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Skeptic Summary #226

Blackly, punch-drunk, halfsies, cheeriness, a real oddity and more!

The ‘Black Box’ of Peer Review - Um… duh.

Dawkins vs. Conservapedia - Not much of a contest, really.

Cut the military budget by 50 percent - Only ’cause it’s the only place republicans approve of spending money.

Editor’s Choice: Need a skeptic cheerleading boost? - Why yes, yes I do.

Oddee.com:

Oddee.com attracts over a million visitors reading more than 3 million pages per month. Focused on the odd, bizarre and strange things of our world, its daily articles and sections explore subjects from Science to Advertising and Technology.

Yup. This site has a collection of some of the strangest, most beautiful, ugliest, craziest and, well, the oddest lists you will see anywhere on the web. The pictures and descriptions are amazing. Two of many of my favorites at Oddee are “The Human Body: a dissection” and “20 Awesome 3D Pavement Illusions.” Browsing Oddee is a trip and a half. Go there!

SkeptiQuote: Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning… You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma… but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind. — PZ Myers

Wednesday: A Discovery channel special on The Hudson crash sparked a conversation on airplane safety and travel. If the plane is going down, every bar is an open bar. Then talk changed over to the old days of computing, members of the Skepticality forum, and the Bush-shoe incident and game. Also discussed was the comet Lulin, with some nice photos at spaceweather.com. To top the evening off, David Mabus (not to be confused with Dr. Mabuse) was banned yet again for posting the same crap about the Randi challenge for the umpteenth time. Oddly this always seems to happen on a Wednesday night.

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2009: Shaping up to be a really bad year for antivaccinationists

A Brief History of Moonbats

Caught on Camera — The Best of Google Street View

Darwin Divides

Dr. Dean Ornish: Turn away from the Dark Side! It’s not too late!

Dreadful Domain Names Used by Real Businesses

Jenny McCarthy “absolutely loves” injecting toxins into her bloodstream

Metaphorically speaking, Pepsi’s gibberish is hard to swallow

Michael Egnor is a friggen nutbar

Oklahoma doesn’t like Darwin, Dawkins, academic freedom or zoology

Psychologists Shed Light On Origins Of Morality

Sita Sings the Blues

The Skeptic’s Dictionary Newsletter #101

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

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, by Daniel L. Everett.



“…Everett’s life with the Pirahã cost him dearly. He almost lost two family members to malaria, and his first marriage broke down after years of highly productive shared field work. But life in the Amazon taught him a great deal about human nature, too, perhaps more about his own than that of the Pirahã. Everett began his linguistic work as a Christian missionary, but the Pirahã were marvelously impervious to his promise of a life with Jesus. They pointed out that Everett simply had no proof for the supernatural world he described, and in the end he found himself agreeing with them. He left the church, choosing a world that more honestly integrated his goals as a scholar with the world view of his Pirahã friends — one where evidence matters.”

— Publishers Weekly

Forum Topics:

1. PZ expelled from Expelled — Dawkins slips in!
2. Beelzebufo ampinga
3. We’d invite Hitler to speak, says Columbia dean
4. Possum on the half shell
5. Why do Republicans hate the poor?
6. A half of a wing & a piece of a prayer
7. Art or oxygen theft?
8. Rush Limbaugh to lead Christian Conservative Party
9. UN adopts binding measure to ban blasphemy!
10. Cut the military budget by 50 percent

Articles:

1. Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
2. Evolving a Venom or Two
3. Skeptic Summary #152
4. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
5. Miracle Thaw Tray
6. The Bible’s Bad Fruits
7. Kent Hovind is a Big Phony!
8. Scientific Truth
9. Come & Receive your Miracle: A Sunday Afternoon at a Robert Tilton Crusade
10. Evolution is a Lie

There were 11,083 daily visitors this week.

Forum Topics:

1. PZ expelled from Expelled — Dawkins slips in!
2. Hell, your final destination?
3. Possum on the half shell
4. Beelzebufo ampinga
5. A half of a wing & a piece of a prayer
6. Art or oxygen theft?
7. We’d invite Hitler to speak, says Columbia dean
8. The shallow end of the gene pool…
9. SFN 2009 Psychic Contest, Enter by Feb1, 2009!
10. Global warming deniers
11. Are skepticism and Buddhism compatible?
12. Stop laughing, dammit! This is serious shit!
13. Why do Republicans hate the poor?
14. Another question answered
15. The water cooler (Part 2)
16. Moon-walker claims alien contact cover-up
17. Funny FAILS
18. Really creepy illusions
19. Crop circles again…
20. Attenborough’s mother fish…

Articles:

1. Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
2. Evolving a Venom or Two
3. Skeptic Summary #152
4. Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
5. The Bible’s Bad Fruits
6. Miracle Thaw Tray
7. Astrology
8. Scientific Truth
9. Kent Hovind is a Big Phony!
10. Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?
11. Evolution is a Lie
12. Cold Reading
13. Mesmer, Casino Monkey, and Video Sex
14. Preaching that Anti-Evolution Propaganda
15. More on the Polonium 218 Controversy
16. The Bible Answer Man
17. Skeptic Summary #223
18. Questioning the Validity of False Memory Syndrome
19. Tommy Debates the Bible Answer man
20. Evidence Cited as Hard Proof of the Existence of Satanic Cults

There were 37,009 daily visitors in February, 2009.