Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Happy Christmas to the Godless


This week I had the pleasure of taking part in one of Robin Ince’s Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. Fending off the “I am not worthy” feeling amidst the likes of Simon Singh, Alexei Sayle and Mark Thomas, and knowing what a terrible idea it would be to try to make people laugh, I plucked a few things from my forthcoming book on curiosity, in particular Kepler’s treatise on snowflakes (on which, more shortly). But I couldn’t resist poking some fun at a few of the scientifically illiterate snowflakes we always get at Christmas, including the one above from dear Ed Milliband. I wanted to offer Ed a little get-out clause for his pentagonal snowflakes on the basis of quasicrystalline ice, but time did not permit.

Anyway, it’s a great show if you still have time to catch the last ones. I did a little interview for a podcast by New Humanist, which I mention mostly so that you can get a flavour of the other folk in the show.

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