Saturday, July 17, 2004
HAVE WE FOUND THE SKEPTICS TURKEY TEEN?
IMAGE (C) Richard Saunders -http://www.users.on.net/~ct/skeptic/kelly/act/images/act_01.jpg
From Peter Bowditch web page RatbagsDotCom come these hints. I have no idea who is who or what is what but we may have a our teen.
Read this (in full) not a bad tale:
Coincidence (10/7/2004)
""In alternative medicine and pseudoscience there are no coincidences. If
two apparently unrelated things happen together, then there has to be a
connection. Skeptics like to point out that coincidences happen all the
time but people only remember some of them, and most of them mean
nothing anyway and are not actually that unlikely.
Last Thursday I drove from Sydney to Canberra to attend a meeting of
Canberra Skeptics. My daughter Belinda came with me, not specifically
to go to the meeting but to meet her friend Bridget who lives in
Canberra. The two girls had met in some Internet forum for young
people, where they had presumably discussed many matters of importance
to teenage girls, including, I suppose, some things that the respective
parents are better off not asking about. They had never met physically,
and Belinda was quite excited about seeing Bridget for the first time.
I waited at the meeting place long enough to satisfy myself that
Bridget wasn't a middle-aged man in a raincoat and then left them to
their own devices. When I came back a couple of hours later I invited
Bridget to have dinner with us and we set off for the Vietnamese
restaurant where the local skeptics were gathering before the meeting.
After dinner we all went to the meeting, and after that about a dozen
of us went looking for somewhere to get a cup of coffee. (This was very
important to me because I was about to set off on a three hour drive
home. The midlife crisis silver sports car is capable of doing about
twice the legal speed limit on the motorway, and I didn't fancy being
asleep in it with my foot holding the accelerator down. I have no
desire for an early meeting with my saintly namesake (or to hear him
say "Ha, ha! You lost!"), let alone John Edward or James Van Praagh.)
At the coffee shop, one of the committee members of Canberra Skeptics
produced some brochures advertising a forum they are running in August
about global warming and the environment (you can see the details here)
and asked if the people from Sydney could take a few home and help
publicise the event. Before you read the next sentence, remember that
nobody in the group had ever met Bridget before that day, she and
Belinda had never discussed anything about skepticism in their Internet
conversations, and she had apparently never heard of the Canberra
Skeptics before. Now read on ... Bridget picked up one of the brochures
and said: "Are you people involved with this? My father is going to be
one of the speakers". Explain that, skeptics. ""
While I am on this subject, pop over to Peter Bowditch site, some great material lots of comments and ideas (for me), you should find something to agree with or rant over. Bowditch site is very professional and up to date. I would say to follow a skeptics path you could do no better than this - see what drives Peter Bowditch mad.
You don't have to agree with Bowditch but expand the mind go look.
You see I think Peters is not a real hard hat red neck skeptic! With a little scratching under all that feathered anger you will find Peter has to believer in something outside his grasp.
How do I know this, pray tell… well if a Computer Consulting Business mans main focus of his skeptical activities are on fraudulent medical practices and that computer consulting business man is not qualified as a MD to make such judgments, then that folks is a man with a FAITH!
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IMAGE (C) Richard Saunders -http://www.users.on.net/~ct/skeptic/kelly/act/images/act_01.jpg
From Peter Bowditch web page RatbagsDotCom come these hints. I have no idea who is who or what is what but we may have a our teen.
Read this (in full) not a bad tale:
Coincidence (10/7/2004)
""In alternative medicine and pseudoscience there are no coincidences. If
two apparently unrelated things happen together, then there has to be a
connection. Skeptics like to point out that coincidences happen all the
time but people only remember some of them, and most of them mean
nothing anyway and are not actually that unlikely.
Last Thursday I drove from Sydney to Canberra to attend a meeting of
Canberra Skeptics. My daughter Belinda came with me, not specifically
to go to the meeting but to meet her friend Bridget who lives in
Canberra. The two girls had met in some Internet forum for young
people, where they had presumably discussed many matters of importance
to teenage girls, including, I suppose, some things that the respective
parents are better off not asking about. They had never met physically,
and Belinda was quite excited about seeing Bridget for the first time.
I waited at the meeting place long enough to satisfy myself that
Bridget wasn't a middle-aged man in a raincoat and then left them to
their own devices. When I came back a couple of hours later I invited
Bridget to have dinner with us and we set off for the Vietnamese
restaurant where the local skeptics were gathering before the meeting.
After dinner we all went to the meeting, and after that about a dozen
of us went looking for somewhere to get a cup of coffee. (This was very
important to me because I was about to set off on a three hour drive
home. The midlife crisis silver sports car is capable of doing about
twice the legal speed limit on the motorway, and I didn't fancy being
asleep in it with my foot holding the accelerator down. I have no
desire for an early meeting with my saintly namesake (or to hear him
say "Ha, ha! You lost!"), let alone John Edward or James Van Praagh.)
At the coffee shop, one of the committee members of Canberra Skeptics
produced some brochures advertising a forum they are running in August
about global warming and the environment (you can see the details here)
and asked if the people from Sydney could take a few home and help
publicise the event. Before you read the next sentence, remember that
nobody in the group had ever met Bridget before that day, she and
Belinda had never discussed anything about skepticism in their Internet
conversations, and she had apparently never heard of the Canberra
Skeptics before. Now read on ... Bridget picked up one of the brochures
and said: "Are you people involved with this? My father is going to be
one of the speakers". Explain that, skeptics. ""
While I am on this subject, pop over to Peter Bowditch site, some great material lots of comments and ideas (for me), you should find something to agree with or rant over. Bowditch site is very professional and up to date. I would say to follow a skeptics path you could do no better than this - see what drives Peter Bowditch mad.
You don't have to agree with Bowditch but expand the mind go look.
You see I think Peters is not a real hard hat red neck skeptic! With a little scratching under all that feathered anger you will find Peter has to believer in something outside his grasp.
How do I know this, pray tell… well if a Computer Consulting Business mans main focus of his skeptical activities are on fraudulent medical practices and that computer consulting business man is not qualified as a MD to make such judgments, then that folks is a man with a FAITH!
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