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• Third Sunday Meeting

  • When
    12/16/2018
  •  
    10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
  • Location
    Pellissippi State Community College, Hardin Valley Road

  Navigating the Family/Friend Dynamic during the holidays

  The discussion will center around the difficulties of diplomacy during holiday gatherings where many of the other guests hold differing world views.

  Come enjoy or Bah, Humbug.
  

  
  

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• Adopt-a-Highway

  • When
    01/12/2019
  •  
    1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Burger King on Lovell Road at Pellissippi Parkway

  Wear sturdy shoes and gloves and bring a "picker-upper" if you have one. Bug spray is a good idea. Meet at the Burger King at the Lovell Road exit off Pellissippi Parkway.  All volunteers must watch this video before working the roadway.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAnxSIUP7eY&feature=youtu.be
  

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• Skeptic Book Club

  • When
    01/13/2019
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Books-a-Million, 8513 Kingston Pike, Knoxville 37919

  Killers of the Flower Moon : The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI 

  In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
  Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. 
  As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

  
  

  
  

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• Skeptic Book Club

  • When
    02/10/2019
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Books-a-Million, 8513 Kingston Pike, Knoxville 37919

  How Physics Makes Us Free 
  by Jenann Ismael 

  In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of the universe. 
  Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes of an important decision and it seems like the scales of fate hang in the balance, that your decision is a foregone conclusion? Can it really be that everything you have done and everything you ever will do is determined by facts that were in place long before you were born? This problem is one of the staples of philosophical discussion. It is discussed by everyone from freshman in their first philosophy class, to theoretical physicists in bars after conferences. And yet there is no topic that remains more unsettling, and less well understood. 
  If you want to get behind the facade, past the bare statement of determinism, and really try to understand what physics is telling us in its own terms, read this book. The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves. The result is a vision that is abstract, alien, illuminating, and-Ismael argues-affirmative of most of what we all believe about our own freedom. Written in a jargon-free style, How Physics Makes Us Free provides an accessible and innovative take on a central question of human existence.
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• Skeptic Book Club

  • When
    03/10/2019
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Books-a-Million, 8513 Kingston Pike, Knoxville 37919

  The Distracted Mind : Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World 
  by Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen 
  

  Why our brains aren't built for media multitasking, and how we can learn to live with technology in a more balanced way.

  "Brilliant and practical, just what we need in these techno-human times."--Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart

  Most of us will freely admit that we are obsessed with our devices. We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask--read work email, reply to a text, check Facebook, watch a video clip. Talk on the phone, send a text, drive a car. Enjoy family dinner with a glowing smartphone next to our plates. We can do it all, 24/7 Never mind the errors in the email, the near-miss on the road, and the unheard conversation at the table. In The Distracted Mind, Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen--a neuroscientist and a psychologist--explain why our brains aren't built for multitasking, and suggest better ways to live in a high-tech world without giving up our modern technology.

  The authors explain that our brains are limited in their ability to pay attention. We don't really multitask but rather switch rapidly between tasks. Distractions and interruptions, often technology-related--referred to by the authors as "interference"--collide with our goal-setting abilities. We want to finish this paper/spreadsheet/sentence, but our phone signals an incoming message and we drop everything. Even without an alert, we decide that we "must" check in on social media immediately.

  Gazzaley and Rosen offer practical strategies, backed by science, to fight distraction. We can change our brains with meditation, video games, and physical exercise; we can change our behavior by planning our accessibility and recognizing our anxiety about being out of touch even briefly. They don't suggest that we give up our devices, but that we use them in a more balanced way.

  
  

  
  

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• Skeptic Book Club

  • When
    04/14/2019
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Books-a-Million, 8513 Kingston Pike, Knoxville 37919

  Letters from the Earth 

  Available as a free Ebook
  by Mark Twain 
  

  Letters from the Earth is a posthumously published work of celebrated American author Mark Twain (1835–1910) collated by Bernard DeVoto.^[1] It comprises essays written during a difficult time in Twain's life (1904–09), when he was deeply in debt and had recently lost his wife and one of his daughters.^[2]The content concerns morality and religion and strikes a sarcastic — Twain's own term throughout the book — tone. Initially, another of his daughters, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939,^[2]probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted"^[3]view of her father. Henry Nash Smithhelped change her position in 1960.^[3]Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant.^[2][4] She was also influenced to release the papers by her annoyance with Soviet reports that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States.^[2] The papers were selected, edited and sequenced for the book in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto.^[2]

  
  

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