skeptical skepticism
gregladen | December 14, 2009Imagine the following scenario. Two guys are walking down the street, in different cities. Guy A has two PhDs, one in quantum physics with a focus on dimensionality dynamics, the other in astrophysics with a focus on relativistic aspects of gravity and black holes. She has published dozens of peer reviewed papers on both topics and is a brilliant mathematician. Guy B never took a physics class but yesterday he finished reading large parts of The Elegant Universe. Suddenly, at the same moment, they each have an idea (they do not have the same idea ... they have different ideas) about how…
gregladen | December 10, 2009I mean, you might be, but I'm certainly not going to take your word for it....
I have an email from a blogeague (that's a colleague in the blogosphere) asking for clarification on the use of the word Skeptic in relation to climate change. This is a person very much involved in ocean conservation who had understood the word "skeptic" to mean a person who "does not believe in" anthropogenic global warming, but I had used the term in a blog post to describe a person who is not an AGW denialist. We have a commenter on this site who seems to have been pretending to have just woken up one recent…
gregladen | November 6, 2009First off, Major Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter is not dead. He's in custody, wounded. Interesting how he was dead for much of the day yesterday. You'd think they'd get that straight.
Second, Hasan is not os "Muslim Descent." There is no such thing. Islam is a religion. He is a Palestinian American.
Third, even though it is true that Fort Hood is the largest military base in the world, it is not (necessarily) true that it has "suffered a disproportionate share of losses" in the Iraq and Afghani wars. It is bigger. It has more. Proportionate means you adjust for size, stupid newsman.…
gregladen | October 19, 2009In case you are interested, the conversation with Desiree Schell, Omar Mouallem, and me talking about "Getting Noticed" on Skeptically Speaking is in podcast form. Here.
gregladen | October 16, 2009Omar Mouallem, Desiree Schell and Greg Laden (that's me) had a very interesting conversation Wednesday night about how skepticism gets noticed. Through comedy, music, blogging, scientific studies, and other outlets, how do we bring people on board? We decided blogging was irrelevant but that music was cool, we came down divided on what some call "attention grabbing stunts" like blasphemy day and killing crackers. And we are going to finish our conversation tonight, on Skeptically Speaking Episode 29.
Be there or be pie! (And we all know pie are square).
gregladen | September 24, 2009Are women more likely to be stupid/gullible? That seems to be the assumption that the ungenerous of us might make when considering the 7% gap between men and women when it comes to religious affiliation....
... that was discussed recently in an ARIS poll. Earlier, I had pointed to Stephanie Zvan's comments on this, and now I see that Pandagon is all over it too. I just hope the ladies at Pandagon don't just buy the bill of goods or fall for the old snake oil routine or anything.
gregladen | September 23, 2009Are women less skeptical than men? Follow that link to find Stephanie Zvan's analysis of the recently reported study that is making its way around the Internet. Stephanie seems to buy into the study uncritically, you know, like chicks tend to do ...... NOT!