The Skeptics Society has retired Skepticblog (while preserving all posts online at their original urls for future reference), but we’re proud to announce our bigger, better new blog: INSIGHT at Skeptic.com! Dedicated to the spirit of curiosity and grounded in scientific skepticism’s useful, investigative tradition of public service, INSIGHT continues and exp […]
Some people say, "Oh, there's anti-science on both sides of the political aisle." But that neglects one important fact: in only ONE political party are the leadership and the party platform dominated by science denial.
Would you believe there is a patch of trapped garbage floating in the North Pacific bigger than the state of Texas? It's called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch".
I just ran across this parody of the “History” Channel by some folks calling themselves the EVP Patrol Squad. They are spoofing the various pseudoscientific “experts” that are regularly paraded out on that channel in favor of various ancient alien, paranormal, and ghostly claims. The funny thing is that if you actually watch some of the stuff on the History Channel, it is so goofy that it almost seems that this is straight from one of their shows – so this is good evidence of Poe’s Law. Enjoy! 🙂
I don’t know about you all, but I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to look a sporks the same again. The horror… THE HORROR!!!
Just in time for Easter, the “History” Channel has come out with a television special which claims to have found the “true face” of Jesus Christ. And just how was this amazing feat accomplished? Supposedly through a complex, three-dimensional computer analysis of the Shroud of Turin.
Of course, this is a major media fail on the part of the “History” Channel, because the entire argument that this is the face of Jesus is based upon a false premise. Namely, the assumption on the part of both the “History” Channel and the researchers performing the computer analysis is that the Shroud of Turin actually did cover Christ… when in reality it didn’t.
All the evidence we have to date shows quite clearly that the Shroud could not have been the funeral covering for Christ, because all signs point to it being created sometime around the 13th century A.D. (see my previous blog posts on the Shroud of Turin here and here). And, unless I’m really bad at both math and a basic understanding of Christian theology, Jesus is supposed to have been resurrected a mere three days after his death, as opposed to roughly seven centuries!!! All the cool technology in the world won’t change the basic fact that if you start with a bad argument (i.e., the Shroud is authentic), you’ll still end with a bad argument (i.e., the “3D face of Jesus” is the real thing). In other words… “garbage in = garbage out”.
So while the “History” Channel might be going for ratings with the timing of this TV special, they get a big, fat failing grade for spreading yet more nonsense when they are supposed to be educating the public.
The Skeptical Teacher 