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".
In keeping with the melding of modern technology with good ol’ fashioned skepticism, I’ve found out about a few neat iPhone/Touch apps that are, in my opinion, a must-have for any skeptic. These apps allow one to take photos and manipulate them into giving the appearance of having captured images of ghosts and/or UFOs & aliens. And while such photo manipulation is not proof positive that ghosts & aliens do not exist, when such manipulation is so easy to accomplish it should give one cause to pull out their Occam’s Razor in an effort to slice away the b.s.
Using these apps, take a look at how I added a ghostly spirit and alien UFO to a couple of my photos…
So what sort of goodies are available at the iTunes store for such skeptical fun? Read on…
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 