Archive for August, 2010

Less than 24 hours after I was in the BBC Radio Leeds studio talking about UFOs I was asked to make a return the airwaves this time to talk about psychics.

I was actually surprised as I didn’t feel my previous interview went that well though this one went much better, I think because I was actually invited on to properly rubbish the claims rather than just add a one line counter voice to the Exopolitics conference.

The item was surrounding the recent news that Joe Power – the man who sees dead people – has had his show pulled from the Edinburgh Fringe because it’s rubbish. Watch him totally miss on Derren Brown Investigates in this clip.

I’m very dubious about this phrase. I mean, surely there is only one sky? On Planet Earth at least, but then that is the only sky we’re supposed to be watching – surely we’re not supposed to be watching over planet’s skies?

In any case, I was invited onto BBC Radio Leeds on Wednesday morning for a debate with the organiser of the Exopolitics conference taking place in Leeds this weekend. It was only a 15-minute slot, including going over to the US to speak to Riley Martin – a man who has spoken to aliens (they tell him, “friend Martin…”) but was never the less interesting.

Anthony seemed a very well educated and smart guy (kind of like the good kid that falls in with the bad crowd 😉 ), he seemed very rational about the whole thing. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Exopolitics movement as a whole. A quick look at their website is very revealing.

The era of looped debating whether ETI [extra-terrestrial intelligence] exists and are engaging our species has pragmatically shifted to assuming this to be the case – until we can gather and validate further information.

Basically, they’ve given up trying to work out whether aliens are visiting Earth and just decided they will assume they are until someone proves them wrong. Because that’s how science works 😉 .

EDIT: Since the blog post was written, http://www.exopolitics.org.uk/ has closed.

While what’s really important in any community group is really interesting and well thought through content (which I will be blogging about over on the Leeds Humanists blog), what I was most excited about this month was us rolling out our new happy humanist roller banner! Look at it sitting there behind Gijsbert, how nice 😀 .

With Mr Foley’s looking like our home for the moment, we had a great Skeptics in the Pub meeting in July with a really strong turn out despite it being in the middle of summer. Perhaps due to the excellent quality of talk delivered by Jonni on “The Mind, Illusion and the Need for Science.”

Beginning the ground work for our trip to Monte Carlo next month, we hit Grosvenor Casino recently to get some practice in (because everyone knows the more you practice at games of chance, the luckier you get).

It was an interesting contrast to Alea which is a bit more up market but as a consequence the food and drink is a bit pricer, as are the minimum stakes.

Grosvenor was instead a little more cheap and cheerful but never the less had some great views and friendlier croupiers, even if some of them did struggle a little with the whole adding up on black jack.

Plus Norm managed to walk with with more than double his stake I can only came away £4 down so on balance it was a really good night. Unfortunately things didn’t go quite so well for George.

Because I don’t yet have a partner to send individual congratulation cards with both our names on it, I thought I would just give a shout of congratulations to all those who have recently graduated.

Most notably my sister who recently received a 2i in Theatre Costume Design. Of course, it’s not quite as good as having a degree from a Russell Group university such as the University of Leeds, but it’s very good none the less and that’s the perfect amount for remaining on good terms with me.

Also congratulations to Kat, Sarah, Charlotte (kind of), James and anyone else who has graduated recently who I genuinely do care about, just not enough to remember you’ve just graduated.