Events in August–September 2019
- Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Soapbox Special
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Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Soapbox Special
Traditionally, our August talk is a little different: it's four of our members giving shorter talks on topics they're passionate about.
This year, we have:
- Simon's take on the natural fallacy in food health discourse, and why you should love e-numbers after all;
- Leah Callender-Crowe, on the Ask for Evidence campaign, the nature of good and bad evidence, and asking for evidence of claims in every day life;
- ‘Freedom of Information: What you need to know’ from Claire Elliott — Find out more about FOI, how to make a request, the exemptions and the funny side of FOI; and
- Dean Moore discussing the evidence for the health benefits of meditating and optimism, while deconstructing the superstitious and often dangerous claims made about these practices in New Age movements
- Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Lydia Lunch presents Verbal Burlesque
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Lydia Lunch presents Verbal Burlesque
A night of spoken word & music
w/ Official: Lydia Lunch, Louise Woodcock & Slow KnifeVerbal Burlesque combines the dynamic spoken word histrionics of Lydia Lunch, one of the genres most controversial performers plus Louise Woodcock & Slow Knife. This will be a very intimate seated show.
Only 50 tickets available.Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is passionate, confrontational and bold. Whether attacking the patriarchy and their pornographic war mongering, turning the sexual into the political or whispering a love song to the broken hearted, her fierce energy and rapid fire delivery lend testament to her warrior nature. Queen of No Wave, muse of The Cinema of Transgression, writer, musician, poet, spoken word artist and photographer, she has released too many musical projects to tally, has been on tour for decades, has published dozens of articles, half a dozen books and simply refuses to just shut up.Lousie Woodcock
Spirit worker, reiki master, performer/creator and avid non-musician, Woodcock appears in whichever guise suits her purpose and has no time for limitations. Woodcock is a lynchpin of Manchester’s experimental music and art scenes, is a seasoned performer and immersive theatre actor working across venues from Manchester Gallery to pubs to glitzy bars like Albert’s Schloss, performing controversial characters including the infamous trashy glamour puss, Trish Dee. She’s agitated The Fall fans at the request of Mark E Smith and incited public walk-out’s from Manchester Gallery.Slow Knife
Slow knife are the sound of Edgar Allan Poe writing soundtracks to pagan Hammer Horror films with a jazz ensemble. Think Ed Wood and Christopher Lee in the sack with Ken Nordine.Quiz Night–
Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Quiz Night
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Quiz Night
Every Wednesday from 8.30 is quiz night Keiran Lawless.
Test your Knowledge and win cash prizes - Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Matt Tompkins: The Spectacle of Illusion
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Greater Manchester Skeptics Society present: Matt Tompkins: The Spectacle of Illusion
Is seeing believing? Is believing seeing? How can we hope to conduct experiments on things that only exist within our minds, and, on a related note, can scientists ever be trusted to study deception without being deceived themselves? What can scientists learn about the mind from the illusions developed and practiced by professional magicians? Join magician and experimental psychologist Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins, author of The Spectacle of Illusion, for a fascinating talk exploring the psychology of magic.
Everyone’s heard, and most of us have told, a story about an uncanny or supernatural seeming experience. Accounts of wondrous and impossible phenomena can be found around the world throughout recorded history. These extraordinary events often seem to be facilitated by extra-ordinary individuals: sorcerers, spiritual mediums, psychic sensitives. Such phenomena have even been reported under ‘test conditions’, witnessed by scientists—men professionally trained in the practice of empirical observation. To date, such events have not led conventional scientists to embrace the reality of supernatural phenomena- but they have arguably led to scientific breakthroughs how we understand the psychology of illusion.
This talk will feature a mixture of storytelling and magical scientific demonstrations to explore how scientists, past and present, have approached the study of illusion. Matt will discuss how magic played a weird but fundamental role in the in the establishment of psychology as a scientific discipline, and how he and other contemporary researchers have been using magic tricks to create new experiments in order to investigate human memory, perception, and reasoning.