SkepticBlog is a collaboration among some of the most recognized names in promoting science, critical thinking, and skepticism. It also features the cast and producers of The Skeptologists, a pilot skeptical reality show.
As part of the continuing adventures of the Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists, I would like to share with you a bit of rough-edited never-before seen footage. This was shot during the Pilot of The Skeptologists and for reasons you will soon understand, it was never included in the final version of the pilot. I found the event interesting and it solidified my thoughts about how people interpret events based on their own predispositions.
Readers of Skepticblog.org will immediately suspect something is up when I ask you to watch a video and tell me if you think I have ESP or not. Of course I don’t believe in ESP and most of you probably do not either. However, when you see this video consider that it might be something related to ESP that is not, in fact, at all paranormal. That is synesthesia.
Synesthesia is the phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sense modality produces a sensation in a different sense modality, for example, touching something and sensing a color. Go ahead, watch this video, and tell me if you think I have synesthesia. Continue reading…
Most skeptics know that self-proclaimed psychics such as Uri Geller, who claim to be able to bend cutlery with just their minds, are actually using magic and trickery to do so. Of course, if they could really bend metal with just their minds you have to wonder why at some point they always have to touch the spoon. The answer is obvious to skeptics: because the only way to bend a spoon is by physically bending it! But how? Continue reading…
Did you see the awesome video of the Canadian meteor from this weekend? Incredible. The meteor streaked across the night sky, growing brighter as it descended. When it reached the denser parts of the atmosphere it grew bright enough to light up the entire sky. It then may have broken apart – as of this writing the meteorite or pieces of it have not been found.
Since the beginning of the Skeptoid podcast, people had been asking me for a video version. Tempting indeed, but having been a college filmmaker and done my share of dabbling, I knew that a weekly video podcast would require far more than the limited time I have available for Skeptoid. So this idea stayed on the back burner for a while.
But I finally got fed up with the amount of uncritical praise and attention given to the garbage conspiracy films Loose Change and Zeitgeist on the Internet, and decided that it was time for a counterattack of reason. So I spent a few months of odd hours putting together my thoughts and writing my own garbage film for the Internet, which I called Here Be Dragons. (I wish I’d picked a different title, because that one’s so common, but heck, I was fresh out of creativity by that point.) Continue reading…
