The Hampshire Skeptics Society is a non-profit organisation for the promotion of science, reason and critical thinking, humanism and a secular life. We run the Winchester Skeptics group who meet at 7:30pm on the last Thursday of every month at the The Winchester Discovery Centre.
Winchester SitP meetings are open to all regardless of beliefs and each months talk will be followed up with a challenging Q&A session and social. We suggest a £3 donation to cover our speaker’s expenses.
Click here to find out how to get to the Winchester Skeptics in the Pub meetings at the Winchester Discovery Centre.
Click here for Previous Events
Thursday 2nd May 2013 – Dr Michael Mosley : The Fast Diet
Dr Michael Mosley is a British journalist, physician, producer and TV presenter. He is probably best known as a television presenter of programmes on biology and medicine, particularly his series on the workings of the human body, Inside the Human Body and The Brain: A Secret History.
Dieting is a subject surrounded by and embedded in unscientific nonsense and a seeming total absence of common sense. Many fad diets are touted by their celebrity endorsed proponents as performing physical miracles on your body for very little effort on your part. Their appeal is so strong because they aim at that within us that desperately craves the quick and easy fix to our problems. The diet book is a multi-million pound merry-go-round of money and glib promises.
In August 2012 Dr Mosley was credited with popularising the 5:2 diet after appearing in the BBC2 Horizon documentary Eat, Fast & Live Longer which resulted in his #1 best selling book The Fast Diet co-written with Mimi Spencer.
Is the Fast Diet just another farrago of common sense dressed up in the vacuous trappings of profound wisdom ? Is it really possible to achieve that Nirvana of eating well and losing weight ?
Michael’s talk will take us through the actual science behind The Fast Diet so we can all find out what it’s all about and hopefully lose a few pounds in the process.
NOTE : This event is on the 2nd of May not the 25th of April due to a booking conflict. Only applies to this SitP.
Thursday 30th May 2013 – Neil Denny : The Little Atoms Road Trip
Neil Denny is the producer and presenter of the Little Atoms Radio Show and podcast. Neil was the recipient of a Travelling Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and in May 2012 he embarked upon a month long, 6614 mile road trip across America. The aim of the trip was to produce a series of podcasts which present a wide-ranging overview of science and skepticism from an American perspective. While many in Europe consider America to be the home of conspiracy theories, creationism and climate scepticism, the USA is also a scientific powerhouse.
However many of those involved in science in the US are also fighting encroaching irrationality. To be an atheist in America is still considered to be a brave and transgressive act. Creationists continue to push for the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside evolution in science classes. Campaigners are fighting to protect the right to legal and safe abortion, for the use of stem cells in medical research, and are fighting against the growing anti-vaccination movement.
Driving from San Francisco to Boston and calling in at Phoenix, Santa Fe, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York along the way, Neil recorded 39 interviews with scientists and science writers including Ann Druyan, Leonard Susskind, Kip Thorne, Priya Natarajan, Paul Davies, George Church, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mary Roach, Edward Stone and Sara Seager. He recorded interviews at some major sites of scientific interest, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, and The American Museum of Natural History. He also spent a less scientific day visiting Kentucky’s Creation Museum. The podcasts from Neil’s trip can be found here : Little Atoms Roadtrip. Find out more about Little Atoms on their website www.littleatoms.com, and follow Neil on Twitter @littleatoms.
Thursday 25th July 2013 – Oliver Meech : When Magic and Science Collide
Magic boffin Oliver Meech meddles with forces we barely understand, in a comedy magic show for the QI generation. Expect brain-boggling tricks inspired by mind-blowing science. It’s the Natural Selection!
After melding magic with Neuropsychology (Ed Fringe 2011) and Time (Ed Fringe 2010) in previous hit shows, Oliver turns his attention to the rest of the universe.
Oliver Meech studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, Creativity at top London ad agencies and Trickery at The Magic Circle. He fuses all three to produce magic that’s ‘fascinating and different from other magicians’ (GWJWTBE blog). When not performing at Fringe festivals around the country, he hops between the UK’s Science, Cabaret and Comedy circuits.
You can catch up with Oliver on Facebook, Twitter @magicmeech, watch him on YouTube and check out his website Magicmeech.com