Skepticism

So I wrote a tribute to Perry DeAngelis a few months ago. I also mentioned that the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe was my favorite podcast. A clever person might suspect that I therefore am myself skeptical.

In fact I'm a longtime member of both the Skeptics Society and the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Why? Because nothing frustrates me more than people believing in things without evidence, or with really stupid, easily-dismissed evidence. The things that annoy or anger me range from medium John Edward to, well, God. No good evidence for either one.

So why haven't I blogged about skepticism more? Because despite my incredible arrogance and superciliousness most of the time, I'm intimidated by real skeptical bloggers like skepchick Rebecca Watson and the aforementioned Skeptic's Guide crew. They do such a good job, and they post 20 times as often as I do. I didn't want to try to compete with them.

Note past tense. I've decided to just go ahead and try it anyway. Prepare for carefully explained disbelief in 2008.

Some of my favorite Internet skepticism, besides the stuff linked above:

Podcasts
Quackcast
Logically Critical

Web sites
The Museum of Hoaxes
Snopes

I have of course been a subscriber to Skeptic magazine for years.

More to come.

A happy Newtonmas and a fine new year to you all.