Paul Fidalgo, Author at OnlySky Media

Can Quora Be Inoculated from Pseudoscience?

by Paul Fidalgo Nov 20, 2013

Reading Time: 3 minutes
For those who don’t know, Quora is a question-and-answer web platform where anyone can log in, ask any question to the community, and potentially have it answered. It’s kind of a Wikipedia for Q&A. The questions can be on any topic, from the highly technical, to the superfluous, to the hilarious (see my posts on Quora questions regarding Starbucks on the Death Star and the geopolitics of Super Mario). As on platforms like Reddit, users can upvote and downvote both questions and answers to better curate the content. It’s a great way to get yourself lost for hours on end and destroy your productivity.
Anyway, this question came up anonymously about Quora itself, and it’s relevant to our little skepto-atheist community:

Are there any Quora policies regarding pseudoscience? If not, should there be one? Let’s discuss. . . . this question is directed towards a Quora moderation perspective.

Wow, what a great question. Quora can’t and doesn’t make any claims to hosting “definitive” answers to anything, but it’s true that an open platform like this easily provides those who shill nonsense, from homeopathy to the paranormal, with a soapbox and with an air of legitimacy.

Politics, Science

Are Republicans Unfairly Pegged as Anti-Science? (Mostly No)

by Paul Fidalgo Nov 14, 2013

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Are Republicans being unfairly maligned as the anti-science party? The easy answer to that is, “don’t be ridiculous, and what right-wing industry lobby is funding that question?” But to Mischa Fisher, a former House GOP science policy staffer who described himself as “a politically centrist atheist,” the answer is yes, and the stereotype is harming science generally.
In a piece in The Atlantic, Fisher argues that Democrats are, more or less, just as prone to anti-scientific thinking as Republicans, but on different subjects, and that Republicans aren’t nearly as backward on science acceptance as their more extreme clown-characters like Paul Broun and Michele Bachmann would make them seem to be.
At the outset, let me just say I agree with where Fisher is going with his argument, but its presentation is flawed.
First, the problems.

Comedy, General

Goldfish Crackers Aimed Straight at the Atheist Market

by Paul Fidalgo Oct 20, 2013

Reading Time: < 1 minute Finally, a snack food company recognizes the enormous buying power (and appetite for human infants) of the atheist market. Behold, baby-flavored Goldfish crackers!

Thank you, Pepperidge Farm. You must share your recipe!
(Thanks to my pal David for the photo!)

General

Teacher in India Wins the Right to Opt Out of School Prayer

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 21, 2013

Reading Time: < 1 minute There’s a happy conclusion to last month’s story about Sanjay Salve, a public school teacher who was denied pay raises due to him because he refused to pray at a school function. Rather than folding his hands to pray, Salve would hold his hands behind his back, as he describes it, “wondering why I should pray to the god of a religion which I do not follow.” The headmaster was not happy, and Salve was denied regular pay raises.
[Click headline for more…]

Education, Politics

High Court Indicates Support for Indian Teacher's Right Not to Pray

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 09, 2013

Reading Time: < 1 minute
An update on a story I brought you last week: Sanjay Salve, a teacher in India, was denied traditional pay grade increases because of his refusal to visibly pray during a school assembly. According to The Hindu, however, his fortunes may be turning around.
[Click headline for more…]

General

Bishop Spong: Hell isn't Real, Grow Up Instead of Being Born Again

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 02, 2013

Reading Time: < 1 minute Serving as almost a direct contradiction to the video I posted yesterday on the Catholic explanation of Hell, today I came upon this 2006 interview with Bishop Shelby Spong, an Episcopalian who is extremely liberal theologically, saying that, in fact, Hell is made up. [Click the headline for more…]

General

Teacher in India Fights for His Right to Opt Out of Prayer

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 02, 2013

Reading Time: 2 minutes The battle over prayer in schools and other public institutions is not exclusive to the United States. In Nashik, India, English teacher Sanjay Salve is in a struggle with his school to be allowed to refrain from prayers, where he has been denied traditional pay grade increases because of his “defiance” — visibly not taking […]

Politics, Science

Even Seculars Pine for Messiahs

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 02, 2013

Reading Time: 2 minutes There’s little doubt that human beings seem to like the idea of messiahs, deus ex machinas that will save us in our darkest hours. Obviously, even we seculars find something appealing about it, or else we’d be rolling our eyes, or else outright rejecting, stories that are messiah-tastic, such as Harry Potter, Dune (Paul Atreides), and even Lord of the Rings (Frodo and Aragorn are both “foretold”).
At The American Scholar, William Deresiewicz sees a pining for messiahs throughout more than our fiction, but in our very response to word events and technology. He cites our collective awe over the Web, and its liberating potential, as well as “politics,” in the sense of either elected leaders (Obama in ’08) or revolutions (the Arab Spring and Occupy) who will magically “change everything.” And he thinks he spots where this inclination has gotten us into serious, serious trouble: Climate change. [Click the headline for more…]

Uncategorized

Rediscovering 'The Human Bible' (A Little Too Late)

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 02, 2013

Reading Time: 2 minutes Since February of last year, Dr. Robert Price has been hosting his solo podcast The Human Bible for CFI. It’s a show in which Bob brings his encyclopedic knowledge and his trademark humor to demystifying the many layers of myth and conjecture about the Bible. The bad news is that it’s coming to an end (at least as a CFI podcast, though Bob does his own thing as well). Funding and listenership were, of course, among the big culprits.
And I admit, I had kind of lost track of it myself. You see I have to consume a great deal of skepto-atheist media in my work, usually very quickly, so even things that CFI produces, things I really love such as Point of Inquiry and the magazines Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, can pile up. [Click headline for more…]

Books, Science

Win Sam Harris's Money

by Paul Fidalgo Sep 01, 2013

Reading Time: < 1 minute Sam Harris has apparently grown weary of what he considers ill-informed attacks on his book The Moral Landscape and its central thesis, that science can be used to definitively determine whether something is “right” or “wrong” morally. So weary, in fact, he’s willing to shell out his own cash and endure a public humiliation if he’s taken down. [Click headline for more…]

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