We’ll meet at the bar. This looks like it will be a great time.

Day:

• Host a COSMOS marathon—all 13 episodes are available for free at hulu.com.
• Check out Sagan’s many books at your local library or bookstore using the thorough listings from WorldCat.org.
• Enjoy the special collection of articles by or about Sagan, previously published in Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
• Listen to Sagan’s last public address for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP) as replayed on CFI’s podcast, Point of Inquiry: “Wonder and Skepticism.”
• Listen to Ann Druyan, writer, producer, and widow of Sagan, discuss life with Carl, his outlook on life, and his famous Gifford Lectures, “The Varieties of Scientific Experience,” also on Point of Inquiry.
• Host your own apple pie baking contest (from scratch, of course).
• Dress like Carl for a day!
• Refresh your skeptic skills with a review of Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit.
• Invite your friends over and try to convince them you have a dragon in your garage.
• Take in a star show at your local planetarium.
• At the very least, seek out a dark sky, look UP, and reconnect with the grandeur of the cosmos.

You can download a Carl Sagan poster as a PDF.

Here’s the link.

We’ll be trying something new this time, and leaving a few minutes for people to give a casual talk about a skeptical or scientific subject. Please contact us if you’d like to raise a subject. Email link is on the sidebar.

If possible, please bring cash for the bill. It’d make things a lot easier when it’s time to settle up. And a little extra to chip into the group would be appreciated. That way we’ll have a few dollars to put toward future expenses.

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For those of you who are familiar with the plight of Simon Singh,we finally have some good news! Simon has won his appeal that his 2008 blog on the Guardian website calling into question some claims of the British Chiropractic Association,was indeed a statement of opinion,not fact.

Singh had wrote that the evidence for chiropractors claims to be able to treat childhood conditions,such as asthma and colic,was lacking in the evidence department. Of course,instead of stepping up to the plate and showing the evidence,the BCA decided to sue Simon for Libel and claimed that he was basically calling them conscious frauds. In May of last year the High Court ruled in favor of the BCA interpretation of the article,saying that it indeed implied an accusation of conscious dishonesty. In February of this year Simon appealed that decision on the grounds of fair comment and yesterday the Court of Appeals ruled in Simon’s  favor.

The BCA isn’t quitting yet though,and is thinking about taking the case all the way to the supreme court to “…uphold its good name and protect its reputation, honesty and integrity.”.

I think its time for the BCA to put up or shut up and show their evidence that THEIR “treatments”  instead of suing people who point out their lack of evidence for it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNlMHONqaRE

Ali Hussain Sibat,of Lebanon,is scheduled to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia any day now on the charge of “sorcery”.

Sibat,who has a television show in Lebanon where he would predict the future,was arrested by the Saudi religious police back in May of 2008 when he was in the country making the Islamic Pilgrimage of Umra. In November of last year he was put on trial,found guilty and sentenced to be put to death. Sibat’s sentence was upheld on appeal and his lawyers said yesterday that his beheading could be happening any day now.

Here are CNN’s original article on the matter,and the latest article.

Often people as the naive question of “whats the harm?” when it comes to people odd,unsupported  beliefs. Sadly, Mr.Sibat, his wife and 5 children may soon get the answer to that question.

For more examples of where unsupported “harmless’ beliefs have gone horribly wrong,visit Tim Farley’s web page What’s the Harm? for numerous examples.

If you think this is an odd question,then it might surprise you that Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga) appears to think they do.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing,Johnson expressed his fear that “…the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.” when it came to a planned military build up on the island. Much credit must be given to Adm. Robert Willard,head of the Pacific fleet,for calmly stating “we don’t anticipate that” instead of rolling on the floor with laughter.

If you need video evidence,enjoy the video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs23CjIWMgA

Check out the site for updates and join the meetup.com group in the sidebar to be notified of upcoming events.

If you’re interested in joining CDS and have questions, email us at

info [AT] capitaldistrictskeptics.com.

One of the most common (and one of the worst) arguments made by creationists -when it comes to Geology- is:

The geologic column doesn’t exist anywhere in the world!!

I run into this statement ad nauseam in their “educational” videos and literature. They state that the text books are lying to us and that it is a another fabrication made up by scientists to mislead and indoctrinate or children to convince us of the lie of evolution. But what argument are they actually making when they say this? Are they implying that the earth doesn’t not contain multiple stratigraphical layers? Of course not. This awful argument is formed on the foundation that most creationist arguments are: confusion and a straw man understanding of geology.

The first problem they run into is confusing the geologic time scale with a geologic column,and in some cases doing so on purpose to confuse the issue.

Here is the geologic time scale:

And this is an example of a geologic column of the Grand Canyon:

The geologic time scale is a representation of the entire age of the earth as a whole,while a column is how those times are represented for a specific local or regional area. What the creationists want is a geologic column that contains EVERY SINGLE age of earths history,as represented in the geologic time scale, in ONE location. That’s usually the challenge issued after making that statement: “tell me one place on earth I can see the entire geologic column.You can’t!”. And of course,we can’t. At least not to the extent that they demand to see. It’s been pointed out to them that all the main Era’s are represented in place like the Williston Basin,North Dakota,but their counter to that is that an Era is a large time scale and they want all the Age’s,not all the Era’s. We can’t find all the Age’s in one single place,but we can follow regional formations to complete the picture globally.

The question I have have for them is: Why should we expect to find that? This is where the dishonesty really takes form. You don’t have to travel the globe to see that there is a multitude of different environments globally,so it’s no surprise you don’t find the same thing everywhere at once geologically. New layers are only deposited in conditions that favor the deposition of new sediments and regions fluctuate constantly between erosional and depositional environments. If you’re in a depositional environment then sediments deposit and if you’re not then erosion can do it’s deed. That’s just common sense! You can know nothing at all about geology to understand this concept. So why do they pretend that its some kind of special pleading to point this simple principle out?

I have a simple to understand analogy to demonstrate this principle,as if it really needed to be simplified. Think of how it snows in the winter time,where snowflakes represent sediment. A snow storm represents a time period where conditions favor deposition. It might snow for a few minutes,hours or even days slowing building up the pile of snow on your lawn. But it doesn’t snow every single day of the winter and in between storms the already fallen snow might be blown or melt,which represents non depositional,erosional time periods. You would be considered an idiot if you argued that January wasn’t 31 days long because you can’t show one single place where snow fell every single day,minute and second of the month. Unfortunately for the creationists,this is exactly what they are doing.

In the coming months membership will be expanded and plans will be made to host events and talks, like SkeptiCamp. There’s even a Skeptics in the Wild camping trip in the works!

So the next meetup will be a Drinking Skeptically / Skeptics in the Pub at Brown’s Brewery in Troy, NY. It’s a place with great beer, great food, and plenty of space.

See you there on Wednesday, March 31 at 7 PM.

Also, registration is still open for NECSS in New York City on April 17.

And registration is also open for The Amazing Meeting 8 in Las Vegas from July 8 – 11. It will be held in the South Point Hotel. See randi.org for details.