Great night of TV Sunday May 4 (Hadrons and Dawkins)

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

No, I don't mean the Logie red carpet or the Logies themselves....

SBS at 8:30 is a show on the hadron collider and then at 9:25 Compass is part 1 of 2 "Slaves to Superstition" with Richard Dawkins. Pity about the temporal overlap, so I will have to VCR one and PVR the other. This is truly a rare event these days with two shows on the same night! Of course, as a backup there is Star Wars () but I have it on DVD anyway.

[renormalised (Carl)]

I know, it's going to be hard to pick which one to watch, but I have Dawkin's DVD "The Root of All Evil??" anyway.

So, looks like it's the LHC for me

[PhilW]

Dawkins produces more provocative collisions than the collider, so he's my choice. I propose we name an elementary particle after him.

[Dujon]

I watched the LHC program. Not unexpectedly I found it disappointing. Maybe to someone who hadn't ever considered or read about 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' it might have been interesting - even enlightening; perhaps like me watching the preceding ABC program about parrots which I thought quite wonderful. Some of the photography in that program was, in my opinion, superb.

Which brings me back to the LHC exposé. Why, oh why, do programs such as these (it's not alone in this) rely on repeating images over and over again? Is it to mask the speakers? Is it to reduce the production costs? I'd much rather watch people discussing or arguing points of view - with images as required to reinforce the comments - than view some CGI, often unrealistic, which distracts and detracts from the subject being presented.

Crikey I'm grumpy this morning.

[astroron (Ron)]

I watched Dawkins, and I was so annoyed that these charlitans wheedled their way out of the questions,or even refused to answer at all
It is even more annoying that there are people who believe all that Crap
Carl Sagen published a book called "The Demon Haunted World" in 1996,
On the cover is a quote from Richard Dawkins Eloquent and fascinating...I wish I had written The Demon- Haunted World...Please read this book.'
Richard Dawkins, The Times
I think Carl Sagen would turn over in his grave to see how far down the road we have gone
Ron

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Second part of Richard Dawkins tonight!

Obviously all of these "phenomena" must be quantum in nature. Once you try to measure the effect, it goes away! It is worrying that there are people who actually get sucked into some of this rubbish. The bit about giving the same horoscope to people of different "star signs" is always very amusing. I have seen this same "experminent" performed in a number of shows and it always comes up with the same result.

[Argonavis (William)]

It is a well known experiment because it is easy and cheap to do on campus with a large class of students. So it has been repeated many times all with the same astounding result. They all want to believe.

Geoffrey Dean, an Australian researcher who has conducted extensive tests of astrology, reversed the astrological readings of 22 subjects, substituting phrases that were the opposite of what the horoscopes actually stated.

Yet the subjects in this study said the readings applied to them just as often (95 percent of the time) as people to whom the correct phrases were given.

Apparently, those who seek out astrologers just want guidance.

Sad really.

[Argonavis (William)]

Dawkins actually explains in more details at this site:

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/...in_stars.shtml

“The American conjuror James Randi recounts in his book Flim Flam how as a young man he briefly got the astrology job on a Montreal newspaper, making up the horoscopes under the name Zo-ran.

His method was to cut out the forecasts from old astrology magazines, shuffle them in a hat, distribute them at random among the 12 zodiacal signs and print the results.

This was very successful of course (because all astrology works on the "Barnum principle" of saying things so vague and general that all readers think it applies to them.)

He (Randi) describes how he overheard in a cafe a pair of office workers eagerly scanning Zo-ran's column in the paper. "They squealed with delight on seeing their future so well laid out, and in response to my query said that Zo-ran had been 'right smack on' last week. I did not identify myself as Zo-ran... Reaction in the mail to the column had been quite interesting, too, and sufficient for me to decide that many people will accept and rationalise almost any pronouncement made by someone they believe to be an authority with mystic powers.

At this point, Zo-ran hung up his scissors, put away the paste pot, and went out of business.""

[Argonavis (William)]

There have, of course, been hundredds of studies of astrology.

Absolutely none have found anything in it.

In order to explain the lack of any objective evidence in Astrology’s favour, some astrologers resorted to the paranormal.

They believe that astrologers can only arrive at the correct interpretation of a chart by using their higher intuition or by tuning in with the cosmic order!!!

wow

Much of astrology is untestable and escapes scientific scrutiny by confining itself to statements that can not be falsified. So the line goes that a horoscope can only provide information about our inner life, basic nature, true reality, hidden potential, deepest aspirations, unconscious fears and motives, forgotten trauma's and possibilities for future development.

Astrology "gives insight into the meaning and quality of our subjective experiences by locating them within a cosmic frame of reference. It tells us why we are the way we are, it can clarify our problems and help us to find solutions - but it can not predict our behaviour".

So nothing can prove it wrong.

Then there is the other "progressive" school of astrologers who regard astrology as a counselling skill. To them the horoscope is only a therapeutic tool and not a source of reliable information.

How irrational is that?

More detail at: http://www.skepsis.nl/astrot.html