Category: Critical Thinking

Something egregiously lacking in most of today’s online crowd. There’s too much gullibility, superstition, pseudoscience and plain twaddle online, but a lot of people accept it ass gospel.

GWT treatment a sure cure for NAWHS syndrome

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

Loading

After years of research* and development, I have finally worked out the details for the treatment of the viral NAWHS (New Age Woo Hoo Susceptibility) syndrome: GWT or Gullibility Whack Therapy. And I’m going to found my own institute: The Whack-a-Wacko Institute of Common Sense Therapy. I stand to make millions. It works like this: Every time a client utters a comment about the healing benefits of any flavour of New Age woo hoo including homeopathy, who avoids vaccinations, gluten and GMOs, who quotes Dr. Oz, Dr. Mercola or Gwyneth Paltrow, who confesses to using ear candling, magic crystals, reflexology, … click below for more ↓

Local media is letting us down

Collingwood / Critical Thinking / Financial follies / Health & Medicine / Marketing / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

Loading

Rule number one in The Elements of Journalism is: “journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” Number three is “Its essence is a discipline of verification.” Keep those two in mind as you read this. I recognize that local reporting is not always the same calibre as the investigative journalism we expect from national media, but in my view (and experience as a former reporter and editor), blindly accepting claims about health, wellness or science without questioning, let alone confirming them through a credible source, and then repeating those statements in a story is not responsible reporting. It’s just typing. … click below for more ↓

What is science? It’s not this stuff.

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Diet Fads / Health & Medicine / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

Loading

Recently in a Facebook post, two of us were squabbling in typical Facebook-fashion over “alternative medicine” and related treatments (many of which came into the discussion as links to pseudoscience and/or charlatan’s websites). As is my wont, I continued to debunk these with links to actual medical sites and discussions on the topic from health services, universities and real doctors. The other person posted a link to a piece that had Dr. Nuzum – a naturopath*, not a medical doctor, who promotes himself and his products heavily on YouTube and social media – comment thus on fingernail ridges: “…in oriental medicine, … click below for more ↓

WTF is wrong with people these days?

Aging / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Learning & Education / Memes; Internet & Social / New Age Codswallop / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Loading

Into everyone’s life comes the realization that we are not young and in between the time when we were, the world has changed. Not always for the better, either. In fact, it’s hard not to conclude the whole world has gone to shit since the internet arrived. Aging is not something that, as a culture, we embrace. After all, who wants to be old? Being a senior today is way too often portrayed in the media as being vulnerable, out of touch and cranky, as if we emerged from the chrysalis of middle age into a hunched curmudgeon shuffling along … click below for more ↓

Collingwood and cannabis stores

Collingwood / Council / Critical Thinking / Local media / Planning & Policies / Publicity & CommunicationsLeave a comment

Loading

Credit where credit is due: Collingwood council this week voted unanimously to allow a cannabis store to open here. That came as somewhat of a surprise given earlier negative comments from come councillors, but in the end they all agreed to it. It made sense to say yes, given that pot is now legal in Canada. Saying no would have made the community seem both out-of-touch and fusty, and would have reinforced the resolutely-closed-for-business reputation that last council gave our town. But the staff report also shows that there is still a deep prohibition-era thinking in town hall. Take a … click below for more ↓

You’re going to die. Again.

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Memes; Internet & Social / Predictions and propheciesOne Comment

Loading

Yeah, I know: we’re ALL going to die sooner or later. No one gets out of here alive. But that doesn’t stop people from saying the end is nearer than we expect. Right around the corner, in fact. The latest Magical Event being touted online (which event is absolutely not like all those others they predicted in the past…) starts December 21 (apparently “the week of Hanukkah in December 2019” because nothing says Jewish festive occasion and worship like the Christian end of the world…), according to wingnut and serial false predictor David Montaigne. Montaigne has written six books of … click below for more ↓

Goodbye, Information Age

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Literature / Media / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Loading

“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website. She writes: …the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced. I no longer need to open a computer, go online and type my questions into Google if I want to know something: I can simply ask it. … click below for more ↓

Natural selection simplified

Books & Reviews / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Evangelicals / Evolution & Paleontology / TheocracyLeave a comment

Loading

I was startled by the simplicity of the forumla. Stephen Jay Gould, the late eminent paleontologist, biologist and historian of science, summed up Darwin’s basic theory of natural selection so eloquently and so succinctly that it rocked me back on my heels. It was something even a diehard creationist could understand (assuming he or she wanted to try…) First there are three basic facts Gould states about life and living creatures: All organisms produce more offspring than can possibly survive; All organisms within a species vary from one another; At least some of these variations will be inherited by offspring. … click below for more ↓

One Million B.C.(E.)

Creationism / Culture / Film & ReviewsLeave a comment

Loading

You can’t help but chuckle when Tumak runs down the rocky slope to battle the baby Triceratops (about the size of a Sheltie) and ends up rolling in the dirt with the all-too-obvious rubber model. I half-expected it to squeak like a dog toy. It’s just one of the many scenes in the 1940 version of One Million BC that make makes it fun to watch. Corny, yes, cheesy, perhaps. But mostly fun. And it was the top-grossing film of the year; that’s no small accomplishment. The film is basically a Romeo-and-Juliet love story with a happier ending. Throw in … click below for more ↓

Another bad year for ‘psychics’ and quackery

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Predictions and prophecies / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

Loading

The year 2018 was another bad year for so-called ‘psychics,’ astrologers and others in the prediction business – and yes, it is a business – because nothing they predicted came true. Nothing specific or meaningful, that is. Sure lots of general “predictions” and vague lifestyle comments phrased as “predictions” were made – many which echoed what others have been saying in real news. But that wasn’t because of some astrological or ‘psychic’ effort. When you read these sites you find a lot of that bloviated nonsense like “The main astrological indications of 2018 are those of releasing the past and … click below for more ↓

Baby, It’s Politically Correct Outside…

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Culture / Memes; Internet & Social / Poetry & Lyrics / Political correctness gone wild / Political fads / Pop Culture / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Loading

I must have travelled to another universe because when I awoke, the world had gone mad. Radio stations were pulling a popular, rather over-played, 74-year-old, playful holiday song because some folks thought it was about rape. Sexual assault. Or at least non-consensual sex. The media was full of Chicken Littles screaming that the cultural sky was falling if radio stations continued to play it. The song was subject of weighty opinions on editorial pages. What is going on in this strange, politically correct and apparently unhinged universe? Let me back up. Two items appeared simultaneously on my Facebook timeline this week: … click below for more ↓

Astrology: millennials in search of woo hoo

Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pop Culture / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

Loading

“Astrology is not a science; there’s no evidence that one’s zodiac sign actually correlates to personality.” I was disappointed to read that line in a story in The Atlantic, a piece titled, “The New Age of Astrology: In a stressful, data-driven era, many young people find comfort and insight in the zodiac—even if they don’t exactly believe in it.” Disappointed not because it isn’t true – it is: astrology is woo hoo – but rather that writers still feel the need to state the obvious. It’s like a movie reviewer starting with “There’s no evidence that Batman is actually a … click below for more ↓

More rapture, less reality

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

Loading

According to some, the rapture is coming again, April 23. I’m so tired of this event. I’m still cleaning up after the last rapture. And the one before that. And the one before that, and before that, and before that… it’s even more frequent than an annual event. But next week it’ll come again. the whole shebang: Christians rising from the dead, the messiah prancing about, angels flitting about like birds, the confetti, the glitter, champagne corks and party balloons all over the place. Raptures are always such a mess. Seriously. April 23, according to a report on Faux News. … click below for more ↓

The magic of reading

Critical Thinking / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Typography / Words & etymology / Writing & cursiveOne Comment

Loading

Can you make sense of those lines in the image to the right? Of course not. They’re deconstructed from the letters of a simple, one-syllable word and randomly re-arranged. It’s just four letters, but their component parts are not arranged in the proper order, so they seem like meaningless lines and squiggles. We’ve not been taught to assemble them into a structure that makes sense to our brains. Yet we’re quite capable of assigning meaning and context to abstract forms, if they’re assembled properly. The order that we prefer those lines and curves to be in is arbitrary – the … click below for more ↓

Raw water: the New Age death wish

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Diet Fads / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery3 Comments

Loading

Would you willingly expose yourself to cholera? While treatable, this highly infectious disease causes great physical distress and suffering to its victims, and is even fatal to some. Most readers have never experienced it because it’s rather a rarity in developed nations, those that have the benefit of modern water and wastewater treatment systems. That’s thanks to decades of stringent and effective health and safety standards and constantly improving treatment systems. But for some, it seems, those systems are a terrible burden; a worrisome threat to their natural state. The very notion of clean, hygienic water bereft of bacteria and … click below for more ↓

Back to Top