#TAM9 – Some Images

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I’ve plucked out a few of my favorite pictures that I captured while at TAM and added a few thoughts. Oh, and least you wonder, yes you can indeed click on any of the pictures to see a larger copy.

I’ve also been advised that all the talks will be made available for free, so as they become available, I’ll post the links.

Where is Randi?

You know the game “Where is Waldo?”, well here is the TAM equivalent called “Where is Randi?”. OK, its a bit of fun, but a serious point can still be drawn from this.

James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world’s most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. In this role over many years he has had a profound influence on countless lives.

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Alzheimer’s – Reducing your risk … potentially

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Alzheimers, the incurable, degenerative, and terminal disease was first described by German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906, hence it was named after him. In its early stages you have an inability to acquire new memories. This is observed as difficulty in recalling recently observed events, then as it advances symptoms include confusion, irritability and aggression, mood swings, language breakdown, long-term memory loss, and the general withdrawal of the sufferer as their senses decline.

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Punching a Hole in Time

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This latest item of science news leaves me wondering just how much of it is hype and how much is real, so I’m pushing it out into a couple of skeptic communities to see what folks think. Here is the claim …

First Demonstration of Time Cloaking

Physicists have created a “hole in time” using the temporal equivalent of an invisibility cloak.

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Catholic Child Abuse – The Cloyne Report

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Back in 2009, the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Nope not my grammar, that is what they called what was also known as The Murphy report) was published with the details of some truly horrifying child abuse. It was not the end-game and so they did not stop there because the last Irish government had agreed to extend the Murphy commission’s remit to include Cloyne, so further investigation proceeded. On Wednesday 13th July they finally issued their report.

To give this a contextual time line, the commission was asked to investigate the handling of sex abuse allegations in Cloyne by church and state authorities between 1 January 1996 – when the church’s first-published guidelines, its Framework Document, came into play – and 1 February 2009. In other words, this is restricted to a period of time that “starts” from the day they claimed to have cleaned up their act and does not consider any of the historical abuse prior to 1996.

First the link so that you can go read it yourself. Here is the full report. At 421 pages in length, it is not a quick read.

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The True evil of Islam Illustrated

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If I asked you, or any decent normal human, the question, “Is it OK to murder somebody who does not hold the same beliefs?”, I remain confident that the universal answer would be obvious. In fact, I’d be astonished if anybody would actually suggest it was a great idea …. well … prepare to be astonished, because Islam belief does indeed appear to consider it to be a viable response to valid criticism of utterly insane and delusional beliefs.

Here now is a video clip taken from an interview given by Shaykh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni on the Egyptian satellite television station al-Hikma on 7 July 2011. Now least you wonder, this is no fringe kook, he is a popular Islamic preacher known for spouting nonsense like this.

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