There's a DailyTech blog post written by Michael Asher floating around with the headline, "Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate". And indeed, reading the post you learn... The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. ...

is bringing another speaker to the Fort Wayne, Indiana area. On Wednesday, August 6th beginning at 7:00PM, will be giving a public lecture at the Downtown branch of the Allen County Public Library on his new book, Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today’s Pop Mysticism. Please read the book and come prepared to ask questions during the Question and Answer period. About the Book The following is an excerpt from the review of Robert Price’s book, Top Secret, America may be the land of plenty, but i...

<Cross posting this from my blog. If you're a skeptic and a blogger this should be of interest to you.> Recently I started writing a weekly blog post for my local , . This week however I wanted to direct everyone to Tim Farley’s new blog, (a site that is definitely going on my blogroll). Tim only has one post of note up as of now, but it’s a doozy chock full of information on to promote skepticism. It’s based on a presentation given at a couple of weekends back. In particular, Tim see...

They should have used this image of Charles Darwin if they wanted to portray an accurate matchup: (Image) Darwin is 51 in that photo. Lincoln was 52 when he took the office of the Presidency. I'm not sure who would come out on top in a fight between Darwin and Lincoln. Both weren't exactly known for sedentary lifestyles. Lincoln's wiry but Darwin looks tougher. Lincoln has Mary Todd to back him up, Darwin controls an army of wild monkeys.. Yeah, that's it. Lincoln and Todd easily beats Darwin ...

Best Firefox ever (and I've been using it since it was Phoenix). I just spent some time upgrading. I'm quite pleased that almost all of my "must have" extensions are already Firefox 3 compatible. The only disappointments were that my favorite theme, iFox, had not been updated nor the Compact Menu 2 extension. For now the Phoenity Modern theme is a decent replacemet for iFox and Personal Menu is a great replacement for Compact Menu 2. And it's true, Firefox 3 uses much less memory, is quite snapp...

You nailed it. The atmosphere is awash in electromagnetic waves, many of them far stronger than the average wifi signal. One such instance is that yellow glowy thing in the sky. Thanks for posting this. This is good blog material. BTW: Are you still doing your blog? PM or post the link. I seem to have lost it. On edit: Wouldn't you know the guy is a conspiracy theorist too. Microwaving Our Planet Cellular Assault by Arthur Firstenberg In February of last year, only five senators and 16 repres...

Former evangelical minister turned atheist, and author of the new book Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, spoke here in Fort Wayne a couple of nights ago. The event was organized by Freethought Fort Wayne (of which I'm a member). I've written up some of my thoughts at my site and thought I'd share them here. John Loftus, the former evangelical minister turned atheist, author of the soon to be released book Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christian...

Just wanted to note for anyone in the Fort Wayne area that John Loftus, a former evangelical minister, author of the book Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains and founder of the group blog Debunking Christianity is speaking at Freethought Fort Wayne’s tonight (May 14th). This should be a lively and entertaining talk so if you happen to be in the Fort Wayne area come on over to the Allen County Public Library, Meeting Room B at 7PM. Fort Wayne is a highly religious community,...

Saw this via blog: Man takes five metronomes ticking randomly. Puts them on a slightly mobile plank held on two tin cans. Metronomes run in sync. Magic. (Link) Well, not really magic, but simple mechanics. How's it work? The earliest known scientific discussion of synchronization dates back to 1657 when Christian Huygens built the first working pendulum clock. Huygens studied systems of two pendulum clocks mounted on a common base. He observed that the clocks would swing at the same frequenc...

1 lb (400-500 grams) alien liver 1 lb (500 grams) ground young alien parsley, to taste 1 medium onion, finely chopped 1/2 young alien spleen 2-3 teaspoons tomato concentrate chopped capers anchovy paste or finely chopped anchovy Fry the parsley and onion in olive oil, when the onion is golden add the ground young alien and cook until browned. Separately, boil the alien liver in water for a few minutes, then mix with the cooked ground young alien and the alien spleen in a blender to make a sprea...

WNYC's On The Media has a short , author of . Manjoo asserts that "truthiness has run amok in the modern media age" and examines how false facts percolate through the partisan echo chambers on both the left and the right. BROOKE GLADSTONE: How do we have an informed society if you can disbelieve anything you aren't likely to approve of? FARHAD MANJOO: Well, in a number of areas I argue that we don't have an informed society; that one of the problems of this age is that we have people disagreei...

For a mere $1500 per month, you can buy space for a side banner on the main page of Alex Jones' Prison Planet website. Today on Prison Planet's main page, an advert can be found for 'The Dragon Slayer', advertised as a free newsletter to which one should 'subscribe now!' ... When the side banner picture link is clicked, the Prison Planet visitor is taken to a page on the website of a church ministry called 'Scriptures for America Worldwide'. So, just what is Scriptures for America? Scripture...

Win a fabulous vacation and help HEALL's Founder August 20 I went into the emergency room to awaken 5 days later to discover that I almost died of acute renal failure. An advanced cancerous cervical tumor was pressing on my bladder causing the kidneys to fill with waste products that were poisoning me. I had a seizure within 20 minutes of arriving at the hospital. High tech medicine saved my life. I need your help to raise funds for my complementary medicine treatment. I need $5,000 per month ...

That's your source!? I just took a look at the video and it's presented by Rima Laibow, the wife of Ret. Gen. Albert "Project Stargate" Stubblebine, the idiot who spent millions of taxpayer dollars on remote viewing frauds. Amazing.

We like to believe that individual choices we make can help us live longer and healthier lives. In many cases that's the case. By abstaining from tobacco use, just to name one, we greatly lower our chances of developing lung and other cancers, coronary and vascular disease. But for many diseases, especially cancers, individual choice is not enough. The obsession with man-made toxins not only reflects a small-minded view of cancer's causes but hints at a worrisome theme in American public health....

A man films his own suicide attempt. Owen Swart swallows an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills on camera and yet miraculously survices! How can this be? Part 1: (Link) Part 2: (Link) Part 3: (Link) Part 4: (Link) Part 5: (Link)

That you have a jigsaw puzzle of a horse in front of you, with all the right pieces, but you can't figure out how to put it together because you're convinced it's a picture of Mt. Shasta.

The Federal Reserve is not privately owned. You can keep making assertions to the contrary but that doesn't make your assertions true. From the Fed's FAQ: The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects. As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the U.S. Congress. It is considered an independent centra...

According to the 1948 Geneva Convention, genocide is defined as "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". If you honestly believe that the U.S., as the goal of the war in Iraq, has the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part," the Iraqis then, well, there's no reasoning with you. I'm sorry SLAD, but not even Bush and Cheney are that sort of evil. Iraq is a horrendous, horrific quagmire that the Bush administration lied and o...

Sounds like you have a zombie infestation on your hands son. I'd keep my brain safe at night if I were you and for heaven's sake keep that coed out of shopping malls. We don't know what it is about zombies and shopping malls but they sure do seem to love them. Perhaps it's because all the brains at shopping malls come pre-tenderized from incessant marketing. Anyhow, it's a well known fact that all artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup and those orange colored cheese crackers with pean...

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken (Link) I thought everyone here would welcome the departure from our usual fare to look at a different conspiracy theory. Steve Wishnia wrote for Alternet what I think is a solid article debunking the notion that marijuana prohibition is a result of a conspiracy between Hearst and DuPont. Wishnia's conclusion is that pot is illegal because of racism and culture wars, not because the paper industry ...

Where did you buy it and how does it work? Fuel and electricity prices are through the roof. I'd like to know more.

Hah! My bet is it's a plastic lawn gnome. They're in league with the white plastic chairs donchaknow. A TOWN in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night. The midget - which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk - was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters. Teenager Jose Alvarez - who filmed the gnome - yesterday told national newspaper El Tribuno that they caught the creatur...

Overly simplistic ideation (often at the hands of those who call themselves socialists), anti-intellectualism, reactionary populism... There's so many reasons why socialism has taken on a negative connotation. The right wing merely exploited all of that, along with fear. So yeah, I think you can blame the right but the real issue is our societal structure.

You heard it here first! Fluoridated tap water has sapped and impurified Alex Jone's precious bodily fluids, er, I mean, reduced his IQ. Well, that explains a lot. Although, if I were Jones's viewers I might question why we should believe anything from a man who claims to be even more mentally retarded than he appears. (Link) That lovely little sound bite occurs about 3:05 into the video.

But the idea that the Army used smallpox infested blankets to deliberately spread smallpox amongst the Mandan Indians does seem to be a myth, and originally an outright fabrication by our old friend Ward Churchill: Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill’s Genocide Rhetoric. Brown, T. (2006). Plagiary: Cross‐Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification, 1 (9): 1–30 Ward Churchill tells a shockin...

The car is not solid silver. The photographs displayed above are genuine, but they don't quite depict an automobile "made from solid silver." The shiny appearance of the Audi A8 pictured here is not due to its being made of silver, but to a customization involving a special polishing technique used to produce a chrome-like finish, for which the car's Dubai owner engaged the firm Motoren Technik Mayer, based in Wettstetten, Germany. (Link)

But I do think Hofstadter firmly established that there is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through our culture for various reasons (not all of them are necessarily bad ones either). One of the examples Hofstadter gave that resonates with me is the 1950s school principal who believed that not every child should be able to read, write or do basic arithmetic. Between this day and that a lot of selling must take place. But it's coming. We shall some day accept the thought that it i...

(Link) Now I'm convinced. Truth bustin' out all over.

Pfft! Stupid bottom feeders bringing down the average wage of trained disinformation technologists everywhere. I never settle for less than a quarter a post. It's this kind of behavior that shows how desperately we need a union.