This Sunday (tomorrow), March 19, at 2:00pm Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute will be speaking at the Skeptics Science Lecture Series at Caltech. This is going to be a great talk as Seth is not only a brilliant astronomer and visionary SETI scientist, he is a great speaker with a wonderful sense of humor. Let me be blunt: he's riproaring funny. Seth and I did a gig together at the Dorthy Chandler Pavillion following a play called "Space" (about alien abduction) and I was really impressed with Seth's knowledge and sense of humor. Details:
Are we alone in the universe, or is the cosmos teaming with life? If extraterrestrial intelligences are out there, why aren't they here yet, or at least why haven't we heard from them? This is what is known as the Fermi Paradox, after the renowned physicist Enrico Fermi, who reasoned that if ETIs were only slightly ahead of us in biological evolution, they would be light years ahead of us in technological evolution, and thus would have colonized the galaxy by now. Yet they are nowhere to be found, unless we are the first, which seems unlikely. So, the question is, where are they?
Dr. Seth Shostak, astronomer and public programs scientist for the SETI Institute, the largest organization on Earth currently searching for radio signals from possible ETIs, brings us up to date on the latest science behind the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, including the exciting new optical SETI and how you can participate in SETI from your home computer.
2:00pm, Sunday, March 19 2000
Baxter Lecture Hall, California Institute of Technology
On Tuesday, March 20 starting at 11:00am at the American Physical Society meetiing at the Convention Center in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, Session G8. FPS: Voodoo Science, features:
11:00 Captured by Aliens, Joel Achenback (Washington Post)
11:36 Polygraph Screening of Physicists and Spies, David Lykken (Dept of Psychology, University of Minnesota)
12:12 How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Michael Shermer (Skeptic magazine)
12:48 The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, Bob Park (University of Maryland)
For details go the www.aps.org
http://www.salon.com/books/it/2000/03/15/voodoo/index.html
Salon profiles the American Physical Society's Bob Park. It's a wonderful piece and Bob has a great new book called VOODOO SCIENCE, which will be excerpted in the next issue of Skeptic magazine. He's an outstanding writer, noted scientist, and a hard-nose skeptic. Check it out.
On Saturday, March 25, at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, VA, there is a C-SPAN 2 Book TV show being filmed on "American Lunacies" featuring:
Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
Jody Dean, Cornell University
Stephen Greer, SETI Institute
Alex Heard, Wired magazinet
Michael Shermer, Skeptic magazinet
4-5:30p.m. in the City Council Chambers. For details e-mail vabook@virginia.edu
New York Times science writer Erica Goode surveys the uproar provoked by evolutionary theorists, most recently by Thornbill and Palmer's "A Natural History of Rape" (MIT Press), in the following article on evolutionary psychology:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/031400hth-behavior-evolution.html
There is nothing like a grass-roots letter-writing campaign to bring about social change. Here is what one skeptic is doing about the debacle in Kansas over creationism, in a posting to me:
A couple of months ago I mentioned to you the idea of lobbying university deans to not admit public high school students from Kansas. In a rare instance of self-motivation (proof itself of the importance of this issue) I have written the regents (all 30) of the University of California the following letter:
Dear Regents:
On August 11, 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education removed evolution and other non-biblical scientific principles from their Science Education Standards Test. Now, high school students in Kansas may receive a perfect score on this test without any understanding of evolution. Public school educators in Kansas, who are partially rated by their student's performance on this test, have removed evolution, the Big Bang and references to geologic time scale from their curriculum. Textbooks are being edited to remove any references to fossils, the formation of rocks and minerals, etc.
The action by the Kansas SBOA was not inspired by any reservations about problems of proof or of fairness in teaching all sides of the issue, but out of a desire to replace science with biblical studies. Any alleged problems with evolution must be dealt with in an open scientific environment, not by censoring scientific discussion. Few scientists have any problem with the teaching of creationism, so long as it is limited to theology classes and, hopefully, the Christian creation myth is compared to the creation myths of other religions, Mesopotamian and American Indian, for example. The problem with the SBOA action is that Science has been replaced with biblical studies.
As a result of the new education standards, public school students in Kansas do not have adequate preparation for a college career. Like a potential history major who has never studied American history or a potential literature major who has only read romance novels, Kansas students are unprepared for the intellectual challenges that will confront them in the California University system.
I urge you to maintain the high standards required for admission into any of the Universities of California and adopt a policy of not considering applications from public high school students from Kansas. Additional information on this subject is available from the Kansas Citizens for Science at www.kcfs.org. I would appreciate a response including your thoughts and how you intend to address this issue.
Sincerely,
J. Adam Barnes, 1993 UCR
snickersnots@yahoo.com
Courtesy of James Medina. No doubt some of these are urban legend type trivia, but fun nonetheless....
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.
Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to Test telex/two communications)
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down-hence the expression "to get fired."
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating
Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard
The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
The man, who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand.
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.