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You know, trying to imagine what skeptical short-films might look like makes me realize that, gosh, there isn’t a lot of high-quality, mainstream, skeptical filmmaking out there. I blame Steven Spielberg.

Anyway — consider this note, excerpted form a press release from the Freethought Film Festival Foundation, which seeks to change that situation:

 

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In keeping with recent trends for national US skeptical organizations to work more closely together to advance shared aims, the James Randi Educational Foundation is very pleased to announce that other national skeptics organizations will formally be supporting this year's Amazing Meeting, held July 8-11 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

For the first time in the history of The Amazing Meeting, both The Skeptics Society, as well as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly C.S.I.C.O.P.), will officially be co-sponsors of the event, providing both financial and promotional support to the JREF for the meeting. Ronald A. Lindsay, President & CEO of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry stated, "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in TAM this year in this official capacity.  This collaboration will benefit all skeptics. We appreciate the efforts of JREF to make this possible and are happy to be able to provide speakers and support for this truly Amazing Meeting." Says Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, and president of the Skeptics Society, based in Los Angeles: "It has always been our pleasure to support TAM, which we have done in various ways every year since the beginning. TAM is such a fantastic annual skeptics conference, drawing attendees from around the world. By officially co-sponsoring this year, we only hope to further increase the impact of this amazing event."

James Randi, in celebration of the organizations coming together to support TAM, said: "This will be yet another step forward in the increasing co-operation between major skeptical agencies who share views about rationality and ethics in the treatment of claims relating to occult, supernatural, or paranormal events."

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If the anti-gay religious right had a resident intellectual, it would be George Alan Rekers. He’s a kind of anti-Anita Bryant — bookish, quiet, loathe to hog a spotlight, working indefatigably behind the scenes to provide at least the approximation of an intellectual basis for a religiously-inspired dislike of homosexuals. He does this through academic papers by the hundred, books, and lectures around the world. (His preferred speaking subject: “Teen Sex.”)

With James Dobson, Rekers co-founded the Family Research Council in 1983. He is an adoptive father and frequent foster-parent, who testified as an expert witness against gay adoption in Arkansas and Florida. And perhaps most interestingly, at least for the purposes of Swift, he is a board-member of NARTH, an organization devoted to curing gays of their gayness — a pursuit generally regarded by professionals as pseudo-scientific, and which often involves such practices as the "laying on of hands."

For this reason and many more, we were delighted to be present last month at Miami Int‘l Airport, hot-pink camera in hand, when Rekers returned from a 10-day European vacation with a male prostitute.

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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine. 

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Vic Stenger talks about the limits of science, and whether scientists should be critical of religion and the paranormal, or if such sorts of claims are out of the bounds of science, and therefore beyond criticism. He discusses the academic and spiritual career of Fritjof Capra, and his book The Tao of Physics and how it misused quantum physics to promote New Age mysticism. He explores the implications of Deepak Chopra’s work, which argues that quantum physics proves that “we make our own reality,” and discusses the movies The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? and how they get quantum physics wrong. He explains wave-particle duality, and the reductionistic Standard Model in particle physics, and why this contradicts the claims of the “quantum spiritualists.” And he talks about the future of New Age mysticism and quantum spirituality.

In this weeks Honest Liar commentary, Jamy Ian Swiss revisits what happened in last week’s episode to victims of the ancient con of the Three Card Monte.

Listen here.

  1. New TAM Offering: Dinner with the SGU Crew!
  2. Your Next Iced Latte Could Come From The Abominable Snowman
  3. Dowsing for Divots
  4. Last Day for The Amaz!ng Meeting Early Registration Discount!