This is a somewhat stream of consciousness response to an interview of Michael McRae by Tokenskeptic followed by an interview with Desiree Schell of Skeptically Speaking.

Please go listen to the podcast, it is quite good.

Continue reading Boobquake: Valid science communication event or just a bunch of boobs … quaking? →

Notice that I didn’t say that the medium IS the message. Just that some of the message is in there. In the medium.

I am forever amazed at how easily compelled my fellow skeptics, and/or my fellow atheists, and/or my fellow feminists, and/or my fellow anti-racists are to tell each other that they are doing it wrong. It was once said (by a straight white male Christian, probably), that “If half the people who make speeches would make concrete floors, they would be doing more good.”

Continue reading If you don’t understand that there is message in the medium, then you may not be helping →

The venue, Minneapolis, is well chosen as it is very hard to get an earthquake going on this nice stable bit of crust.

I know it is a bit early, but I’ll remind you of this now and then … as you are making your plans for the summer, consider attending the Skepchicon track at the Convergence thingie in Minneapolis this July.

There will be many other things going on a Convergence. It’s one of those fantasy/sci fi conventions where you wear the Star Wars suit. Well, you don’t have to wear the suit if you don’t want to. And the Skepchicks have a series of things going on:
Continue reading Reminder: Skepchicon in Minneapolis in July →

In case you are interested, the conversation with Desiree Schell, Omar Mouallem, and me talking about “Getting Noticed” on Skeptically Speaking is in podcast form. Here.

Omar Mouallem, Desiree Schell and Greg Laden (that’s me) had a very interesting conversation Wednesday night about how skepticism gets noticed. Through comedy, music, blogging, scientific studies, and other outlets, how do we bring people on board? We decided blogging was irrelevant but that music was cool, we came down divided on what some call “attention grabbing stunts” like blasphemy day and killing crackers. And we are going to finish our conversation tonight, on Skeptically Speaking Episode 29.

Be there or be pie! (And we all know pie are square).

Are women more likely to be stupid/gullible? That seems to be the assumption that the ungenerous of us might make when considering the 7% gap between men and women when it comes to religious affiliation….

… that was discussed recently in an ARIS poll. Earlier, I had pointed to Stephanie Zvan’s comments on this, and now I see that Pandagon is all over it too. I just hope the ladies at Pandagon don’t just buy the bill of goods or fall for the old snake oil routine or anything.

Are women less skeptical than men? Follow that link to find Stephanie Zvan’s analysis of the recently reported study that is making its way around the Internet. Stephanie seems to buy into the study uncritically, you know, like chicks tend to do …… NOT!