Archive for category Skepticism
Creatures, cavegirls and kids
Posted by Mike in Dinosaurs, Skepticism on May 25, 2011
In a fit of nostalgia, I recently decided to hunt down copies of a particular TV show I remember from when I was a kid.
Those of you who know me will not be surprised by this. I am, at the age of 32, just as much of a Doctor Who nut as I was 29 years previously. I also have every episode of the Children’s ITV gameshow Knightmare on VHS. Nostalgia and the completist, collectors instinct are a dangerous pairing.
My latest whim is the 1982 animated version of The Incredible Hulk. No, not the dreadful Bill Bixby series of the same name, which it seems everyone but me remembers fondly. I’m so bored of hearing producers talk about how the Hulk movies are failing because they lack a resemblance to the TV show. I’m sometimes not wholly convinced that these people realise the Hulk is actually a comic book character. Bill Bixby has, I fear, doomed all subsequent live action versions of the Hulk to emulate his version of the character, instead of Stan Lee’s.
But I digress.
One episode of The Incredible Hulk, titled The Creature and the Cavegirl, features Bruce Banner attempting to use a “time projector” to go back in time and prevent the gamma ray explosion which first turned him into the Hulk. As you might expect, things go awry and the Hulk ends up travelling “a million years back in time”, where he rescues a woman – the eponymous cavegirl – from a bear-like monster and a marauding dinosaur.
This is the point at which I started getting frustrated. Dinosaurs and humans living together? Who died and made Ken Ham the script editor? Modern humans living one million years ago? Seriously? Come to that – dinosaurs living one million years ago! Really?! You’re going to put that in a kids TV show? Irresponsible much?
Then I took a step back.
Sure, this show is telling kids (albeit indirectly) that humans and dinosaurs lived together a million years ago. But it is also telling kids that getting caught in a nuclear blast with turn you into a green, quasi-Jekyll-and-Hyde monster in magic elastic pants. And that it is possible to traverse the fourth dimension via a device called a time projector.
These things are just as crazy, but I don’t find them in the least bit objectionable.
Why not?
Are you a selfish bastard?
Posted by Mike in Activism, Skepticism on April 4, 2011
There are plenty of people who are critical of skepticism, both from within and without the skeptical community. We’re accused of being closed-minded, grumpy, bearded doubters and nay-sayers. We’re accused of armchair skepticism, of ivory tower skepticism, of ‘scientism’, and of being in the pocket of a mysterious large farmer.
Some people think we aren’t pro-active enough. Some people say we should let people believe what they like. We’re accused of preaching to the choir, of living in an echo chamber, of not meaningfully engaging with the other side of the debate. We’re accused of being dicks, or of not being dickish enough. We’re accused of both accommodationalism and fundamentalism.
Some of these criticisms are valid, some are bogus. Some seem to assume that there is only one way you should behave if you’re a skeptic, when really – it takes all sorts.
So here is something positive we can all do. It doesn’t get in anyone’s face, it isn’t dickish, it isn’t fundamentalist or accommodationalist. And I’d actually be pretty surprised if any skeptic had a serious objection to it:
It’s easy. It’s free. You won’t get anything out of it until after you’re dead, except perhaps a smug sense of self-satisfaction. But if you don’t do it, you’re probably just being selfish. Your kidneys are no good to you after you’ve wrapped a car around a lamp-post, but they may just save the life of one of the four people who die in the UK every day because of a lack of suitable organs.
So get on with it… register as an organ donor now. No ifs, no buts. Chop chop.
(With thanks to the Prof for suggesting we champion this.)
Homeopathy in the Wirral: RIP
Posted by Marsh in 10:23, Homeopathy, Merseyside, Skepticism on April 2, 2011
As I’ve covered previously, the position of homeopathy on the NHS in the Wirral region has been under review, with the Professional Executive Committee evaluating the future continuation of the 200-year-old non-science in the wake of dwindling patient interest.
Following the open meeting of March 10th to discuss proposals to cut homeopathy from the budget, the PEC collected their thoughts and formally presented them to the Wirral NHS Board. This meeting took place on the 22 March 2011, and unsurprisingly attracted the attention of the North West ‘Friends’ of Homeopathy, whose very vocal envoy John Cook persuaded the board to allow him to present his objections to their proposal. Readers of the previous blog or listeners to Skeptics with a K will know John well, and his forthright advocacy style.
Fortunately, a local councillor is a supporter and friend of the MSS, and he was able to equally persuade the board to allow an external voice of support into the meeting to counter the objections of the homeopathic lobby – which is why I found myself called upon to give a 5-minute speech in favour of disposing with the sugar pills once and for all.
The exact text of the speech is presented below, and my opportunity to present it came immediately after 5 minutes from the homeopaths, in which the main thrust of their argument was:
- The consultation process had not been as robust as one would hope (essentially attempting to get off on a technicality)
- Homeopathy does indeed work and there is science to prove it
- Homeopathy is used by 10% of the population (a somewhat spurious figure brilliantly put into context by the board, who pointed out that the 60 affected patients in the Wirral each year are in fact just 0.02% of the population)
- Those who seek to end funding for homeopathy are in fact attempting to ban it, with similar zeal to the calls to rid the world from smallpox.
I’ve no doubt that John will be able to offer a fuller clarification of these points below, and I welcome him doing so if he so wishes. Following this argument, I took to the rather official-looking table with it’s little microphone, the eyes of the board upon me, and began: Read the rest of this entry »
The Mass Libel Reform Blog – Fight for Free Speech!
Posted by Colin H in Activism, Government, Journalism, Libel Reform, Media, Skepticism on November 10, 2010
The English libel law is particularly dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.
You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.
The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign
Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.
If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.
We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign
QED: The People’s Panel
Posted by Allan in Skepticism on November 5, 2010
Get your QED ticket now!
Have you ever been going to an event and hoped that a favourite topic of yours will be covered in the programme, only to have your hopes cruelly dashed upon arrival at the appointed place and the anointed hour? In every event schedule there are one or two items that truly stand out for you, and it’s a great let down if they’re set up in a way that’s perhaps easier on the organizers, but less of what you really want to see.
Bad PR: How To Be A Modern Journalist
Posted by Marsh in Bad PR, Skepticism on October 26, 2010
Have you ever wanted to be a journalist in today’s fast-moving, exciting, cutting-edge, new-media, buzzwordy-buzzword age? I bet you have! You can’t fool me – I know you used to watch the New Adventures Of Superman as a kid and quite fancied the Lois Lane lifestyle: hunting out bad guys, tracking down sources, breaking big stories (admittedly while usually ending up somehow embroiled in those stories to a depth that only a super-powered alien could extricate). It’s OK, you’re not alone, we all wanted to be Lois Lane, myself included. I had the shoes and everything.
Usually, to achieve this lofty ambition I’d suggest that your options were fairly limited – either plug away at blogs and other self-funded and often-largely-unread outlets, and hope to get picked out of the crowd Little-Orphan-Annie-style by some benevolent throwback of a newspaper magnate (good luck in finding one); or you work your way through the tried-and-tested system: take a journalism course costing thousands of pounds, hope it’s one that the newspaper you’re applying to actually respects/recognises, secure a bottom-rung position and begin covering ‘man bites dog’ stories for the ‘Weird News’ section of your local rag until the will to delve has been so beaten out of you that you’re as unwilling to achieve real depth as an asthmatic scuba diver, and then return to the office to file 300 words of copy only to spend the day watching it getting trimmed back and pruned until your day’s work is a 20-word stub just before the classifieds. I’m joking of course, this doesn’t really happen – you’d not have left the office to do any of that: that’s why phones were invented.
Still, that’s what I’d usually offer as advice (not that I’ve been a journalist myself, you understand, so my advice is purely pithy conjecture and semi-satirical commentary). However, today I’m feeling a little more generous, so I’m going to let you into a little secret: there are simpler solutions, easier paths to tread. In short, there are shortcuts. And I’m going to share those shortcuts with you right now: Read the rest of this entry »
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