Skeptical Skepticism
Category archives for Skeptical Skepticism
Sungudogo Second Edition
Posted by Greg Laden on December 17, 2013 
As you know, I wrote a novella as part of a fundraiser a while back. It is called “Sungudogo” and it is the story of the origin of the Skeptics movement and modern cryptozoology. It is also an adventure story in which the protagonists, Archer Mallows and Pat Soffer, travel across the unforgiving landscape of…
The Golden Eagle Video Is Fake, But Not For The Reasons Given
Posted by Greg Laden on December 19, 2012 Last night Julia sent me a link to a video of a Golden Eagle swooping down into a Montreal park, picking up an infant/toddler and lifting it several feet into the air before dropping it and flying off. Â Since then many on the Intertubes have declared the video to be a fake while others insist…
Mythbusters on Head-on Collisions
Posted by Greg Laden on October 1, 2012 I’m sure you all have cable and/or satellite setups and thus see the Mythbusters, which is clearly one of the best things on TV, as they produce them. But I am always a couple of years behind because I watch them on Netflix. Two more seasons were released on Netflix very recently, so I’ve been…
Which is more likely to be real, Ghosts or Martians?
Posted by Greg Laden on September 30, 2012 Do ghosts really exist? Is there life on Mars? Despite what one might think, what with large class sizes and the homogenization of culture caused by TV and Fast Food, the fact remains that clumps of high school students organized into classes can vary widely from one another. Each year has its own characteristics, and…
The Secular Coalition of America’s Big Goof
Posted by Greg Laden on September 29, 2012 The Secular Coalition of America is a lobbying group that represents several groups, including American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, Camp Quest, the Secular Student Alliance and so on. A few months ago the SCA made news, in a bad way, by appointing a former Bush White House Staffer, Edwina Rogers, as Executive Director. Many…
The Antiskeptics
Posted by Greg Laden on June 10, 2012 
Skeptics fight an up hill battle. This battle consists of deploying critical thinking across a range of cultural landscapes, implementing scientific thinking to solve problems, and the thoughtful evaluation of knowledge, while 90 percent of the world is out to stop you, or at least make it hard. Or so it seems. To be honest,…
There is no fruit in a BLT
Posted by Greg Laden on May 28, 2012 
First, I want to say that tomatoes are a fruit. Here is a scientific definition of fruit: Fruit noun, plural: fruits (1) (botany) The seed-bearing structure in angiosperms formed from the ovary after flowering. source See? Tomato is a fruit. Having said that, in common English parlance we do not call a tomato a fruit.…
Does the Internet need an HR Department?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 13, 2012 When a young girl put a picture of herself, holding a book she had just gotten as a present, on the social networking site reddit, she was immediately subjected to intense verbal sexual assault by reddit readers who aptly demonstrated how awful it can be when boys and young men are left to say and…
I reject your reality and I substitute my own
Posted by Greg Laden on April 30, 2012 I don’t know if this phrase … … originally from Adam Savage or if he’s quoting someone. I think it might be his. Today, I was in an internet argument with someone (can you believe how many people on the internet are WRONG???) and I used a phrase like that. Then I instantly lost the…
Skepticism is a cultural phenomenon
Posted by Greg Laden on April 25, 2012 Skepticism is a cultural phenomenon. I know that many self-declared skeptics prefer to … ah … believe otherwise, or as they would perhaps say, they have deduced from pure principles using sound logic that Skepticism is rational behavior and there is nothing cultural about it. But they are wrong, and that is trivially easy to…