In one day, the Atheist Campaign have raised nearly ten times more money than their original target of £5500. So cats can be herded after all?

Today, the Ministry of Defence published classified documents relating to UFO sightings in the UK between 1986 and 1992.

Those expecting high resolution photographs and detailed schematics of super-advanced alien tech may be disappointed to find thousands of poorly typed letters describing UFO sightings amounting to a stunningly feeble collection of evidence for extraterrestrial visitors.

There are also letters to the Prime Minister from distinguished organisations such as The Irish UFO Research Centre demanding that the UK Government release all the information they have on the program of ‘genetic cross breading[sic]… with potentially hostile “Greys”‘.

The files can be downloaded as PDF documents from the National Archive website.

Jurassic Ark by sculptor Stephen Geddes

What is it about politicians that makes them start talking more sense after they have left office? It happened to Robin Cook when he resigned from the Cabinet in protest to the UK’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Al Gore only seemed to become a much more powerful political figure, especially with respect to our attitude towards climate change, after he left office. Even Michael Portillo has managed to redeem himself slightly in the public eye after his fall from grace eleven years ago. And of course, everyone loves Tony Benn.

Yesterday, the man who played a key role in garnering international support for the ‘War on Terror’, powerfully enunciated what every right-thinking, educated person knows, that Barack Obama is the right person to be the US President.

Colin Powell resigned as US Secretary of State in 2004 after acknowledging that the sources who provided the evidence for WMDs – that was used to justify the deposition of Saddam Hussein – were wrong about their conclusions.

He was always seen as a moderate figure in the US administration, and was more popular with Americans than Rumsfeld or Cheney. However, I’m wondering how the same person who yesterday spoke so clearly and sensibly about his reasons for supporting Obama and not McCain could not speak out against the Bush/Cheney led invasion of Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks in the US.

The adage ‘power tends to corrupt…’ may be true, but unless you reach ‘absolute power’, it seems the process is reversible.

On a Saturday afternoon, Grey’s Monument in Newcastle usually hosts Christian evangelists from different groups using various methods to indoctrinate passers-by with their religion; from the hell-and-damnation-type shouting preachers to the well organised and massively funded Alpha Course, who cleverly use the ‘Big Question’ type of rhetoric to encourage people to sign up for a ten week course on the Bible.

Today, handing out leaflets near a small table stacked with printed material, were two representatives from the North East Humanists. Many would argue that these people are trying to do a similar thing to the Christian evangelists, to bring people around to their world view. I would argue that as a registered charity they are there to campaign for secular interests: the abolishment of faith schools, the teaching of Science without the hindrance of religious sensitivity, and the promotion of the rather obvious idea that people can be good to one another without fearing the wrath of a supernatural entity.

At Newcastle University on the 11th of November – in a joint lecture with the North East Humanists to commemorate the forthcoming 200th Anniversary of Darwin’s birth – Professor Steve Jones will be giving a talk entitled ‘Is evolution over?’. It’s an astonishing fact that many millions of people in the UK believe evolution never even started. Anyway, I’ll be there.

To think of the millenia in which we had no explanation for the bright object in the sky that gave us warmth and made our crops grow. Now, in the last few decades, science has finally revealed the true nature of the Sun, our nearest star.

I believe our only hope for the future it to adopt a new conception of
human ecology, one in which we start we reconstitute our conception of
the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our
minds in the way that we have strip-mined the earth for a particular
commodity, and for the future it won’t service. We have to rethink the
fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.

Sir Ken Robinson

In a stunning talk for the TED conference last year, Sir Ken Robinson argues that our education system is based on old fashioned ideas of achievement; that the goal of education is to put titles before and after our names, rather than equip children for a changing world. He argues that creativity is educated out of us, and creative subjects such Art, Drama and Dance are very much secondary to more ‘academic’ subjects such as Languages and Sciences.

I experienced this process as I progressed through the education system, and I’m seeing its effects in my current place of work, where productivity is blighted by a lack of creative thinking. Furthermore, I know many people for who School education did not work, yet I consider them to be incredibly intelligent people. Robinson talks about a spectrum of intelligence in our society, however it seems that only a small part of this spectrum is addressed in our schools.

A better quality version of the presentation is at the TED site.

In 1991, Richard Dawkins presented the Royal Institution Christmas lectures for Children, and to help illustrate our tendency to think we are superior to the rest of the species on the planet, he invited a member of the audience to read an excerpt from Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

The lecture series, titled ‘Growing up the Universe’ has recently been released on DVD. I remember it when it was first broadcast on the BBC, and as a 15 year-old who’d had a vaguely Christian education and thus had many unanswered questions about our origins, it was a wonderfully inspiring and educational piece of television.

Much as I like Radio 4, the one-sidedness of the Thought for the Day section of the Today programme disappoints me. Why are religious views implicit when we think of Thought for the Day, when there is no such mention of religion in the title?

In 2002, representatives of the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association sent a letter to the BBC complaining about the fact that the two minute, forty-five second slot is only for the broadcasting of religious views. As a result, the BBC granted some air-time for a secular viewpoint from Richard Dawkins, and this wasn’t even part of the Thought for Day slot. Furthermore, while there have been speakers representing other faiths, the views expressed are pretty much always from the believers in a Judeo-Christian God.

Just as the BBC has policy of un-biased, neutral reporting of news, should not the same be true for the Thought for the Day. I have no problem with some religious view expressed, but how about about a more balanced selection of speakers throughout the week?

To provide this balance, I’ve had the idea of providing a ‘Rational Thought for the Day’ podcast including audio and video of prominent secular thinkers and writers, and maybe publish it at around 07:50 when the Radio 4 version goes out. It would take a bit of development time and a lot of co-ordination, but does anyone think this would be a good idea?

Under a clear night sky, it’s good to look up and sense the beauty and magnitude of space.

Unfortunately a combination of urban sprawl and inefficient street lighting means that if you live in or near a city, it is becoming the case that if you want to see stars, the only way of doing it is to get a friend to give you a sharp tap on the head with solid object.

A less painful method – if you’re in the US anyway – is to partake in National Dark-Sky Week, “an event, usually occurring in April, during which people in the United States are encouraged to turn out their unnecessary outdoor lights in order to temporarily reduce light pollution”.