The inestimable Sir Terence Pratchett of Ankh-Morpork is spearheading a new competition to find an unpublished writer of speculative fiction and to lead them towards all the glorious riches that go with publication – literally in this case, since an advance of £20,000 is part of the deal.

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This is the second part of a post covering the BHA’s conference on humanism, philosophy and the arts held at Conway Hall last weekend.

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And so to London last weekend for the latest in the British Humanist Association’s series of study days, events that are always well worth attending and which should definitely figure on your future list of entertainment and diversion.

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“I support the correctly used apostrophe with that kind of fierce emotional investment in an irrelevance that most people reserve for football” – David Mitchell.

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From video-sharing site Vimeo, here are a series of webcam captures of performance artist Marina Abramovic’s exhibition The Artist is Present which was performed for three months between March and May 2010 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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Today’s Wikipedia Article of the Day is a little gem.

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Here in the headquarters of the Constitutional Monarchy of Koningen der Nacht we are very much enjoying a new web-based game called Echo Bazaar, set in a version of London that has fallen through the earth and into Hell.

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Be very careful about what you gamble your immortal soul on. That is all.

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On Friday evening we looked up into the sky and saw a bright twinkly dot rising in the south – the International Space Station was overhead.

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Here’s a nice video from the Richard Dawkins Foundation featuring the philosopher AC Grayling. He’s explaining why the policy of ‘teaching the controversy’ in those areas of education that some would like to make controversial, even though they are really not at all controversial, does nothing but devalue education.

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See what’s been worth reading today.

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Now, how did we first come across the Cybraphon project? Was it via Radio Riel, that noted purveyor of steampunk music? I believe it must have been. Anyway, fresh from its BAFTA success, the robot is now collaborating with guest composers. The following video is a tango composed by Bernd Rest.

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From today, if you want to criticise religion in Ireland in a way that its adherents choose to find offensive, you might find yourself paying 25,000 euros for the privilege. To highlight this regressive new blasphemy law, the Atheist Ireland blog has posted a list of 25 blasphemous quotes and asking bloggers to republish them. So here we go.

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After a period when it looked like scammers had got bored with the 419, here it is back in abundance. We have received five or six of these in the course of a couple of weeks, after months of being free of them.

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Interestingly, the classic 419 scam does not appear to have had its day yet. This fine example dropped into the inbox a few days ago.

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One of those gloomy newspapers, the ones that always seem to think that the end of the world is nigh, the ones you don’t read if you have a glass-half-full sort of outlook, reckons that Bonfire Night is on its last legs.

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A thought-provoking experience on Wednesday when, for work purposes, I am required to attend a motorsports event. Without going into too much detail, it’s not a race, but a sponsors’ event, even though it does involve taking cars out on track. However, even though there’s no racing happening, everyone present has so much invested in the occasion that it’s almost painful.

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I wouldn’t blame you if you were put off by the title of this post. After all, it’s a pretty moot point which people will continue to argue over, disagree about and use as a subject for television documentaries probably for decades to come. And whenever these discussions kick off, Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane always gets mentioned, much to the annoyance of those people who don’t rate it very highly.

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Last weekend the British Humanist Association held one of its regular conferences at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, London. The topic was Evolutionary theory: is this all there is? and, as usual with these events, there was a distinguished list of academics on hand to discuss questions relating to biology, psychology and philosophy. Here’s my (inevitably subjective) summary of what went on and what we got out of attending.

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See what’s been worth reading today.

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