Skeptophilia

You might have heard that a while back, there was a recall on Toyotas because of a problem with stuck accelerator pedals , a malfunction tha...

So once again I've been sent a link several times with either "Oh, lord, here we go again" or "Ha!  This is real!  You s...

In C. S. Lewis's wonderful fantasy story The Magician's Nephew , he says, "The trouble about making yourself stupider than you ...

I swear, the conspiracy theorists are getting faster these days. In the past, it seemed like they'd at least wait until the dust settl...

I have an update for those of you who are worried about when the world is going to end, or civilization is going to fall, which honestly wo...

I find it puzzling how few people actually understand weather. Partly, this puzzlement is because I've always found it completely fas...

Tomorrow is the start of a new school year for me, and that probably explains why I had the reaction I did to a flyer that some friends of m...

In fiction, when an evil villain against whom you have fought long and hard is finally vanquished, you are generally depicted as being prett...

Well, it was only a matter of time, wasn't it? In the last few years, we've seen a surge in the number of claims that the governme...

If I can sum up the rationalist view of the world in one sentence, it would be: your belief in something does not make it the truth. If yo...

Here I sit, having battened down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Sandy (due to arrive in the wee hours tonight), and two things are...

In Umberto Eco's brilliant novel Foucault's Pendulum, three worldly and skeptical book editors whose company specializes in publish...

Last night the remnants of Hurricane Isaac swept through upstate New York, bringing electrical storms and some much-needed rain to our area,...

It is a curious feature of woo-woo that the purveyors of such ideas feel driven to add layer upon layer of complexity to their theories, as ...