Occasionally, something interesting happens in an eastern city that is not NYC. Very occasionally. But I caught wind of a new scheme thought up by the curators at Harvard’s Natural History Museum to capitalize on Harry Potter mania and to teach kids about the natural world. The Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt is a clever way to [...]
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I predict John Edward and his buddies will capitalize on this study. Hey! It’s great news! According to a study in the Daily Mail, psychic powers exist and we can see into the future. Wow! Although apparently the effects must be really small because no one seems to have been able to predict that 9-11 was [...]
I’d already written an angry letter to the network back when the show first aired but I decided to follow the Skepchick example and help this campaign by writing a second letter to the network. Here’s what I wrote A&E:
 Believe it or not, as an atheist I don't see this as an irrefutable text. As far as atheists are concerned, I think I come off being rather tame. I have never suggested that religion is some horrible institution that should be burned to the ground and I have been quite outspoken with my fellow skeptics about my belief that there are forms of belief which cannot ever be debunked through skepticism. That said, creationism bothers me on multiple levels. Last week, I wound up spending an inordinate amount of time arguing with a creationist on this very blog and I came to the conclusion that reactive defense of evolution was not going to win an argument with someone who refuses to look at evidence. So I’ve decided to go on the attack on this one. My reason is simple: whether there is a god or not, the specific God of Christian Creationism is logically impossible. … continue reading this entry. What me rot? You can use your critical thinking skills to analyze a broad amount of information. You can take this critical analysis one step further and conduct simple experiments to gather your own evidence. No, really. I mean YOU! Because that is exactly what blogger J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, at the food blog Serious Eats did. Not [...]
She was writing about the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly, featuring an overweight couple who apparently met in a support group for the overweight (I’ve never watched, or heard of, the show before this article so pardon any misunderstanding I have about it’s plot). She went on to write that obesity is something people can control if they put their minds to it. Overall she was critical of any messages in the media that might normalize obesity out of concern for rising health care costs for illnesses associated with being overweight and/or inactive. … continue reading this entry. What do you write on the Critical Thinking chalkboard? Driving back from the debate on Friday, Steve and I got into talking about critical thinking. I don’t remember how it happened. Talk about the debate moved to discussing what I wished I’d been able to say in the debate, to “here’s what I think skeptics believe [...]
On Friday I did something that was fairly new for me. I’ve been online writing about my opinions for… years. I’ve been getting into random arguments with strangers for… years. What I’d never done before was get up in front of a room full of Christians and try to represent an atheistic and highly skeptical viewpoint. And now I have! The people that ran the event say they’ll have it up online by the end of the week, when it is I’ll give everybody the link and if you want to see me with my ratty blond beard being told that I’m representing the New York City Skeptics (I told them that I wasn’t a representative of NYCS, but just a member, but they didn’t always listen) and saying why I don’t believe in God, you can check it out to your hearts content. For today, I’m going to do what I can to tell you about the event, say what I took from it, where I think I could have done better. Basically, I’m going to use this blog that I hope you tend to enjoy as my diary. Aren’t you lucky? … continue reading this entry.  An approximation of the "hockey stick graph" (which is under copyright) Adding to the non-stop scientific controversy surrounding global warming research, the guy in charge of investigating the quality of the other guy’s work is now being investigated for the quality of his work. Confused? Why would that be? The work of Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley et al. that produced the now epic figure depicting that global temperature has risen dramatically in the second half of the 20th century (dubbed the “hockey stick graph” because of the shape of the data) has been under fire since its publication in its first incarnation in Nature in 1998.[1] Some statisticians questioned the techniques used by the hockey stick researchers (I’m sure if Mann and Bradley ever had any interest in the sport it has now been smashed) to estimate early temperatures and called into question the conclusions drawn in the original paper.[2] … continue reading this entry.  Beat me, Alom! Beat me! This morning, Page sent me an article from “The Guardian” where Alom Shaha complains about certain activities perpetrated by skeptics. Alom spends the first third of his article making obvious strawmen about skeptics, attempting to get you and I pissed off before telling us that’s what he’s doing and actually starting to put together some sort of argument. I have no idea if he actually means anything said in the first third of the essay or not so I’m going to do the adult thing here and leave it be. For the rest of Alom’s essay, he goes into what he sees as failings of the skeptical movement, and some are valid points, but I can’t help but feel there is an unintended irony to the whole article. Alom’s article points out a number of areas that skeptics like to talk about as problems without often posing solutions, and Alom winds up positing not a single viable solution. … continue reading this entry. |
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The blogosphere and comment threads were a buzz last week over