It’s called The Scope Of Skepticism, which might make me cranky — I’ve been unimpressed with a lot of the timid boundary-setting of the skeptical movement — but it’s taken from Kylie’s podcast, and she’s a good interviewer. I expect there’s some argument with the ideas, which is always good.
Sean Carroll live-blogged a seminar discussing the latest results, which meant he wrote down a heck of a lot of cryptic jargon I couldn’t understand at all. But here’s the bottom line:
Personal editorializing by me: we’ve found the Higgs, or at least a Higgs. Still can’t be sure that it’s just the vanilla Standard Model Higgs. The discrepancies aren’t quite strong enough to be sure that they really represent beyond-Standard-Model physics… but it’s a strong possibility.
Cool. The broad strokes of the Standard Model look OK, but there might be enough unexpected variance that some new physics will emerge from it all. It sounds like the best of all possible results from a physicist’s point of view.
But really, the best part of the article was this:
I could waste time being disappointed in myself that it took 50 plus years for me to realize I am an Atheist; a much better use of my time is to realize that I now know the full extent of work required to rewire the hardwiring of a thorough brainwashing. I know the value of this knowledge in helping me to understand the tactics of my enemy who did this to me when I was a small child.
My enemy is religion, specifically Christianity.
A splinter faction of the Horde is planning to invade Rhinebeck, New York, site of a yearly sheep and wool festival. I’ve been asked to bring to your attention their nefarious plans, so that you can join them.
The organizing committee of Mattir, Muse, and Onion Girl have meet and have begun to plan the Horde invasion of Rhinebeck. The best way to think of this is a mini-Horde con* that just happens to happen near sheep. You are welcome even if you don’t like sheep – there are plenty of things for you to do (maple sugar cotton candy for one).
Rhinebeck will happen from Friday, October 19 to Sunday October 21st. We will arrive at the hotel on Friday and have a Horde pizza party. Saturday morning will be a trip to Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool (or other activities as people want) then a nice dinner out at a restaurant on Saturday evening followed by debauchery as desired. Sunday we’ll have brunch together then get on the road.
Slightly differently than last year, we are going to make it an upfront cost that you can pay into over time, rather than having to come up with hotel costs all at once (and have us having to cover for the person who forget to pay their room cost). We are estimating that the cost is going to be around $350, although that might go down. That $350 will cover your room cost, the party room, pizza on Saturday and brunch on Sunday as well as entry into Rhinebeck and snacks throughout the weekend. Additionally, built into that cost is eeeeeevil socialism. We’d like to be able to support some people who would not otherwise be able to attend because of lack of money – so we’ve rounded that number up a bit (yes, if you can toss in a bit extra toward the scholarship fund we’d appreciate that too).
All of that said, we need to start figuring out who is going to attend. To that end, we’ve created an email address, a poll, and a paypal account. Mattir, Onion Girl and Muse all have access to all three. The email address is RhinebeckHorde at google’s email service.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING PLEASE FILL OUT THE POLL.
If you have any questions, please email us.
*Yes, there will be a harassment policy. It will be made by radical, shrieking, feminist harpies and will be enforced by making sure no one has any fun (and sharp pointy sticks). No, you may not sexually harass the sheep.
Whew, good. I was wondering what their intent towards the sheep might be.
Wait, what? A Pharyngula assault on a sheep and wool festival? What have I wrought?
Boys, close your eyes. This is Secret Knowledge.
(Episode CCCXLIII: Yay, Jamie Kilstein!)
I haven’t even done anything too annoying yet, and look at the picture she’s using to illustrate my participation in CONvergence. I look dopey (but not as dopey as Matt), while Bug Girl gets to look fierce. Subtle sexism at work there…or I do just look goofy all the time. Oh, well.
I’m guessing…it’s just me.
She’s been hired as the new Public Relations Director for American Atheists.
You know who we’re going to be griping at over the next round of AA billboards, right? Dave Silverman is sighing in relief that he now has someone to duck behind. Did he tell her that her job involved being a target?
OK, so you can’t make it to Convergence in Bloomington, Minnesota this weekend, because you live in some strange foreign backwater like the United Kingdom. I guess you could go to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition instead, if you live somewhere out that way. It’s going on right now, 3-8 July.
Oh, wait: they’ve got a whole suite of online science videos and interactive games? And the whole world can participate? Even if you’re in Bloomington? Uh-oh, we’ve got bigtime competition.
Maybe some homeschoolers can check in and learn cool stuff, too.
I gave a talk in Madison in April. They recorded it! Now you can watch it too!
I’ve noticed that the same group of whining jerks can be found congregating at any post anywhere on the net that barks madly at freethoughtblogs, no matter how stupid the argument being made might be. No, I take that back: the more stupid it is, the more they aggregate. It’s as if stupid were cyclic AMP, and they were slime molds…
Anyway, the latest fracas is at Debunking Christianity, where John Loftus seems to be a high density secretor of that substance. He writes,
Some high profile secular women have undressed for a Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar, which is promoted by some of the women at Freethought Blogs and includes Greta Christina and Maryam Namazie in solidarity with blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, who posted a nude photo of herself as a scream “against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy.” Others participated in Boobquake. Skepchick regularly posts something called “Skepchick Quickies” (*ahem*). The message is clear to me, that women can use their bodies as they see fit. I understand that completely. Men do not own the bodies of women. (No, I’m not interested at all thank you very much).
But this sends a mixed message to some ignorant young men now doesn’t it? It’s not surprising to me that some of them may think some secular women are “available.” It can create an environment at Freethought conventions where some men may look to hook up. Thunderf00t is asking what’s wrong with that in the bars afterward? Hooking up is what some people want to do (men and women). Knowing which ones want to do so is another question. How are some of these men supposed to know?
A “mixed message”? How? Does Loftus really think that a woman posing nude means she is sending the message that she is available for sex anytime with anyone? Madness. This is one of the things we’re fighting against: this binary attitude and possessiveness about women’s bodies. Fortunately, we’ve got Greta Christina on our side, and she has just blown Loftus and his cluster of toadies away. Go read that. Maybe it will help some people realize that the inconsistencies they’re projecting on everyone else are entirely the product of their own scrambled heads. Also, it’s a great smackdown.
This seems to be a tricky concept for some people. So I’ll spell it out again: If you are interested in having sex with someone, the person you need to consult about it is the person you’re interested in.
You do not, however, consult the question of whether some atheist bloggers posed nude for a calendar. Or whether they participated in a mock scientific experiment designed to make fun of the hypothesis that female immodesty causes earthquakes. Or whether they title their quick-summary-of-interesting-links blog posts with the mildly double-entendre title of “quickies.”
I do want to mention one little tangent in the comments at Loftus’ blog, since it addresses an event I’ll be participating in this weekend, and because it makes the commenter look awesomely stupid.
And ThunderfOOt was right again… they are in danger of being a fringe group. So far Skepchickcon has 28 attendees— 24 of which are speakers
Uh, no…talk about not understanding the culture at all.
Skepchickcon is the science/skepticism track at a medium-sized SF/Fantasy convention, Convergence. It is also one of the more popular tracks there — the talks this year have been moved into the largest available room in the conference center. Last I heard, there will be 5500 attendees, with the possibility of it breaking the 6000 mark with drop-in registration. Not all will be going to the science/skepticism track — there will be many parallel sessions going on — but most will probably drop by a few of the sessions. The 28 attendees listed above are people who will be actually staffing panel sessions.
We atheists should think about that. We were thrilled to have the largest meeting ever this year, the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, which had about 4000 people there. That was impressive to us — but it’s the equivalent of an average sized regional science fiction convention, which go on all the time, year after year. You want to do outreach? Our atheist conventions are good places for like-minded people to get together and organize and plan, but they aren’t outreach.
Some of us actually know what outreach looks like.
Furthermore, the format of these meetings is completely different from what you may be used to at atheist conventions. There’s relatively little of the routine speaker-standing-behind-lectern-lecturing stuff; this is a participatory experience. Those 28 attendees will be sitting on multiple group panels and tossing out ideas and encouraging the audience to throw ideas back. It’s much more like a good interactive classroom than a lecture. So what we’ll be doing is getting people to talk about science and skepticism, which is powerful stuff.
There are other events going on, too. There are events called sandbox sessions where kids will get to have fun. My wife Mary is volunteering for a couple of those, and she’ll be guiding kids through owl pellet dissections and discussions of evolution. This is outreach, too.
And then there are the parties. Freethoughtblogs and Skepchick are both hosting party rooms, where people can talk and socialize informally. We’ve been warned that, as a rough guideline, you can expect about 10% of the convention attendance to show up at your party room each night — we’ll be basically managing a 500+-person party, where yes, we’ll be talking about science and skepticism, and drinking, and laughing, and having a good time. Outreach, outreach, outreach.
Anyone who thinks that having 28 of us at a conference means we’re a “fringe group” really is babbling out of their ass.
