Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
And today’s TAM9 live feed can be found here … all done by a couple of folks who are far better at live blogging than I am, so go check it out. As for me, well, I’m back to my collection of tweets and quotes that I, for some bizarre reason, like to filter and collect … as always … enjoy …
Oh, and for all you Pharyngula folks, PZ has announced the meetup at 6pm, in the Garden Buffet tonight.
Tempting as it might be to live-blog, there are folks out there doing a far better job than I ever cold, so I’ll simply point you in their direction ..
Twitter has of course been in full swing, to tune in, you can tap the #TAM9 Twitter feed here. But if not bothered, then to help bring back the day, here are a few of the tweets that I liked … enjoy
There is too much going on, and I’m also in the middle of it all, so I can’t create a generic 30,000 ft view. However, what I can do is attempt to capture a few sound bites that I’ve mined from twitter … enjoy …
Andrew Brown has written within his Guardian blog that it is simply absurd to claim that science is the only road to truth.
Basically he rips into a speech given by Nobel prize-winner Harry Kroto. I’ll not bore you with the details, but basically he claims that apart from science there are other ways for determining truth. Really!! … How about Astrology, voodoo, palm reading, crystal gazing, tea leaves,rituals , meditation, prayer, etc.
OK then lets think about it for a moment. Quite clearly Mr Kroto is using the word ‘science’ as a shorthand for what might better be termed ‘rational inquiry’. Now I will indeed grant Mr Brown one key point, there are indeed other forms of inquiry that lie outside the domain of rational inquiry, we have a special term to describe them – irrational inquiry, but is this what he is getting at? You bet it is.
What is indeed curious is that Mr Brown tends not to be explicit and actually explain what other ways he has for arriving at truth, but given all the shoe shuffling and hand waving going on, I’m sure you can guess, it is a rather familiar pattern. OK, here is a not so subtle clue, his blog on the Guardian falls into the context of “Comment is Free – Belief” context. “Ah ha” you say … yes exactly, now you get it, and can grok what he is implying about ‘other’ roads to ‘truth’.
Its time for the skeptical Podcast vote. Below you will find a list of specifically skeptical podcasts, or simply other podcasts that have a skeptical theme to them as suggested by a wide array of folks (BTW … thanks).
When making your choice:
The goal here is a bit of crowd-sourcing to enable folks to suss out what is truly popular.
Personally, I find podcasts to be of immense value, especially on a daily basis when I’m in transit to/from work, and like everybody, I have my favorites (sorry, no names now, I’ve no wish to influence the vote). If you have not yet made the leap, then why not consider trying out a few, it truly is a cool way to keep your finger on the skeptical pulse. Hopefully the results from the poll below will help you to pick out the truly cool stuff.
There is an interesting news story today about the deal that Google has reached with the British Library. The BBC reports …
Thousands of pages from one of the world’s biggest collections of historic books, pamphlets and periodicals are to be made available on the Internet.
You can read the full story here.
This is a good thing and also is very much in keeping with the very reason for the existence of the library itself. The very concept of a library is to provide access to knowledge for everyone. However, beyond that, it is also (I suggest) one more step towards a more rational culture for us all.