Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists

From May 8th:

Announcements

There will be a lecture on Healing Touch Therapy on May 19^th, 1-2 PM at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center, B-130. We think it is outrageous that this is actually taught here at UCLA. Please, somebody attend this and ask them questions.

BASS and the Infidel’s club are both sponsoring a panel called “Faith Meets Doubt”. It occurs on Monday, May 18^th, 6:00-7:30 PM in Humanities A40. There will first be a presentation by a deist and a conservative Jew, and then a discussion panel made of six students: two Christians, two Muslims, and two Atheists. RSVP on Facebook.

Meeting discussion

We discussed the talk by Brian Dunning, “Here Be Dragons”, which occurred on May 6. Brian Dunning is a real common sense skeptic. “Ghost orbs”… are they supposed to be living orbs which died? And why are they surrounding the Loch Ness monster in this photo? We wonder, though if Dunning isn’t just preaching to the choir, since most of the attendees are BASS members.

Speaking of which, Brian Dunning is starring in a pilot of a possible new TV show, the Skeptologists (also, see the Skepticblog). Though we haven’t seen the pilot, some people thought it might be comparable to MythBusters, but a bit more rigorous. Someone complained that though MythBusters promote science, their experiments are not up to standards.

We discussed Healing Touch Therapy, which consists basically of putting your hands on or near the patient. Then, supposedly, you manipulate their “putative energy field” in order to heal them. The whole idea is premised on the existence of a “biofield”. Is this field is a scalar or vector field, and what are its units? This is being taught to med students at UCLA?

T-Shirts! Roy suggested a bunch of different t-shirt designs, which you can see on his flickr stream. As a group, we tend to be indecisive.

We met Steve, who is one of the hosts of Preach Around, a UCLA radio show. The show is a satire of Christian talk radio. They plan on recording our evil, godless meetings so that they can show everyone exactly how many babies Darwin-worshippers eat. This will be a lot of fun to do at one of our upcoming meetings.

Miscellaneous videos: Q-Ray bracelets? The Kiai Master. The leprechaun in Alabama. Jesus and the Terminator.

Last 5 posts by Tristan Miller

• Presentation: Separation of Church and State - March 6th, 2010
• BASS protests the Westboro Baptist Church - January 17th, 2010
• BASS and friends protest the Phelps family - January 14th, 2010
• Snacks List - January 12th, 2010
• BASS Meeting I - January 6th, 2010