Podcast, Show

Episode 2 – today, 7pm GMT

8 Comments

Crikey! Has it already been two weeks? I guess it’s that time again… almost.

Since the first instalment of the League of Reason Show on the 6th, we’ve taken on board a lot of criticism and hope that everyone will agree that this week’s is an improvement.

Things are still progressing slowly as we aim to craft something everyone can enjoy without rushing it. With any luck, this time next year we’ll still be going and everything will be almost unrecognisably more awesome. For now though, you’ll have to share our frustration at trying to explain technology to dprjones (who asked him to be involved again?)

There are just a couple of things I’d like to point out, as I did in my video announcement. If you intend to be a guest on the show, please do not call us (we’ll call you), wear headphones throughout and mute your microphone when you aren’t speaking. These simple steps will help things run immeasurably more smoothly.

Today I’ve created a sub-forum for show discussion, as well as an FAQ thread which I hope will answer any current questions, and will be updated as needs be. Analysis, criticism and suggestions would be very welcome in this forum, and I will be checking it on a daily basis.

Here are the time-zone details for today’s show:

US: 3pm E, 2pm C, 1pm M, 12pm P
UK: 8pm BST
Europe: 9pm CEST, 10pm EEST
Australia: 4am West, 5:30am Central, 6am East

I very much hope to see you there, and before I forget, here’s a nice, clickable link!

News, Reason, Science

San Francisco legislators clearly have irradiated brains

1 Comment

This is a completely unintentional follow on of sorts from my previous post about how non-scientists and the general public are most definitely not the right people to be making decisions of a scientific nature. Now while the subject has nothing to do with synthetic biology this time round I think the underlying feeling of this story is pretty much the same.

 

Legislators in San Francisco are set to introduce new laws requiring all mobile phone retailers to post radiation emission level notices next to all the handsets they sell. Tony Winnicker, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, claims that this “is a modest commonsense measure to provide greater transparency and information to consumers” and the proposal, which passed with a vote of 10-1, is likely to get its final approval next week despite the fact that there is NO EVIDENCE that mobile phones cause any harm to humans.

 

Continue reading San Francisco legislators clearly have irradiated brains →

News

Because the public always knows best

12 Comments

I came across this story on the BBC website this morning that, as a skeptic and someone with a keen, if purely amateur, interest in science, gave me considerable pause. A joint report issued by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) shows that the public is calling for the regulation of Synthetic biology. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, after all ever since Craig Venter created the first artificial cell it should have been obvious to anyone that this was coming, and it is not as though a bit of regulation is a bad thing. However what got me about this report is the level of control the general public is calling for.

 

The resulting report concluded that people wanted scientists who worked with the bits and pieces of life to do so with humility and respect for the material they were working with.

 

It also showed that people wanted to have a say in how the research was conducted and how grants were awarded. There should be consideration of social values as well as scientific merit, they said.

 

Now I don’t know about you but I can’t think of anyone who would be worse than the general public when it comes to evaluating the benefits of various areas of scientific research. I’m also sure that I’m not the only one who can’t help but read the words “humility and respect” and think “must not play God.” The general public as a group stopped getting itself vaccinated due to one ethically vile over reported paper. It now doubts climate change due to the use of the word “trick” in a couple of emails. And it spends millions every year on alternative medicine that, to put it bluntly, doesn’t work. This is hardly the right group of people to be making decisions about a new cutting edge area of scientific research. This is exactly what we have, oh what are they called, ah yes, experts for.

 

Ok, that is all. Please return to your daily lives.

Events, YouTube

League of Reason Show starts today!

24 Comments

At the end of last month, the notorious YouTube creationist and geocentrist, NephilimFree, posted an open invitation to debate any other user. DonExodus2, author of many popular videos detailing evidences for evolution, accepted the challenge, and they began to establish the debate rules. It was all agreed over Skype, and I myself was privy to some of the conversation and chat between them.

The initial debate subject was Creation and Evolution. Of course, that’s not actually a debate, it’s just the teams. The debate requires a proposition (for example, “Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?”) for which one party can argue in favour, and one against. Without such a statement, NephilimFree’s proposal was akin to establishing a game called Chelsea and Manchester United, and then refusing to further specify what game they are actually playing. Without establishing that they are playing football (or soccer to my American friends) we have no rules in place to determine how the game can actually be won or lost. Likewise, Creation and Evolution (and the long list of other subjects NephilimFree listed he wanted to discuss) is not a debate; it’s just two nouns.

For a couple of days a debate question was established and agreed upon by both parties, as was the issue with moderators. It was shortly after that NephilimFree insisted on returning to his original proposition (despite being thoroughly educated about why it was not a debate) and began accusing DonExodus2 of backing out. I wish to make my it clear that from my position as a third person, it is NephilimFree who I think is being unreasonable, and rejecting previously accepted terms without giving good reasons.

Due to the conflict of understanding, the debate as originally planned will certainly not be going ahead, but perhaps that’s a good thing after all. On Friday, Thunderf00t posted a video detailing the first ever League of Reason Show. It’s an idea that myself and others have been considering for a long time, and since NephilimFree won’t be showing up to BlogTV (by his own admission) we have a good excuse to kick it off this weekend.

The format is quite simple; we will be using Skype and BlogTV to broadcast a group discussion, and taking questions live from creationists, or those of a theistic position who feel they can back up their claims. In order to do this, we have created a LoR Skype account (LeagueOfReason) which must be added before a question can be submitted, and a new BlogTV channel.

The show will last 2 hours, giving everyone time to pop over to watch The Atheist Experience on ustream. We won’t deny that our show is flagrantly derivative of their own, we just hope there’s room for one more. To further rip them off, we will also be uploading clips to our YouTube channel and they should be available on Monday for most people. We are not yet sure how regularly this show will take place, but dependent on the turnout, we would like to make it a weekly affair.

The show starts at 3pm EST, which is 8pm BST. This is 7pm GMT, but remember to take Summer Time into account. In any case, I recommend turning up early of course, and I hope to see you all there in the chat!

Astronomy, Entertainment, Events, News, Random, Reason, Science

There’s A Reason The Metro Is Free

6 Comments

Most of you will have realised that I get the vast majority of my newsing from free London rag The Metro, distributed around the Underground every morning in order to allow bleary-eyed businessmen to further realise that the world is falling gracelessly towards the sun. I don’t think the Metro is a bad little paper, really; the quality of writing is generally good, and it catches stories earlier than other papers you might come across in the day. And you’ll find articles of comparable quality on the same subjects in “real” newspapers.

However, you develop an unfair bias of a newspaper when you peruse it mainly to find new nonsense to write about in your blog. You ignore all rational articles about politics\current affairs\crossbows to the face and concentrate only on articles that guarantee a spout of vitriol frothy enough to incur a transparent sense of self-righteousness. And as a result, your perception is that the chosen paper exists only to print stories about religion, druids and the supernatural. Unfair, since the Metro regularly dishes out reasonably informative articles about modern science and astronomy.

Continue reading There’s A Reason The Metro Is Free →

Reason, Science

Could you patent the sun?

15 Comments

One of the biggest enemies facing critical thinking and scepticism is that of personal bias. Bias is extremely easy to spot in other people, but notoriously difficult to spot in yourself. No one likes to think that they may be biased but everyone is, in one way or another. Bias often appears in science denialism where someone may be religiously biased towards a Biblical interpretation of the fossil evidence (for example) rather than towards the scientific explanation. The best we can do about our biases is recognise them and be extra vigilant when we come across evidence that conforms to our biased pre-judgements. Because bias has such an affect on our interpretation of evidence, scientists especially should try to limit the influence of such outside factors on their impartial research. Yet we see precisely the opposite occurring. As research and industry snuggle into a cosy relationship, scientists have become enamoured with their commercial partners.

The commercialisation of research has exploded in the fields of biomedical science and biotechnology, with industry poised to make millions, scientists are all too happy to take a cut of the action. However, money is a powerful motivator and researchers now have an added incentive to find certain result. The result which favours whatever corporation provides the funding. If scientists are being influenced by their source of funding, then it should be apparent in their results. Industry funded projects should find positive results more often than non-profit funding. Indeed, taking the example of pharmaceutical research, that is what we find.

Continue reading Could you patent the sun? →

Events, News

Why YOU should go to TAM London 2010

14 Comments

Picture the scene. It’s brisk, but not quite chilly, at 7:15 on Saturday the 3rd of October 2009, and I’m clutching at my little pot of warm, brown liquid that tastes almost like coffee. Seven-fifteen. It’s a bloody awful time for me. Too late to do any observing and too early for’¦ well, just about anything else. To make matters worse, the previous night I managed approximately one hour of sleep. Even for an astronomer, that’s pretty bad, and waking myself up onerously at 5 to catch the bus resulted in a graceless ballet of a start. Yet here I am, sipping at my faux café and grinning. Grinning like a twat. Because today I’m in London at the Mermaid Conference Centre and something very special is about to happen.

Perhaps more than anything else in recent years, it is in light of the introduction of The Amaz!ng Meeting in Europe that no one can deny the rising tide of scepticism around the globe.

The Amaz!ng Meeting

Continue reading Why YOU should go to TAM London 2010 →

Culture, Events, News, Random, Reason, Science

Lisa, I Would Like To Buy Your Rock

6 Comments

It goes like this:

[Item] or [practice] nullifies or negates the effects, presence, activity or consequences of [entity], [energy], or [phenomenon]. How can you tell? Because absolutely nothing is happening, and so the [item] or [practice] is a legitimate success. This stone keeps away bears. You can tell because you don’t see any bears around here . . . yes, this stone IS for sale. How expensive? Completely. Continue reading Lisa, I Would Like To Buy Your Rock →

Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

Science vs. religion: are they incompatible?

34 Comments

One question that frequently confronts the New Atheists (especially those with a science background) is whether a religion and science are incompatible. The stock answer is that many religious leaders accept science as a good way to understand the natural world and conversely, many scientists have a religious faith (Ken Miller and Francis Collins come to mind). In a previous blog post I talked about how sociological research had revealed that about half of American scientists are able to both perform cutting-edge science and maintain a religious identity. An even larger proportion is still interested in matters of spirituality despite daily engaging in rational, empirical inquiry.

These facts show there is, at least, a kind of ‘brute compatibility’ between science and religion; a single person can hold both ideas simultaneously. However, the obvious counter to ‘brute compatibility’ is to point out that in certain cases the findings of science conflict with specific religious claims about the nature of the world. For example, if you claim that the world is 6,000 years old, science says you are wrong. According to empirical data, the world is more like 4.5 billion years old and anyone who says the scientific evidence shows otherwise is simply mistaken. Because science can only conflict with specifically defined religious claims, I call this ‘specific incompatibility’. Although this type of incompatibility is important, and probably accounts for a large proportion of science’s moderating impact on religion, it does not completely contradict all types of religious claims. Again, this answer is too superficial; the original question is asking something more fundamental – are religion and science incompatible at the deeper, philosophical level?

Continue reading Science vs. religion: are they incompatible? →

News, Reason, Religion, YouTube

Pakistan makes our point for us

10 Comments

So in case you don’t know today is Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, a day one which everyone is encouraged to draw a picture of the Muslim prophet Mohammed as a way of calling the bluff of the extremists that threaten violence against those that do just that. Now I have to admit that I am still in two minds about this. On the one hand I do think it is important to stand up to these people and show that threatening violence against people for drawing a picture will not be accepted and will not stop us from doing so. Freedom of expression baby. On the other hand I find the whole thing slightly off putting for reasons I can’t really put into words. I’m generally not a confrontational person and this all seems a bit too much like getting up in someone’s face for my liking.

 

Continue reading Pakistan makes our point for us →