Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists

Last Friday, someone asked me what had happened in the last few meetings. Aren’t you glad that all the meeting minutes from the last quarter have been made public?

I heard a rumor that next Friday, March 13, there will be pizza at our meeting. But you’re all skeptical, so you probably want to verify this for yourself by coming to our next meeting. Ackerman 2408, 5:00-6:50 PM.

Meeting discussion

Our official discussion topic this meeting was SETI vs UFOlogy: why is one science and the other not? SETI, if you didn’t know, is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence by searching for transmissions from far away stars. Spencer disagreed with the premise of the topic, saying that he did not in fact consider SETI to be science, because it cannot falsify any hypotheses. Matt took an opposing position, saying that it’s worthwhile to search for extraterrestrial life, even if we do not believe that it exists nearby. Of course, that was only the starting point, and we wandered off in many random directions from there.

Someone in the group has in fact seen a UFO! She said that in Granada Hills, there was a giant floating triangle of lights. Eventually, the lights zoomed off in different directions. There were several witnesses. I don’t have any explanation for that one. Andrew mentioned that there is something called Project Blue Book, which studied many UFO reports. The project concluded that there are no alien UFOs, though there are several cases that they couldn’t fully explain.

Another question: What is your favorite skeptical topic (not counting religion)? A few of the answers: conspiracy theories, mainstream economics, homeopathy. Mine, of course, is anything physics-related.

Speaking of physics-related skeptical topics, have any of you seen the LaRouchians (aka the LaRouchebags) on campus? They’re a very politically oriented personality cult surrounding Lyndon LaRouche, and I think they prey on college dropouts. Among other things, they believe Newton, who may or may not have even existed, stole all his ideas from Kepler. Newton’s laws are plagiarized from Kepler’s laws. Joe tried showing them a physics problem involving friction, and asked them to solve it using only Kepler’s laws (which only deal with orbital motion). Their reaction was to question his credentials, and then promptly ignore him. They literally turned their back towards him, even while trying to talk to someone next to him.

And has anyone seen that guy on Bruin Plaza who yells out random words? Apparently, he’s the Universal Philosophical Genius. Supposedly, he read a book about quantum mechanics, and then decided that hanging out at UCLA was good times. A sample argument: How can distance exist if points have no size? Yeah… At least he doesn’t have a history of harassing people on campus like the LaRouchians do.

Incidentally, LOGIC, the Objectivist club, debated the LaRouchians years ago. And the LaRouchians won! The LaRouchians basically said that Ayn Rand wrote some good fiction arguing Objectivism, but where is the real evidence? Joe’s analysis was that LOGIC seemed more interested in just talking about Objectivism than actually calling out the LaRouchians on all their BS.