Welcome to Skeptics’ Circle #106.  There have been many submissions and I will try to include as many as I think I can.  I wish I had time for witty and clevery, but I have clean run out of wit and clever after two weeks of substitute teaching hordes of Middle Schoolers.  Who knew!  They really do have a way of zapping all the wit and clever right outa a 30+ year old.  So I don’t have any cleverness (nor clevery cleveriness), but I do have excerpts.  I highly recommend that you read all the posts that you can, but in order to entice you, read the excerpts.  Thanks to everyone for submitting.  Thanks for dropping by.  Thanks, David, for the chance to host again.

First, Bing McGhandi at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes brings us “Cell Phone! O Cell Phone!” a humorous tale of “Young Earth Creationism.”  Where was this mysterious revelation revealed by the revealer of revealings?  Well, I’m glad you asked:

Preface (By Bing McGhandi)

The following account came to me from a randomly generated email address and was unceremoniously deposited in my spam folder. I cannot attest to this curious email’s authenticity, so I leave it to my readers to decide the merits of the tale. I have made a few small changes for readability, but otherwise this uncanny account is presented entirely as I encountered it.

Next, Adam Cuerden at Waffle takes on Citizendium’s pro-Homeopathy bias with “Citizendium: The Encyclopedia only pro-Homeopathy editors can edit.“  Here is a short excerpt about the Citizendium article on Homeopathy:

It shows: Criticism is practically non-existent, and what little remains is pretty much strawmen designed to be attacked and knocked down, or exist solely as statements on the line of “some criticism exists. Now back to more information about this great form of alternative medicine you should try”

After you have read Adam’s post and perhaps sipped on your toadstool tea, procured from your local witch, you should check out Greta Christina’s post, “Atheism and the ‘Shut Up, That’s Why’ Arguments,” over at Greta Christina’s Blog.  Greta summed up the post quite nicely in her submission:

Many of the most common arguments against atheists and atheism are essentially of the “Shut up, that’s why” variety. This post shows exactly how these arguments are designed, not to respond to atheist arguments, but to shut them up.

Next, Karen Stollznow at The Skepbitch draws our attention to the wonderfully absurd notion that Australian abortion legislation is to blame for the recent bush fires there.  In Extremists Exploit Disaster we learn that:

A group of Christian Fundamentalists, aptly named Catch the Fire Ministries, posted a media release on their site, wherein they irrationally blame a new pro-choice abortion law for the bushfires.

Not arsonists, not summer, not extremely high temperatures, but a law that allows abortion in the state of Victoria, where the fires are occurring…

Honestly, it makes me almost giddy to know that Christians can give us all such wonderful absurd humor.  Well, it does until we consider some of the realities of the real world:

Tragically, almost one thousand houses have burned to the ground, hundreds of people have died…and these assholes think that abortion is to blame, that the fires are God’s punishment, and that prayer is the answer…

I would pray for Catch the Fire Ministries to pull their collective heads out of those orifices upon which they sit, but I happen to be an atheist and prayer is a ludicrous waste of time and energy.  So, instead I’ll move on.

Andrew Bernardin from The Evolving Mind takes on more absurdity in his post, “How Bogus Beliefs Persist (III): There is a Crisis in the Road Through Mid-life.”

Armed with the belief in a mid-life crisis, a person can readily notice and acknowledge those instances of mid-life-ish persons behaving in a crisis-ish manner. My own mother, at the age of 55, following three decades of driving a series of station wagons, bought a black, two door Trans-Am. A few relatives may have gossiped about my mother’s otherwise hidden crisis, using this inkblot of unusual behavior as evidence. Someone with graying hair doing something odd — must be going through a mid-life crisis. Meanwhile, opposing…

If you wanna know how that sentence ends, you better go check out his post.

And now, unfortunately, my late day and my early waking means that I must go into rabbit speed with the next batch of posts.

David Shiffmanof Southern Fried Science brings us “Gasp…Vaccines unlinked to autism!”

Though most intelligent people already knew this, a special court has just ruled that autism is not caused by the…

Whatever more could there be?  Go find out!

B. Dresche’s post, “Naughty Elmo” (funny, I almost wrote “Emo”), at ICBS Everywhere (great name for a blog!!) tackles the suggestion in the media, as well as among some parents, that dirty messages have been deliberately placed in children’s toys:

This is a perfect example of how human perception is influenced by knowledge. Perception driven by expectation and belief is called “top-down” processing, whereas perception that starts with information from the senses is considered “bottom-up”. Most of our daily perception is top-down in nature.

Will Patrick Holford Be Calling Upon His Mailing List to Sign the New Andrew Wakefield Petition? If So, We’ve Made Some Annotations. With a title like that, what else can I say about post from Holford Watch (dot info)?

In June 2007, as the Autism Omnibus Hearings were in progress and the initial test case was being heard, Patrick Holford contacted his mailing list and asked them to sign a petition in support of Dr Andrew Wakefield. Although it doesn’t look like he ever signed the petition, it is clear that he influenced other people to sign, people who directly cited him as instrumental in the decision not to vaccinate children against…

I must be sleeping as I had no idea there was a vaccination scare going around.  Makes me want to chop off my own vaccinated arm.  Not really.  To those other handful of posts on vaccination that did not make it into this edition, I apologize, but I didn’t want to be too redundant.

Moving right along, Matt Lowry brings us “Why Do People Believe in Woo and Superstition?” Good question.

A recent study from Northwestern University researchers may have found an answer, one which would corroborate the views of many skeptics who’ve pondered this question for years: control.

Over at Whiskey Before Breakfast we get the post, “Tarot Cards and Blame.”

I own four or five packs of Tarot cards. I used to do Tarot readings, actually, trading a quick reading for a meal or a cup of coffee. And I believed, at the time, that what I was doing when I gave a reading was simply…

Using those partial excerpts and leaving people hanging is truly a cheap trick and I apologize for the many times I have used them.  But sleep is what it is and time is what it is and TechSkeptic is who (s)he is and me happens to thinks that (s)he is pretty smart cookie, so let’s end with his(er) post– that last () is meant to be humorous BTW.  Techskeptic comes in with “This Is How Sad the CAM Industry Has Become.”

How low does the so-called “alternative” medicine” have to go before we finally put a stop to that nonsense. This is perhaps not even low enough. They are putting real drugs into the pills for them to work, but they still want to keep the “natural” label, which as you may know, is completely meaningless.

Thank you all for your contributions, visiting, and being Human, Oh So, Human.

Oh, yes!  And you curmudgeons shall not forget to visit the archive of skeptomania, also known as Circular Reasoning, the archive of Skeptic’s Circle.

Skeptic’s Circle #107 will be at The Skeptic’s Field Guide on March 12, 2009.  Until then, farewell, my curmudgeonly friends, don’t let the troglodytes get you down!

Here's my guess. If the economy goes up, Obama's rating will too. If the economy goes down, so will Obama's rating. Now let's watch it right here. It may not happen immediately, but it will usually follow.

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