Simon Singh and the ever growing idiocy of the general public

While I realise that the title to this post is long, it's deservedly so.

SFSoc in association with Astronomy Ireland held a talk in Trinity about his new book Big Bang. (Not to be confused with the other bestselling book The Big Bang.) While I expected the talk to be a certain amount of PR for Singh's new book, I didn't expect Astronomy Ireland to be hawking their wares every five seconds. Out of an hour and a half talk, 20 minutes were spent waiting for the head of Astronomy Ireland to stop talking.

The fact that there would have been no venue for the talk if it wasn't for SFSoc (disclosure: I am a committee member of the SFSoc), was glossed over quite quickly. The fact that many of the audience seemed to have problems in understanding concepts which Singh explained in laymans terms also brings into question what sort of people Astronomy Ireland are accepting money from. (By the sounds and looks of it, everyone and anyone... seriously, if someone wanted to convert from kilometers an SI unit to light years why would you ask an author how to do it?)

On the upside, Singh's talk did more than just advertise his book. He had some pretty good basic information there about the Big Bang theory. He also explained some of the background to the whole Big Bang debate. An electrified gherkin brought applause (come on public, do bright things still interest you that much?!) and he used the power of suggestion to make over 300 people hear the "hidden message" when you play a verse of Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' backwards.

For those interested, the backwards verse is said to contain the words:

oh here's to my sweet satan.
the one who's little path would make me sad,
who's power is satan.
he'll give those with him 666,
there was a little toolshed where he made us suffer,
sad satan.

You can listen to the track both forwards and backwards on Jeff Milner's website.

Enough ranting, I've got projects to do...

...and that