Debt Free and Prosperous Living

During down-turns in the economy, when many people have either lost a job or fear that they will lose their job, scams for making money or getting out of debt abound. Of course, these scams are always floating around. I’ve often wondered if they maintain the same “noise” level and other noise just recedes bringing [...]

UPDATE: Uganda, Maddow, and Praying Away the Gay

MSNBC has done a great public service by letting the people at the Rachel Maddow Show practice actual journalism.
This video is important because it shows just how dangerous pseudoscience (or in layman’s terms, outright quackery) really is. Richard Cohen has written a book that has had the effect of igniting an attempted genocide of gays, [...]

Man in coma for 23 years, now finger pointing way too fast.

Littlejohn read my mind by commenting about this media sensation case.   This appears to be a case of facilitated communication.  First watch this video and notice how fast the facilitator is supposing reading his reactions and typing.  Foul!  No way.  Steve Novella sums this up better than I could.  Check out his take and [...]

Happy Skeptics Day!

Well, maybe.
Skeptics Day is either October 13th, January 13th, or the first Friday the 13th of the year.  I’m going with October 13th to fit my own selfish needs.
However, yesterday was Freethought Day.  A real and recognized by Wikipedia (and a number of other groups) holiday. I didn’t realize it was Freethought Day until this [...]

Michiana Skeptics

I want to draw attention to another Indiana skeptics group. The group is the Michiana Skeptics and holds monthly meetings at the St. Joseph Public Library.
Here’s the notice I received via Atheist Nexus:
We are a fairly new, local band of atheists and skeptics located in NORTHERN INDIANA!! Called “Michiana Skeptics”. We have our own website(google [...]

Did you hear about the dyslexic, agnostic insomniac who stays up all night wondering if there really is a Dog?

I needed something funny this morning so, here are some of my favorite jokes of a rational/philosophical/freethought nature.
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During the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, one morning’s executions began with three men: a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a rationalist skeptic.
The rabbi was marched up onto the platform first. There, facing the guillotine, [...]

The Amazing Meeting 7 redux

Every year the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) puts on what many consider to be the premier Skeptics’ conference. The 7th annual “The Amazing Meeting” (or TAM) was July 9th-12th in Las Vegas.
TAM is a collection of speakers, workshops and paper presentations. Here’s the full TAM 7 schedule. In addition there are magic shows, talent [...]

What’s on my mind and yes this is random, deal.

Since my brain is in Concentrate-On-Work-For-The-Next-Two-Days-Then-I’m-Off-To-TAM7 Mode, all I have time to post is what I’ve read recently that I found interesting via my Yahoo Pipe news/mashup/flux capacitor feed aggregator (DO NOT click on that link unless you want to enter a world of nerd you may never recover from, srsly).

Lunar mapping satellite snaps first [...]

Open Forum Friday: Is “ambush skepticism” a good idea?

Mark Edward at Skepticblog has a post up suggesting we (skeptics, not FFW) take up “ambush skepticism“. Just a couple of the suggestions he makes in his post:

Offer a tarot reading to the Watchtower person once you agree to have them come into your house to discuss Jesus. If they balk, quote Corinthians to them [...]

How To Be A Parent And An Atheist.

How do I parent without religion, without God?
It is a question that I have been struggling with for the past three years.  At first I thought parenting would be pretty straight-forward: you try not to do any irreparable harm, you make sure their diet consists of more than ice cream and M&M’s,  you teach them [...]