10/12/2009

Kent Hovind is a friend of mine.

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: , |
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(post title taken from here).  Kent Hovind has found a way to get back in to the public’s attention again, and as always it isn’t for a good reason.  If he isn’t making a laughing stock of himself, it seems he’s making a laughing stock of himse … wait.  Ok, so maybe there’s only one thing he’s good at.

If you don’t know who he is, he is most famous for being a bible literalist and young earth creationist.  He’s a self proclaimed doctor through an unaccredited “university” (read: diploma mill) as well as a self proclaimed science teacher (though his employment history does not reflect this).

His doctorial dissertation has been kept exceedingly secret.  This is odd as the standard practise for universities globally is to make such dissertations publicly available.  Both he and his “university” has consistently refused to allow it to be made public despite numerous requests  for reprints or scholarly inquiry.  That is until now.

The fine folk over at WikiLeaks.Org have managed to get their hands on it.  The popularity of wikileaks though means this file is extremely slow to download.  Despite coming in at a mere 2.1MB it still took me close to an hour to download it, so I have decided to mirror it here and here. (more…)

 

25/11/2009

NSW schools to get ethics as an alternative to religion.

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: , , |
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Right now, public schools across Australia generally have religious education classes.  Thanks to the high involvement and lack of seperation between church and state in this country, generally if someone does not wish their kid to be indoctrinated in these classes, the childs only option is to sit out and do, well, nothing.

The Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for a number of years to have an alternative so that kids who sit out of these classes have something productive to do other than sit in a small room with no books and nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.  This has always been rejected by the religious right and their influences though as it may give these kids an upper hand, allowing them an opportunity to get educated in something the other kids cannot.  They fail every time to see the irony here, they are essentially saying their own course on religion is useless and does not contribute to ones education.

What the Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for the strongest, is an ethics class as an alternative.  More irony to the religious right, they are essentially saying the kids who attend religion class won’t learn about ethics.  A quick look at the bible seems to confirm this.

After that very long introduction though, I am finally getting to my point.  It would appear the NSW government has beaten Victoria to the punch.  Out of almost nowhere, the NSW Premier Nathan Reese has announced today that schools across the state of NSW will be getting ethics classes as an alternative to religion. (more…)

 

25/11/2009

When care givers go bad.

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: , , |
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(This was also posted at YoungAusSkeptics.com)

The news sites are going crazy right now about a Belgian man called Rom Houben who has spent the last 23 years in a coma. His facilitators are now claiming he was not in a coma at all, but rather that he was just trapped concious inside is body unable to get out and communicate with the outside world.

The skeptic sites are going crazy as well about this story, but not for the same reason. Watch the video below and see if you can pick the reason why.

(more…)

 

25/11/2009

Redefinition of words.

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: , , , , |
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(This was also posted at YoungAusSkeptics.com)

One of the great things about the way language evolves is that words change their meaning all the time. The main reason this happens is due to the way in which we generally learn words. How many of you upon hearing a new word actually go to the effort to pick up a dictionary or go to an online one and look up the words meaning? I am sure a few of you do, but the majority of people (myself included) don’t.

Instead we look at the context the word was used in, the sentence it is in and those surrounding, and from there we use our intuition and past experience to decide our own definition of the word. If we get it wrong, we continue to get it wrong until such a time as we are corrected. We may easily decide to start using that word, incorrectly of course, in our conversations with others. They then pick up on this incorrect meaning and maybe even apply their own meaning to it which is different again. As the word spreads and is picked up, the meaning changes. Dictionaries have in the past and continue today to change the official meaning of a word based upon common usage. (more…)

 

21/11/2009

Does being a skeptic mean someone is an atheist?

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism, Skepticism | Tags: , , , |
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The topic on the link of atheism and skepticism comes up all the time in skeptic circles.  The general questions tend to hover around the topics of whether skeptics should be atheists, should skeptics cover atheistic topics and fights, can theists be skeptics, is theism a subject we should make taboo or not, and recently whether atheism is in fact skepticism as well.

For starters, atheism isn’t necessarily the skeptical stance when it comes to theism.  You see, there’s generally two paths that lead to atheism.  One being the Acharya S and Zeitgeist path which is full of conspiracy theories. It claims that christianity stole most if not all of its aspects from other religions etc.  The evidence put forward is full of examples where prior religions had similar traditions, symbols and mythology therefore christianity stole it.

Pagans for example celebrated winter solstice at or around the end of December, christians have christmas then, therefore christians stole that from pagans and/or used it to crush paganism.  The problem here is that it confuses correlation for causation.  Just because two things are similar does not mean one caused the other.  This is a logical fallacy often argued against by sceptics in all manner of topics.  This form of atheism is in no way shape or form sceptical. (more…)

 

19/11/2009

Scientology offering refunds?

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: , , |
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A few days ago in Australia, independent senator Nick Xenophon gave a little speech about the cult of scientology accusing them of being a criminal organisation.  Podblack does some nice coverage of it if you would like to read more.

This has put the media in to a spin and the cult of scientology in to damage control overdrive.  As yet we have not seen their usual tactic of digging or manufacturing dirt on the person to discredit and ruin them personally, however there have been a number of interviews.

The Channel 7 morning program Sunrise had a representative on from the cult of scientology this morning, and she had some interesting things to say.  The most surprising of these, is that if people are unsatisfied or leave the cult, they offer full refunds.  Audio here. (Right-click, save as)

That is right everyone.  After the hundreds of horror stories of people losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cult, going broke, being ostracised and having their lives destroyed, it appears the cult now offers refunds, in full!

This spokesperson has just opened the cult of scientology up to a barrage of compensation claims, and I certainly hope they come thick, fast, and most importantly publicly.  I would love to see just how many (if any) of these requests they honour.  I am expecting the number to be somewhere in the realm of between zero and none.   The methods they use to weasel out of these request for compensation will be highly amusing to say the very least.

 

31/10/2009

A reaction to factual stories on vaccination (Part 5).

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: , , , |
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Wired Fear CoverNote: You can now read this at Wired Magazine. Day 1. Day 2.

This is the fifth part of Amy Wallace’s (website) (twitter) tweet session following up her amazing article in Wired Magazine with comments and emails she has received.

As with the last few days, I have decided to consolidate this in to a blog post that is easier to read for those who, like me, find it annoying trying to read bottom to top and in such short snippets.  Again the only changes I have made have been the adding of paragraphs (something not possible in 140 character tweets) and the occasional full stop, comma or space.  Other than that, the section in block quotes below is directly as they came from her twitter stream.

It’s Friday morning and I’ve just heard from the 415th reader of my Wired story on vaccine panic.

A new blog on misogyny and J.B. Handley/Gen. Rescue: http://bit.ly/2YjLKb

This just in: 3 studies find pregnant mothers’ flu shots make for healthier babies. Read it here: http://bit.ly/jyBkw (more…)

 

30/10/2009

Bushfires.

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Misc | Tags: , , |
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Victorian bushfiresLast night, a TV show on the ABC called Catalyst had a special on bushfires, something that should be of great interest to anyone who is in or near an area that regularly has them (ie, anywhere at all in Australia as well as California and maybe a few other places around the world).

destroyed townFor those who may not know, last year there were some horrific bushfires in Victoria and South Australia earlier this year.  Entire towns almost completely wiped off the map as the bushfire passed through leaving few if any properties standing.  Everyone in Australia was devastated, tempers flared in the aftermath and discussions could be heard anywhere and everywhere as to what went wrong and what should be done.

Catalyst decided to actually investigate the issue and rather than parroting the usual comments, they actually looked in to the science of bushfires.  Fighting them, protecting ones property from them, and the psychology of managing and fighting one.  For the moment the videos can be viewed at their website here (at least for those in Australia, I am not sure about overseas), as well as some very interesting web exclusives that I shall be checking out this evening when I get home. (more…)

 

30/10/2009

A reaction to factual stories on vaccination (Part 4).

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: , , , |
[4] Comments 

Wired Fear CoverNote: You can now read this at Wired Magazine. Day 1. Day 2.

This is the fourth part of Amy Wallace’s (website) (twitter) tweet session following up her amazing article in Wired Magazine.  Today’s tweets are a selection of comments from the actual article.

As with the last few days, I have decided to consolidate this in to a blog post that is easier to read for those who, like me, find it annoying trying to read bottom to top and in such short snippets.  Again the only changes I have made have been the adding of paragraphs (something not possible in 140 character tweets) and the occasional full stop, comma or space.  Other than that, the section in block quotes below is directly as they came from her twitter stream.

Hello, everybody. Just heard from the 345th person who has taken the time to write me after reading my Wired story on vaccine panic. You can read that story here: wired.com/magazi... Yesterday I was interviewed by National Public Radio’s Melissa Block. The interview, which ran on “All Things Considered,”. Is available online here: npr.org/templates... (more…)

 

29/10/2009

A reaction to factual stories on vaccination (Part 3).

Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: , , , |
[4] Comments 

Wired Fear CoverNote: You can now read this at Wired Magazine. Day 1. Day 2.

This is the third part of Amy Wallace’s (website) (twitter) tweet session following up her amazing article in Wired Magazine.  Today’s tweets are feedback from people who actually have Autism Spectrum Disorder themselves and how it affects them.

As with the last few days, I have decided to consolidate this in to a blog post that is easier to read for those who, like me, find it annoying trying to read bottom to top and in such short snippets.  Again the only changes I have made have been the adding of paragraphs (something not possible in 140 character tweets) and the occasional full stop, comma or space.  Other than that, the section in block quotes below is directly as they came from her twitter stream.

My tweets are readable now on the Wired site. Day One: wired.com/magazi… Readers react at Wired, Day Two: wired.com/magazin…

This is instructive: Check out what happened to @bastardsheep’s traffic when he arranged my tweets in order: http://twitpic.com/n8fm8

Just got my first email from Poland. It comes on the heels of a few from Australia and Japan. Vaccine panic is indeed a global issue. (more…)

 

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