The Skeptic Canary

Well, what can I say about QED? As expected, it was absolutely superb. The talks were varied and fascinating, the panels were engaging and at times unintentionally hilarious, and it was wonderful to meet up with so many great members of the skeptic community (apologies if I didn’t get the chance to talk to you, there were just so many people there)! Huge thanks to the organisers and everyone involved.

In the latest episode of The Skeptic Canary Show, myself and fellow QEDcon attendee David James discussed the event with Paul Hopwood, who sadly for him didn’t get a ticket in time (hopefully next year Paul!). Keir Liddle from the Edinburgh Skeptics was kind enough to call in, as was Rob McDermott who made history by being the first person to swear on the show! Don’t worry though, the recorded version has some hasty censorship applied. Go and have a listen at the link below.

The Skeptic Canary Show Episode 3 – QEDcon

Incidentally, I couldn’t resist posting this pic of myself at Richard Dawkin’s table at dinner. Cheers to Richard Cooper for taking it!

Episode 1 of The Skeptic Canary Show is now in the can, you can listen back to it through the link below. It’s also been submitted to iTunes, so hopefully you will be able to hear the show through that soon too!

Skeptic Canary Show Episode One

I am very happy to announce that Episode Two of The Skeptic Canary Show be be broadcast on BlogTalkRadio at 6:30pm UK time next Wednesday April 10th. Our guest will be Ed Clint, evolutionary psychology grad student at UCLA and co-founder of the Skeptic Ink Network. We are hoping for a lively and rewarding debate, so if you want to get involved with the show you can register for a free BlogTalkRadio account and call in via Skype! Be sure to bookmark the link below:

Skeptic Canary Show Episode Two

Having appeared on Justin Vacula’s Brave Hero Internet radio show, I thought I’d take the plunge and start my own! It’s imaginatively titled “The Skeptic Canary Show” and you will be able to listen to it live on Wednesday April 3rd at 7:00pm UK time.

I was attracted to the Blog Talk Radio platform because each episode has it’s own URL. You can bookmark the show, listen to it and listen back to it all from the same link! You get a dashboard during recording so you can accept callers, and it plugs in with Skype.

The first show is entitled “Skepticism 101″ and will be a discussion on skepticism, what it is and what it means to people. Joining me will be Paul Hopwood and David James. You can call in via Skype! Just wait until the show starts and you will see a Skype icon. Clicking that will start a Skype call so you can be on the air!

If you would like to be a guest on future episodes you can pitch me an idea at tom at skepticcanary dot com.

Listen to Episode One of the Skeptic Canary Show at the link below!

Skeptic Canary Show Episode 01 – Skepticism 101

A few days ago Internet retailer Amazon came under fire for selling t-shirts based on the World War 2 slogan “keep calm and carry on”. These shirts featured a variety of disturbingly offensive variations of the famous phrase, including “keep calm and grope them”, “keep calm and hit her” and “keep calm and rape a lot”. In their defence, the company behind the shirts, Solid Gold Bomb, claimed that the slogans were generated automatically by a computer program, and that they were probably not even seen by human eyes before going on sale. The guys at Skeptics With a K have investigated this, and it is an absolutely superb piece of skepticism. I would humbly suggest that you check out this great piece of work at the following locations:

• Listen to the “Skeptics with a K” podcast
• Read the write up of the investigation

Once you have heard the podcast, hopefully you will understand why I got this t-shirt made!

Did we land on the Moon? Yes. Yes we did.

I’ve just spent the last hour launching a furious diatribe on Twitter having sat through one of the worst pieces of television it has ever been my misfortune to witness. Channel 5 have just broadcast a “documentary” (and I use the term very loosely) asking “Did we land on the Moon?”. They trotted out the same tired old arguments, let me just run through a few of them:

• How could the flag fly if there was no atmosphere? – They had a pole running through the flag
• How come shadows appeared at different angles? – Perspective. The moon is quite big.
• How could they have used those chest-mounted cameras? – They practised before they went.

I could go on, but pretty much every Moon hoax conspiracy has been debunked many times on clavius.org. However, this program went far beyond the usual shite, and got pretty damn sickening. In 1967, the Apollo 1 mission ended in tragedy when three astronauts (Gus Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee) died in a cabin fire. A terrible accident? Not according to the documentary. They went so far as to ask if the three astronauts could have been killed because they “knew too much”. Unbelieveable. I find that this kind of lazy sensationalism an afront to the memory of those brave, pioneering heroes.

I also find it incredibly distasteful of Channel 5 to broadcast such a shoddy and morally bereft program about the Moon just days after the death of Patrick Moore. If you really want to watch “Did we land on the Moon?” the page for the program on Channel 5′s website can be found here. There is talk on Twitter of complaining about the program to Ofcom. I don’t know what the grounds for complaint would be but I will certainly consider it.

At least Brian Cox has the right idea.

Oh for gods sake why have channel 5 conspired to fill my timeline with nob ends. #yeswelandedonthemoonyoufuckwits

— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) December 12, 2012

Last week I had the privilege of being a guest host on the Greater Manchester Skeptic Society’s podast “Just Skeptics”. I had a blast recording it, and it’s a really intereting show covering Vitamin K injecions, Police and Crime Commissioners, Nadine Dorries’ appearance on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and Donald Trump’s meltdown on Twitter following the US Presidential elections. My own contribution was a quick quiz from wisdomofchopra.com and a chance to enthuse about Brass Eye. Enjoy!

• Just Skeptics episode 28
• wisdomofchopra.com
• Brass Eye on 4OD

It’s Halloween, which means that the results of the Merseyside Skeptics Society’s Halloween Psychic Challenge are out! Not surprisingly, the test found no evidence of psychic ability. The guys have done a great job with the publicity, even getting an article on the BBC News website!

This week has also seen the Good Thinking Society announce the shortlist for it’s very first “Golden Duck” award. I talk about both the MSS Psychic Challenge and the Golden Duck award nominees in my latest car vid, enjoy!

This weekend, the Merseyside Skeptics Society held their annual Halloween Psychic Challenge at Goldsmith’s College, London. I think the challenge is a great idea, and I for one am eagerly awaiting the results on the 31st. However, some aren’t so keen, and have had a bit of a dig at the society and skeptic societies in general. I’ve made a car vid talking about these concerns. Enjoy!

The other night a group of us went out in Liverpool to celebrate my immenent 30th birthday. I had a great time and I’d like to thank everyone who turned up! Andrew Johnston, the Merseyside Skeptics Society board member we affectionately refer to as “AJ” (pronounced “Adj”), came up with a skeptic-based drinking game that was great fun to play, so I thought I’d share the rules to it here so you can play it with skeptics where you are. I’ve tweaked the rules a little, simply because AJ’s rules were quite specific to myself, so here we go:

It’s a varient of the “name game”, where each person in turn has to say a name where the first letter of the first name starts with the first letter of the last name that the person before said. You have to think while you drink, and if you can’t think of a name you can pass but you have to drink. If someone says a name where the first and last name start with the same letter, the order changes. In our skeptics version, the names you can say are skeptics, scientists and anti-skeptics. Here’s the twist: if someone says a name and one of the players has been blocked by that person on Twitter, then everyone has to drink! So, here’s an example:

• James Randi
• Richard Dawkins
• Dan Dennett (change order)
• Dana Ullman (everyone drinks!)

We were getting a bit desperate at one point, allowing “Heinrich Himmler” as an anti-skeptic! Still, I had fun with this game, so why not give a go? Enjoy!

I’ve been experimenting with “in car” videos, where you record yourself speaking about something while driving. I’ve been inspired by Matt Dillahunty, so I thought I’d give it a go. The first video is about Internet comments, let me know what you think!