Category
Pseudoscience
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07.03.08Derren Brown, magician skepticIt should come as no surprise that many great magicians are also skeptics. Harry Houdini was a skeptic. James Randi is a skeptic. Penn and Teller are skeptics. And a more recent and popular example is Criss Angel Mindfreak. Magicians tend to be skeptical because they know how easily it is to fool people. (Similarly, psychologists tend to be skeptical because they know how easily people can fool themselves.) To them, a psychic is simply a dishonest magician. Derren Brown is an English magician and mentalist, and he is part of the great tradition of skeptical magicians. Watch: he's really good. I ...
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05.27.08Innumeracy in Global Warming skepticismFirst, a short introduction is in order. My name is Miller. I'm a physics student at UCLA, and a member of BASS. I'm not closeted or anything, I just prefer pseudonymity. I have my own active blog, "Skeptic's Play", but I will occasionally contribute to this one. As a blogger, I am probably self-absorbed, and will shamelessly plug my blog often. The following essay has been cross-posted on my blog. There's an article in the latest issue of Skeptic Magazine called "A Climate of Belief" by Patrick Frank. It says that the case for Global ...
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05.26.08How Astrology Ruined Myanmar’s EconomyIf you have been following the news, you no doubt would have heard by now of Cyclone Nargis hitting Myanmar (also known as Burma) and the ruling military junta's piss-poor disaster relief initiatives that makes FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina look like a shining moment in the Bush Administration's history. It is estimated as of today that 155,000 people are dead and that number is certain to rise given the complete lack of food or medical aid and the completely unwillingness of the government to aid its own people. Apparently the regime is more concerned that foreign journalists and aid ...
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05.10.08Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Refutation Part III - 1:00:01 to the EndHere's the last part of my refutation (it's a good thing midterms are over). This one will be shorter, since many of the points Stein tries to bring across are redundant. Here is Part I and Part II of my refutation. 1:00:52 - Hitler's views on superior races mirrors Darwin's own theories, and a necessary pre-requisite to Nazism was Darwinism. At the time, many eugenicists used Darwin's theory to justify the slaughter of Jews, Slavs, and infirms en masse. The Anti-Defamation League respectfully disagrees - "The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political ...
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05.10.08Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Refutation Part II - 30:01 to 60:00Here it is, Part II of my grand, time-wasting refutation. (Here's Part I and Part III if you're interested) 31:22 - A cell could not have been the result of Darwinian evolution because it is a machine of at least 250 perfectly ordered proteins, each of which has to work to maintain a lifeform. Therefore there must be an intelligent design to make something this ordered and precise. That's assuming that proteins have all-or-nothing function, which is COMPLETELY false. There are countless mutants of even just one protein and different mutants of different proteins have different catalytic efficiencies. Most mutations don't even ...
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05.10.08Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Refutation Part I - 00:00 to 30:00So somehow I made it my mission to refute every argument made by this piece of crap, per the notes I had taken down on my post "Liveblogging Expelled: NIA". The horror! Here is Part II and Part III of my grand exercise in poor time management. 00:42 - Ben Stein brings up the example of Dr. Richard Sternberg, who didn't "tow the party line" and agreed to publish an article by IDer Stephen Meyer. Sternberg was subsequently forced to resign. According to the Biological Society of Washington which had to bear the shame of that particular article being in their publication, Sternberg ...
recent posts
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