Skepticism
pharyngula | July 9, 2011The town of Bolungarvik, Iceland has been engaged in a lot of public works construction projects, like a new road and building a barrier to protect them from avalanches. Unfortunately, there have been delays and accidents, and they've decided what's causing the problem: Elves. Pissed-off, cranky elves.
Some people pointed the finger of blame on angry elves who had finally snapped. The dynamiting for the town's new avalanche defence barrier comes less than a year after a new road tunnel through the Oshlid hill was completed — neither of which with the prior blessing of the hidden people.…
pharyngula | July 5, 2011I think we've reached the saturation point, so comments are closed on this article. However, I do think I need to link to Rebecca Watson's summary of her recent absurdist travails. Or if you'd rather, try reading Schrödinger's Rapist and be enlightened.
This time, though, really, go over there if you feel the need to comment.
It is interesting that it is the jerk chauvinist skeptics and atheists who have turned Ms Watson into an angry feminist. It's all your fault, bozos.
pharyngula | July 4, 2011Richard Wiseman, the fabulously funny and enlightening skeptical psychologist, has written a book called Paranormality which is a fabulously funny and enlightening dissection of paranormal claims; I got an advance copy because I'm special and I recommend it highly, and so do Skepchicks. However, something strange happened. Wiseman is British, and he published in the UK, but when he tried to get it picked up in the US, publishers balked.
The book has done well in the UK and has been bought by publishers in lots of other countries. However, the major American publishers were reluctant to…
gregladen | July 2, 2011Good morning.
I'm afraid to go to the SkepchiCON party tonight because I might get into a conversation with someone and since it will be loud, and we will have to shout to be heard, we will be shouting at each other.
At the "evolution from the experts" panel, I want to spend more time talking about what Evolution Is rather than what happened in the news over the last year, but I'm afraid that will bore the audience.
Despite my deep commitment to the study of evolution and defense of evolution-related teaching in schools, I'm starting to realize that global climate change is more…
pharyngula | July 2, 2011There is an odd attitude in our culture that it's acceptable for men to proposition women in curious ways — Rebecca Watson recently experienced this in an elevator in Dublin, and I think this encounter Ophelia Benson had reflects the same attitude: women are lower status persons, and we men, as superior beings, get to ask things of them. Also as liberal, enlightened people, of course, we will graciously accede to their desires, and if they ask us to stop hassling them, we will back off, politely. Isn't that nice of us?
It's not enough. Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted…
pharyngula | June 28, 2011The Atlantic published a rather contemptible apologetic for alternative quackery titled "The Triumph of New-Age Medicine, which basically declared victory for the altie wackaloons. The way it did this was devious, and reminded me so much of creationist tactics. First, it declares that "mainstream medicine itself is failing"; it doesn't really have any evidence of this, it just declares that modern medicine is built around the infectious disease model, and that it hasn't solved all health problems. Familiar stuff, hey? If a science can't explain every jot & tittle of every detail of every…
pharyngula | June 26, 2011Edinburgh will be hosting Skeptics on the Fringe in August — three solid weeks of skeptical events. Danger! All of your illusions will be scoured away, the flamethrower of reason will turn all your generous delusions to ash, the bones of reality will be unclothed and exposed…I expect people will come staggering out of Scotland at the end of August with eyes like lasers, burning with the unholy light of truth unmasked. Someone might want to alert the local fire department.
aardvarchaeology | June 23, 2011I don't like Falun Gong, which I regard as a crazy manipulative cult. And I don't like the Chinese government, which I regard as a repressive capitalist dictatorship. These two organisations, in turn, hate each other. And it looks like someone in the Chinese government is trying to use me to disseminate anti-FG propaganda.
This morning I received two letters from people claiming to be FG members trying to convert me. Neither letter is very long. Both contain loudly racist statements about black people and "mix-blood". It is a matter of public record that my wife is Chinese and that we have a…
pharyngula | June 16, 2011Registration is now open for Skepticon IV, to be held in Springfield, Missouri on 19-20 November. I don't know how you'll be able to afford it — it still has that extravagant price tag of $0. It's a fun event! And if you get bored, you can always hop on a bus and go to Branson, instead!
pharyngula | June 15, 2011As one of those geezers in his grey, tired, wizened 50s, I'm torn between the cranky get-offa-my-lawn attitude and a patronizing bless-their-little-hearts when I see all these young'uns romping about at meetings nowadays. And the internet is even worse: look, it's a literate 13 year old atheist and a hardnosed 16 year old skeptic!
I'm going to have to combine my views — it gets easier as senility looms — and kick their little hearts around on my lawn, I guess.
pharyngula | May 31, 2011I'm jealous. Jen McCreight is on the Savage Love podcast. She chews him out for a lack of skepticism, too.
gregladen | May 26, 2011It is easy to make fun of other people with whom we disagree, but when it comes down to it, how do we really know when we are being smart about something vs. getting it all wrong? Gut feeling? Our friends agree with us? Some smart person tells us what to think? This is a problem that as plagued humanity since the first time anyone tried to establish ground rules for leaving flint chips around the camp where our unshodden Neanderthals brothers and sisters, who came by to visit now and then, would step on them1.
Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing by Swarthmore Professors…
pharyngula | May 18, 2011Author Annie Jacobsen has a new book that finally reveals the truly true truth about the so-called UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico. And here is the answer: Roswell Martians May Have Been Deformed Nazi Kids Sent by Stalin.
It explains so much.
The craft, she writes, wasn't an alien spaceship, as many have since theorized, nor was it a weather balloon, as the U.S. military alleged in its clumsy cover story. It was, according to Jacobsen, a Nazi-inspired Soviet spy plane with Cyrillic letters embossed on the hull, crewed by malformed adolescents, two of whom survived the crash.
Stalin used…
aardvarchaeology | May 18, 2011
Marabouts are West African con men & fortune tellers who market their services in Europe with little flyers printed on coloured paper. In France, there's an ongoing collectors' craze for these notes. I found one under my windshield wiper the other day. I translate:
Mr Seeki
Fortune teller, international marabout
Born with spiritual power. I am known worldwide. I can solve all your problems e.g. love, health, family problems, business, legal issues, financial transactions, weight loss. You learn how to protect yourself and your family from the enemy and how you get your near and dear…
pharyngula | May 15, 2011I can tell it's going to be even worse than usual. They're going to have another Global Atheist Convention, which I predict will be even bigger and more successful than the first one, and now I'm getting requests to plug other skeptical events in Melbourne, as if the kangaroos and drop-bears who will attend that sort of thing need even more recognition of their ungodly superiority over us gullible Americans.
It's going to be a long 11 months, isn't it? And even when it's over, Oz will be smirking in that superior way over how they were able to pull off such a grand event.
Hey! How about if…
pharyngula | May 6, 2011Hey, Copenhagen, there's a Skeptics in the Pub starting up in your town. It was inspired by the big Gods and Politics conference there last year, so you know these events do have some effect — they can help get local activists get started.
pharyngula | May 1, 2011You know I'm coming to the big city in less than two weeks, right? I'll be at the Anti-Superstition Bash on Friday, May 13, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM at the Corinthian Yacht Club, in Essington, PA. You know you want to go, if for nothing else for the snooty thrill of being able to tell your friends you have an engagement at the Yacht Club to attend that evening.
I'll do my best to dispel any bad luck you might be experiencing right now, replacing it instead with chance events.
aardvarchaeology | April 28, 2011Bertil Albrektson is a very cool Bible scholar. A former professor of Old Testament Exegetics in Turku, Finland, he was on the most recent Swedish Bible translation commission despite being an atheist. His ground-breaking little 1967 book History and the Gods. An essay on the idea of historical events as divine manifestations in the ancient Near East and in Israel was recently re-issued, and I read it for the first time. Its basic message is that on two important points, Hebrew monotheism is not as dissimilar to other religions of the Ancient Near East as had previously been argued. Good…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011Oh, look what's on the pharmacy shelves! It's "medicine" for cute little babies! Everyone loves babies, and we want them to gurgle and coo and be happy, so when their widdle tummies make them cranky, we give them a little medicine to make them feel better.
Only…Brauer is marketing homeopathic "medicine" to kids — it's not going to do anything. Those colicky babies are going to suffer and continue to cry and cry and cry, and the only change will be that Brauer will be a little richer.
Brauer profits off the pain of children, and offers nothing in return.
If you use advertising that exploits…