Archive for February, 2010
When Is A Watch Not A Watch?
Posted by Andy in Pseudoscience, Skepticism on February 13, 2010
When is a watch not a watch?
There’s something about a certain type of selling that really gets my goat. It’s the really well written, apparently credible, charismatic selling that shows itself in marketing brochures and various collateral online or in print. Mostly this happens where the commercial entity that seeks to benefit is well-funded. They can employ the best marketing people and get the best writers.
To people like me, and I hope, you, the marketing speak comes over as a cloud of bullshit arrows, words desperately devoid of facts and trying to strike home between whatever neurones aren’t paying close attention.
For example:
Philip Stein has recently introduced its first Automatic timepiece with Swiss movement, its unique e-tailing program that includes profit sharing for local retailers from online sales and the opening of the company’s first store in the Americas. For a complete history of Philip Stein or technical information related to natural frequencies or the new Natural Frequency Disc, please visit www.PhilipStein.com.
Oh, hold on. Did someone mention frequencies? Oh yes. Get ready for it. It’s the latest solution to the everyday stresses and strains that YOU can’t cope with. It reduces stress, increases how quickly you get to sleep, increases how well you feel AFTER you’ve slept and makes you have better dreams. Read the rest of this entry »
What Is It? #4
So, another week, another testing image for you. Take a look at Prof. Dowling’s latest submission, and see if you can tell us what we’re looking at. Leave your answers below, and we’ll announce the winner next week.
Last week we showed you this photo and asked you what it was. The correct answer was the HR 8799 system. In the center, you can see the host star HR 8799. Further investigation shows that three of the specks surrounding the star are planets (marked): Starting at 11 o\’clock, clockwise: HR 8799b, HR8799c and HR8799d. The other specks and patterns are artefacts, which are unavoidable in a challenging observation like this one – star and planets are extremely close, and the star is a few thousand times brighter than the planets. The distance from the star to HR 8799c corresponds to 38 times the average Earth-Sun distance. This image is the latest taken by European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, in particular its combined camera/spectrograph CONICA, which was developed at the MPIA and at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (M-PIES, which is quite a funny acronym). Image credit: MPIA/W. Brandner (MPIA = Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)
Which you guys knew, because you Googled the filename, like dirty rotten cheats. Still, credit where credit’s due, king amongst those cheats was Jon D, who first to correctly guess/Goggle the right answer. No Googling this time, people!
Skeptics with a K – Episode #015
Posted by Mike in Podcast, Skeptics with a K on February 11, 2010
Clueless men, the scent of a woman, Gandhi’s glasses and logical fallacies. With two big mistakes to correct from last episode (whoops!) the guys return with a new episode of Skeptics with a K.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Charles Champions Unreason
Posted by Marsh in Skepticism on February 11, 2010
Thales is a lone skeptic from darkest Devon, (the home of crystals, white witches and alternative practitioners). MSS have kindly agreed to let him vent his spleen on their website from time to time.
The Prince of Wales continues to confirm his well earned reputation as the country’s leading crackpot. Charles can rant as much as he likes about the carbuncles of modern architecture and town planning, but when it comes to health, he abuses his position of authority in his tireless advocacy of the integration of unproven quackery into mainstream medicine at the tax payers’ expense.
The Prince, talking recently at the annual conference of The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment declared his pride at being regarded as anti-enlightenment.
“We cannot go on like this, just imagining that the principles of the Enlightenment still apply now. I don’t believe they do” – Source: The Times
As a reminder, the central principles of the eighteenth century enlightenment were freedom, democracy and reason, and as historian Peter Gray says, “Lead to the scientific method, religious tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means.” Read the rest of this entry »
‘Men Don’t Know Anything About Women’ Says Company Who Don’t Know Anything About Men
Posted by Marsh in Bad PR, Flat Earth News, Media, PR, Sexism, Skepticism on February 10, 2010
Look out fellow men, our secrets are out! Not only is Valentine’s Day is swift-approaching, and therefore supplies of the colour pink and badly-drawn teddy bears on overly-sentimental cards bearing the motto ‘I Wuuurrrrrrve You’ or something equally-nauseatingly trite rapidly running out , but now – now of all times! – the Daily Mail has chosen to expose a dirty, filthy, shameful and completely 100% true fact: none of us male folk know anything, at all, about our womenfolk. Nothing. Nada. Nowt.
Seriously, nothing. Age, hair colour, eye colour, general shape – all alien to us men. Really. It’s remarkable we’re even able to pick them out of a police line-up. Although try asking them what the hell they’re doing in a police line-up, and you’re in trouble. Bloody Women. Harumph. Oops, that might have been wildly sterotypically ignorantly sexist towards the end there, and I can’t go around like that…
…because clearly wild, ignorant, sexist stereotyping is the Daily Mail’s job, as evidenced by their stunningly-accurate-and-definitely-not-made-up research on the amount we fellas know about our missuses:
“Think he knows you? Think again! How millions of men don’t know their partner’s dress size, date of birth, or even eye colour“
Millions of men! Millions of men don’t know their partner’s date of birth! If the UK population is 60 million, let’s simplify things and say that 50% are male (ratios tend to favour a higher female population, bloody women harumph and all that), that’s 30 million men at most, of which millions don’t know their partners’ eye colour! That’s assuming all have partners. And are straight. Realistically, we’re probably talking about 15 or 20 million men who are straight and attached. So the Mail’s ‘millions’ of ignorant men speaks to a real epidemic! What bastards we are!
ORRRR the Mail made it up. Hmm. Let’s read on beyond the headline, and see if we come out the other side. Read the rest of this entry »
Mad Journalist Syndrome
Posted by Colin H in Conspiracy Theories, Government, Journalism, Media, Public Health, science on February 9, 2010
On the 14th January, Simon Jenkins published an article online at the Guardian’s Comment is Free section entitled: “Swine Flu is as Elusive as WMD. The Real Threat is Mad Scientist Syndrome.”, in which he criticised both scientists and the government for what he saw as scare tactics and misinformation in the handling of the swine flu outbreak. The article annoyed me a little, but I had food in the oven, and as I’m a man who lives on his stomach (to paraphrase Dr. Bruce Banner, you wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry), I forgot about it and went about my merry way.
A week later, the article began to surface from the sea of my subconscious and I grew increasingly irked. I gradually came to realise that it was a much more frustrating article than I had initially given it credit for. Read the rest of this entry »
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