The Round-up w/e 25/11/12

Hello and welcome to Brum Skeptics round-up of the Internet’s good the bad and the subject to individual aesthetic taste.

When I was a kid dinosaurs were big scaly things that chased women wearing furry bikinis but there is more and more evidence of how wrong I was. There were feathery ones that chased the bikini clad maidens too.

Mark Twain described golf as “a good walk spoiled.” I bet he wouldn’t have been so dismissive if there had been dinosaurs on the course.

Conflict over the so-called Holy Land is much in the news but is hardly new as this animation ably illustrates. Despite being referred to in the Bible as “a land flowing with milk and honey” I much prefer these ones of bread and chocolate.

Here is a much better use for those machine guns.

We already knew that the 2012 Apocalyptic beliefs were stupid, right? Well now that view is supported by the Pope and he knows a lot about irrational and ridiculous ideas.

Firstly an argument that you should hold ideas based on what you can argue and not what you believe. If you want a classic example of how to put an argument together you could do worse than have a listen to the Copleston vs.Russell debate on the Cosmological Argument. As much as I enjoy a bit of metaphysics I think this Priest got a bit carried away.

There are no good arguments for the limitation of rights and the mutilation of children based on gender and religion.

He may have to go to Russia but we finally have a party that David Icke can get enthused about.

I love this story for two reasons. A mystery code from World War 2 that can’t be cracked is pretty cool in itself. But the other thing is that because of it I found out that there is a pigeon museum!

Burzynski news, and it’s not good.

Feeling hungry? How about some infinite bacon followed by a bullshit fetus burger.

Smartphones, they can spread disinformation but are little modern day miracles in themselves.

A teacher questions how to approach students that doubt evolution. Perhaps one way in would be to give them this book on the importance of the scientific method as a present.

At last, proof that extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists. How do you spell pareidolia again?

An article of professional interest for me here. I spent weeks learning to read Braille and never managed to do it fluently by touch, I had to use my eyes. Very similar but very different to this person in fact.

I have some random links left over so please help me out by thinking of some vaguely relevant and/or amusing connecting text for these:

Fear Cancels out Placebo Effect

Lung on a Chip

Did Jesus Die for Klingons?

and

God told her to drive at 100mph

For those that came to Aarathi’s great talk here’s a recent post from her on the changing attitudes to sex. You can buy her book from here and some time very soon the DVD of her talk here.

December is a bit of a lazy month of us Brum Skeptics, no speaking event. We do have a social tonight though which we would love to see you at and there will probably be another in December so check back for the when and where of that.

2013 is looking mighty fine. We’ll be kicking off with the wonderful Robert Llewellyn, as long as his electric car gets him to the venue on time. We also have the inaugural Birmingham Skeptics Book Group so get reading.

I’ve had my head stuck in reports and write-ups  all week and have barely read anything else so a massive thank you to Roy Beddowes for passing on the vast majority of these links. We’ll finish with a great little video on the phases and libration of the moon.

This week’s round-up was put together by Patrick Redmond (@paddyrex)