Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
In Professor Richard Wiseman’s latest book, Paranormality, he suggests that it is very easy for so-called psychics to give highly accurate readings. Later, in the back of the same book, he gives an example that can be utilized to convince complete strangers that you can read their aura (or some other similar medium babble) and demonstrate that your apparent psychic powers are real, because you know all about them.
OK then, lets put that to the test here and now.
There is a great article in today’s UK Telegraph by Hugh Pennington , the emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen. It has been written in response to the news that Bill Gates and also the UK government have comitted huge sums to money, when yesterday they pledged £814 million on top of the UK’s existing commitment to GAVI (the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation) of £680 million between 2011 and 2015.
Here are a couple of choice quotes that I’ve plucked out because I really like them …
Not too long ago I blogged about a crazy Egyptian Islamic Cleric, Shaykh Abi-Ishaq al-Huwayni, who suggested that Muslims who were short of cash should go on a raid and sell any prisoners taken in the market.
As you might imagine, it caused a bit of a stir (his comments made it into the Egyptian press), so he was interviewed over the phone by a TV station and asked to explain himself. At first he appeared to back off a bit and suggested that his words had been taken out of context, but then he proceeds to put it into a 7th Century setting. What is astonishing is that his explanation is even more outrageous and utterly offensive to any normal sane human.
Here we do indeed have an individual, who is not just out of time from another century, but has had his sense of morality so utterly fucked up by religion, that he appears to be from another millennium.
I recently came across an article about “Cliff Richard“. Looking at what had been written, I was rather surprised to find that the author wrote about how Cliff met a Catholic Priest and that they now lived together and were really good close friends. I thought to myself, “no, that simply can’t be right, I … Read more
PZ is well-known, and also well worth listening to, not just because he is somebody who can communicate effectively, but also because he actually has something worth listening to, so it was a delight to see him coaxed him out of his academic seclusion for a trip to Ireland and also, on his way back, to a Skeptics In the Pub in Glasgow.
I have two treats for you today. The first is a direct confrontation with some Muslims who stuck a camera under his nose while he was out for a walk, the second is his complete talk at Skeptics in the Pub in Glasgow.
“Sara Palin is Nuts” – Many of us have know it for quite some time, so it is no surprise, but … now here comes the truly funny bit … she has been off on Tours of various sites, and for her latest boondoggle to some far-flung place she would probably not be able to identify on a map, she told Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times:
I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.
I guess I can understand her desire for such a meeting, as the keeper of the Ronald Regan flame, self appointed of course, it fits in quite well with her political agenda. However, when presented with the idea, Thatcher’s aids are quoted as saying:
Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.
You can read the original report about this here, and then you can enjoy the frothing and foaming it generated within the right-wing kook camp here.