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Skeptic Summary #377
By The Staff
Posted on: 12/2/2012
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Morton, Markuze, masters, buzzwords, satire, Full Documentaries and more!
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Week ending December 02, 2012 (Vol 9, #26) Welcome to the Skeptic Summary, a quick, bi-weekly review of the Skeptic Friends Network and the rest of the skeptical world.
Forum Highlights:Glenn Morton erases his archives - Morton suffers from his own demon, again.
How the divine pen of N crushed the atheists - Markuze re-arrested for probation violations.
Never call them ‘master’! - Examining religious titles.
New general technology? - A lot of buzzwords, but not much substance.
Editor’s Choice: Do you really know him? - Awesome satire.
Kil’s Evil Pick:FullDocumentary: Streaming documentary films — I love a good documentary. Especially, but not limited to, science documentaries. And I have, in the past, recommended links to documentary channels on YouTube and elsewhere here in my picks. And through very little work of my part, I think I have hit upon the mother-load of online documentaries at the FullDocumentary site. Through very little work of my part because it was just a link that someone had posted on Facebook. (I looked so I could credit that person, but there is no name attached to the “share.” Oh well…)
Within moments of posting the link on Facebook, SFN-regular H. Humbert pointed out that one of the documentaries is the pseudoscientific film, What The Bleep Do We Know? On the upside, whoever is running the site chose to add this disclaimer:The film has been criticized for both misrepresenting science and containing pseudoscience and has been described as quantum mysticism. So yeah. Thar be woo here… and plenty of it! I watch those kinds of movies so it’s not a problem for me. If it is for you, worry not. Most of the documentaries are straight up and not crazy. (Be careful in the conspiracy folder, however. It’s filled with nutty stuff.)
The categories cover just about everything you might be interested in. As usual, I’m not going to link to them. But go look! There are literally hundreds of titles under these headings: History, Business, Society, Conspiracy, Economics, Performing Arts, Mystery, Health Nature, Music, Religion and Science. There’s going to be something, or a lot of things, in there for you! Plus there is also a breakdown of the same list into Most Popular titles. Of course, Most Popular doesn’t mean better.
So what do the creators of the FullDocumentary have to say about themselves? Nothing at all! I couldn’t find a thing about who they are. They do tell us that new titles are added daily, and there is this disclaimer:None of the content is hosted on FullDocumentary. All videos and documentaries are not on our servers or uploaded by us. The videos are sourced from elsewhere on the internet from sites such as YouTube, Google Videos, Vimeo and embedded here.
All documentaries are assumed to be either in the public domain or uploaded with the consent of their copyright owners. Should any visitor have any copyright issues or questions regarding the documentaries featured, please contact the respective video host.
Hey, I warned you about the conspiracy folder! That’s about it. FullDocumentary is the no-frills place to go for when you just must watch a documentary film, and a great resource for finding them. I’m highly recommending the site, or it wouldn’t be this week’s Evil Pick. But hey, isn’t that always the case?
SkeptiQuote:There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons that sound good. — Burton Hillis |
Chat Highlights:Wednesday, November 21st: This was a slow chat. Terry talked some about the stock market. the ignored dropped by and we talked about Christians misrepresenting atheism, then winter weather. We also had a surprise visit from our web-master @tomic! Mars rover Curiosity, and Dennis Markuze was also mentioned.
Come chat with us.
New Members This Week:ZOGMAN Quasar stigger Jussi LogicallyYours Slowvehicle alice
(Not a member? Become one today!)
Elsewhere in the World:Aerosols: Airborne particles in Earth’s atmosphere
Aussie scientists un-discover Pacific island
The ‘Bloop’ mystery solved!
Call That a Ball? Dogs Learn to Associate Words With Objects Differently Than Humans Do
Cat regularly catches bus in Dorset
Conversion therapist: Lawsuit won’t stop us
Dispelling common myths about the flu vaccine
Doubtful News
Drunks More Likely to Survive Injuries, Study Suggests
Great tit disease ‘spread to UK by insects’
Heroes of Science Action Figures
I’ve got your missing links right here
Island in the Sky
Judge Forces Parents To Vaccinate Child
Lively: Praise God for Strip Club Explosion
Melba Ketchum announces Bigfoot DNA results. Without the data.
Most and Least Emotional Countries Revealed
Neil Patrick Harris in Neil’s Puppet Dreams — Behind the Scenes
Onion: We just fooled the Chinese government!
Risk of robot uprising wiping out human race to be studied
Self-taught African Teen Wows M.I.T.
Skepticality #196 — Jill-Jet: And The Magical Tale of Penn
Stephen Fry on American vs British Comedy
Still Looking Like the Higgs
What’s New by Bob Park
Yet another patient wasting money on Stanislaw Burzynski’s antineoplastons while Burzynski apparently slithers away from justice yet again
The Yeti: Asia’s Abominable Snowman
Got some skeptic news items? Send them to us, and we’ll think about adding them.
Book of the Week:Global Warming and Political Intimidation: How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists As the Earth Heated Up, by Raymond S. Bradley.
“Global warming is the number one environmental issue of our time, yet some prominent politicians have refused to accept scientific evidence of human responsibility and have opposed any legislation or international agreement that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. A few have gone even further and have tried to destroy the reputations of scientists researching climate change by deliberately undermining the credibility of their research. These politicians have sought to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the public and to weaken public and political support for the control of fossil fuel use.
In this powerful book, highly respected climate scientist Raymond Bradley provides the inside story from the front lines of the debate. In clear and direct language, he describes the tactics those in power have used to intimidate him and his colleagues part of a larger pattern of governmental suppression of scientific information, politics at the expense of empirically based discourse.
Speaking from his experience, Bradley exposes the fault lines in the global warming debate, while providing a concise primer on climate change. The result is a cautionary tale of how politics and science can become fatally intertwined, written by one scientist who was unwittingly ensnared in a web of political intimidation.”
— Book Description
This Week’s Most-Viewed Pages:Forum Topics:- Bedini motor
- Dr. Jeffery Life and Cenegenics
- Random fun
- Little-a versus big-A atheism
- Scattershots: gargoyles & grotesques
- Glenn Morton erases his archives
- Climbing Jacob’s ladder
- Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed! (Part 2)
- New general technology?
- ETs are here, despite guesses to the contrary
Articles:- Evolving a Venom or Two
- Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
- The Myth of the Missing Moon Dust
- Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
- Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?
- Evolution is a Lie, and you Skeptics KNOW it!
- What is a Skeptic and Why Bother Being One?
- Free the Glutens, or When a Cookie isn’t Just a Cookie
- The Legend of the Shrinking Sun
- Cold Reading
There were 5,948 daily visitors this week. Last Month’s Most-Viewed Pages:Forum Topics:- Parody Chick tract, ‘Myths, Lies and Miss Hinn’
- Dr. Jeffery Life and Cenegenics
- Little-a versus big-A atheism
- Stan Lee’s superhumans
- Random fun
- Bedini motor
- Scattershots: gargoyles & grotesques
- Talk about your sore losers!
- The Supper
- How the divine pen of N crushed the atheists
- Election 2012
- Fif50ty FreAkieSt AnIMaLS
- Funny FAILS
- Medical acronyms
- Scientist: No knuckle-walkers in human ancestry
- The Skeptic Summary
- Jesus tempts Satan
- New general technology?
- Disney buys Lucasfilm… more Star Wars movies coming
- Scattershots: Cleaning out the pipes
Articles:- Evolving a Venom or Two
- Miracle Thaw — The Bogus Miracle
- Fundamentalists Hate Noah’s Ark
- Is the Speed of Light Slowing Down?
- What is a Skeptic and Why Bother Being One?
- The Myth of the Missing Moon Dust
- Cold Reading
- Free the Glutens, or When a Cookie isn’t Just a Cookie
- The Legend of the Shrinking Sun
- The Bible’s Bad Fruits
- The Biblical support for a Flat Earth and Geocentricism
- Scientific Truth
- How Do Vaccines Work?
- Preaching that Anti-Evolution Propaganda
- Skeptic Summary #376
- Skeptic Summary #375
- Evolution is a Lie, and you Skeptics KNOW it!
- Evolution is a Lie, and you Skeptics KNOW it! Part 4
- TAM5
- N. 25, June 2002: Ecology vs. ecophily — being reasonable about saving the environment
There were 28,339 daily visitors in November, 2012.
More issues of the Skeptic Summary can be found in our archive.
The Skeptic Summary is produced by the staff of the Skeptic Friends Network, copyright 2012, all rights reserved.
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