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Skeptic Summary #132

Jesus, predictions, smoke, flying saucers, psi-balls, parties and more!

Jesus’ family tomb found? - Right next to blueprints for a perpetual motion machine!

A look back at 2006 - Time to see how well we did.

You may be a fundamentalist atheist if… - All smoke, no fire.

Editor’s Choice: A flying saucer design - Speaking of perpetual motion machines…

From the Archives: Anyone seen ‘psipog.net’? - If you drop a psi-ball on your foot, how much will it hurt?

AWOL this week, it seems.

Party, party, party!

Sunday: Southerners need to leard to drive carefully when it’s snowy; activities in active threads; a tooth-fairy stole CDs; members’ once in-a-lifetime sports deed; a good unit conversion tool (freeware); music and the importance of good lyrics; what makes a good singer?

Wednesday: The night started with talk of a possible joint chat in the upcoming future, and then went into political parties as the most recent poll went up. There was quite a bit of confusion as some members learned by experience that clicking “View Results” actually submits an anonymous vote. More computer talk lead Dave into telling a story on how much fun one may have with batch files and pretending to reformat the C: drive. Chat ended with some discussion on some of the more recent threads, as well as other skeptic forums.

Come chat with us.

Willow
klaudio
MrFancyPants
sharmarajgaurav
smoke
AbortedJesus

(Not a member? Become one today!)

Bad Science

Fact or Fiction? Living People Outnumber the Dead

Scientists Say Enough to Right-Wing Manipulation of Their Work

What’s New by Bob Park

Got some skeptic news items? Send them to us, and we’ll think about adding them.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert.



“On the burgeoning shelf of cautionary but occasionally alarmist books warning about the consequences of dramatic climate change, Kolbert’s calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. Expanding on a three-part series for the New Yorker, Kolbert (The Prophet of Love) lets facts rather than polemics tell the story: in essence, it’s that Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented ‘climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience.’ An inexorable increase in the world’s average temperature means that butterflies, which typically restrict themselves to well-defined climate zones, are now flitting where they’ve never been found before; that nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly; and that the prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land. In her most pointed chapter, Kolbert chides the U.S. for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. In her most upbeat chapter, Kolbert singles out Burlington, Vt., for its impressive energy-saving campaign, which ought to be a model for the rest of the nation — just as this unbiased overview is a model for writing about an urgent environmental crisis.”

— Publishers Weekly

Forum Topics:

1. You may be a fundamentalist atheist if… (890 views)
2. My supposed left-wing media sources (733 views)
3. Jesus’ family tomb found? (603 views)
4. Iranian Manhattan Project speeds along (414 views)
5. Chimps hunting with spears — WOW, just WOW! (290 views)
6. The water cooler (278 views)
7. Trivial questions (266 views)
8. Libertarianism (229 views)
9. God murders (206 views)
10. Global warming: the cold, hard facts? (204 views)

Articles:

1. Astrology (195 views)
2. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle (112 views)
3. Kent Hovind is a Big Phony! (60 views)
4. Cold Reading (44 views)
5. The Bible’s Bad Fruits (43 views)
6. Miracle Thaw Tray (39 views)
7. Skeptic Summary #131 (31 views)
8. Evidence Cited as Hard Proof of the Existence of Satanic Cults (29 views)
9. Why Do Creationists Fear Evolution? (29 views)
10. Tommy Debates the Bible Answer man (25 views)

There were 5,148 daily visitors this week.

Forum Topics:

1. Global warming: the cold, hard facts? (2,299 views)
2. Q’s on atheism (1,691 views)
3. Religion versus vaccines — sound familiar? (1,572 views)
4. My supposed left-wing media sources (1,321 views)
5. Evolution myths (1,302 views)
6. Owl on the dollar bill… (827 views)
7. Libertarianism (799 views)
8. CNN bashes atheists, blaming the victim (712 views)
9. What did cause the Towers to collapse? (659 views)
10. Flying cars stifled by politics, politics, and war (566 views)
11. New Statesman — Iran war imminent (566 views)
12. The water cooler (554 views)
13. Iranian Manhattan Project speeds along (470 views)
14. Jesus’ family tomb found? (390 views)
15. Overwhelming evidence? (389 views)
16. Interview — Chris Hedges — American Fascists (389 views)
17. Olympic myth? (364 views)
18. Bigfoot is amazing! (356 views)
19. Dixie Chicks documentary coming out 2/20 — Ha ha! (347 views)
20. Blasphemy challenge discussed on Nightline (326 views)

Articles:

1. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle (414 views)
2. Astrology (407 views)
3. Kent Hovind is a Big Phony! (255 views)
4. Cold Reading (215 views)
5. Miracle Thaw Tray (151 views)
6. The Bible’s Bad Fruits (141 views)
7. Evidence Cited as Hard Proof of the Existence of Satanic Cults (136 views)
8. The Bible Answer Man (112 views)
9. Why Do Creationists Fear Evolution? (104 views)
10. Tommy Debates the Bible Answer man (97 views)
11. You’re an Idiot (89 views)
12. Skeptic Summary #39 (86 views)
13. Preaching that Anti-Evolution Propaganda (83 views)
14. TAM4 (82 views)
15. Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down? (76 views)
16. Evolution, Scientology Style (76 views)
17. Evolution is a Lie (72 views)
18. Evil Skeptic and a Visit to Awareness 2000 (69 views)
19. Spam Alert (65 views)
20. Kent Hovind is a Kwazy Kweationist (65 views)

There were 20,530 daily visitors is February, 2007.