A Drunken Madman

BECAUSE I CAN!!

Yes, in classic style I'm biting off more than I can chew and sponsoring/running/participating in a side event for TAM Australia. Yes, shortly before the Amazing Meeting (aka #tamoz) kicks off, I'll be hosting a skeptical open mic night at a venue somewhere in the city. It'll most likely be a pub, because let's face it, I'll need a drink.

I'm hoping to attract some out-of-towners, and maybe some international guests. I'll be kicking things off myself with a five minute demonstration of how to speak 8bit binary using only beer glasses, coasters and a whiteboard marker. I have no idea how well it'll work, but that'll be for the audience to decide. I'll also have a talk on Skepticator in reserve, and maybe one or two other subjects too, just in case time needs to be filled.

There's a good chance I'll lose my voice by the end of the weekend though, so I need participants to step up to the plate and talk. All you need to do is five minutes on a skeptical or scientific subject, then there's a five minute Q & A with the audience, then you can have a drink! You can do a song, if you like, as long as you don't need a full band. Reading pre-prepared statements will be frowned upon, but you can bring notes. Off-topic subjects may be gonged off at audience discretion. You may do more than one talk, as long as the subject matter changes, and you may not do two consecutive talks.

I'm wondering whether I can manage spot prizes or an overall prize for best topic as determined by audience vote, but I'm trying to keep it as informal as I can.

Anyway, head over to Facebook to sign up for the event, or feel free to discuss it in the comments here.

UPDATE: for those without Facebook access, @HappySinger has summarised the event here: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/1q891j

 UPDATE 2: It's now designated a "fringe" event, and it's going to happen at the Macquarie Hotel. Meetup.com also has a hub for fringe event planning here.

... or so he was described by Jeremy Hardy on a recent BBC 4 News Quiz.

I must admit, I agree.

A self-described "enemy of the enlightenment", Prince Charles is a seemingly bottomless well of fallacious nutbaggery, beginning with talking to plants and ending, most recently, with this choice quote:

'In short, when we hear talk of an "environmental crisis" or even of a "financial crisis," I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with - and our perception of - Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.

Yes, folks, it's all our fault for having no souls. Charlie Boy really seems to believe that the problems the world faces right now are a direct consequence of scientific understanding of the world around us.

The man is a loon.

In addition, as highlighted by the RDF, it all goes back to Galileo. From this I can only conclude that Charlie believes that an understanding of the way the universe really is must be wrong and evil, and therefore the root cause of everything. Let's go back to believing the world is the centre of the universe and everything will be fine.

Now I was first alerted to this via Ruth Gledhill's blog. You may remember Ruth from an earlier post, where I opined that she just doesn't get it. True to form, Ruth gushed that Charlie's speech was "inspired".

Ruth is also a loon.

Her post as Religion Correspondent for The Times is as clear a case of a fox guarding the henhouse as I've ever seen. She lacks objectivity and is a regular fawning sycophant of the religious establishment, skewing her coverage and glossing over some real problems with religion, primary amongst which is the fact that it's just unsupportable in the face of evidenciary enquiry - which of course Charlie would say is "reductionist thinking" and therefore invalid. Sigh.

Ruth and Charlie are made for each other. It's just a shame Camilla stole Chuck's weird little heart.