It’s time! Tickets for our 2nd Annual Charity Star Party are on sale now! Are you coming to Dragon*Con this year? If so, you should seriously consider coming in a day early to attend. This year’s entertainment includes renowned astronomers and hosts of AstronomyCast, Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain with special appearance by musician George Hrab! Plus, Skepchick Rebecca Watson will be hosting the event. The Emory University Physics department is sponsoring the event and will be showing off their observatory and telescopes.

This event is in honor of Jeff Medkeff, the Blue Collar Scientist, astronomer, skeptic and friend to many of us. Jeff succumbed to liver cancer in 2008. All proceeds will go toward the Light the Night Fund: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Jeff’s name.

Food, drinks and conversations with astronomers. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, star gazing!

We have a bit more space than we did last year but tickets will sell out. Get them while you can!

Hi all! Just a quick note to let you know that the Skepticamp schedule has been posted. Check out the Skepticamp page for more all the details! And if you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Register and come help out – we’d love to have you!

This is a rushed post on short notice so I apologize in advance for being abrupt. Tomorrow and Thursday, the Westboro Baptist Church is planning a series of demonstrations in Atlanta. We are trying to round up participants to counter protest. Westboro Baptist Church is run by Fred Phelps who puts on the God Hates Fags protests. NOTE: Don’t click that link on a full stomach. It’s evil.  They protest around the country spreading their message of hate at military funerals and other public events.

The best counter protests I’ve seen involve peaceful demonstrations that collect money for charities like this one.

Others take a more surreal approach:

http://laughingsquid.com/san-franciscos-answer-to-westboro-baptist-church/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94878257@N00/4540981479/

Anyway, we are rallying the troops at the last minute. Details of what to do below the fold! » Continue reading “Westboro Baptist Invades Atlanta”

I’m very excited to announce that in March, we are hosting a Live Amateur Scientist podcast. Brian Thompson has graciously agreed to come to Atlanta to help us raise money for the Atlanta Skepticamp this summer!

We’re crazy excited about this. Brian is one of my favorite podcasters and the last time he did a live podcast in Atlanta, it turned into one of the best parties I’ve been to in years.

I hope that if you’re in or near Atlanta, you’ll join us. Brian will be interviewing Atlanta’s own Blake Smith (co-host of the Monster Talk podcast), and Lindsay Starke (writer and conspiracy expert). We are also expecting some exciting visitors who are coming into town for the event. Nothing is confirmed yet but there may be sightings of loud astronomers and flora-dwelling crustaceans… you never know

Plus, PRIZES. And not shitty Kevin Trudeau books like we had last year (although I think I still have a couple that may show up…) I’m talking really cool prizes, donated by the Atlanta Skeptics, Surly Amy, Tree Lobsters and others. » Continue reading “The Amateur Scientist Invasion”

Generally I support the idea that politics should stay out of science and vice-versa, but when talking about problems that can be accurately measured and quantified, I think science can lend a hand in providing solutions. Case in point: the new super speeder law that has become official on 1 January 2010. This law will tag on an additional two hundred dollars to a speeding ticket when the measured speed is thirty-five miles over the posted limit.

There are two stated reasons for this extra fine: the first is that Georgia lawmakers want to reduce the amount of speeding in the state. If you’ve ever been on any part of I-285 you know what I’m talking about; it’s a frakking racetrack. The second reason stated that this extra money will go fund trauma centers, but (fine print) the legislature can do whatever they want with it.

I don’t want to talk about Georgia politics, (but I will if given half a chance); instead I want to focus on the idea that higher fines will decrease speeding. Surely, other states have tried this approach. There should be a mountain of data out there confirming or unconfirming this idea. Can we move this from an idea to a testable hypothesis? » Continue reading “Evidence Based Government”

I was visiting my mother in the hospital a few months ago – nothing serious; she reacted badly to anesthesia during an outpatient procedure – and I happened to glance over at the rolling cart they put the meals on that extends over the bed. There was a tube of HeadOn. (For those of you unfamiliar with HeadOn, it’s a tube of wax that you rub directly on your forehead to relieve headache pain.)

“Mom? HeadOn? Really?”

“Don’t start. I know it doesn’t work, but it works for me.”

Well. There you go. The power of the placebo illustrated in one short sentence. It effectively stopped the conversation. Could I argue against it? Should I? I just changed the subject.

» Continue reading “The Power of the Placebo”

It was with some trepidation that I accepted the invitation to blog for Atlanta Skeptics. It’s not that I have nothing to say on skeptical matters; it’s that directive to make it local. Let’s face it, Sonny doesn’t call for rain prayers every day.

However, I was able to relax once I saw an article today that made me realize that I could cover nearly any subject that raises my skeptical hackles, because it’s all related. Perhaps I can take you through my thought processes that led to that conclusion.

The article was on Holocaust denial. Eric Hunt filed a lawsuit in Florida that called an Auschwitz survivor’s memories “vicious lies”. Now, Holocaust denial is not really a subject that interests me; I like looking into alternative medicine. Holocaust denial is like belief in a flat earth – most people dismiss it out of hand, and there’s really no reason to “come out” against Holocaust denial. But a quote at the end of the article caught my eye.

Hunt had earlier been convicted of assault against Elie Wiesel, a famous Holocaust survivor. He made a statement after the trial: “’I had been sucked into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the Internet,’ Hunt said in August 2008. ‘I don’t believe any of that garbage now that I’m taking my medication.’”

Well, he’s off his meds now, obviously, and that sparked a connection in my mind with a group that’s in the news in Atlanta lately – Scientologists. This group does not give any credence to psychiatry or to medicines prescribed for mental health. If it were up to them, there would be thousands more Eric Hunts roaming around, a hair away from physical assault on those who don’t agree with them.

Now, this is not to say that all Holocaust deniers should be on psychoactive drugs, or that all Scientologists are anti-semitic. It also doesn’t mean, in this specific case, that Hunt is a Scientologist and is off his meds for that reason. However, it does show that unexamined beliefs which are innocuous on the surface, like Scientology, can lead to dangerous consequences. In Eric Hunt, the denial of the evidence of the usefulness of his medication is directly related to his denial of the Holocaust.

As skeptics, we are (or should be) willing to go wherever the evidence leads. And I would opine that denial of evidence is part of most of the subjects we’ll be discussing here.

Did you miss one of the Atlanta Skeptics in the Pub meetups? Don’t worry! Thanks to Mark Ditsler and Laverne Knight-West over at Abrupt Media, we are now recording and publishing all our Skeptics in the Pub events via podcast.  The RSS feed is here. You can also check the sidebar on the right for a feed of what’s been published!

Mark is also publishing all the Atlanta Science Tavern talks as podcasts and that feed is here, and includes the event we did in partnership with the Science Tavern for Ginger Campbell’s talk.

Many thanks to Mark and LaVerne who provide all their A/V equipment to us free of charge for our events!