The 54th Meeting of the Skeptics Circle, as done by Mickey Spillane (or someone very much like him)

It's that time again, when the part of the blogosphere that celebrates critical thinking over the usual credulousness that allows dubious stories to spread far and wide meets to examine those stories and claims with a hard-nosed skepticism. And few skeptics, it would seem, are as tough as the narrator of this edition of the Skeptics' Circle, who's now telling his tale over at Action Skeptics (where, I guess, they're trying to take the name of the blog literally):

I've been on my own since the Department cut me loose over the Pendelton incident, when I decked that con-artist "psychic" the chief saddled me with during a murder case. Made no nevermind to me. The suits at the department were all jerks anyway, and I don't want to work at a place where they made me take a liar on a joyride chasing wild geese when lives were at stake. I cleaned out my desk and rented some space with a room above. My cat Loki and I moved in, I arranged the furniture to minimize qi flow, and I called the painter. He made me some very pretty words on the front door: "Jack Bixby, Skeptical Investigator."

Join Akusai for the rest.

Next up is EoR at The Second Sight. EoR has hosted before, with amusing results, and I have high hopes that the next time will be just as good. And, as always, if you're interested in tryng your hand at hosting the Circle yourself, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com. The schedule can be found here, and the guidelines for hosting are here. We'll see if your qi and feng shui are right for the job...

More like this

When we look at a the data for a population+ often the first thing we do is look at the mean. But even if we know that the distribution
I love this question: Why is it warmer in the summer than in the winter (for the Northern hemisphere)? Go ahead and ask your friends. I suppose they will give one of the following likely answers:
Technorati Tags: ddftw, bozos, markcc-screwups
Last week we looked at the organ systems involved in regulation and control of body functions: the nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, we will cover the organ systems that are regulated and controlled.