New Blog

I've started a new blog that probably won't interest many of you. But I thought I'd announce it here anyway, in case some of you are desperate for something to read.

STARFLEET International are going through a tough time at the moment. The Commander STARFLEET is pretty unpopular with a small group of outspoken dissidents, and has faced an unending torrent of what can only be described as abuse from them since he entered office in January.

As a result of the unending flame war, hundreds of members are choosing not to renew their membership, and STARFLEET is in pretty bad shape. Several of the dissidents have created blogs as a soap-box for their rhetoric, and I thought it was time for someone to inject a little logic into the proceedings.

So I launched STARFLEET Fail FAIL, a play on the name of the biggest of the dissident blogs, STARFLEET Fail. My fellow bloggers and I intend to try and critically analyise the arguments presented by the dissidents with the intent to weed out all the logical fallacies, propaganda techniques and pure silliness in the hope of finding the real message behind it all.

I hope that there is actually a message there, and it's not just a group of difficult-minded people with nothing better to do than annoy other Trekkies. But we'll see.

So, if you're interested in social dynamics of volunteer organisations, the inner workings of organised Star Trek fandom, or just have a morbid curiosity about just how seriously Trekkies take all of it, please feel free to take a look!

I now pronounce you...

As some of you may be aware, Hide and I are getting married soon. In planning the wedding, possibly the most difficult aspect we've encountered so far is finding someone to perform the ceremony.

The difficulty, as you may expect, is that we are not religious: Hide doesn't subscribe to any religious doctrine and I'm an atheist.

In some countries this wouldn't be a problem. In parts of the US we would simply recruit a Justice of the Peace to perform the ceremony. If we lived in Scotland we could contact the Humanist Society for a list of local Humanist Celebrants. But despite South Africa's allegedly very progressive constitution, non-religious people seem to be actively discriminated against here.

According to South African law, we have two options:

1. Get married in court.
   
2. Get married in a church.

The reason that these are the only options is that the only people (other than judges) who are allowed to obtain marriage officer certification from the Department of Home Affairs are members of the clergy of recognised churches. The law is progressive enough to include clergy of just about any religious organisation that has an established presence in South Africa, but stops short of recognising non-religious affiliations.

This is very problematic for us, and presumably for other non-religious couples in South Africa. If we want to be married in a traditional ceremony, but without involving someone's imaginary friend in the equation, we're out of luck. All we can hope for is to find a marriage officer who is either a religious apostate, or liberal enough to be prepared to leave the superstition out of it. And that appears to be no mean feat.

Getting married in court is an absolute last resort for us. It seems silly to have two weddings: one for the friends and family, and a second for the Department of Home Affairs. Why should we have to have two ceremonies when religious people need only one?

And that's not all. For some time now I've been interested in qualifying as a marriage officer myself. It seems only fitting that a Starship Captain (such as I) should be empowered to perform weddings - it's a maritime tradition going back as far as anyone can remember. But since STARFLEET International isn't a religious organisation, that would be impossible as well.

So what can humanists, secularists and atheists do about this sort of thing? How do we go about changing this clearly discriminatory piece of legislation? Seriously. That's not a rhetorical question. How do we do it?

Are you a married South African secularist? How did you get past this hurdle?

Are you an apostate or liberal marriage officer? Contact me, please!

Update Time

Right, so, now that I'm back in the land of the living, it's time to bring you guys up to speed on what's been going on.

As I mentioned, I've been working like crazy on my lecture for the Star Trek convention. First I was working on creating it, then on transcribing it. That's all done now. So, if you're interested in reading it, take a look here.

Hide recorded a video of the lecture, but there were sound issues (read: I am too tall, and the microphone wasn't close enough to my mouth to provide any magnification at all to my voice, but was just the right height for me to keep bashing it with my remote control). So I don't know if it will be salvageable enough to post. But if Hide is able to work her magic on it, you will be the first to know.

Next, there have been tremendous happenings aboard the USS Dauntless. We lost our old domain, so I was forced to come up with another plan in a hurry. Fortunately I think about these sorts of things, and within a couple of days, we had a fully operational new website at our new domain and hosted by my dear, dear friends over at Google. You can find it here!

I highly recommend the Google Apps backbone if you're looking for a one-stop web solution for your organisation. It's basically a web-based substitute for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Office, all in one. Awesome. Plus, it's free for non-profit organisations, and very reasonably priced for companies. Check it out!

Other than our new website, it's been a very busy few weeks for the Dauntless. We've welcomed several new members aboard, including our first Israeli, we've had a number of Away Missions, we've had our photo published in the newspaper, and our friends over at Skepchick took notice of our SciOps Homeopathic Suicide Attempt, which sent our numbers soaring.

Well, that's about all I can think of right now. I'm sure there'll be more to come. I'm going to try my hardest to resume a more regular blogging schedule, but, as usual, no promises.

Swart out

Bridge to SciOps: Report!

There’s a new sceptical kid on the South African block, and it’s me! ...and some other guys.

As my regular readers will no doubt be aware, I am something of a Star Trek fanatic, to the extent that I have founded my own Star Trek fan club (now defunct) and currently serve as a chapter president of another Star Trek fan club, The USS Dauntless, as well as a member of the board of directors of its parent organisation, STARFLEET International (SFI).

Although I’ve self-identified as a Trekkie far longer than I have done as a sceptic, for me the two are linked.

Although I always enjoyed Star Trek, I became a serious Trekkie around the time I discovered the Internet: about ten years ago. I was captivated by the sheer depth of it. The more I learned, the more I found there was to learn. So I delved into it, poring over books, trawling the bowels of the web, and I have emerged, as a butterfly from a cocoon, one of the most knowledgeable Trekkies I know. And I know many.

As part of my exploration of Star Trek, I developed a fondness for science. Again, this wasn’t new. As a little boy I was captivated by books on space exploration, which is probably one of the reasons I enjoyed Star Trek so much. I remember watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos over and over again, trying to absorb it all, but not really possessing the necessary understanding to parse it.

After being subjected to the sheer irrelevance of the high-school science curriculum, I lost interest in all things scientific. But that didn’t last long. Thanks to Star Trek I regained by interest in how the world worked.

In order to really appreciate the depth of the Star Trek experience, it required that I get to know an awful lot of science… beyond the silly experiments in high-school and onto the really interesting stuff: relativity, quantum physics, evolution, sociology, linguistics and any number of other disciplines were brought into the fray.

The more I got to know Star Trek the more enamoured I became by science. I inevitably discovered the sceptical movement and the value of critical thinking: a discovery that has inspired me even more than my initial discovery of Star Trek.

But I’m still a Trekkie, and now a sceptic. It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured out how to combine the two. Two weeks ago I announced on the USS Dauntless mailing list that I was forming a new team: Special Scientific Operations (SciOps). The SciOps team’s mission is:

To perform investigations, publicise results, promote critical thinking and generally support and advance the scientific imperative within its community and the on the Internet.

Some of you will be aware that there are already some sceptical organisations in South Africa. The South African Sceptics and Sceptics South Africa are both excellent groups, but their respective missions appear to be more along the lines of creating a sceptics’ community and publicising the sceptics’ perspective to the general public. Both are valuable and necessary.

But I think there’s a need for a group that will get its hands dirty and actually perform scientific investigations into claims of the paranormal, rather than sitting around talking about investigations performed by others. SciOps will be that group.

Since STARFLEET is based on the fictional Starfleet (the scientific and exploratory service of the United Federation of Planets, as depicted in Star Trek, of course) it stands to reason that we should be actively involved in the advancement of science and its companion, scepticism. And what makes it even more exciting is that it can be done in the name of Star Trek, furthering the SFI mission of pursuing “Gene’s Dream ”.

I’m looking forward to being more than just an armchair scientist and vocal sceptic, and actually getting involved in the real thing. Furthermore, I invite you all to join us in our mission!

My new phone

So I'm posting this from my brand, spanking new Nokia 6680 with 3G, video calling, 2 cameras, Symbian Series 60 operating system, 74mb of storage, Bluetooth and full multimedia capability.

All you fools who don't have one: I pity you.