In the future we will have flying cars, pet aliens, erotic robots and REAL virtual reality video gaming, and you know who is going to make all this totally kick arse awesome stuff? The young people of today. Yes, soon all of you old people will die and anarchy will ensue in the shape of a kid nation (except the kids won’t be kids anymore they will be adults…that is confusing).

I think it’s about time society started thinking about, well, me. By me I mean, the youth. I say this because my generation is the immediate future. The people who are currently at university in a lecture while I’m at home wagging tafe, the people who are actually at tafe while I’m wagging tafe. These people will be one day running our country, our businesses and our education system, and that day is not that far away. In a few years, this will happen, we will literally rule the world and it is ours and societies responsibility to educate Generation Y.

Thats why I am doing my part by building The Young Australian Skeptics website. The Young Australian Skeptics is all about educating and entertaining young skeptical minds as well as spreading awareness of the scientific method to young people. Construction of the site starts soon, but to begin I need content. When I publish the site I plan to use my own content as well as articles written by you! So send me your skeptical, educational and motivational articles. They can be about anything, science, religion, pseudoscience, meetings…anything!

So don’t dilly dally. Head over to the Young Australian Skeptics submission page (found at the top of the site) and submit your articles today!

Oh, and while I’m at it, take a look through my blog roll for naontiotami’s blog, Homologous Legs. He is another young skeptic who writes mainly on creation science. Make sure to check out his youtube channel also which can be found on his site. Keep your eyes open for other young skeptics on the net and make sure you support our future!
Skelliot

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Blogs are old news, the age of the podcast has begun and in honor of the dawning of this new age I thought I would do a skeptical podcast run down of the casts that I currently (or have in the past) listen too!

Geologic Podcast
http://www.geologicpodcast.com/

Do you want to laugh? Well, if you do, then listen to George Hrab on his podcast. The show consists of sketches, his mother rapping, religious morons and many of his absolutely side splitting characters (all played by him). He even has cameos by famous pod caster Soccer Girl! (A podcast I have not yet listened to by the way.) I am not kidding when I say Mr Hrab is funny, all I can say is go check it out for yourself and then send me (or George, preferably me) money for finding it for you. It is recommended that you listen to episode 31.1 if you want to catch up and get in on the “in” jokes.

Skeptics Guide to the Universe
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

No self respecting skeptic skips this weekly podcast. Hosted by Steven Novella, an academic neurologist and full time skeptic, and the skeptical rogues, Robert Novella, Jay Novella, Rebecca Watson (the Skepchick) and Evan Bernstein. The SGU is a must listen for any skeptic, or non-skeptic for that mater, in their weekly rounds of the podcast scene. In the show they discuss current topics in the news and skeptical community as well as devastating break downs of pseudo-science and woo. Their regular interviews are truly entertaining. The Amazing Guru of skepticism James Randi also has a regular section called Randi Speaks where he attacks certain issues head on. If you love knowledge, and who doesn’t, tune into the SGU and join its already huge (35,000 last time I heard?) listener base!

Skepticality
http://www.skepticality.com/index.php

Again, a must listen for any self respecting skeptic. Join Derek and Swoopy as they delve into a specific issue each week. Generally their show consists of an interview with a prominent personality in skepticism or science but their older shows were more like SGU in structure. My favourite recent episode was the No Intelligence Allowed! interview with Professor Richard Dawkins and Dr. Michael Shermer about the new ID movie Expelled.

Are we alone? - SETI Podcast
http://radio.seti.org/

Are we alone? Who knows! But damn it’s fun to speculate. That’s what the SETI podcast is all about… well, not really, they explore deep into different scientific issues as well as the astrobiology topics it is based on. Each podcast focus’ on one or two topics and consists of interviews and fantastic banter between the two hosts. Seth Shostak is the senior astronomer at the SETI institute.

Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/

This is a podcast that I don’t listen to regularly, but when I do listen I enjoy it thoroughly. The podcasts are usually fairly short and consist of mainly scientific topics (duh). My recent favourite episode was their interview with Mark Mathis who they proceeded to basically rip apart. It was hilarious to listen to him back peddle when met with a difficult question.

Cj’s Skeptical World
http://tcradiolive.com/cjskeptical.php

Unfortunately CJ’s no longer makes his podcast, but what he has made so far are highly entertaining. Listen to CJ as he spews mind bending rants about Woo and science in the American and world media. He even gives this blog a fleeting mention.

I hope this quick run down has helped you to decide on what you want to listen to. With each packet of knowledge I receive I come closer to world domination, please help me in that goal by commenting and posting your favourite Podcasts.

I am having trouble writing this week. I’ll be back next week with something so totally awesome your head with explode and cucumbers will eject from your nipples.
Skelliot

This isn’t an overly skeptical story, but it’s about tech and tech is cool.

Today I was browsing ye ol’ Interwebz and I came across a really cool story. Swinburne University in Melbourne are developing a new network administration tool that is bound to make their industry a whole lot more fun!

They are using the Quake 3 open source engine to create a visualization of network usage and activity! The project, named L3DGEWorld, will allow the user to walk through their network interacting with specific computers and files. They will be able to enforce firewall quarantines by shooting certain files and computers as well as, through bouncing objects and varying colours, tell how a node is operating.

I think one of the coolest things about this program is the virus scan functions. When a virus scan is made a ripple of energy can be seen traveling through the 3D world and washing over files like a shock wave. Imagine quietly tinkering away on a particular PC only to turn around and be faced by a huge slovenly worm virus, then having to blast it into oblivion. Sounds like some fun for a usually boring job filled with changing numbers, letters and black DOS screens.

Chicky check it out.

http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/l3dge/tools/l3dgeworld_2.3/

Human culture holds many old traditions that we have entertained for thousands of years. While some of these cause no harm at all, others have become out dated and some are just dangerous to begin with.

Lets just say that everyday for thousands of years my ancestors went hunting in the forest to catch a deer, boar or some other tasty looking critter or to forage for some vegetation. Back then this practice would have been considered necessary to survive and prosper. Many of these traditions still stand today as something that we continue, and with good reason. For example, agriculture is a tradition that advanced the human race a huge amount. Hunting is another skill and tradition that benefited our ancestors. While it is important that we remember tradition and record it we shouldn’t always keep practicing a tradition.

Some traditions are so outdated they actually do harm. I could point out religion for this quite easily but instead I wanted to bring up the topic of “Scientific research”.

I’m not talking about legitimate research. I’m talking about the slaughter of innocent creatures under the guise of tradition and an outright lie distorting the scientific method. I am talking about the Japanese whalers.

Today the whalers returned back to port in Japan after continued harassment by the activists that lurk around their hunting grounds in the Antarctic. While they slaughtered many innocent animals (551 Minke Whales) their efforts were severely hampered by the men and women who braved the freezing oceans to stop the massacre.

These magnificent creatures are like humans, victims of tradition. Only they aren’t the ones who practice it. They are just on the receiving end. Just because Japanese culture has been killing whales for a few hundred years they think they can just continue it due to tradition even with no real necessity?

Tradition can be a dangerous thing when left unchecked. Maybe it’s time we started re-evaluating our ancient ways.

RIP to all the whales killed in the name of tradition.

Skelliot.

It’s Friday afternoon 6:30pm, and on a piss stained seat on a bustling locamotive sits a young boy. His feet swing slowly back and forth as he peruses a newspaper. His innocent and youthful eyes flit over the articles of the paper until he finds something that catches his interest. His vibrant blue saucers widen with horror as he locks onto a frightening article. It reads -

“Gaming’s autism link.”

Shocked, the boy reads on.

“Obsessive computer game playing has been linked to a rare form of autism.”

The young boy snaps out of his shock and puts on his skeptical hat and examines the article more closely.

Ok, so as you have guessed the young boy is me. I wasn’t really shocked and awed when I saw the article but I was angry. As I read on it was apparent that the news paper had obviously either blown a study out of proportion or reported on a scientific study that is flawed. The article goes on -

“Doctors say hours spent on your console could give you the same negative character traits associated with Asperger’s syndrome.”

Right, so first the article says that gaming is linked to a rare form of autism now its referencing “doctors” who say that it can cause character traits similar to Asperger’s syndrome. Firstly, just because something is like something doesn’t mean it is that same thing. A cold is caused by a virus, but when you get a cold you don’t say, “Hory shit mang! I got a minor case of the AIDs!”. No, you don’t. That would be silly.

The kicker of the article was that it stated that -

“according to Dr John Charlton…In total, 3 per cent of those questioned (out of 400 gamers) during the study had signs of being addicted to game playing.”

3 per cent. Wow. So basically this study detected noise and if it did detect anything it detected that video game playing is very very mildly addictive to some people…like pretty much everything else. (Smoking, alcohol, drugs, sex etc.).

It is obvious that it was a slow news day in the MX news room on Friday so they had to fabricate a story that would seem scary in order to shock the mindless masses coming home from work at the end of the week.

This is exactly what we need (SARCASM DETECTOR ACTIVATED!). Not only do vaccinations seem to cause autism, now our beloved video games cause it to! RUN FOR THE HILLS! Heres hoping that this little gem flies under the radar and isn’t picked up by the autism/vaccination proponents who seem to latch onto any little thing that comes their way.

So basically what I want to say is, Go die in a fire MX news paper. They know their target market and they continue to push brain dead anti-science at them.

A lot of the time when people think about the personalities assosiated with skepticism and the skeptical community they think of cynical bearded old men stewing away grumpy at the world. While this is obviously a stereotype some of the most notable skeptics are in fact, bearded old men. For example, the venerable James Randi fits the description well (how ever I don’t think he is cynical).

Many skeptical minds are young and fresh and looking for a younger image to follow so I think it’s about time we broke that old sterotype and kicked it out on its arse. A new image is what we need and someone who is helping to change the mold is Cpt Disillusion.

Basically, Cpt Disillusion makes debunk videos and posts them on youtube. But in a modern twist, he uses this chance, of a large young audience, to debunk other youtube videos that are in the spotlight. So far he has debunked things such as the penguin slap, the Haiti UFO and the “man on Mars”. He dedicates each episode to one topic and then, through the use of video manipulation and CGI know how, debunks each video!

What is great about this guy is how he uses special effects and technology to make the skeptic world more attractive to younger viewers. Not only does the show look great, it’s actually very funny too!

Please check out his videos on youtube and see for yourself.

(Thanks to the Swift newsletter and James Randi for bringing this guy to my attention.)

Skelliot.

We humans are almost incapable of visualizing big numbers. When we think of big numbers we think of a thousand, a million, but when we get to numbers in the high millions it starts to get hazy. Think about the number 100 ^100. Thats one hundred multiplied by itself 100 times. It is impossible to visualize a number of this immense size. This number is called a googolplex and it is theorized there is only about 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the whole universe, so now you can see how large this number actually is without actually comprehending it. ITS FREAKING LARGE.

Anyway, I am actually getting to something here. Lets think of a number that is much much smaller than a googol or a googolplex. That number is 1 trillion. OK, A trillion is still not a small number, in fact, its a very large number. A trillion is one thousand billion. ONE THOUSAND…BILLION. A billion… times… ONE THOUSAND. Yes, I know, so what? you ask. Well let me give you an idea of how big a trillion is. You haven’t lived for one trillion seconds, neither has your family, or western civilization. A trillion seconds ago, 31,688 years ago, humans were accompanied on Earth by Neanderthals. I hope this puts that number into perspective for you because America ALONE has spent 3 trillion dollars on the war in Iraq so far. Ummmmmmmm, WHAT!? The rest of the world, Britain included, have spent about the same all up. So thats a cool 6 thousand billion dollars spent on the war.

Now, I want you to sit back, and think about this much money.

Go read this and also read about this guy.

Most charities, religious or not, do a fair amount of good work on the planet Earth. But sometimes the inner workings of charities and organisations go awry or completely barking mad. You see, Mercy Ministries, an evangelical christian group, have been doing their “best” to help poor women who suffer from mental health problems. The ministry works in conjunction with another well known christian group called Hillsong Church as well as coffee chain Gloria Jean’s. On the Mercy Ministry website they claim to be

“providing homes and care for young women suffering the effects of eating disorders, self harm, abuse, depression, unplanned pregnancies and other life controlling issues.”

A noble pursuit one would say, that is until you remember that these people believe in a literal heaven and hell, demons and angels and are probably the last people you should go to to help with mental health issues, let alone unplanned pregnancies. You see, three young women who broke away from the group have claimed that Mercy Ministries have been blaming their problems on “demonic possession” and even performed exorcisms that allegedly left the young women suicidal. Of course, Mercy Ministries have been quick to combat these claims in a letter that can be found on their website, here. Notice that none of the claims have actually been addressed in the letter which is written in a very loose manner and seems to dodge the main issue, that the organisation performs exorcisms.

This is another great example of religious-based “healing” having an ill effect rather than a positive one. What is the point of going to a form of “healing” that is considered alternative when you can take advantage of a science-based treatment that is demonstrably effective? Remember that there is medicine and then there is the rest, the alternative really isn’t an alternative. So next time a person walks towards you in a time of hardship with a Gloria Jean’s coffee in one hand and a cross in the other, punch them in the face*.

For further reading check out these links:-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/17/2191256.htm

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/03/16/1205602228832.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/they-prayed-to-cast-satan-from-my-body/2008/03/16/1205602228826.html

http://www.mercyministries.com.au

http://www2.hillsong.com/pages/default.asp?pid=170

P.s. Now for something completely different (kind of). Check out this site (link sent in by Leopold). It’s by a guy named TED! who claims he is the second coming of Jesus or some crap. Anyway, I got over it in the first couple of sentences and you will see why when you check it out. Give it a read and see if you can get further than me!

* (Disclaimer: Do not punch people in the face. It hurts them and you might go to gaol where worse things will happen to parts of you that you don’t want them to happen to. )

Well, we have another step back on the censorship front for our great nation of Australia. The Attorney General of South Australia Michael Atkinson, is working hard to make sure there is no R-18 rating for video games in Australia! HURRAY!

His reason for this is, of course, to protect “our children from harmful material!”. Oh, perfect. Not only is this an blatant appeal to emotion it’s an obvious ploy to get parents on his side. I mean, who doesn’t want to protect our children from harmful material! A child’s parent will see this statement and, possibly out of ignorance of the gaming world, agree with the Attorney General.

Of course the Hon. Michael Atkinson is a devout christian who’s main interests were stated as “christian values”. Sigh. Here we go with the theists trying to impart their prudish beliefs on the masses yet again. Not only is this man obviously spouting an agenda he also doesn’t bother to do any research! He is quoted as saying,

“Games may pose a far greater problem than other media - particularly films - because their interactive nature could exacerbate their impact,”

“The risk of interactivity on players of computer games with highly violent content is increased aggressive behaviour.”

I would love to see the studies that come to this conclusion. So far to my knowledge, and Ron Curry’s, CEO of the games industry body, there has been no studies with definitive results pointing to this. Even if a study were to arise with a definite result indicating violent tendencies developing from violent games (there has been some studies that point to it) , video games still shouldn’t be censored! Throughout the ages media has instilled violence, even books have done that. Take the Bible and the Koran for example, lets ban those instead.

This being said, I’m all for keeping young or unstable children away from hard core violent or topically extreme games, but isn’t this a job for the parents? Just like with film, video and the internet, the censorship is up to the parent! It isn’t up to our government (or the religious) to protect children, it’s up to the parents to police what their kids are looking at. There is a reason for having these damn ratings in the first place!

In my opinion, keeping up with the rest of the world is something we should definitely be trying to do. So far Australia is the only developed country without an adults only rating. Sometimes it’s important to portray a topic in a certain way, and it’s not always daisies and bunny rabbits. Sometimes we have to show the shittiness of something. Video games are an art form (well, some of them are.) and censoring a whole art form and industry is not on.

(Update: It also seems that the majority of gamers are above the age of minors anyway…Well above! See here or here for a pdf. To me this seems to point towards the Attorney General not actually wanting to protect our children, but to stop older people from playing violent games. An R-18 rating would protect our children more so than not having one, but by banning an adults only rating it will stop mature age video game players from accessing extreme content video games.)