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Category Archives: Skeptics

Climate change, scepticism and elitism

Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle To think well of themselves. [...]

Unhappy Medium

A major Edinburgh Fringe venue has defended its decision to put a “psychic medium” on the bill. Joe Power – “The Man Who Sees Dead People” – is to play a three week run at The Assembly. However, Power was booed and heckled during the Assembly’s 30th anniversary gala. Assembly director William Burdett-Coutts admitted he [...]

Life, the Universe and pretty much everything

Eye-candy du jour, for the inner science geek. This is the extraordinary place where we all live – the Universe. The picture is the first full-sky image from Europe’s Planck telescope which was sent into space last year to survey the “oldest light” in the cosmos. It took the 600m-euro observatory just over six months [...]

Mind Your Head

On the very lengthy ‘charge the Pope‘ thread, there was some discussion in the comments of the moral content of different religions. There were suggestions that some religions may in fact be superior to others with respect to their social and institutional effects, even if on an epistemological level, all of them are equally untrue. [...]

And this isn’t okay, either

Just thought I’d remind certain peeps around the place.

In Simon Singh news…

From the BBC: The British Chiropractic Association has dropped its libel action against the science writer Simon Singh. Dr Singh was being sued by the organisation because of comments he had made about the effectiveness of chiropractic in the Guardian in 2008. The case itself had sparked an intense debate about the role of libel [...]

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

… Or, should I say, Richard Dawkins. Apparently, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are consulting their lawyers to see whether the Pope can be charged when he visits Britain in September. Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens believe the Pope should face charges for the alleged cover-up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church, The Guardian reports. [...]

The Cats That Will Not Be Herded

I’m reasonably sure I was the first libertarian to suggest that organising libertarians was akin to herding cats (here, apparently), and since then the notion has spread around Ozblogistan. Well, I think I’ve found a new group of cats that will not be herded: atheists. This observation comes after noting the response to a piece [...]

NB: Lawyers are not scientists, please stop trying to recruit us

Elsewhere, I’ve pointed out that good lawyers are perfectly capable of ‘doing’ science, or history, or [insert non-legal academic discipline here]. That we can do it, however, doesn’t mean we ought to do it (see what I did there?). That this may be the developing common sense of the profession is evidenced in part by yesterday’s [...]

You gotta laugh at yourself, sometimes