Delicate Balance

by Steve Cuno

In Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer describes his experience as the “guest skeptic” on a program for NBC. The other guests claimed to have experienced a close encounter of the third kind. He writes that after the taping, he and they went out for dinner and talked about...

Noteworthy, 18 Jan 2011

• Steve Cuno has a new post up on the JREF Swift blog: How to Sabotage Skepticism from the Inside: Entwine the Claim with the Cause
• Steve also recently posted this on his personal blog: Denying human nature is no way to fight racism

A picture of Internet wildlife

by human nature photographer A. Skeptic

A huge flock, honking and flapping their wings, but going nowhere.

In Which I Admit to a Bias

by K.O. Myers

I generally eschew the annual ritual of New Year's resolutions. If I don't have the mental discipline to positively alter my character or behavior in June, I'm not sure how passage from one arbitrarily demarcated solar orbit to another is supposed to provide the necessary willpower. If the psychological signpost of the beginning of a new year affords you sufficient impetus to tack toward a course of self-improvement, you have my sincere congratulations. I've never found it particularly motivating.^*