Greetings readers and listeners. You may remember me writing about mentalist Adrian Saint before, in The California Aggie, here on my blog, and the Skeptic’s Circle also picked up the story and promoted it. Back in February, he claimed to have predicted the results of Super Bowl XL, and got The Aggie to report that he did, abandoning skepticism entirely, so I felt I had to say something. Our local Davis mentalist responded in The Mentalist Strikes Back, making several more predictions that turned out to be wrong. Every saga has an end, so now it’s time for The Return of the Science Guy. Read More…

Come ye, hear ye, hie thee to the sixth and thirtieth Skeptic’s Circle, at The Examining Room of Dr. Charles. But if you are the kind of person who values affirmations of belief over evidence, beware! You’re about to undergo major reconstructive surgery.

Gotta love superstition, it gives us lucky numbers, unlucky fridays, sidewalk crack phobias, and obsession over meaningless numbers. Take today, for instance, the Sixth Day of the Sixth month of the Sixth year of the century/milennium. 06/06/06, the mark of the beast, aka the antichrist, people seriously freak out and spend an inordinate effort to keep this palindromic number from coinciding with anything, be it a birthdate or a social security number. By no ironic coincidence, Ann Coulter released her new book today, but on the flip side, PZ Myers announced that today is the birthday of his blog.

Now for my ‘mark of the beast.’ Read More…

The new (or prospective?) faculty advisor for AGASA at UC Davis, Bob Taylor, just gave us an interesting lecture about Immanuel Kant’s argument for rational religion. All about virtue, good, evil, and the quest for the Highest Good. I’m posting this for AGASA members who couldn’t make it, but hey, if you’d like to listen to some dense philosophy, enjoy! Read More…