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It’s Flash Wednesday! NYC Skeptics is proud to announce that Rationally Speaking podcast co-host Julia Galef will be joining our board of directors, effective immediately. View the full announcement here. Our next public lecture will be Prof. Graham Priest on at 1PM on Saturday Sept. 11 at the Jefferson Market Library. This lecture is free and open [...] This week the Scientific American podcast “Science Talk” featured a panel from NECSS 2010. The panel was “Arguing with Non-Skeptics” and featured James Randi, D.J. Grothe, George Hrab, Steve Mirsky, and was moderated by Rationally Speak Podcast co-host Julia Galef. (Part 1) (Part 2) We’re doing it again! Preparation for SkeptiCampNYC 2010 are getting underway, and we [...] This Sunday NYC Skeptics will host what we hope will be the first of many “volunteer lunches.” The RSVP period for this weekend’s lunch has closed, but that doesn’t mean you cant get involved! If you’d like to volunteer your time or expertise please send an email to Page or Michael with [...] The focus of this episode is Massimo’s new book, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. The book, broadly speaking, is about what philosopher Karl Popper famously called the demarcation problem: how do we tell the difference among science, non-science and pseudoscience? We explore the complex relationship among these, [...]  James Randi at NECSS 2010 (photo by Larry Auerbach) This weekend New York City Skeptics and The New England Skeptical Society held the second annual Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism (NECSS). The scuttlebutt from the event and Twitter (#NECSS) was that it was even better received by this year’s sold out crowd than last year’s sold out crowd. After a full day of terrific speakers delving into important topics, the event culminated in one small man, sitting alone on stage with a mic taking questions from the audience. James Randi can be credited with popularizing skepticism, and from his frequent visits on Johnny Carson Tonight Show, he managed to bring rational thought to Americans all over the country. And they love him for it to this day. … continue reading this entry.  Taken with a 24-inch RC Optical Systems Telescope by Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona (Board of Regents) Okay. I’m going to admit it, I’m bummed that the US is ducking out of the space race. I’ve heard all the arguments, and I understand them. Yes, the government can be an inefficient mess of bureaucracy that does things for four times the cost that they should be. One look at how our attempt to count the populace every ten years should verify that. (On a slightly different note, I’ve been doing a little bit of government service lately, and it’s firmly added one more notch to my “conspiracies are impossible” beliefs. If there’s anyone with the intelligence and organization to take over the country, believe me, they don’t work in government.) And yes, I understand that they may go into space again without private industry one day, but they need to build a new shuttle… I get it, okay? But still… it makes me a little sad. … continue reading this entry. Choices, choices! How are you going to celebrate February 12th, the 201st anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 151st of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Here are a couple of suggestions. Attend the Darwin Day event sponsored by NYC Skeptics for an opportunity to participate in a fascinating conversation between Massimo Pigliucci and anthropologist [...] The 2009 Nobel Prize winners for the science categories were revealed this week, and the United States were well represented. I read a couple of articles praising the National Institutes for Health (NIH) on its enduring commitment to funding basic research, and I began to wonder how much of the research that has won Nobel Prize recognition in the past was actually supported by American funding agencies, like NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), a.k.a the US government? It would appear the answer is: The large majority! With a desire for procrastination, and a nerdy love of statistics, I compiled the bar graph below, which shows the number of individual Nobel laureates by country, and you can see that the US blows everyone else out of the water.
 Photo by www.musicofnature.com No, this is not a frat boy pub crawl in cricket costume. On September 11th, the night before NECSS (have your tickets yet?), Discover Life in conjunction with the American Natural History Museum is sponsoring the first New York City Cricket Crawl, “an aural expedition and a celebration of life in the leafy jungles of urban and suburban NYC and surrounding area.” More specifically, these organizations are urging people to wander their neighborhoods, with ears cocked, listening for the burring sounds of crickets and katydids. Under the hum of cars, stereos, screaming kids, droning air conditioners, and laughing hipsters, how many species do you think you can identify in your neighborhood? |
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