I am happy to announce that the Women Thinking, Inc skeptical organization (of which I’m the secretary), in conjunction with Skepchick, is holding its annual March Madness bracket challenge to help raise funds for our efforts at promoting vaccines. My colleague Jacqueline elaborates:
Every year Women Thinking Inc. hosts a March Madness bracket challenge. This year is no exception. Compete with us to help a good cause and have tons of fun with your fellow Women Thinking Inc. super-heroins and superhero. Half of the proceeds go to the Hug Me! I’m Vaccinated campaign and the other half go to the super genius winner. This bracket challenge is also being adopted as the We Have Sports internet radio show (like us on fb!) official bracket challenge.
To enter donate $10 at womenthinking.org. Your Paypal email address (or add a different one in the message) will be sent an invitation to join our bracket challenge. When brackets come out on the 17th, go to the website in the following days and simply fill out your bracket by cutest mascots, best uniforms, sexiest point guard, or with teams you actually think will win.
Join us! This was so much fun last year and I can’t wait to lose again. In the end, no one is actually losing because you are helping a great cause. Do it now!!!
The Women Thinking Free Foundation, an organization of which I’m a board member, has come up with a great idea for skeptical activism: setting up NCAA tournament brackets and giving the proceeds to the promotion of vaccinations via the Hug Me I’m Vaccinated campaign! And how do I know this is such a great idea? Simple: because I know little to nothing about sports (and I don’t really care about them much either), and this got me to sign up for a bracket! Check it out and spread the word…
Do you like basketball? Do you hate deadly diseases? Have you been trying to find a way to use basketball to fight deadly diseases? Well, now you can by joining the Vax Your Bracket NCAA Tournament Pool. It costs a mere $10 to enter! Half of the proceeds go to the winner …and the other half go to Women Thinking Free Foundation to help us do things like run our Hug Me! I’m Vaccinated! pro-vaccination campaign. Check out http://www.hugmeimvaccinated.org/to see where the money will be going.That’s right! You can now combine sports with saving the world!
We’re using simple CBS Tournament rules and there will be prizes for the top 3 winners. Plus, did I mention that you’ll be helping to save the world by promoting vaccinations?
Prizes:
1st place: 1/2 of the $$ collected
2nd: Hug Me T-shirt or Hug Me bear
3rd: Money back
The directions are simple:
1. Go to http://www.womenthinkingfree.org/ and click on the “Buy Now” button on the bottom right.
2. Once we get your payment, we’ll send you an invite to the Pool at the email you provided. You’ll have to create an account with CBS Sports. The deadline for sending us payment to join the tournament is Wed March 14 at 9am.
3. Starting on March 11, you can log on to CBS Sports and make your bracket. You must make your bracket before the first tournament game is played on Thursday night.
4. Log into CBS Sports during the tournament to see where your standing is compared with all the other players. We also approve of trash talk.
5. Save the World!
It never ceases to amaze me how psychics and their ilk manage to persist, despite numerous moments of spectacular fail – such is the nature of cognitive dissonance with the psychics & their followers. Well, at least we can have a little fun with it… A few days ago (on March 31st), just for a little bit of skeptical fun, Jimmy Kimmel had a psychic named Gary Spivey on his show to make a series of Final Four picks for the NCAA tournament. Of course, as Kimmel outlines in his opening remarks, most of these games had already taken place, and some of the “teams” (such as Balboa and Flanders) don’t even exist! Watch as master psychic Gary Spivey makes his predictions…
That’s pretty damn funny, if you ask me. I will give Gary Spivey one thing, however: he’s got the most wicked-cool looking hairdo EVER!!! 🙂
Okay, I just couldn’t pass this one up… I saw this video today on Yahoo Sports where they claim to show recent footage of the world’s longest basketball shot. I’m a bit skeptical, because such videos have been released to the Internet before and many are found to be digitally altered or tweaked. So it’s tough to take something like this at face value.
But I’m willing to be convinced – most especially because, if true, it’s a pretty damn cool feat! And it does make sense that, given enough attempts, something like this could be done – there is, after all, nothing in the laws of physics which would prevent it. With that, here are two videos showing the claimed shot…
So, my fellow skeptics, what do you think? Real or fake? Let the games begin! 🙂
The Skeptical Teacher 