial, close that window, and make contact with the Birmingham Skeptics Weekly Round-up.

To successfully complete this week’s round up you will need a printer, a pair of scissors, some Pritt-Stick and a full set of fingers. Oh, and also a passport type photograph of yourself as we’re going to regress your physiognomy by 3.7million years.

With the academic year in full flow, what better way to start things off than with a few light revision aids: