Weekly Round-up w/e 25/09/11

Hello and welcome to this week's weekly round-up.  After last week's sterling effort by Roy, this one is only a brief one to try and keep you up to date with what's going on.  Don't forget, this week we have Mark Stevenson coming to Birmingham to present his Optimist's Tour of the Future talk.  If you've not already, get over to our Facebook page and click 'yes, I'm attending' on the event page.  Only if you're coming though, click no if you're not.  Anyway, here you go:

Can neutrons exceed the speed of light?  If so, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV.

First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion.

Double whammy gene therapy clears HIV from body.

As a world centre of fashion, if any country was going to introduce a dress code, then France would be it.  As with all arbitrary laws such as this, the target is a minority.

Tearing pages from Bibles makes atheists ugly according to someone I’m not interested in.  It may be just paper with words on it, but it’s needlessly provocative.

Sub-nuclear particles may move faster than light, who says homeopathy can’t work?

UC Berkeley Invents Mind Reading Machine Called 'Natural Movies'

Coronation Street are to have visitors from another planet as UFOs are spotted by a couple of the characters.  You won’t find any Gail Platt ET jokes here.

Prescribing Jesus.  Is it really appropriate for a doctor to offer Christianity as part of the treatment?

xkcd, topical as always: http://xkcd.com/955/

Newly set up Project Barnum has a nice looking website with some good resources and useful information on the sort of tricks used by psychics to con their customers.  It also has a campaign to get theatres to stop booking psychics if you’re into that sort of thing.  I quite liked the Magicians Vs Psychics poster.

This week's round-up was rounded-up by Paul Bryant (@thebigyeti)

Weekly Round-up w/e 18/09/2011

Welcome once again to the Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub round up of internet things that are collected by us to amuse or bemuse; a smorgasbord of thoughts and ideas that you can take away and mull over for a while until the next interesting thing comes along to displace them.  

This week’s blog is slightly different and it’s something we’ve been actively encouraging, a guest blog by a regular member of the Sitp audience; hi, my name is Roy, and I’ll be your skeptic sub-contractor this week right down to the end of this page. If you’re interested in contributing to any future blogs, including this one, please form an orderly queue behind me. Let’s begin - hardhats on.

Weekly Round-up w/e 04/09/2001

Hi folks, welcome to the Birmingham Skeptics round-up of things that we’ve stumbled across and enjoyed over the last week or so. The first piece is s bit of scientology news from the southern hemisphere. This is a new angle of attack and if it works out could prove very difficult for these Thetan clearing adherents. Don’t forget we’re looking forward to hearing Martin Poulter on Scientology in October

I make no apologies for including Orac for a second week running. Most of us know the essentials of homeopathy and how it works. There is nothing in it and it doesn’t. But just when you thought  there was little more to read on the subject Orac comes up with a very amusing post about something that is ridiculous by even homeopathic standards

You know how you wait ages for a bus and then two come along at the same time? Yes, it’s probably an example of confirmation bias but I promise I wasn’t looking for this in particular when I came across not one but two posts involving Big Foot. The first is from a group of Minnesota skeptics who linked to a video of somebody who firmly believes in the existence of the creature. It’s interesting to then pop across to Brian Dunning at Skepticblog to see how he takes apart the main arguments of the proponents.

Now I only came across this next item this morning via Greg Laden over at ScienceBlogs. The Nasa website has been responsible for losing many hours of time and I don’t think that this is going to change much with the introduction of the ability to explore the solar system from the comfort of my armchair. I found the controls a little difficult at first but worth the time and effort to experiment and get to grips with them.

Crispian Jago has a wicked sense of humour and a creative bent to match. Check out his endorsement of the Detox 2000 (Patent Pending) for proof of this.

Climate change has never been a controversial area has it? The Guardian report on a remarkable geoengineering experiment looking to mitigate the effects of global warning. Read the comments below and you’ll find a lively discussion on all aspects of this subject.

The final link is a shameless plug for my posting about meeting the Asian Rationalist Society of Britain and the great Narendra Nayak.

We’re always looking for guest bloggers  on our site so if you haven’t blogged before and fancy a go, or you're a regular blogger but would be willing to contribute your talents to our page, then please get in touch at birminghamskeptics@gmail.com, we’d love to hear from you.

This weeks round up was compiled by Patrick Redmond (paddyrex)

Skeptics in the Punjabi

Dr Narendra Nayak

A Blog Post by Patrick Redmond

On Saturday I had the pleasure to meet Narendra Nayak. He is, amongst other things, the president of the Federation of Indian Rationalists. He was on a tour of the UK and had already met up with Skeptics in Glasgow and Edinburgh and was taking part in an event organised by the Asian Rationalist Society of Britain to promote critical thinking and encourage blood and organ donation amongst the Indian community. I went along for the end of the day and it was brilliant.

I slipped in at the back and watched an entertaining doctor present an excellent talk on quack remedies, the placebo effect and the need for critical thinking that would not have been out of place in any Skeptics in the Pub meeting. Dr Dihal’s lecture slipped between English and Punjabi and although  my Punjabi is non-existent the accompanying PowerPoint and what I already know of the subject filled in the gaps. The people in the room were entertained and the atmosphere was great.

I chatted quietly to one of the people next to me about the group and he said it had been going for some time but each year got bigger and stronger. The reason for this, he figured, was education. He was born in India but raised in England and he didn’t believe in all the superstitious stuff. Because he was educated his children also don’t believe in it and then in turn their children won’t. We know that educated or not there are still plenty of people able to be convinced of all kinds of magic and nonsense, but I think that he’s right, education is the key and that is what this group is about.

Debunking is an important aspect of their work. In between speakers Dr Nayak slipped out and we recorded a quick interview that will go out on the podcast soon. However difficult we might think the role of the skeptic is over here, in western society, it’s very different in India. Superstition and religion are far more significant factors in daily life. Holy men perform miracles persuading people of their supernatural abilities to advise and heal. Amidst all this non scientific medicines are not only available but given governmental approval. Rationalists have to face much more the powers of religion and the powers of state in their battle. If you search YouTube for Narendra Nayak you will see many videos of him replicating the feats of these so-called holy men  to demonstrate that their power is anything but divine and that their effect is to stop people seeking medical or professional help when it is needed with all the consequences that might hold.


Ash Performing Psychic Surgery

Lottery Tickets from Eggs

I’d missed his earlier demonstrations of psychic surgery, an ordeal I had performed on me by Edinburgh’s Ash Pryce only a few months ago, but I did watch him cracking eggs open to remove lottery tickets from their centre and reading minds.

The mood was one of amusement but the message was serious, as was the underlying main theme of the meeting. The religious beliefs of many in the Asian community prohibit them from donating organs or blood. The need for these organs is urgent and the supply isn’t there. Superstition is directly leading to preventable deaths as opportunities to save lives are lost.

One of the aims of Dr Nayak’s visit was to help unite groups within the rationalist community. That was why he made contact with the Birmingham Skeptics and I’m really glad he did. Here on our doorstep is the main office of the Asian Rationalist Society of Britain. I’m ashamed to say that I’d totally missed their existence and it took a visitor from another continent to get us together. They made me very welcome. Now that we’ve made contact I’m very much looking forward to working with them in the future.

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 28th August

Well, after a week’s break the final weekly roundup for August is here, so sit back, relax and enjoy our selection of interesting items from the web chosen especially for you.

We’ll start with the irrepressible Prof Edzard Ernst. A short and pithy blog illustrating that the chiropracters have far from succeeded in manipulating the quackery from their profession.

Over at the ever informative BBC they report on a new fossil discovery that rewrites the timelines on some aspects of mammalian evolution. So much information from such a little thing, and I love how each new discovery gives us a more complete fossil record.

I’ve always been drawn to Orac’s blog. Partly for the masterful handling of such stories as this further nail in the anti-vaccination argument. A big part of it though is that I loved Blake’s 7 and I get a bit of a kick from that transparent box of wires and lights up in the corner.

I have to admit to a bit of ignorance here, I hadn’t come across the Desteni until I stumbled over Muerto’s blog on the subject. Since then I’ve had some interesting reading searching around the Internet on this peculiar cult.

If you don’t know Daniel Loxton yet then shame on you. He does outstanding work spreading a love of science and critical thinking to that most important part of society, the young. He has a new book out called Ankylosaur Attack (Tales of Prehistoric Life) and it’s even available over here in the UK too.

Ben Goldacre hardly needs our plugging, but this is a very interesting study he describes and just in case you missed it,here’s the link.

I like to see some science writing from Birmingham and so here is Russell Beale with What is Science? or Here be Dragons. If you look over at the right hand column you’ll see Lucy Harper who wrote a blog post for us some time back.

Like some old Vaudevillian I like to finish with a song. Rationally Speaking Out Loud found this one buried in YouTube and handily provides the lyrics. I’m sure it expresses the sentiments of many skeptics out there and It’s well worth a listen. Enjoy and don't forget our next two speakers in September, Peter Harrison andMark Stevenson.

This weeks round up was compiled by Patrick Redmond (paddyrex)

The Weekly Round-Up (w/e 14th August 2011)

Welcome to the increasingly accurately named weekly round-up.

It's been a strange week as we had to cancel our regular meeting, which this month was to feature Mark Stevenson (@OptimistOnTour). We are hoping to reschedule this talk in the near future, replacing one of our socials. There will be 2 SitPs in that month and hopefully as few people as possible will miss out.

Why Nothing Matters

By Ronald Green

Why should nothing matter? If anything matters, why should nothing matter? And yet it does, for there isn’t anything, it seems, that nothing does not touch, or anything that does not touch nothing. History, philosophy, religion, science, art, literature, music – all look towards nothing at some point, stimulating questions that would otherwise not be asked.

What is this nothing, that we can’t actually see, touch or feel? Is it absolute? Is it relative to everything else? If we are able to think about it, write and read about it, is it something, and if so wouldn’t it then not be nothing?

This is precisely the mystery of nothing – that the more we think about it, the more there is to it.

The struggle to understand the concept of absolute emptiness, the absence of everything, has been going on for some two thousand years, for at least as long as there have been written records of what people thought is important. Those who have made it their business to think have been puzzling at "nothing", wondering what it was, whether it was anything at all, whether it existed, in fact, and if it did, how it affected things around it.