Global Atheist Convention Social Calendar

I've just been fiddling around with this. The Idea is to have a calendar that captures all of the related social events happening in March, so that people have a 'one stop' guide to everything that's going on during and around the Atheist Convention.

It's only a work in progress at the moment, and most of teh peripheral events are Sydney based (because they're the ones I know about) but I'm hoping that others will send me the details of their events and I'll put them up too.

You can view the calendar here: GAC Social Calendar

If you want to get an event listed, email me

Please feel free to pass the calendar around. The more people know about it, the better resource it'll be!
(I'll make a non-Google Calendar version of it too, if need be)

Who's Who at the GAC: The Big Names

It's now less than a month to go before the Global Atheist Convention, and I thought it might be useful to go through the list of speakers and give a bit of a rundown on who's who before we all get there.

There's a good mix of presenters and it looks like it's going to be an amazing weekend (Randi not included), but looking through the list of guests, there are plenty of big names that everyone knows, as well as quite a few lesser known players.

I'm going to see how far through the list I can get at a comfortable pace, providing background info and links to interesting media etc for each of the speakers. My hope is that, by the time the GAC comes around, it may be a bit of a resource for those who want to know a bit more about the people they've paid to see.


For this first post, I'm going to breeze through the big names. These are the people that were probably the draw-cards for most of the attendees.

Richard Dawkins

I'm pretty sure that anyone reading this already has a pretty good idea who  Dicky-D is. With an early career with a strong foot in Biology, Dawkins started to gain public attention with his book The Selfish Gene. Since then, he has written no less than nine books, with a general progression from hard science (The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker), through books combining detailed and complex scientific notions with an almost poetic style, by which the most complicated of theories can fairly easily be understood by the lay-audience (Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow), to his more recent books, which focus on evolutionary theory and those who are working against evolutionary theory and science in general; most notably fundamentalist religious adherents (The God Delusion, The Greatest Show on Earth). 

Dawkins' website, richarddawkins.net, is pretty much essential reading for 'the atheist in the know'. With one of the best 'scientific atheism' forums around, as well as regular updates on what Dawkins is up to, and a news feed that seems to pretty much capture all of the most essential atheistic items across the world. If you haven't been, go and check it out. You'll find yourself with hours upon hours of articles, videos, interviews, news and much much more.

Recently, Dawkins has been producing a steady stream of documentaries (well, he's actually been doing it for quite some time, but he's been doing it much more lately), most notably the Four Horesmen round table discussion with fellow 'New Atheists' Sam harris, Christopher Hitchens and Dan Dennett; The Root of all Evil in which Dawkins takes on religious fundamentalism, The Enemies of Reason where Dawkins dives into the world of alternative medicine, psychics and psuedoscience in general; and The Genius of Charles Darwin which is Dawkins' homage to Darwin and his world changing theory of evolution.

Find out more about Richard Dawkins at richarddawkins.net

PZ Myers

Again, I'd be surprised if people reading this haven't heard of PZ Myers, but just in case...

Paul Zachary Myers is another biologist, who specialised in Evolutionary Development (Evo Devo). He is the author of one of the most popular science blogs (that was carefully worded so as not to upset Phil Plait). His blog is Pharyngula (pronounced: far-eng you-lah), on which he mixes peer reviewed science blogging with his own blend of humorous, caustic, informative and irreverent musings.

PZ is known to be able to crash any online poll by directing his blog readers (pharyngulites) there. One of my favourite PZ moments, was crackergate (see link for a detailed rundown of the full crackergate events), where PZ, in reaction to a story of catholic craziness vowed to abuse eucharist crackers to demonstrate the silliness of believing that a palestinian zombie can manifest in a small piece of bread and be eaten by followers as form of cannibalistic worship.  Lots of religious people reacted with pronounced zeal, and it all ended up rather messy, literally.

To find out more about PZ, visit his blog, Pharyngula at: scienceblogs.com/pharyngula

Peter Singer

Peter Singer is an Australian ethicist and applied philisophy professor. Well known for his book Animal Liberation, as well as the often controversial nature of his work and public appearances.

Singer is a proponent of a utilitarian system of ethics and approaches difficult ethical situations with an objective, rational and careful style, making his positions sometimes uncomfortable or confronting, but very difficult to flaw.

On a personal note, Singer has had quite a profound influence on my life. I received a copy of 'The Ethics of What we Eat' for Newtonmas in 2008 and adopted a Vegan lifestyle in mid January as a result. Since then I have continued to have a strong interest in secular systems of ethics, a subject of continuing interest for me.

You can find out more about Peter Singer by following the various links from his wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer, or checking out his homepage on the Princeton University site. (due to the diverse nature of his work, I find that the wikipedia links lead you to a greater range of his works, from early essays to a video of him cooking Dhal!

Hungry Beast Devours Conroy!

I'm really starting to enjoy the ABC TV show 'Hungry Beast'. It's kind of a 'Chaser's war' without the chaser boys.

On tonight's episode, they had a really good segment about the proposed clean feed internet filter, which plans to filter a range of 'prohibited' content at the ISP level. The main politician behind this ridiculous scheme is Senator Conroy, who was interviewed on the show.

Here's the full interview:



Here's tonight's full episode:




I recommend checking out this show. It's on at 9pm on ABC1 on Wednesdays.

I'm back!

It's been a fracking LONG time since I've done any blogging, but I've decided that I should get back into it, because it seems like there's a lot going on and I've been feeling the need to voice my opinion...

But I should explain...

Since September, things have really started to pick up with a local group I've started up, the Western Sydney Freethinkers, which has been taking a lot of my time to organise. The good news is that now things seem to be running along with a bit of inertia, which gives me a bit of time to get back to doing the more important stuff.

There's been a whole pile of other stuff too, but things are calming down a bit now, so it looks like I'll be back in ur toobs, tellin you what I think about stuff...

Since my last post there's been heaps of stuff happening. I don't think I even mentioned the whole AVN campaign, the mountain of crazy that comes with the holiday season, developments with the Global Atheist Convention, the return of Jesus, big changes to Sydney Atheists' organisational structure, Mercy Ministry's downfall and heaps of other stuff... but then again, plenty of people have done it better that I ever could have, so I guess there's no real loss there...


Anyhoo, thanks for those of you who've hung on over the past few months. I plan to try to put up posts on about a weekly basis.

Till then,here's Ben Goldacre of Bad Science talking about the Placebo effect.

Enjoy

Jesus: All about lies!

I just thought I'd send out a salute to the genius who grabbed the url jesusallaboutlife.com. For those who haven't been past a church in NSW or WA in the last couple of months, there's a campaign with the slogan "Jesus: All about life" and a great many churches have a large poster out the front with that slogan.


The parody site is brilliant and comes up #4 on a google search. I'm sure this campaign will afford us many opportunities for slander and enturbulation

I wonder if it's got something to do with "Collect '09"?


UPDATE

I've also found out that the url allaboutlife.com has been linked to Secular Thinking.com

A friend of mine, Dr Chaotica has just put out the song 'All about Life'

Nice work, peeps!

Victorian churches can legally discriminate on grounds of sexuality and marital status

In a new equal opportunity bill to be introduced next year, Victorian religious groups will no longer be allowed to discriminate based on the grounds of race, disability, age, physical features, political belief or breastfeeding. Sure, that sounds great, but it's interesting that two of the major sources of discrimination amongst religious communities, sexuality and marital status, will not be included in the new bill.

The gut reaction is likely to be something along the lines of "well great, if the churches are going to discriminate, it'll just drive people away from them, aiding in the secularisation of Victoria", but what is often forgotten is the role that religious communities play in community support, employment and social services. This means that religious schools will be able to deny employment to adequately trained people if they are homosexual, a single parent or even living with a de-facto partner, if their religion supports it. It means that welfare could be denied to single parents. It is a disgrace.

More interestingly, many of the religious communities who will be selectively discriminating against these groups will still be recieving tax benefits which are compensated for by the taxes paid, in part, by the very groups that they are discriminating against!

So what's next?
























News sources
The Age
SMH

Nobody Scores at the Second Coming!

Happy Birthday Zach!

Today is our puppy's 1st birthday!

He's such an awesome little thing, so full of personality and life.

He's also been all over the internet! He has a "Dogbook" page, Twitter account (@puppyzach) and has been talking on youtube!

Here is a quick slideshow of his 1st year, inn'e cute?! (may take a little while to load)
And here is his youtube premiere

Bigger, longer, uncut

I was sent this news story today, and was asked to comment on it.


My response was:

I don't support the idea that a parent has the right to mutilate their children's bodies without a solid reason for doing so.

From what I have heard and read (podcasts, books etc) the health claims made about circumcision are all either false, or negligable when compared to the possible defecits.

If a person chooses to get a circumcision for cosmetic or cultural reasons, I believe that they should be able to choose when they are capable of doing so, with all the relevant information at their disposal.

At the heart of it, circumcision is a cultural/religious practice which may have come from many ancient sources, including health, identifying races, and spiritual beliefs. The modern medical claims seem to be an attempt to justify the practice post hoc, and to me, that's not good enough.

I believe that laws protecting male children from circumcision are a good move, and may help to break down an outdated, irrational practice.

You can read a much better response to the circumcision debate by Harriet Hall, the Skepdoc here: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=269

Ben Goldacre on The Now Show, BBC4

God's facebook page

Noam Chomsky and Peter Singer on abortion

The Baloney Detection Kit

Richard Dawkins: The Purpose of Purpose

During Richard Dawkins' American tour in March 2009, he gave a talk titled "The Purpose of Purpose". I travelled with Richard to these cities and filmed the talks, which I've edited together here. The content of the talk remains intact, while the editing moves between the different locations and Richard's Keynote presentation. (From Richard Dawkins.net via Atheist Media Blog).

Friday video megamix!

Webtoons for thinkers

Link bombing!

Well, I've got too many links open than I know what to do with, so I'm going to excrete them all through the blog. Here goes!

Top 8 levels of Scientology- Find out some details about everyone's favorite brainwashing cult!
Sarah Palin "God told me to sue the internet"- "Alaskan soccer mom politician receives message from her invisible friend prompting her to take legal action against an abstract entity"
God hates fags- Westborough aren't the only religious group with this message. Hell, even Kevin Rudd is going to vote against gay marriage in Australia, presumably on religious grounds.
Paleontologists pwn Creation museum- Hee Hee. I'd love to visit this stupid museum. Great quote "It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?"
Video game clinic- Get well by playing video games. Atchoo! 'Sir, I think you need two days of Left For Dead, bed-rest and beer."!
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!- "For men with fertility problems, some doctors are prescribing a very conventional way to have a baby: more sex" seems sensible to me...
Dead baby Christians- Failure to provide adequate medical care to your children= child abuse via neglect. Good Parenting: You're doing it wrong!
Plastinated punks- A dissection of the human body. Quite pretty actually, in a morbid kinda way.
Aura believers get a new study to quotemine- Wait till they see this research! The next MB$ festival should be interesting!
The Mighty Boosh are going to America!- Boosh, Boosh, Stronger than a moose. Don't lock your doors or we'll come through your roof top. Stop look around take your mind off the floor. Because The Boosh is loose and we're a little bit RAW!
Learning=good- Gaining new knowledge stimulates some of the same areas activated by hunger and thirst, suggesting it is a basic human need.
Friday prayers for democracy in Tehran- Sometimes it is a mad, mad world.
America loves drugs- Zippers, ploppers, whizzers and shiners. Whatever they're called, America wants them, and HOW!
Pro lifers are douchebags- But I guess it's all in the perspective. Are you pro the mother's choice do do what she wants in her life, or are you pro the life of an unborn fetus?
David Eggers' chats to Salon- I really like this author. I would even compare him to a modern James Joyce (kinda). I got his second (?) book "You shall know our velocity!" from Target for 50c and it blew me away. I bought copies for everyone I knew for that Xmas to share it around. He's a monkey genius!
Animals with old-newtech- Seems the animals beet us to the punch on some of our recent inventions.
Dog heroes- One day Zachie will be on this list.
Symbolic science- Videos about the various symbols in science, physics and astronomy.
Science is a dead dog's head- Russian scientists kept a severed dog's head alive! (with Videos!)
Art is a drain- Las Vegas drains flickr set. Very arty.
Pushbike the envelope- Cool new designs for bikes.
Extreme people- Guinness world records on human traits.
I welcome our ant overlords- Argentine ants have taken over the world, and we didn't even know it! A single colony stretches from the Americas to Europe and Japan!

That'll keep you guys busy!

Human Sacrifice. That Mitchell and Webb Look

God Demands Evolution

Darren Brown said about this video:
PLEASE – do yourself a favour and turn the sound OFF – NOW. I’m almost willing to throw the towel in admit that creationists are right when I hear it. However the video is just brilliant (if you ignore the silly text as well)... Here’s 500 generations every SECOND backed up by actual fossil evidence – shoved in to a computer and animated together. It’s fantastic to watch.

And here's the video that is linked from the "god demands evolution" link in the previous vid.


I wonder if they'll be convinced?