Category: General

The Lost Hours of the Lost Symbol

In fourteen days time the new Dan Brown page-turner will be in my not-at-all sweaty hands. I am, oddly enough, looking forward to it; if ‘The Lost Symbol’ is as big an event as ‘The Da Vinci Code’ became it will fuel Conspiracy Theories and interest in Conspiracy Theories for years to come ((I hope the Freemasons are getting ready for an increased interest in what they are up to. Whether they end up being the villains or the hidden heroes of the story, they are going to be subject to quite a lot of scrutiny should the book prove popular.)).

I will be there to feed.

I plan to read the book in one mammoth sitting; it shouldn’t be too hard; I read the last Harry Potter book in a few hours (I had to, after the internet’s role in the Snape Reveal Fiasco of ‘…the Half-Blood Prince’) and J. K. Rowling’s prose is a damn sight more complex than anything Dan Brown has to offer.

I’m hoping to get a short review of the book up within a few hours of finishing the undertaking; I’ll leave the longer review a few days to fester.

09/01/2009

The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories – Skeptics 2009

I’ve booked me tickets (as a posh pirate might say) for me trip to Wellington; Skeptics Conference 2009 here I come! Given the exclamation mark, a ‘thing’ I hardly like to employ in scribblings such as these (my pirate grammar is interfering with me normal speaky-writey transcription) it seems timely to post some more information about the when of the talk entitled ‘The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories.’

The presentation is on Saturday the 26th at the pleasant time of 11:45am ((I say “pleasant” because last time they had me on first thing in the morning.)). I’ll blather on for about half an hour, offending some people (one person quite deliberately) and amusing others, before the brief fifteen minute window for questions (most of which will be used up by people asking overly long questions and get short replies).

Here is the draft programme for the conference; the topic and speakers, on the whole, seem much more interesting than last year’s offerings; I’m quite happy to be on after John Robinson’s talk on unwarranted skepticism in regards to Climate Change, because it feeds nicely into my talk and might even lend weight to a section of it, if the audience reaction goes the way I think it will.

I’m willing to take bets it will.

I’m both looking forward and not looking forward to the conference; I’m not the biggest fan of the so-called sceptics called ‘Skeptics;’ a lot of them are just really big fans of Science who don’t really know how it works. Whilst I’ll enjoy the trip down and the reconnection with the friends I made last time I probably won’t enjoy the predictable, naive empiricist-style questions that will have to be fielded by the other presenters and me.

I should point out that I don’t tend to enjoy attending conferences but I do enjoy presenting at them. I look forward to a world where I can present hologrammatically.

More news as it comes to hand.

On holograms.

And the conference.

08/24/2009

Five trivial items of notes in re my thesis

1. On Friday, after using yet another example culled from the death of Julius Caesar, I changed the title (temporarily) of the thesis to “A thesis on the Death of Julius Caesar, plus occasional musings about the Epistemology of Conspiracy Theories.”

2. Half my footnotes are mere reminders to myself to make sure the thesis cross references itself in the final edit. About half of the remaining non-reference-y footnotes will likely not survive the final cull.

Except for the Bibiography footnote. That stays.

3. Sometimes, to avoid criticism from my supervisors, I pre-empt the critique with a square-bracketed section explaining that I know the section is awkward/incomplete or frustratingly vague. From time to time I think this is cheating on my part, although it can be due to not knowing how else to express something at the time.

4. I think I know how to turn this into a publishable book, long-term; I’ve already got short snippets (% out in the actual LaTeX files) of extension material in the main body of the thesis sections for careful elaboration at some future date.

Of course, by the time I finish this thesis I probably won’t want to expand on these sections ever again.

5. All my previous work has had references to aardvarks. The current work does not. This displeases me.

08/09/2009

Tumblr

I now have a Tumblr account. It’s basically just links and suchlike that I don’t want to clutter the blog up with; I shan’t be using it for substantive content.

If you want to see what it is I’m hoarding, go here.

08/07/2009

Post-mortem, sort of…

Yesterday (all my troubles seemed so far away…) saw me present the first draft of ‘The Slippery Slope of Conspiracy Theories’ to the Department of Philosophy. It was only the second time I had performed it live, with a preview to a very select audience the night before (the audience, numbering one, is probably the best person I know for questioning what I say) and on both occassions no major criticisms were brought forth about the presentation’s thesis or content. Yea, verily, some of the text on the slides was fixed up, but that was due to awkwardness of sentences rather than errors of thought.

Just like that sentence.

Which is good (the pleasing reception, not the awkward phrasing of ideas, et cetera). The duration of the presentation is on target (30 minutes, give or take a few seconds) and it flows together nicely. I now have two things to do with it before the conference:

One. I still think I need a snappier conclusion.

Two. I’m going to have to force myself to keep practicing giving the paper over the next two months; given just how easily it all went yesterday my intuition is to let it lie fallow until September. This is not a good idea; ideally I should practise giving the paper a few times a week so that I become less dependent on looking at the slides to work out where I’m up to. I want to be facing the audience the entire time rather than looking back over my shoulder (I don’t want any accusations that I’m reading the slides; I’m not, but constantly looking at them rather than my audience gives the wrong impression).

Roll on September. Actually, given that I’ve just said September, here’s Earth, Wind and Fire.

08/06/2009

Debate – Do we need God to ground our moral obligations.

Tomorrow (Thursday the 5th of August) I am moderating a debate on the moot “Do we need God to ground our moral obligations?”

The location: HSB2, University of Auckland

Time: 1-3pm

It’s a face-off, so to speak, between the Overseas Christian Fellowship and the Atheist Club. It also sounds like it will be fairly friendly, seeing that they’ve been exchanging notes. Come along and swell the crowd.

08/05/2009