Posted on : 26-04-2012 | By : John | In : Event, local, movie
In keeping with this month’s theme of religion in the classroom, The Revisionaries, a documentary about the Texas State Board of Education’s textbook selection process, is showing at the Somerville Theater as part of the Boston Independent Film Festival on Monday, April 30 at 6:45 PM.
For a sample of what to expect, see former Texas SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy on the Colbert Report a few days ago.
The Texas Monthly published a summary of the rave reviews for the film, which premiered last Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
We should try to meet up in front of the theater at about 6:30.
Tickets can be purchased online or at the box office. RSVP on Facebook.
P.S. If you still feel some of those pesky brain cells clogging up your cranium, there is still time to see American Juggalo tonight at the same theater.
Meet this month’s Book Club (and inaugural Skepchick Book Club) author Katherine Stewart. She will be discussing her new book (and signing Kindles?), “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children” at our usual time and place (7 PM Monday evening at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square.) We’ll be a week late this time, on May 7, 2012, but it’s worth the wait!
At last month’s SitP, we had an author as our guest and we asked a lot of fantastic questions. Let’s do it even better this time! Check out her web site and read this sample (from a NY Times op-ed), or better yet read the whole book. It is interesting and important even if it is scary enough to be a Halloween selection.
See the previous post for more about the book.
RSVP on our Facebook event page.
Posted on : 06-03-2012 | By : John | In : Event, local
Wednesday, March 14 is Pi Approximation Day.
Mathematics is a dirty business, but somebody has to do, preferably while covered with a sticky mass of Pie Filling! (The volume of a pie is 4⁄3×π×((Rt+Rb)⁄2)²×h, where Rt is the radius of the top of the pie, and Rb is the radius of the bottom of the pie and h is the thickness of the pie.)
Armed and dangerous
Join us for our annual pie fight on Cambridge Common (one block north of Harvard Square) on Wednesday, March 14 at 7 PM. Bring a pie and scuzzy clothes.
A map, maybe.
The weather forecast is for clear with a high of 56, so be prepared for freezing drizzle or heat and humidity.
RSVP
Update: Bad Geometry! I forgot to multiply by the depth of the pie. Also, the Greek letter lowercase pi looks really awful in the default font. Sort of like a poorly drawn lowercase “n”. I said math is a dirty business; there’s your proof.
Posted on : 18-08-2009 | By : Jared | In : Blog Post, skepticism
Continuing our tour of local purveyors of woo, we come next to Dahn Yoga. Now, aside from the fact that it often pushes certain woo-ish ideas, yoga can be a valid form of exercise. I’ve generally forgiven it for its excesses because of this, and would have done the same for the Dahn Yoga centers I see both near my job (in the Back Bay) and my home (in Cambridge), too.
But back in February, we were fortunate enough to get the inimitable Tim Farley, of WhatsTheHarm.net, as our speaker for Boston Skeptics in the Pub. Amongst other things, Tim talked about a woman named Julia Siverls who died during a Dahn-sponsored course. This piqued my curiosity and prompted me to look into things a bit more deeply.
WHO
This month’s guest speaker is Tim Farley, who runs the web site What’s The Harm?, where he details the injustices caused by belief in superstition and pseudoscience.
WHERE
Tommy Doyle’s
Harvard Square
(top floor)
96 Winthrop Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
WHEN
Monday, February 23, 2009
7pm
HOW MUCH
Free!
Facebook Event Page
(join the Boston-area Skeptics group to get all invites)
