Canberra Skeptics Argos: Mar 2003


N.B. Keep the evening of Thursday next (13th March) free (see below)
The second function for 2003

Those in the Wig and Pen on Monday 10th February had a most convivial evening.  As far as we could determine, unless they were in disguise, none, other than those members of the committee present, were skeptics.  

 
Monday 10th March  

There will be a social get together in the Wig and Pen (one block west of the GPO in Civic) on Monday 10th March from 7.45pm.  Any topic for discussion goes but will be on the August Convention program, and may well be on Bush fires of the George W variety as well.  

 
Thursday 13th March

Dr Malcolm Gill (CSIRO) will present a talk  
"Bushfire Biodiversity - the good, the bad and the ugly".  7.30 - for 8.00. CSIRO Discovery Centre, Clunies Ross St  (Behind Bruce Hall).

Light refreshments. Financial members (those paid up after January 2002) free.  Dr Gill is a world authority on the effects of various types of bushfire on different animal and plant species. He will be explaining how regular fires of the one type can reduce species diversity in various ecological niches. The effect on Homo (not so) sapiens may come up in discussion.

 
News from the Committee

The Committee met on February 10th and 24th and will meet again on 10th March. The program for the 2003 National Skeptics Convention (22nd to 24th August -- write it in your diaries now!) to be held in Canberra is slowly coming together.  We have a number of confirmed presenters but need more. There are three functions that we are organising for school kids during the Science Festival week.  All schools Australia wide are to be notified about  these in the very near future.  They are:
The Convention proper will start on the evening of 22nd Aug with an open forum "Alternative remedies -- the good the bad and the ugly" and then run over Sat and Sun with a dinner on the Sat evening.

 
The website designed by David Wilson is close to up and running and will be viewable via the www.skeptics.com.au website by next Wednesday.

  We ran a stall at the ANU O week fair on Wednesday 26th Feb.  Thanks to all those offering to assist and especially to Jennie Louise and Michael O'Rourke for helping me run it.  We had much interest (the "free energy" machine was as usual a good drawcard) and the new pamphlets we have authored proved popular.  We wish to put all the old topics onto disc and then the website and gradually update them.  We hope current members will be there at 7.45pm on Monday 10th Mar to welcome the following new members to the Canberra Skeptics.

Grant Baldwin, ANU

George Bills, ANU

Tam Camden-Dunne, ANU

Malcolm McCulloch, Weston

Peter Rou, ANU

Dean Stretton, Griffith

David Walton, O'Connor

                                                                          
                                                       
Canberra Skeptics has agreed to run a public lunchtime forum (12.15-1.45pm) on Tuesday July 15th as part of a program organised by U3A in association with COTA and SCOA. This will be on Homoeopathy. The venue is Hughes Community Centre.

The next meeting of the Committee will be on 10th March. Please contact me by email, or phone me or Vicki on 6296 4555 if there are any issues you want raised at the meeting, if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list or if you know of someone who might wish to be added to it.
 
Ramblings from the President

  As a relative newcomer to the Canberra Skeptics, I was relieved to find that the Society's corporate knowledge is still around -- just.  This newsletter is not -- as reported in the Jan 2003 issue -- called "The Argus", nor, had my right index finger hit the wrong vowel on the keyboard, " The Argas".  It is in fact, I am reliably informed, "The Argos" .  Having rediscovered early in February that the upper half of my anatomy is connected to the lower half through some biological engineering which should rate only a bare pass, I have had ample time over the last four weeks (while lying prone) to ponder on the fine differences between these three words.

  According to my Oxford Classical Dictionary, Argas was a citharode (player of the cithara, I guess) and poet of the first half of the 4th century BC and renowned for his badness (which, being without my glasses at the time, I first read as baldness).  This picture does not fit with any of the skeptics I know, perhaps with the exception of the Hon Pres, and so may be dismissed.  But for Argus and Argos that is another matter.

The above-mentioned Dictionary claims Argos is a city in south-eastern Greece while that in the Iliad was a kingdom. Also in Greek mythology Argos was a monster of huge strength and size of variously stated parentage with (a) a third eye in the back of his neck, or (b) two eyes before and two behind, or (c) many eyes. He was set to guard the heifer Io, but Hermes killed him and he turned into a peacock.  There was also an Argos who built the longboat Argo which features in the Greek saga of Jason and the peripatetic Argonauts. 

According to the OED (the Shorter) this "mythological person fabled to have had a hundred eyes" and hence "a very vigilant watcher" was in fact called Argus .  Now the OED is not prone to typos, so I guess this must be the Roman name for the aforementioned Greek chappie. The Melbourne Argus (a newspaper founded in 1846) was inappropriately named  otherwise it would have seen the knives in the back -- which led to its demise in 1957-- coming.

No doubt the founders of this newsletter were Greek scholars, unless, while in their cups, they intended it as a vehicle for bullshit and called it "The Argol" [(a) dried cow dung used as fuel in Tartary, or (b) the tartar deposited from wines].  Alternatively, on the spur of the moment, they wished it to convey a pointed skeptical message and called it " The Argot" [(a) the peculiar jargon, phraseology or slang of any class or group, or (b) the spur of a cock]. Or maybe it was intended to mimic a very lightweight and inert gas and was called " The Argon". The present Committee inherited remarkably skimpy records of past activities of the Canberra Skeptics, so I have been unable to search the archives to check. If any back copies of " The Argos" are kicking around the odd Canberra attic, we would love to see them.

 
Pete Griffith,

President, Canberra Skeptics

7 Mar 2003

igriffit@bigpond.net.au

6296 4555

 
Canberra Skeptics Inc

Committee 2002-2003

Pete Griffith (President)

Peter Barrett (Vice President)

Vicki Moss (Secretary)

David Wilson (Treasurer)

Arno Mikli

Michael O'Rourke

Jennie Louise