Start Of Season 3
SkepticTV is back with a new season!
During our opening show we'll be looking back at science news of the past year.
It’s a Culture not a Movement
So there's been a little bit of blogging going on recently following a piece written for the New Statesman by Robin Ince and Brian Cox where they state the importance of not conflating opinion with science, it's an interesting piece and can be read here. As you can imagine it focuses on the need not to forget why science is important, but with this being the internet someone didn't like it and wrote a blog post ranting about it.....and it's to that blog post, or the general nature of it, that I'll be replying to.
To make it clear though I'm not going to do a point by point response, that's already been done here by Martin Robbins, he responds paragraph by paragraph and really takes the writer to task and it's definitely something worth reading. What I want to break down is the guy's misuse of the geek label, I had a brief twitter exchange with the writer of another blog post about this and Martin in which my gut call was confirmed......they used the term geek as a catch all bucket for anything they didn't like.
A clever way to donate!
Chris Wanjek has made the generous offer of donating all profits from purchases of his book 'Hey Einstein' tonight by listners of the show. You can get in on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and it's a novel about what clones of Einstein growing up in some very disparate parts of the United States, with interesting results. To participate in this you need to buy a copy of the book, either hard copy or on kindle, and then email him at wanjek@nasw.org and let him know that you bought the book and he'll donate the profits to our fundraiser!
Womble
2012 Schedule – Now with Links! (Updated)
So as promised, here is the fundraiser schedule with links. Don't forget that we're raising money for Sense About Science and their Ask for Evidence campaign, they're also on twitter as is Voice of Young Science. We have a donations page set up at Just Giving and if you are in the UK you can donate by text message to 70070 with the code STVC99 and state the amount in £'s up to £10. We'll be on twitter, you can tweet us direct on @SkepticTV or by using #12hourcall. The last link you'll need is where to find us, I'll post that below...
Schedule for the 2012 Fundraiser
{Edit:Schedule with links here}
Firstly massive appologies for not doing this on the weekend! Real life has spat a number of things at me right now so I have to juggle them and the fundraiser, however given my overall awesome nature I'm sure I'll be fine.......so without further messing around lets do this!
Schedule is Full and Auction Prep
So kiddies, we are at two weeks to go, the schedule is full and will be announced shortly and we are in rapid fire preparation for our auction to accompany the fundraiser. How will our auction work you ask? Well we will be using ebay and there's the ability to set up accounts for fundraising events so that the money will go pretty much straight to the charity, a bit like the first giving page we have.
So how does it work? Well there are two things, the first is the obvious one were you check the listings and bid on things that take your fancy.
Fundraiser Teasers and Misc Updates
Whilst our blog tends to be a little quiet at times we do very much have legitimate reasons.....all the little planning squirrels here at SkepticTV have been beavering away on our fundraiser. This year it will take place on Saturday 8th December between 2pm and 2am UK time, which is 9am to 9pm EST.
So far we have confirmed a few friends of STV: we will be inflicting some audience voted for pwnage material on the TWL boys; we have Tombestone and Greydon from #Grand Unified; a good friend of mine by the name of Jim that DJ's The Rock Show; and the infamous DPRJones. We've also set up the donation page at Just Giving, and it's live now so you don't have to wait if you want to start sharing it about!
No Tech Tonight
Sorry guys, our tech guy can't make tonight and our back up tech guy isn't around.......and since the rest of us haven't been trained up (and I've been known to have a death touch on computer) that means we won't have a show tonight. Sorry guys 
Womble
MSF Auction Item
I'm just going to quickly pimp out the item I've donated for the MSF charity Auction for this weekends fundraiser. There are just under 2 days left (at time of writing) so you've got plent of time to put in a bid.
I'm offering a handmade bookmark, the starting bid is $20 and the level of complexity will relate to the final bidding price. To give you an idea of what is available materials wise I displayed what I have for the pictures for the ebay lot. The piece on the black thread is the item I'm making for this years STV fundraiser (you might be able to quess what it is), there's also the start of the design I've been working on for Bair. At the TWL fundraiser he donated $120 and as I offered to make a bookmark for those that donated over a certain amount and he more than exceeded that amount I'm making him one, and for $120 I'm pulling out the stops.
Whatever the item sells for I will talk to the winner and discuss colour schemes and design ideas and they will get a handmade bookmark of clever and cunning design.
Happy Bidding!!
Womble
This Weeks Show Postponed
Just a quick heads up that we are having to postpone this weeks show. Panel member numbers aside Collin has been unwell and is still recouperating so we won't be doing a show this week. We will cover this weeks topic next time, so if you have any questions you were planning on asking us post them as a comment below and we'll try and have a quick read up on them for next time. 
Womble