- FREE audio download: Chapter from War: History, Causes & Solutions
- Skepticality: Columbine: True Horror and American Myth
- lectures: announcing the Fall/Winter Season of Lectures at Caltech
- latest from Michael Shermer: How to Talk to a UFOlogist (if you must)
- upcoming event: Atheist Alliance International Conference ’09
FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD
a Chapter from War: History, Causes, and Solutions
War is a serious subject and serious consequences, and Dr. Michael Shermer treats it as such, bringing to bear on the topic all the tools of science and history to understand war’s history, causes, and solutions. In this free audio download of Lecture 1, Dr. Shermer introduces the course, defines what he means by war, what sorts of causes will be sought (proximate causes and ultimate causes), human nature and human culture and how they interact to cause conflict, and the ultimate consequences of war.
DOWNLOAD the sample MP3 (47MB)
Dave Cullen
Columbine: True Horror
and American Myth
On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on American society when they carried out their plan to kill as many of their high school classmates as they could. The very word “Columbine” has come to represent a specific brand of unthinkable horror: when children make a calculated decision to murder their teachers and peers.
In the chaos and aftermath of that April day, legends and misinformation quickly proliferated. A great deal of what was reported about Columbine was simply not true. Author Dave Cullen has spent the last ten years of his journalistic career studying the lives of the residents of Littleton Colorado as they were before, during, and after this shattering event. Cullen’s seminal book on the subject, Columbine, delves deep into the psyches of the killers, the victims, and their families to set the record straight not only about what really happened on that fateful day, but why.
the Fall/Winter Season of Lectures at Caltech
Mark your calendar! The Skeptics Society is pleased to announce its Fall/Winter season of the Skeptics Distinguished Lecture Series at Caltech. This continues the seventeen-year-long series, presenting over 200 lectures by some of the most distinguished experts in the world. Unless otherwise stated, all lectures take place in Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech. First up…
Beyond Cosmic Dice
Moral Life in a Random World
with Dr. Jeff Schweitzer
Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Morality is our biological destiny. We each have within us the awesome power to create our own meaning in life, our own sense of purpose, our own destiny. With a natural ethic we are able to move beyond the random hand of birth to pave our own road to a better life. With the ability to choose to be good comes the obligation to make that choice; choosing to be moral is what makes us special as individuals and as a species. We are special if we choose to be, if we ourselves decide to use our big brains to manage wisely our relationships with one another and with our environment.
Dr. Schweitzer spent much of his youth underwater pursuing his lifelong fascination with marine life. He obtained his doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography through his neurobehavioral studies of sharks and rays. He has published in an eclectic range of fields, including neurobiology, marine science, international development, environmental protection and aviation, and he worked the White House as Assistant Director for International Science and Technology. Praise from Bill Maher: “This is the book that ties it all together — the problems that religion creates in solving our looming problems, and the unholy environmental mess we’re in. I’d say that someday we’re going to have to listen to this man, but the truth is, that day is NOW.”
followed by these lectures…
The Philosophical Baby
What Children’s Minds Tell Us
About Truth, Love, and
the Meaning of Life
with Dr. Alison Gopnik
Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm
READ about this lecture
Whole Earth Discipline
An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
with Stewart Brand
SPECIAL DAY AND TIME:
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 7:00 pm
READ about this lecture
The Tangled Bank
An Introduction to Evolution
with Carl Zimmer
Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 2:00 pm
READ about this lecture
Bright Sided
How the Relentless Promotion
of Positive Thinking has
Undermined America
with Barbara Ehrenreich
Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm
READ about this lecture
Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs
Evolution, Extinction, and the Future of Our Planet
with Dr. Donald Prothero
Sunday, December 6, 2009 at 2:00 pm
READ about this lecture
The latest additions to MichaelShermer.com and SkepticBlog.org
NEW ON SKEPTICBLOG.ORG
How to Talk to a UFOlogist (if you must)
Michael reviews Confessions of An Alien Hunter by Seth Shostak.
• READ the blog post •
It is a shame these great lectures (and the Alliance Convention info) is not availabe to us hicks in the hinterland who love their guns and country but don’t carry a Bible.
It is also a shame – make that SHAME – that these lectures aren’t available to these non-hicks in the non-hinterland who don’t own guns and/or carry a bible but who happen to live on the other coast, albeit in a Big City (New York) and don’t have the budget to fly to CalTech at the drop of a hat, or idea, or whatever…
Can’t they be recorded and put up on YouTube, or something….
I concur with Paul and Ed–I’d love to have access to these lectures. I would be willing to pay to be able to watch and listen to all of the convention lectures remotely.
Lectures at Caltech are available for purchase on DVD from our online store. You can see which ones are currently available by browsing our past lectures starting on page 3 with Stuart Koffman’s Reinventing the Sacred. Just look for the “BUY this lecture” link to order the DVD. The newer lectures will eventually be available on DVD.
You can also browse our Lectures at Caltech by subject at Shop Skeptic.
And it’s a shame that registration ($249) is so expensive that the students living close by Caltech cannot afford to go.
On Nov. 21, 2008, the Harris and Klebold parents were sent the same letter requesting cooperation. “Your stories have yet to be fully told, and I view your help as an issue of historical significance,” it said. “In 10 years, there have been no major, mainstream books on Columbine. This will be the first, and it may be the only one.” The letter came not from Mr. Cullen but from Jeff Kass, whose Columbine: A True Crime Story, published by the small Ghost Road Press, preceded Columbine by a couple of weeks.
“Mr. Kass, whose tough account is made even sadder by the demise of The Rocky Mountain News in which his Columbine coverage appeared, has also delivered an intensive Columbine overview. Some of the issues he raises and information he digs up go unnoticed by Mr. Cullen.” –Janet Maslin, New York Times
“A decade after the most dramatic school massacre in American history, Jeff Kass applies his considerable reporting talents to exploring the mystery of how two teens could have planned and carried out such gruesome acts without their own family and best friends knowing about it. Actually, there were important clues, but they were missed or downgraded both by those who knew the boys best and by public officials who came in contact with them. An engrossing and cautionary tale for everyone who cares about how to prevent kids from going bad.” —–Ted Gest, President, Criminal Justice Journalists
I wish you would have nothing to do with Bill Maher.
He called the American Military Cowards.