I think it’s the first time I’ve ever walked into one of my classrooms and faced the situation where due to a tragedy in the community, a class could not be completed as scheduled. Due to that, things have been rather turned upside-down, on top of recovering from a cold.
So – in order to get things back into order, I’ll be working on a few things that will take me away from blogging regularly. There’s a few unfinished projects and I’ll be catching up on them in the meantime.
I’ll try to contribute more science essays in the near future to do with my research, however, as I’m shockingly overdue in that regard. You can read some earlier work in the links supplied in the page-banner above, under ‘Research‘.
Firstly, the Token Skeptic Podcast Episode #25 is now out! Warren has been incredibly patient as I’ve had other projects and then my voice just disappeared due to this painful cold (those who attended the VDS Tokbox get-together can attest to that!) – but I’m really grateful that he’s recommending some really fantastic books for listeners!
The reviews for this episode are:
- Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God – A Novel, by Rebecca Goldstein;
- Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies.
You’ll also hear us mention in passing the website ‘Butterflies and Wheels’ by Ophelia Benson (the book that I couldn’t find in the room while I was talking to Warren was in fact Does God Hate Women? by Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson).
Warren’s bookstore, Embiggen Books, is in Noosaville on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia. Their website is www.embiggenbooks.com and the show is available on Zune, mp3 via Libsyn or iTunes.
Speaking of iTunes, you can find and rate all of the shows there, or you can visit TokenSkeptic.org – I’d love to hear your feedback at tokenskeptic@gmail.com.
Some other items of interest – you may be aware that the tickets for TAM Australia are selling and selling fast. That means 
that the early-bird tickets are essentially making up the entirety of the sales and the only way to get them is to be either a JREF or Australian Skeptic magazine subscriber. Therefore, if you were waiting until next month for full-price, you may be too late?
A few friends have been blogging about skepticism recently – Gold from New Zealand has a blogpost about his thoughts regarding the run-up to TAM Oz – ‘The Amazing Meeting: Australia’. There’s also another friend, Elizabeth McRae (actress, skeptic, powerhouse and supermum) who is a member of the Natural 20 Podcast and writes the Skeptopia blog – she has recently written “Why I’ll never return to JREF Forum or The Amaz!ng Meeting”.
If people are looking for Fringe Events in Sydney during the time, there’s now a dedicated Meetup.com site for TAMOZ, with people proposing ideas and activities.
I have previously mentioned the Australian Science Week blogging competition – there’s now a special dedicated ‘Microblogging’ / ‘Twitter’ category! The requirements are – and you could win an android phone!
Other short items – Dr Ben Goldacre in The Guardian on ‘Predictions are fine, but there are better ways to protect a population‘: Last year’s earthquake in Abruzzo in Italy shows it is impossible to predict certain tragedies – but that hasn’t stopped the seismologists being blamed.
Daniel Loxton writes on the Importance of Skeptical Scholarship on Skepticblogs, as he reads Ben Radford’s new book (which I now have, yahoo! Will have to do a review myself!):
How important is scholarship for skeptics? Should skeptics know a lot about the paranormal literature (or, rather, the many niche literatures for the many niche paranormal topics)? And, does it matter whether we know much about the literature of skepticism?
and finally, Communicating Astronomy with the Public – CAP Journal. Do check this out, there’s some fascinating articles there that I’ll be reflecting upon myself for a planned future interview.
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