13 July 2011 by Erik Davis
Much Sturm und Drang last week over the revelation that Valley Park Middle School is allowing an imam to hold Friday prayer services in the school cafeteria. It’s one of those interesting stories that makes for strange bedfellows, with the Centre for Inquiry and Canadian Secular Alliance standing alongside the Canadian Hindu Advocacy, the Muslim [...]
Posted in Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Evolution, Media, Ontario, Skepticism28 Comments
27 June 2011 by Erik Davis
There’s a viral video doing the rounds — an edit, set to music, of footage from a documentary about a stone-age tribe in Papua New Guinea making contact with modern humans for the first time. It’s an astounding thing to watch. The Toulambis, as they are known, trepidatiously approach the modern man on the [...]
Posted in Cognition, Critical Thinking, Culture, Environment, History, Skepticism, Social Sciences13 Comments
16 June 2011 by Erik Davis
It must be true. A little bird told me. That little bird of course was Cosmo the Amazon Parrot of the Vancouver Aquarium, who went on CBC and Global a few weeks back to predict a quick win by Vancouver. Watch: A Strong Track Record? At the time, it seemed reasonable to trust Cosmo – [...]
Posted in Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Culture, Logic and Fallacies, Media, Probability and Statistics, Skepticism1 Comment
31 May 2011 by Erik Davis
By now, you’ve no doubt gotten wind of the controversy caused by two Toronto parents who decided not to tell the world the gender of their new baby, Storm. The story jumped from our national press across the 49th parallel, where the hosts of ABC’s The View had this to say: These positions are [...]
Posted in Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Media, Skepticism12 Comments
20 April 2011 by Jason Tetro
Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the election in Canada, and witnessed two Leader’s debates, I find that there has been much said to woo Canadians to vote one way or another. It’s been interesting to see the differing styles and content from all five Leaders and how each of them has aimed [...]
Posted in Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Logic and Fallacies, Skepticism0 Comments
04 November 2010 by Erik Davis
My colleagues, and others around the web, have been doing an admirable job combating the nonsense that Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher are peddling as part of their so-called Vaccine Awareness Week (VAW). It’s especially gratifying to see, considering the size of their organization and audience, that a rag-tag, loose association of bloggers can [...]
Posted in Cognition, Critical Thinking, Health, Media, Skepticism, Vaccines1 Comment
29 October 2010 by Steve Thoms
This ridiculous farce of an invented controversy got way out of hand way too fast. My apologies for sleeping on this one. I thought that sanity would prevail, and everyone would surely see the perpetrators for the fools they are. It seems that I over estimated the Canadian media’s ability to be dedicated to journalistic [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Canada, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Health, Logic and Fallacies, Media, Ontario, Pseudoscience271 Comments
29 October 2010 by Erik Davis
This is the final installment of my five-part series on Magical Thinking, which began on Monday to elaborate on the themes of my talk at Skepticamp Toronto last weekend. Previous installments: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4. Engaging the Non-Skeptic Hang around the skeptical community long enough, and you’ll inevitably [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Science, Skepticism3 Comments
28 October 2010 by Erik Davis
This is the fourth installment of my five-part series on Magical Thinking, running Monday – Friday this week, which picks up on the themes I introduced at Skepticamp Toronto last weekend. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are here, here, and here. On Holism, Contagion, and Sympathy In the last article in this series, we discussed [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Cognition, Critical Thinking, Skepticism, Vaccines1 Comment
27 October 2010 by Erik Davis
Welcome to the third installment of my five-part series on Magical Thinking, running Monday – Friday this week, which provides more background for my talk at Skepticamp Toronto last weekend. You may wish to read Part 1 and Part 2 first, to put this post into context. On Essentialism & Vitalism In yesterday’s article, we [...]
Posted in Cognition, Critical Thinking, SkepticismComments Off
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