As the poster for the Centre for Inquiry notes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It’s a popular catchphrase for the skeptical movement, but should be an intellectual policy for everyone. Regardless of what is being claimed, it requires evidence at the same level of the claim. Anecdote is not evidence,
Continue readingTag: conspiracy theories
Terahertz: Edmonton Journal grants space to debunked anti-WiFi conspiracies
Some parents in Alberta are trying to get schools to ban wi-fi on baseless fears and scare-mongering. The kicker: these same parents are fine with wifi in their house. It’s not so much the parents who bother me in this story as the Canadian Teachers Federation, the local school councils,
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Bad News For Balderdash
A recent story on New Scientist gives a glimmer of hope for those of us who bemoan the swelling tsunami of claptrap and codswallop that fills the internet: THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free “news” stories spread like wildfire. Google
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Comets, Aliens and Conspiracy Wingnuts
The European Space Agency has accomplished one of the greatest engineering and scientific achievements in human history this past week. Not only did it get a space vehicle into orbit around a comet travelling at more than 55,000 km/hr (34,000 mph), it landed a probe on the very rough surface of
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The Ebola Panic
Ebola has gripped the imagination of North American media and been spun into a terrifying spectre looming like a horseman of the apocalypse over us. So widespread has it become that Jenny McCarthy, one of the top wingnuts of quackery and pseudomedicine, and poster girl for the pro-measles-pro-mumps parents, felt compelled
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Those Crazy Creationists
I know, I know, it’s the proverbial fish in a barrel when you critique creationists. They are just so easy to mock. But how can you help yourself when someone like Ken Ham opens his mouth in public? The media just love to pounce all over him. He must take his lessons in
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Chemtrails: yet more conspiracy claptrap
A bit of simple math was used to debunk the chemtrail nonsense conspiracy recently. Over at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’s website there’s a great piece explaining why there simply aren’t enough pilots, planes or chemicals for the chemtrail silliness to be true: A typical crop duster might use seven
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter
The headline for this piece comes from a recent article in Time Magazine: “Dear CNN: Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter.” The article isn’t – as you might have thought – about local bloggers. It’s about critical thinking. Or rather, the lack of it, on CNN’s part.The lack of it
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement
Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly
Continue readingTerahertz: I get email – Human rights and Climate change
Recently, I wrote about a ruling against APEGA, Alberta’s professional association for engineers, by the province’s Human Rights Tribunal. Low and behold, the defendant in the case, Ladislav Mihaly, emailed me with a follow up request for help. My name is Ladislav Mihaly, and I am the Engineer who won
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Conspiracy Theories: 2014 Update
It’s time to update a piece I wrote in December, 2012, outlining the secret deals, backroom negotiations and “barbecue politics” that our council has been involved in since that date, more than a year ago. So here comes the update, the emperor without his clothes: Secret meetings: none Backroom negotiations:
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Debunking the Adam Bridge
A story popped up on the internet in late 2013, recycled in early 2014, claiming “NASA Images Find 1.7 Million Year Old Man-Made Bridge.” Claptrap. It’s not a bridge. It’s simply a natural tombolo: “a deposition landform in which an island is attached to the mainland by a
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax
What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these constructions
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism
There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their replacement by entertainment, spectacle, self-righteous self ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. These are usually followed by vituperative ridicule and angry caterwauling
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?
That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Chemtrails redux: the attack of the tin-foil hat brigade
My earlier post on the nonsensical chemtrail conspiracy has generated quite a lot of activity recently (more than 1,000 views in a few days – thanks!). So much so that I decided to look online again to see why – had this silliness abated? Were people waking up and laughing
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: $35 Million Costs Confirmed in Report
I was told recently that the $35 million projected capital costs for the Central Park redevelopment had been called a “red herring.” That’s verifiably untrue. The actual total amount shown in the final report is $35,251,965.11. This isn’t a made up number, an inflated number or an imaginary number. It
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Casinos redux
First let’s clarify the terms. A “casino” was never really in the discussion, although just about everyone used that term. What the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) offered was a “gaming facility” as they euphemistically called it. A gambling … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Racism and the US Civil Rights movement retold
As I read through Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland, about American politics and life in the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement and the reaction to it by white Americans, the narrative astounds me. Such anger, such violence. Such sadness. … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: The CAO Conpsiracies
Collingwood has appointed an interim CAO, John Brown, former city manager of Brantford, St. John’s and Oshawa, to help the town’s administration and governance during the interim while we search for a full-time CAO. This will, of course, send the bloggers into … Continue reading →
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