Last night saw a fantastic double header of speaking events in Liverpool, kicking off with Ignite 7 and ending with Stuart Ritchie giving a critical analysis of pornography at the Merseyside Skeptics Society. The Ignite format was new to me, each speaker gets 5 minutes to give a 20-slide slide show on any subject that … [Read more…]
This Thursday (September 15th 2011) I’ll be giving a 5 minute talk on flags (yes, flags) at Ignite Liverpool. The event is upstairs at Leaf on Bold Street, starting at 6pm. I’ve not been to one of these events before, but it sounds like great fun. Lots of speakers have 5 minutes and 20 slides … [Read more…]
Following Channel 4’s screening of Four Lions at the weekend, I thought I’d contribute a report to the Pod Delusion on the film and it’s surrounding controversy. You can listen to it here. As well as myself, the show features reports on the 50p tax rate, abortion counselling, racism and synchotrons, and there is an … [Read more…]
This evening (Sunday September 4th) Four Lions, the début film from director Chris Morris, gets it first UK screening on Channel 4. The film, which tells the story of four bumbling Jihadists from Sheffield, caused controversy when it was first released in cinemas, and the Daily Mail thinks the screening will cause outrage because it’s … [Read more…]
The #ten23 hashtag on Twitter is currently full of homeopathy skeptics currently up in arms over a Daily Mail article claiming that the EU are to spend 2 million euro on researching the use of homeopathy in livestock farming. However, rather than being another piece of Mail right-wing euro-bashing, it is in fact true. Fernando Frias kindly … [Read more…]
A few months ago, the Wirral Primary Care Trust (PCT) made the extremely reasonable decision to cease funding for homeopathy. This was done at a meeting of the Professional Executive Committee (PEC), which followed a public consultation (which I attended). John Cook of Northwest Friends of Homeopathy presented the case for homeopathy in both the … [Read more…]
I’m happy to say that I’ve made it onto the Pod Delusion again, this time appearing on the same show as Neil deGrasse Tyson no less! Following on from Bethany Jenkins’ piece about being a Christian and a skeptic, I thought I’d contribute my thoughts about who can be a skeptic, and what it takes … [Read more…]
Not only will the fantastic QED conference be back in Manchester next March, but the QED team today revealed that ticket prices will actually be lower than they were this year! A full ticket for the weekend will cost just £89 (cheaper for students) compared to £99 this year. I think that this is amazingly … [Read more…]
You may remember that last month some homeopaths posted a somewhat mysterious survey up on surveymonkey.com, possibly in an attempt to get some sympathetic data. Of course, skeptics picked up on this and crashed the survey. I had a feeling that this would cause the homeopaths to abandon the survey (which is now closed), so … [Read more…]
I’ve been looking for something to contribute to The Pod Delusion, and I thought that my take on Morrissey’s recent comments would be a good place to start. So, I recorded my piece, sent it in, and was later informed that it was good enough to be in the show! As if that wasn’t exciting enough … [Read more…]