Skepticblog

As some of you may know, earlier this year I made three pilot episodes of a new web video series called inFact. The idea was to take the content from Skeptoid and repackage it for delivery to a much broader audience. If you’re wondering what the heck brand of paint I was sniffing to imagine I might have time in my schedule to make a weekly video series, you are on the right track. Of course I don’t have time, and don’t expect to find it any time soon. Video takes an order of magnitude more time and money to produce than an audio-only podcast like Skeptoid.

Therefore, the only way to produce inFact is to take time away from my regular professional career as a consulting computer scientist. This is the kind of career change that I’m looking to make anyway, to become of a full-time science journalist and skeptical outreach professional. But being the family breadwinner, I can only make such a change when there is sufficient money in the game. (continue reading…)

I have been saying for years that a) most UFOs are simply misidentified mundane phenomena (satellites, meteors, balloons, Venus, weird clouds, even the Moon) and that 2) if they were real, astronomers — who spend a lot more time looking at the sky than your average person — should be reporting most of them.

My musings on this have been twisted and distorted by UFO folks — shocker! — even though I’ve been pretty clear about what I would count as evidence. But now we may have a way to cut through the garbage. A new website has been started for professional and amateur astronomers to report Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. I rather like this new UAP acronym, since it avoids the UFO/flying saucer baggage. Anyway, it was set up as part of IYA 2009 to help astronomers report things in the sky they may not immediately understand. Better yet, it has links to handy guides that will help people who might otherwise misidentify normal things like sundogs and other weather phenomena.
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Hey 9/11 Truthers, CNN is reporting that al Qaeda just took credit for the Northwest Airlines terrorist attack:

Be prepared to suffer because the killing is coming and we prepared you men who love death just as you love life and by God’s permission, we will come to you with more things that you have never seen before. Because, as you kill, you will be killed and tomorrow is coming soon. The martyrdom brother was able to reach his objective with the grace of God but due to a technical fault, the full explosion did not take place.

—al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Still think that al Qaeda did not orchestrate 9/11? Still think this is all an “inside job” by the Bush administration? Just who do you think Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab worked for? George Bush? Abdulmutallab’s own father ratted him out after he was radicalized by Muslim extremists — was that all part of the “inside job” as well? What was that sewn up in his underwear, the same superthermite that Bush operatives used to bring down the World Trade Center buildings with planted explosive devices?

Will someone from the 9/11 Truth camp please wake up and accept the fact that when al Qaeda takes credit for 9/11, says that they would do it again, and then tries, we should take them at their word.

Sherlock Holmes has always been a favorite fictional character of mine. He is a deeply flawed character, and that is likely part of his appeal and popularity. But mostly, at his core, he is a profoundly rational character, combining impeccable logic, keen observation and attention to detail, and an astounding fund of knowledge.

I doubt there is a fictional character more famous than Holmes for his towering intellect.

Like any fan, I approach a new imagining of a favorite hero with some trepidation – and that is how I approached the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

There is simply no way for me to discuss this movie without massive spoilers. So do not read on if you have not seen the movie and are planning to. I do recommend the movie – so go see it, and then come back and read the rest of this post.

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Some of the female Cosmonauts. The fat bonehead in the white shirt is Sergei Korolev, who led the charge to discredit the women and end their program.

So I figured out what I’m going to talk about in Berlin next week. At The Amaz!ng Meeting 7 this year in Las Vegas, I was lucky enough to give a 20-minute talk on the last day, and the topic was the Missing Cosmonauts. It’s been one of the most popular episodes of my Skeptoid podcast, and it concerns the urban legend that a number of Soviet Cosmonauts died in space, on flights that never made it into the history books, and who were subsequently erased from history. These tales are based almost entirely upon interpretations of some recordings made by two young Italian brothers who tuned their radio receivers in to pick up Soviet and American radio traffic during Cold War era spaceflights. (continue reading…)

So there’s a video of actress Jessica Simpson which is burning up (hahahahahahaha!) the internet right now. Her friend gave her an ear candle for Christmas, and she’s using it in the video:

I love this video, for a lot of reasons. First, as should be obvious to anyone who prefers not to set their head on fire, ear candling is dangerous and ineffective. Unless you’re trying to set your head on fire. Then it’s very effective.
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Black Peter: The Anti-Claus

Just a quick wish for happiness from me to all of you. Is a skeptic allowed to dare make such a thing as a wish? Can happiness be a possibility in a world where there is such an overwhelming mess to be skeptical about? How can any of us sleep at night when huge masses of people say they talk to dead people or have x-ray vision? It’s almost unbearable. If you are like me, we have no other choice. The sand has no place for our kind to bury our heads. 

I don’t have a lot to say this week. It’s been over a year now since I started writing at this blog. It was October, 2008 when I began to put my thoughts down here. In some ways many things have happened and in other ways - many things have not happened. The Skeptologists which launched this project is still searching for the right foothold among the wilderness that is television. I still hold out hope.

When I see with my own eyes all the claims and counter-claims, all the cons and dodges and totality of what we have to face as incoming bullcrap from the world of woo, it seems like a never-ending uphill battle. Can a skeptic have such a thing as faith?

I don’t know what else to call it. Is is perseverance? Is it folly? Is it just a blind feeling that things will get better? The slope keeps getting more slippery with no light at the end of the tunnel. Find your own light in 2010 and let it shine brightly.

So while you are toasting in the New Year and sitting in front of a roaring fire with friends or family, please take a moment to stop, take a deep cleansing breath and be of good cheer.

We are growing. 
There is hope, whatever that may mean  to each of you.

Peace,

Mark Edward

The entertainment and media world is in a very sorry state. I have not been immune to that. While I share those issues with the rest of my peers, I’ve been working insane hours to make sure that the supporting production company for The Skeptologists, Truth Hurts, and other programs remains in good shape. I have had to allow this weekly task to fall away recently while I tended to those other matters. Of course you all have been in the greatest of hands without me.

I’m not the skeptical storehouse of information and vast material that my cohorts of SkepticBlog seem to be. My area of expertise is mainly in the world of production and media, so I honestly had begun finding it very difficult to find subjects that I felt would be entertaining or relevant to our loyal readers. Once I finished up my reflective journey about how we created and shot the Skeptologists pilot, I felt like I had just ran out of material. Rather than vamping on subjects that I know far less about, I decided to take a break and re-evaluate. Kudos to the other bloggers who have continued without fail through the year, they have steadfastly committed their much more precious time to their weekly penning.

Which brings me to where I’m at now: Looking towards the beginning of the new year, and some exciting projects and prospects. (continue reading…)

NASA visualization of arctic surface warming trends. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Larry Stock, Robert Gersten

As many skeptics know by now, legendary skeptical trailblazer James Randi set off a firestorm last week with two Swift blog posts about global warming. His first post carried his strong suspicion that consensus science on climate change is incorrect, while his followup post wondered “whether we can properly assign the cause to anthropogenic influences.”

Skeptical bloggers were swift to respond. Critics (including PZ Myers, Orac, Sean Carroll, and James Hrynyshyn) chastised Randi for speaking outside his domain expertise; for dissenting from current consensus science; and for lending his name to the disreputable “Oregon Petition Project.” Others, like Phil Plait, corrected Randi while sensibly reminding us that “anyone, everyone, is capable of making mistakes.” And, inevitably, global warming deniers seized upon the event. (One headline, at Britain’s Telegraph.co.uk, gleefully crowed “James Randi forced to recant by Warmist thugs for showing wrong kind of scepticism.”)

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I know this is old news – but I finally had an opportunity to watch Expelled over the weekend. It was on Showtime, so I could see it without giving any money to the producers.

I have read many articles about this little piece of anti-science propaganda, and I have spoken to several of the scientists who were exploited in the making of the movie (including our own Michael Shermer – they were interviewed under false pretenses and were horribly abused in the editing room, by all accounts). But still, seeing the movie for myself was a real experience.

For a scientific skeptic, the movie definitely takes place in bizarro-world. Ben Stein talks a great deal about how “Darwinists” (read regular scientists) have a particular world-view. I don’t think there is one world-view shared by all scientists who accept the evidence for evolution. But there certainly is a difference in significant aspects of the world view of science and that of the creationist/intelligent design crowd.

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