The Smug Baldy Speaks

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, believes that we’re entering a new age of scientific understanding that renders the “old” scientific method obsolete. The reason? We now live in an age where petabytes of data are available, and we can now use powerful computer and mathematical models to find heretofore unanticipated correlations.
This […]

One of Sylvia Brown’s biggest on-screen blunders, mistakenly telling Shawn Hornbeck’s parents - on camera - that he had been murdered, has now caused a bit of a stir in syndication across the pond. The Ofcom regulatory agency found that ITV’s rebroadcast of the Montel Williams episode in which Sylvia Browne needlessly devastates Hornbeck’s […]

In my ongoing series about how local non-scientists are attempting to make scientific appeals to include intelligent design in public science classrooms in Alabama, I bring you this tidbit that appeared in yesterday’s Mobile Press Register. In letter titled, “Science not beyond error” a minister from a local Church of Christ argued:
Herein lies […]

In a recent opinion piece in our local paper, the author announced support for something he oxymoronically called “non-religious” intelligent design (or ID), and went further to claim that this version of ID was more scientific than its predecessor since it made no claim as to the identity of the mysterious universal designer. The […]

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to examine critical thinking and I’d like to get your input as well. For starters, I’ll just take on the term “Critical Thinking” itself. In later posts, I’ll cover how critical thinking is related to science and effective argumentation.

In today’s eSkeptic there are not one, but two responses to Ben Stein’s new anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In the first response, Ben Stein’s Blunder, Michael Shermer recounts his own strange interview for the film, as well as several fabrications, including the one at the film’s opening in which Stein lectures at […]

Nobody should be required to take a neutral stance on stupidity. Indeed - here at SmugBaldy, we’re vehemently anti-stupid, so this is the sort of thing that really irks me. I had previously written a short piece about how creationists were trying to worm their way into the hall of power in Texas, […]

Over on the comments on my Sylvia Brown’s 2007 predictions post, Bethany asked this:

WHO CARES IF SHE IS FAKE?! WHAT HARM IS SHE DOING?!?!?!?!

I almost let this slide, but couldn’t do that in good conscience.
You tell me:
Most famously, Sylvia tells Shawn Hornbeck’s parents that their child had been murdered. Oops, he’s alive and well. […]

This video is priceless. Here we have an Atheist and a True Believer having a calm, rational discussion about belief, knowledge, epistemology, and the existence of God. Of course, it’s rational up to the point at which the caller cannot contain his righteous fury.

Just when you thought that the battle for America’s soul was won, and the forces of lunacy and idiocy had retreated to the fetid holes from which they sprang, we find that Texas will be the new battleground for creationists bent on the destruction of rational thought in science education. In an editorial today […]