After several months of sometimes painful deliberation, I can no longer maintain the pretense that Grassroots Skeptics continues to serve a useful purpose. Rather than allow it to founder, I’d prefer that it make a reasonably graceful exit. As of June 15, updates to the website and our various social media outlets will officially end. When the URL comes up for renewal, I will allow it to lapse.

If you have contributed content to Grassroots Skeptics, in the form of a blog post or other resource, you are welcome to reuse it for your own purposes. If you’re not sure how to locate something that you’ve submitted, please leave a comment or contact me by email, and I will try to help you retrieve it.

I want to thank all of the skeptics and organizers who offered their support and encouragement. Thank you to everyone who shared our posts, joined our contact lists, suggested a resource, submitted a guest blog post, or signed up to participate in our Speakers Bureau. Extra special thanks are owed to Jen Myers, Patrick Jerome and Joey Haban; their contribution as volunteers was immeasurable by any existing instrument.

Finally, thank you to all those people who are still doing good work, sharing the values of reason and critical thinking. I hope that your efforts are rewarded with meaningful change.

Not everyone got off so easily. But with the power of the interwebz combined, we can help! So keep reading…

Louisa County in Virginia is a lovely, mostly rural area between Charlottesville and Richmond. The 5.8 magnitude earthquake on August 23rd was centered near the town of Mineral, causing damage to local homes and businesses. Two public schools in the county have been condemned and closed, and I’ve seen signs at my doctor’s office advertising to collect umbrellas for students who have to walk between trailers for their classes. THEN there was hurricane Irene. And recently, there was a tornado spotted and recorded in the county. Though the earthquake did by far the most damage, you can say that the location has felt the trifecta of Mother Nature’s rage.

A few weeks ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Louisa County’s request for money to rebuild. Residents have been relying on the generosity of neighbors, but that’s just not enough. If the quake was felt all over
the East Coast and discussed all over the world, I figure that we can turn it around and do something to help the area rebuild. Turns out, there is already a foundation set up to take donations and distribute the money to local residents who cannot cover the costs of home repairs, and to help out the local schools.

So, let’s all be neighbors here. This is my challenge to you. If you are reading this, go over there and donate a few bucks. I know, I KNOW money is tight and everything is being occupied in protest. But look, did you feel the earthquake? Did you talk about the earthquake? Were you amused by pictures of fallen lawn chairs? Well, consider this a small payment for the distraction and, dare I say, entertainment for that week.

But wait, there’s more!

Donate via the website by Novmeber 5th and send me a confirmation of your donation of $10 or more and I’ll give you a virtual hug! What’s that you ask? Well, it’s like a hug, only not the same as in real life. But I can hug a stuffed animal (might be a DSBK mascot, might be Ambien turtle, could be something else…) for you and send you photographic evidence of that hug. I figure, I’m not an artist or a singer or award winning podcast host, but at least I can be pretty damn adorable when I try.

Also, the very generous Ray Sanders at Dear Astronomer has donated a Galileoscope to give away to one lucky person randomly drawn from the donators. What?! You get to help and can get a telescope? Awesome.

So, go to http://louisacares.com/donate.php. Donate. Send me proof of a $10 or more donation at nicole [at] noisyastronomer [dot] com and I’ll hug you. Virtually. You can crop or block out your personal information, as long as there is a confirmation number and total in there somewhere. If you already donated when I tweeted the link, that counts as well! Offer for the Galileoscope drawing is good until November 5, 2011! I’m happy to give hugs, real and virtual, any time.

I live in an area where ley lines, alternative medicine and vaccine scares are all taken terribly seriously. Until two years ago, I didn’t know anything about skepticism, and my colleagues still refer to SitP as my cynics’ group.

Nearly a year ago, I saw a shout-out on Twitter from one of my friends who I met at Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub. He let me know that some locals were looking at setting up a SitP in Cheltenham so I went along to see if we could, because Birmingham is a long drive on a weeknight. There I met up with four others, who became the founding members of Cheltenham Skeptics. We asked a local speaker and found a venue, which was surprisingly hard. Who knew that Cheltenham had such a thriving skittle league?

Being in Cheltenham, we’re very aware of the different festivals held there — Science, Literature, Music and others. The Science Festival seemed an ideal opportunity to run some really good events, with some amazing speakers who would just happen to be in town. Will, one of the other co-organisers, contacted the festival and got a really positive response. It took some time, but once their line-up was finalised, we met with them and went through available speakers, planning an event each day of the festival, and two on the Saturday. Then we were advertising, twittering like mad, arranging equipment and booking the venue.

The week of the festival was hard work. Both Will and I work full time and the other helpers for Cheltenham Skeptics — Chris, Abby and Mike — were fabulous at supporting us. Our speakers were all friendly and enthused, and the majority of the equipment was there when we needed it (if only just in some cases). We had the Festival of the Spoken Nerd, Ray Tallis, Jim Al-Khalili, Helen Keen, Dean Burnett and Harry Witchel, all of whom were fabulous. We had the launch of the new Cheltenham Skeptics’ T-shirt, courtesy of Neil.

We’re already talking about next year, and the Literary festival. All very exciting and I hope Cheltenham Skeptics in the Pub goes from strength to strength.

Schell and Atlanta Skeptics organizer Maria Walters, along with labor organizer Trevor Zimmerman, have compiled their techniques into a Skeptical Activism Campaign Manual. It will help you identify skeptical issues that will benefit from activism, set goals, plan strategies, communicate with the media and your target audience, and evaluate your results. If you’re interested in taking your work as a skeptic to the next level of effectiveness, the manual is a must-have resource. Download your free copy now!

California:

Reason For Reason
Norman Clevenger
http://reason4reason.org

Florida:

Orlando Skeptics
Kelley Clark
http://www.meetup.com/OrlandoSkeptics/

Your eyes are probably rolling right now. Skepticism and ethics? WTF do they have to do with each other? After all, skepticism is about evaluating claims about the way things are. It’s about promoting science and the scientific method as the most reliable way of learning about nature and the universe. It’s about facts and evidence, critical thinking and reason.

Ethics, on the other hand, is about beliefs, values, and morals – right and wrong, good and evil. These are judgments that people make, and science can’t tell us what those judgments should be. It’s about pointless navel-gazing and endless arguments over “accommodation” vs. “confrontation,” or whether or not we should be “dickish.” Right?

No. Or at least, not completely.

We call ourselves skeptics, but there are people out there – moon-hoaxers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists – who also call themselves skeptics. What distinguishes our brand of skepticism from theirs is the value we place on evidence and the belief we have in scientific inquiry for getting at the truth. Like it or not, those are our ethics. As skeptics, our other beliefs should be subject to change because our belief in science as a method trumps them.

But as skeptics, we also know how hard it is to change people’s beliefs, including our own. We’re humans, and our brains don’t come pre-wired for skepticism. We like certainty. We like simple, black-and-white answers. We have heroes who can do no wrong fighting villains who can do no right. It’s us, the “good guys,” against them, the “bad guys.” No one is immune to these cognitive biases, not even our most famous skeptics.

At the risk of sounding like Captain Conundrum: believing in skepticism requires skepticism of our beliefs. That’s why we created Skepticism and Ethics – as a place for skeptics to share, discuss, and critically examine what we do, and how and why we do it. Skeptics have no ethical code handed down from on high, so it’s up to us to determine what we think it should be, and to help each other in upholding our skeptical ideals. We won’t have black-and-white answers; we won’t always agree on what’s right. But skeptics should be used to that.

Check out the articles and provide your comments. If you would like to contribute an article or essay, contact us at admin@skepticismandethics.com. Help us get the conversation going!

We’re proud to announce that Grassroots Skeptics founder K.O. Myers will be appearing at LogiCON, an event celebrating a love of science and critical thinking for everyone. He’ll be participating in a panel titled How to Convince Your Friends and Family That Science Is Awesome, and a talk on Critical Thinking in Everyday Life.

In addition, LogiCON features members of the Grassroots Skeptics Speakers Bureau. Skeptically Speaking host Desiree Schell will moderate the Science Is Awesome panel, as well as a panel on Evidence Based Parenting. Cognitive psychologist Barbara Drescher will appear on the parenting panel, and will present a talk on causal inference.

LogiCON takes place at the Telus World of Science, in Edmonton, Alberta, on Saturday, April 9th. For more information and to register, visit events.logicon.ca.

California:

The Godless Liberal Social Society
Frank Minero
http://www.godlessliberals.com

United Kingdom:

Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub
Giles Wendes
http://portsmouth.skepticsinthepub.org

Ear Candles Are Illegal!
Jamie Williams
http://www.earcandlesareillegal.net

There Should Be A Sign
http://shellity.blogspot.com

The Voice of Reason
Andrew Carruth
http://www.god-proof.com/blog

Parenting Within Reason
Colin Thornton
http://www.parentingwithinreason.com/

Righteous Indignation
The team
http://www.ripodcast.co.uk

Scopes Monkey Choir: Music in a Rational Universe
http://scopesmonkeychoir.com