As an educator I always had to be on my toes, not only to prevent undesirable behavior, but also to be aware of something much more elusive. Teachers are always on the lookout for something called a "teachable moment". They are tricky because they don't appear in your lesson plans, you have no idea where they will come from or when, and they may not even be [...]

From JREF Swift Blog
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1050-putting-woo-to-a-good-use.html
7/30/2010 12:49:56 AM
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Hmph. I’m no genius, and I know there’s lots of astronomy-related things I don’t know that much about. But what surprises me is that there still are complete surprises for me… like a type of galaxy I’ve never heard of!

So here’s NGC 3621, as seen by the 2.2 meter MPG/ESO telescope in La Silla, Chile:

[Click to galactinate to the 3500 x 3100 pixel version.]

Pretty cool, right? This is a near true-color image, using three filters that come close to mimicking the eye’s blue, yellow-green, and red sensitivity, as well as a filter that selects the light from warm hydrogen gas (shown [...]

From Bad Astronomy
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/xRJ1mHrMq7Y/
2/5/2011 12:30:21 AM
Search rank: 307

... Well, it could happen ...

Intelligent Life Detected by SETI: A radio signal which is too narrow to be natural, changes frequency in an interesting way, and changes amplitude in an interesting way was detected by SETI while gazing at Kepler-discovered planets a great distance away. When SETI pointed the same radiotelesope in a different direction, however, the signal was still there, indicating that it came not from a distant galaxy but rather, from earth or an earth-launched satellite. ET is home. Phil Plait has an excellent discussion of what happened.

In a related story, a secret US spy rocketship is supposedly tracking the Chinese spacelab.

The US Air Force's second mysterious mini-space shuttle, the X-37B, could be spying on China's space laboratory [...]

From Greg Laden's Blog
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GregLadensBlog/~3/wt-VmfL3ruk/large-headed_supersoldier_monk.php
1/8/2012 2:41:10 AM
Search rank: 304

I mentioned previously that I was going to be a guest on Skeptically Speaking again.  The live show was Friday, and is now available for download with links to all the many books discussed.

As always the show was fun to be on.  I wish we could have got more discussion in than we did, but it was a very full show as it was.

I often come out the other end of these events feeling like I was at best a shotgun of information.  Perhaps I had some impact if I was aimed at the appropriate target, but even then I was all over the place.  So I figured I'd take a little bit of time to mention my books (as well as the books I had on my shortlist that other guests spoke about.

When I was [...]

From Confessions of an Asshole Skeptic
http://assholeskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-christmas-shopping.html
12/21/2010 7:58:00 PM
Search rank: 301

I never thought I'd be praising Bill Gates, being a Mac person and all and not being at all fond of Microsoft, but it's impossible for me not to in the wake of a recent interview Gates did with CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

As you probably know, since retiring from Microsoft, Bill Gates has dedicated himself to philanthropy in the form of the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the greatest works of this foundation has been to initiate vaccination programs in the Third World. These activities are likely to save thousands, if not millions, of lives over the next several decades.

Not surprisingly, the anti-vaccine movement has begun to notice and to attack Bill Gates, who has stood up for vaccines as the single greatest medical [...]

From Respectful Insolence
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/insolence/~3/i377NhkxCvI/bill_gates_steps_in_it_in_a_good_way.php
2/6/2011 2:30:52 AM
Search rank: 300

Carmen has posted a thought provoking blog asking 'are skeptics racist?', the answer, she makes clear, is 'no'.  However, she does raise very important and under discussed issues regarding outreach.  As an educated person, white of skin and gifted with both an X and a Y chromosome at conception, I'm not often appreciative enough that my society is generally more welcoming to the likes of me than to them that isn't like me.  Of course there are traits that I hold and afflictions I suffer that society neither understands nor appreciates.  Yet I can look around, I can see MPs, professors, doctors, captains of industry and comrades in unions that look like enough like me and have enough of my background to emphasise with the difficulties I face, if I am to be reduced to sobs by the frustrations of life there are people in positions of power to feel my pain and to provide me with [...]

From gimpyblog's posterous
http://gimpyblog.posterous.com/skeptics-in-the-coffee-shop
7/29/2010 11:45:58 PM
Search rank: 300

Yes, everybody. Even that child raping bastard in Rome with the pretentious hat, even the idiots who talk to the dead, even the UFO nut that accosts you outside your favorite coffee shop or bar to tell you about the glowing mountain on I-10. Even you, you credulous bastard.

Everybody is a skeptic. My fucking dog is a skeptic.

At least, that's the case if you use the fuzzy logic definition of skepticism. In the fuzzy definition, a person is a skeptic if they have some skepticism about some things and less skepticism about other things. So, if somebody is mostly an evidence based thinker but they happen to passionately believe that Bigfoot eloped with Elvis to a cross-species bathhouse on Jupiters seventh moon, they're a skeptic. And if someone is sometimes an evidence based thinker but just sort of believes that Barak Obama is the anti-christ and wants to put us all in death camps [...]

From Whiskey Before Breakfast... the Blog
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6326152&postID=3386881523866437150
4/16/2010 5:41:00 AM
Search rank: 300

Before joining Scienceblogs.com, I blogged independently at "Evolution ... not just a theory anymore." That was a cool name for a blog, but I didn't transfer the name to Scienceblogs because there were already a whole bunch of blogs with "Evolution" in the name. There was a lot of stuff on that blog, mostly not worth saving but a few items of possible interest. Also, I've kept a number of things on that site that don't really fit here at the scienceblogs.com site, such as lots of links to books I like, a few downloadable research papers, and so on.

Over recent months, "Evolution ... not just a theory anymore" has been increasingly vulnerable to nasty attacks from the usual suspects, even though it is just sitting there minding its own business. It turns out that upgrading the very old wordpress installation is tricky, and transferring the database to a new installation is a fool's errand, especially given that half the junk on the old site is junk. More than half. [...]

From Greg Laden's Blog
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GregLadensBlog/~3/4TstqjvBrss/my_new_old_blog.php
8/14/2011 12:35:54 PM
Search rank: 300

Guest post by Alden Griffith from Fool Me Once

My previous post, “Has Global Warming Stopped?”, was followed by several (well-meaning) comments on the meaning of statistical significance and confidence. Specifically, there was concern about the way that I stated that we have 92% confidence that the HadCRU temperature trend from 1995 to 2009 is positive. The technical statistical interpretation of the 92% confidence interval is this: "if we could resample temperatures independently over and over, we would expect the confidence intervals to contain the true slope 92% of the time."  Obviously, this is awkward to understand without a background in statistics, so I used a simpler phrasing. Please note that this does not change the conclusions of my previous [...]

From Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=304
1/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
Search rank: 299

If you live in Georgia, and have a miscarriage, you will be investigated, if recently introduced legislation is passed. The bill proposed ...

... by House Republican Bobby Franklin would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and require miscarriages to be investigated by authorities.

...

Franklin's bill would classify the removal of a fetus from a woman for any reason other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus as "prenatal murder." Physicians indicted for alleged "prenatal murder" would have their license suspended until they were found innocent of the crime.

Although the legislation would not place any criminal penalties on natural spontaneous abortions, it would require miscarriages to be reported by hospitals and other medical institutions, and a fetal death certificate issued. [...]

From Greg Laden's Blog
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GregLadensBlog/~3/tIxuHNl886c/when_will_this_madnes_end.php
2/24/2011 4:13:11 AM
Search rank: 297

Created page with "If you're a college scholar, you understand how expensive things can be. The common price of tuition for school annually at a 4 12 months personal college is round $35,000 these ..."

New page

If you're a college scholar, you understand how expensive things can be. The common price of tuition for school annually at a 4 12 months personal college is round $35,000 these days. Many times college students have to pay for lots of that out of pocket; monetary assist only covers so much and not a lot of dad and mom can foot the whole bill.

College students additionally face other needed bills, one of many greatest of which is their textbooks. Faculty textbooks aren't cheap both - they'll run into the hundreds per book. Luckily the web has created an avenue the place it's fairly easy to search out cheap textbooks for college college students - however you need to know the place to look.

Only a decade in the [...]

From SkeptiCamp - Recent changes [en]
http://skepticamp.com/w/index.php?title=User:MountsSundberg636&diff=3799&oldid=prev
3/9/2012 5:57:50 PM
Search rank: 296

Created page with "If you're a college scholar, you understand how expensive things can be. The common price of tuition for school annually at a 4 12 months personal college is round $35,000 these ..."

New page

If you're a college scholar, you understand how expensive things can be. The common price of tuition for school annually at a 4 12 months personal college is round $35,000 these days. Many times college students have to pay for lots of that out of pocket; monetary assist only covers so much and not a lot of dad and mom can foot the whole bill.

College students additionally face other needed bills, one of many greatest of which is their textbooks. Faculty textbooks aren't cheap both - they'll run into the hundreds per book. Luckily the web has created an avenue the place it's fairly easy to search out cheap textbooks for college college students - however you need to know the place to look.

Only a decade in the [...]

From SkeptiCamp - Recent changes [en]
http://skepticamp.com/w/index.php?title=MountsSundberg636&diff=3798&oldid=prev
3/9/2012 5:57:39 PM
Search rank: 296

I normally wouldn't bother writing about a new law firm setting up in London, but this particular firm, Anderson Olivarius I think might be of relevant interest.The Independent has an article on it. Here's a the first two paragraphs

For much of the past 25 years, Jeff Anderson has been the American Catholic Church's bête noire. Working out of a small office in St Paul, Minnesota, the 63-year-old US attorney has spearheaded more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Church, winning millions of dollars for his clients and forcing open the doors of one of the world's most secretive institutions.

From Confessions of a skeptic
http://scepticalthoughts.blogspot.com/2011/02/theres-new-lawyer-in-town.html
2/3/2011 9:54:00 PM
Search rank: 296

Australian Skeptics

Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, the Nigerian Skeptics Society and former director of the Center for Inquiry/Nigeria.  Leo currently works for the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) as its director in West and Southern Africa.  He also represents IHEU at the African Commission on Human and People's Rights in Banjul, Gambia.

In the past few months, Leo has spent much of his time rescuing alleged witch children in Akwa Ibom state in Southern Nigeria.  He has been arrested, detained and beaten up several times by police and local gangs in the course of his work, campaigning against superstition, injustices and religious fanaticism.

On 20 August, as part of a speaking tour of Australia, Leo will be in Sydney to talk about how science and [...]

From Events - Australian Skeptics
http://www.meetup.com/AustSkeptics/events/23647471/
6/27/2011 7:34:09 PM
Search rank: 296

In the wake of FRONTLINE's The Vaccine War, I was going to have a bit of fun with the reactions of the anti-vaccine fringe. After all, the spokescelebrity of the anti-vaccine movement, Jenny McCarthy, has posted yet another brain dead screed at--where else?--The Huffington Post. So has everybody's favorite pediatrician to the stars and apologist for the anti-vaccine movement, Dr. Jay Gordon. Both are incredibly target-rich environments, each worthy of its very own heapin', [...]

From Respectful Insolence
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/insolence/~3/r_BQuQJvdH0/too_deliciously_ironic_for_words_gary_nu.php
4/30/2010 1:00:00 AM
Search rank: 296

Good security decisions require making intelligent trade-offs, but far too often we settle for poorly justified security measures based on fear and ignorance rather than reasoned risk analysis.

You can readily find computer and network security courses in most computer science departments, but it may be overly ambitious to call computer security a science. The profession certainly has aspects of an art, and it is fair to call much of the work engineering, but it lacks the rigor and objectivity of a science when put into practice. We highly desire security metrics to objectively measure the effectiveness of security technologies and to give the field this extra rigor, but they are difficult to come by. In fact, developing objective security metrics is considered one of the grand challenges of the field (INFOSEC Research Council 2005).

Part of the problem is the difficulty of quantifying risk in this field. Often, qualitative analysis is [...]

From Committee for Skeptical Inquiry | Main Feed
http://www.csicop.org//si/show/thinking_critically_about_computer_security_trade-offs
1/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
Search rank: 296

Freethinkers FSU

 

We meet every Wednesday, but there is NO MEETing this Wednesday due to ... Spring Break!

If you'll be back in town sometime Sunday, or are chillin' in Tally, come out and relax with us  ...

Railroad Square's 2nd Annual Interfaith Day, with tabling, discussions, and more from the businesses of the Art Park and the Tallahassee community.

Official times:  NOON to 5pm

Inivite anyone and their peeps'.

Some groups there will be:

Freethinkers FSU

Tallahassee Atheists

Buddhist Society of Tallahassee

Intervarsity Christian FSU

Pagan Student Union FSU and Red Hills Pagan Council

And More..

Together with the Tallahassee Atheists, there will be [...]

From Skeptics upcoming events
http://www.meetup.com/FreethinkersFSU/events/16848777/
3/9/2011 8:08:10 AM
Search rank: 294