Baroness Warsi and the Blue Screen of Death

It appears that the good Baroness is in need of a reboot. Here's a screenshot …

Militant Realism Threat to Fantasy, warns Warsi

Ancient myths are being "sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere", Conservative co-chairwoman Baroness Warsi whined in an article for the Daily Telegraph.

The Muslim peer said Europe needed to become "more confident and more comfortable with its middle eastern fairy tales ".

She will also highlight the issue in a speech at the Vatican later on Tuesday.

"I will be arguing that to create a more divisive society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their spiritual fantasies," she wrote in the Telegraph.

"In practice this means individuals not accepting reality and nations implementing policies that will allow special privileges to certain religious groups.”

Baroness Warsi, who is Britain's first female Muslim cabinet minister, went on to write: "You cannot and should not extract irrational beliefs from the evolution of our nations any more than you can make the Pope wear a rubber Johnny on his head"

She wrote that examples of a "common sense" taking hold of society could be seen in a number of things - "when people aren’t allowed to discriminate against poofters or when schools are not allowed to teach creation myths as established science; and where magic sky fairies are sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere".

She also compared the intolerance of religion with totalitarian regimes, which she said were "denying people the right to delusions”

Her comments come days after the High Court ruled that a Devon town council had acted unlawfully by allowing councillors to talk to their invisible friends at meetings.

On Baroness Warsi's article and speech, a BBC political correspondent said it was not the first time a senior Conservative had called for a revival of The Dark Ages.

"Last December, Prime Minister David Cameron said the UK was a Christian country and 'should not be afraid to torture heretics and burn witches like we did in the good old days”.

Original Article here

Shortlisted for an Ockham

Don't you just hate that sycophantic drivel people come up with when they've been nominated for an award. You know the sort of stuff, "I don't expect to win, but it's a real honour to be shortlisted amongst these other really brilliant people".

What a load of old bollocks.

Anyway, turns out that I've been shortlisted for an Ockham award by the Skeptic Magazine (I should bloody well hope so too, I nominated myself enough times). You wont have heard of the dreary collection of blogs I'm up against. Some ranting liberal biologist with a weird cephalopod fetish, a mob of dissident tarts who whinge a lot, an annoying Scots git who gets other people to write his blog for him and some Irish clever trousers.

Pathetic.

Anyway, after being robbed of the Orwell Prize last year, I have taken steps to ensure I triumph over this band of no-hopers. After acquiring his address from a surprisingly helpful PR consultant in Texas with time on his hands, I now have skeptical prodigy Rhys Morgan gagged and tied to a chair in my garage.

So French, Grossman, Ronson, Singh and Wiseman, I have a copy of Stuck in the Middle by Stealers Wheels on my iPod, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Bad Science Infographic

On increasingly frequent occasion I receive some ready prepared suggested content for my blog that I am assured will be just the thing for my readers. I don't normally oblige.

However, yesterday I received a rather nice infographic from @jenicarhee summarising the inherent human flaws that can exist within my beloved scientific method.  This one seemed worth sharing, so here its is ...

Created by: Clinical Psychology

Original Source here

WinSitP: Simon Singh on Alan Turing and the Cracking of the Enigma Code

Winchester Skeptics in the pub has now been up and running for two years.

We have had two years of fantastic talks and as more and more people have heard about us, it has become increasingly hard to accommodate everyone in the biggest available pub we could find in Winchester. Following our hugely successful sell-out Christmas Special at the Intech Planetarium we will therefore be moving to an exciting new venue.

The Winchester Discover Centre is the perfect new home for Winchester Skeptics in the Pub. WInchester Skeptics in the Discovery Centre is however a little unwieldy, so we'll probably just stick to Winchester Skeptics in the Pub, or even just Winchester Skeptics.

The success of Winchester Skeptics in the pub can be traced back to our very first (and packed) meeting in January 2010. Our inaugural speaker on that occasion, despite still going through a somewhat misconceived libel trial at the time, was of course Simon Singh. We are therefore delighted to welcome Simon back as the inaugural speaker at our shiny new venue in the year that marks the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth to give an enthralling talk on Alan Turing and the cracking of the Enigma Code.

Simon will also be brining an original working Enigma machine to demonstrate how the cunning little buggers work.

You can take a 360 degree virtual tour of our new venue here.

Do come along next Thursday and fill your brains.

How to replace the School ICT Curriculum

I haven't coded for a long time. A long time.

Although I made a living in the early 80's writing management information systems in AppleSoft BASIC, and after my software engineering degree I worked for a while as rather mediocre Ada programmer on military information systems, I was never one of the worlds most accomplished computer programmers.

I was however fortunate enough to be born at the right time to receive a proper education in computer studies. Although my rather BASIC understanding of how to construct loops, branches and subroutines and how to manipulate strings and define multi dimensional arrays seems somewhat detached from my current daily working activities, it nonetheless provides me with a much greater insight and appreciation of the inner workings of the more complex applications I now use.

In much the same way as my admiration of English and literature in later life, has subsequently made me aware of my loss in not receiving a classical education, perhaps future IT consultants will, on realisation, mourn their loss at never having had the opportunity to load the accumulator or pop the stack when dabbling in ancient assembly languages.

The recent government announcements to scrap the current IT curriculums that merely instruct our children on how to use computers to become efficient office lackeys, in favour of a return to more creative and development based IT education is therefore most welcome on my part.

However, there is another method from the early 80's that we could also redeploy to achieve these laudable aims in adolescent IT literacy. By reinstalling ZX Spectrums, Acorn Electron's, Oric 1's and even the occasional Dragon 32 in WH Smiths, the youth will once again be unwittingly self-instructed in the art of writing short, memory efficient programs that display amusing profanities and the sexual preferences of their friends on the TV monitors before the store manager realises what they've done, or have indeed calculated how to terminate their witty little programs.

I Am A Centrefold

I’ve been offered a most excellent gig by those lovely people at The Skeptic Magazine.

A while ago I cobbled together an Alt-Med flowchart to enable the budding Alt Med junkie to select an appropriate pointless therapy.

A new and improved version of this diagram now nestles proudly in the centre of the latest issue of the Skeptic magazine, where you can rip it out and stick it on your wall, if your so inclined.

You can purchase the magazine here. However I will be producing regular centrefolds for future editions of the magazine so why not subscribe?

Skeptic Trumps: Rhys Morgan

Click Here for the full deck of cards

Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Park 4: Featuring Rhys Morgan

Threats From the Burzynski Clinic

The Burzynski Clinic Is Using Libel Laws to Silence Critics of its Cancer Treatment

Make Your Very Own Clarksonator

To make your very own Clarksonator, you will need:

• 3 Sheets of Paper
• Some Cardboard
• 2 brass paper fasteners
• Scissors
• Stapler
• Pritt Stick
• A Sharp Pencil
• A Computer and Printer
• A Sense of Humour
• Time on Your Hands
• Poor Taste

1. Print out the above Clarksonator and paste it onto a sheet of thin cardboard.
2. Cut out a second piece of card the same size to use for the backing.
3. Cut out the rectangular windows in the front card. You may need to get James May to help you with this bit.
4. Print out the "Target Wheel" below and paste it onto some card and cut it into a circle.
5. Using the sharp pencil, make a hole in the centre of the "Target Wheel" and another hole where indicated on the Clarksonator.
6. Insert the "Target Wheel" between the front and back of the Clarksonator and push the paper fastener through. Open out the fastener at the back and ensure the wheel spins correctly.
7. Next print out the "Retribution Wheel" shown below and paste it to some cardboard and insert it into the Clarksonator.
8. Staple the edges of the Clarksonator ensuring not to staple the wheels.

Target Wheel

Retribution Wheel

"The Clarksonator works a treat, the other day I saw some vegetarians, so I consulted my Clarksonator and told them that they should be made into pies and eaten by John Prescott. It was really funny, me and Hammond laughed about it for hours"

James May, Broadcaster

Skeptic Park 4: Featuring Rhys Morgan #Burzynski

If your are unfamiliar with intimidating legal threats directed at Rhys and the impressively level headed and rational way in which he has dealt with them,  please check out the following blogs:

• Threats from The Burzynski Clinic
• The Burzynski Clinic Threatens 17 Year Old Blogger
• Burzynski Clinic: the domain of scoundrels and quacks
• Could the Burzynski clinic fall foul of UK law?
• Belligerent Burzynski rep gets on the wrong side of Rhys Morgan
• Stanislaw, Streisand and Spartacus
• Dr Burzynski's crooked antineoplastons
• Representative from Burzynski Clinic sends aggressive legal threats to skeptics who question "antineoplaston" cancer therapy

Previous Skeptic Park Episodes:

Skeptic Park 1: Simon Singh

Skeptic Park 2: Derren Brown

Skeptic Park 3: Evan Harris

Tasty Boxer Short Recipes for Prof. Jim Al-Khalili

Despite further experiments at CERN confirming that neutrinos have travelled faster than the speed of light; the scientific community remain a trifle sceptical and still unwilling to resign Einstein’s theory of special relativity to bin just yet.

Nonetheless Prof Jim Al-Khalili, who famously boasted that he would “eat his boxer shorts” if anything travels faster than the speed of light, must surely be eyeing his undercrackers with unpalatable suspicion.

To this end our crack team of particle physicists here at Science, Reason and Critical Thinking have teamed up with top comedy chef Heston Blumenthal, to help alleviate Jim’s woes. In the highly unlikely event that Einstein’s theory turns out to be as much use as Anne Frank’s drum kit, our team have prepared a selection of gourmet recipes for Jim to choose from…

Appetisers

Spiced undercrackers stuffed with braised plums

Deep fried garlic butter shreddies in a tempura batter with trimmed leeks and flat leaf parsley

Tacklebags and coriander fritters with halloumi and sweet lemon dressing

Tandorri kecks in mini pitas with a yoghurt mint dressing

Mains

Baked underchunders with red onions stuffed with toasted spiced couscous

Trolleys tart tatin with shaved manchego and rocket

Peppered underdaks with a whisky sauce 

Smoked dung collectors kedgeree

Roast grundies, caramelised apple wedges with a broccoli and mustard jus

Bon Appetit

Beware the Paramyth

What’s the fastest growing form of woo woo in Britain today?

• Is it perhaps those brash rambunctious religionists at the more happy-clappy end of the spiritual spectrum?
• Is it the quack army and their ever-growing canon of inefficacious alternative therapies?
• Is it psychics and ghosts hunters who’ve plummeted lowbrow TV to new depths?
• Is it the mind-body-spirit brigade of Newage nutters and neopagan fruitcakes who reject formal religion in order to fanny about with their own personalised spiritual delusions?

I suspect not. I would like to propose a new contender that as far as I’m aware, hasn’t even got a specific name yet, so let me try and explain it.

There is a new wave of modern myths sweeping the country that although diverse in nature have a common theme. At the heart of each of these myths is a tiny conspiracy theory that panders to our tabloid fuelled fears that those with different views, traditions and ideas to us, are influencing policies that will bring about the downfall of our traditional way of life.

These paranoid myths (paramyths?) may have a grain of truth at their centre, but have been exaggerated to become outright lies that spread like wild fire by uncritical paramythers more anxious to propagate their ideological agendas than check the facts.

Let me give you a few examples to explain what I’m talking about:

Yesterday my wife was talking to the man on the checkout tills at Asda about opening times over the Christmas period. She was told that Asda would be closed on Christmas Day, but would be open on Boxing Day. Not because of cooperate greed or because that in all probability the other supermarkets in our area will also open on Boxing day but:

“Because of the Muslims.”

No further explanation was necessary. We all know the secret Muslim agenda to turn our beloved Christian country into another Islamic State.

Here’s another example: earlier this week the Telegraph ran with this headline:

“BBC drops Frozen Planet's climate change episode to sell show better abroad”

We all know that those gas-guzzling Yanks put their head in the sand at the first mention of man-made climate change. Why else then would the BBC not package this episode up for sale with the rest of the series?

During the 2010 Football World Cup I remember my kids reporting on a rumour that was making its way around the school yard and virally spreading through facebook that:

“Pubs ban England Shirts”

And a tabloid newspaper championed our cause to fly St George’s Flag in the face of the forces who apparently sought to ban such things.

Again needling the fans to unproportionately act against an ever-popular paper-selling anti-English conspiracy lie. Steven Baxter has a much more reasoned investigation here:

Even a government minister (admittedly one of the more stupid ones) has been sucked in by these paramyths. At this years Conservative Party Conference the Home Secretary, Theresa May, came out with this howler:

“The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat."

Theresa May may not have made it up, but some paramyth peddling pillock did, and she uncritically bought it.

But of course the perennial paramyth that always starts to kick off around this time each year is Melanie Philips’ favourite, The Winterval Myth.

Which even the Daily Mail has finally printed a correction on.

I suspect these examples may just be the tip of the iceberg. It’s therefore high time we picked up our burning pitchforks and headed off on our crusade against the paramythers*.

When it comes to hanging monkeys, there are an awful lot of would be Hartlepudlians out there.

*A more suitable name may be substituted if someone comes up with a better one.

It’s Skeptical Correctness Gone Mad

Go on, admit it, you all think that Psychic Sally is a big fat fraud.

However, the majority of skeptics and rational commentators on the recent tribulations of the ever so lovely  Sally Morgan have gone out of their way to make it perfectly clear that they are absolutely not accusing her of being a fraud. And I too would like to make it quite clear up front to everyone, including Sally’s legal team, that I’m not making that allegation either.

We all know perfectly well that we cannot scientifically disprove Sally’s psychic claims any more than we can disprove Bertrand Russell’s celestial teapot or Carl Sagan’s garage dwelling dragon. The likelihood of Sally’s mystic abilities being supernatural powers currently unknown to science are roughly equivalent to the likelihood of spontaneous heavenly crockery. Indeed the possibility any self proclaimed psychic has genuine paranormal powers are as close to zero as makes no odds, but it is nonetheless important to concede that it’s not an absolute impossibility. It therefore doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to transfer the burden of proof onto Sally, and kindly invite her to prove her mystical abilities under scientifically controlled conditions.

Sally may well be many things, but one think she is clearly not, is a complete and utter fuckwit. She knows as well as we do that the seemingly inexplicable phenomena seen in her stage shows will not manifest themselves under tightly controlled test conditions. She also knows as well as we do that it is not possible to empirically disprove her claims through the scientific method, so it’s hardly surprising that her response is simply to bat the burden of proof back to the skeptical community.

Stalemate.

This deadlocked situation seems to have spawned a set of almost creed-like clichés resonating around the sceptical community. How often have you heard phrases along the lines of?

“Sally may well have genuine psychic abilities; we just want to give her the opportunity to prove her powers beyond all reasonable doubt.”

The sceptical community are reduced to pussyfooting around the big name psychics being ultra careful not to explicitly claim they are frauds (apart from clear cut cases like Peter Popoff).

The preferred tactic seems to be hopelessly goading them into proving their claimed abilities under controlled conditions like the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge with more clichés like:

“We would love for Sally to prove that she has genuine psychic abilities as it would be one of the most monumental scientific discoveries in history”

But would we truly be thrilled and delighted if a psychic were to pass a controlled test? Would we set to work rewriting the science books straight away in the light of this truly astounding new observation? Or would we not still be a little sceptical? Would we be reluctant to immediately overturn a wealth of negative data in the light of a new freak positive? It would certainly be a fascinating discovery that would warrant in depth inquiry, but with extreme caution.

But of course these offers of a potential scientific paradigm shift and the possibility of bringing psychic investigation into the realms of credible science are meaningless carrots, dangled in the safe knowledge that we all know its just a load of old bunkum and cheap parlour tricks really.

Bunkum it almost certainly is, but it’s hard to hammer the point home when restricted by the unwritten rules of sceptical correctness.

Perhaps there is another way. Perhaps it’s just a matter of giving the psychics enough rope and waiting. In the last episode of Derren Brown’s recent series “The Experiments” he conducted an experiment in to luck by seeding a made up rumour of a lucky dog statue. The rumour quickly spread around the local townsfolk and eventually drew the interests of Psychic Sally herself who credulously proclaimed that the statute was standing at the centre of “a vortex of energy”.

This looks like a much better way of exposing bullshit, and helping the public avoid treading in it.



POSTSCRIPT:
Well spotted commenters, I did mean to include something about self delusion. Just read fraud in its broadest terms covering both conscious and self deluded.

Skeptics in the Planetarium

The Hampshire Skeptics Society cordially invite you to join them on the 8th of December, 2011 at Winchester's premier nightspot*, Intech Science Centre and Planetarium!

Tickets Available Here

We are immensely proud to announce that we will be joined by the following esteemed guests:

Sheila Kanani - Mullard Space Science Laboratory

Sheila is a PhD student at UCL (Mullard Space Science Laboratory) who, when not building spacecraft like the Cassini Probe, analysing the data from such probes before anyone else on the planet gets to see it, inspiring the next generation of UK physicists and teaching at Space School UK , likes to unwind by entertaining the masses at events such as Bright Club and Spacetacular!.

Helen Arney - Physicist, Festival of the Spoken Nerd, musical comedian, all round good egg

For anyone that attended this years sell-out Uncaged Monkeys tour, Helen needs no introduction. Unless of course you suffer from short term memory syndrome. In which case; brilliant! You are going to enjoy Helen's set even more as every song will break over you like the first flush of love and each, frankly, disgusting aside will make you blush like a sixteen year old debutante who has accidentally stumbled upon her fathers secret cake stash. If you would like a sneak preview, check out Helen's fantastic work here.

Helen Keen - Space Enthusiast! Robot Enthusiast! Tea Enthusiast! Survivalist!

Quite frankly how we managed to blag an appearance from Helen, now that she is the comedian in residence at Newcastle's Centre for Life and following her hit Radio 4 show It IS Rocket Science is beyond me although our threat to release the compromising video of her throwing a diva hissy fit and smacking long suffering writing partner Miriam Underhill across the upper arms until she cried, may have something to with it (Thanks Kash, I owe you one buddy!).

Robin Ince - Science Groupie, Scientist Herder, President of the Richard Feynman Appreciation Society

I don't need to even write anything here, do I? If you don't appreciate how amazing it is that Robin is joining us this evening then you are dead to me, dead...

We will have a fully licensed bar and some really cheap food and if we ask Dr. Jenny Shipway really nicely she may even put on a planetarium show for us all on a night that promises to be one you will never forget!**

*(If looking up at the stars is your thing)

**(Short term memory syndrome - see Helen Arney) 

Many thanks to James Thomas for arraigning the venue and special guests and providing the above text.


We also plan to be publishing a new exciting calendar of speakers for 2012 at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub here soon.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To Religion

Religion: Some information to help you live with it.

Religion is farfetched. Really farfetched. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly farfetched it is. I mean, you may think it's fairly improbable that fairies exist, but that's just peanuts to religion. Listen ….

The Messiah

The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a Messiah as

“A humanoid deity designed to suffer the sins of man”

The marketing division of the Holy Roman Catholic Church describe a Messiah as:

 "Your Pretend Pal Who's Fun To Be With."

Curiously enough an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that fell through a temporal python warp from 1979 defined the Messiah as:

 “A very naughty boy”

The Christian Fish

Pan Galactic Communion Wine


To make your own Pan Galactic Communion Wine:

Take the blood from one body of that Ol' Christ Spirit after muttering a few magic spells over some cheap red plonk.

Add a wafer.

Drink, but very unquestioningly.

The effect is like having your brain washed by a slice of theology wrapped round a large logical impossibility.

Islamic Sermons

Islamic sermons are of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Jews of Israel. During a recitation by their chief Rabbi Yona Metzger the Groper of his sermon "Ode To A Signature I Forged One Mid Summer Morning" four of his audience suffered severe groping and the women suffered sexual harassment. Yona was reported to have denied the allegations and claimed it was a violation of the basic human rights enjoyed by every individual. The very worst sermons of all are by Anne Atkins and are aired on The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 during Thought for the Day.





Apologies to the great DNA.