The Skeptic Detective

I choose not to believe

skepticdetective — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:57:15 +0000

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature and it remains premature today.” -Isaac Asimov There are a lot of things which make me uncomfortable with the idea of religion. Unfortunately (for those involved) my societal exposure has largely been to Christianity, [...]

Wait, a truck load of WHAT?

skepticdetective — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:38:28 +0000

On Thursday afternoon my open plan office erupted into a subdued panic caused by an e-mail that was doing the rounds. I could track its progress through my office just by watching who got up and went to join the steadily growing gaggle of people discussing the topic. I finally managed to snag a copy [...]

Blasphemy Day was FUN!

skepticdetective — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:28:40 +0000

As many of you may know, the 30th of September was International Blasphemy Day. A brief description of Blashpemy day from that website; The objective of International Blasphemy Day is to open up all religious beliefs to the same level of free inquiry, discussion and criticism to which all other areas of academic interest are subjected. Why [...]

The Durban boredom festival

skepticdetective — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:32:48 +0000

As some of my readers may know, Durban played host to an “international” psychic festival last month. I realise that I’m possibly a little slow in writing this report on the psychic fair, the reason for my delay is that it took a month for my brain to recover from the boredom of the festival. After [...]

My hero smoked pot

skepticdetective — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:45:18 +0000

Ok, so maybe this is old news to you, but I just found out that Carl Sagan smoked marijuana. Not only did he smoke the weed, he actually smoked enough of it to have developed quite a complicated philosophy about his experiences while high. He didn’t stop at scrawling unintelligible dawdles on an old history [...]

Stupid shit people believe

skepticdetective — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:01:40 +0000

Sometimes I am truely astounded at the things that people believe without spending one minute thinking about. I received the following e-mail at least six times within the space of a few days last week; This is frightning ! ! ! Aaron, just MINUTES before the attack…………. McDonalds, Burger king, Time Zone etc… All places with ball pits [...]

Science is Beautiful

skepticdetective — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:43:08 +0000

I’m not talking about the messy scientific process, of course, I’m referring to Nikon’s annual Photomicography competition. Awesome hey?

The Carnival of the Africans #11

skepticdetective — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:47:23 +0000

Welcome to the 11th edition of the Carnival of the Africans, the Spring edition! September has been a very busy month for the Southern African scientific and skeptical blogging community and I have scoured the blogs to bring you a carnival bursting with newly-hatched goodness. Let’s get started; One of the things I remember about pregnancy [...]

Thank you, Dr Borlaug

skepticdetective — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:38:27 +0000

Thank you for feeding the world and preventing the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. Good Bye.

Thirty years ago, maybe…

skepticdetective — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:33:34 +0000

It is not very often that I receive a chain e-mail that is as easy to disprove as this one, and because it is Sunday afternoon, I’m feeling lazy, and I want to go home and have a braai and a few glasses of amarula I’m going to be very lazy and just give you [...]