Stand-up comedy is often funniest when there is an element of truth to what is being said. In this excellent piece of satire comedian Dara O’Briain tackles homeopaths, nutritionists and other ‘bullshit peddlers’ as he calls them. Thanks to @murraybiscuit for linking me to it.

Visitors to the Google landing page on 14 August 2009 would have seen the special logo that the search giant put up for the day, which celebrates the birthday of Hans Christian Ørsted who was born in 1777.

Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist who made numerous contributions to science. He is probably best known for discovering that electric currents can induce magnetic fields, paving the way for breakthroughs in electromagnetism – and, ultimately, leading to modern communications solutions such as cellular communications, and countless others.

He also had an impact on modern philosophy and was the first person to explicitly describe and name the ‘thought experiment’. One of the most commonly-known examples of a thought experiment is ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ that provides an hypothesis used in quantum mechanics.

As a critical thinker in the 18th century, imagine the friction Ørsted must have dealt with on a daily basis from a European public largely taken with religion and mysticism.

As always, Google picks up on worthy celebrations and uses its logo to pronounce them. Which is rad.

Understanding the probability of things happening is, in my opinion, vital to critical thinking. Once you comprehend the numbers behind occurrences, you start to see that even the most remarkable of events were inevitable. This realisation is  a powerful mechanism for raising one’s consciousness.

Satisfactorily explaining how probability works can be difficult when placed on the spot in an argument, however. But it is a key conversation to be had when dispelling myths such as clairvoyance. One of the best explanations of coincidence is in the following video I have found by a Youtube user named Doug who publishes under the moniker of ‘QualiaSoup’. It’s a great piece of content and something I should keep handy on my iPod for the next time I am caught in an argument on the subject…

Some months ago the media in South Africa widely reported on Amazon.com changing its shipping policies to no longer ship to South Africa. A couple of posts on this blog explored that. Turns out the media was wrong for the most part.
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This post is a motivation for watching Brian Dunning’s ‘Here Be Dragons’ movie. If you’d prefer not to read my myopic meandering you can just skip to the bottom and hit play.

I was recently in a debate with a dear uncle of mine who loves a robust argument just as much as I do. Given that we were both somewhat intoxicated on fine scotch at the time the argument was fairly heated. The topic – homeopathy. My uncle buys into the pseudo-science. I do not.

I often have these arguments with family members given to the likes of homeopathy and whenever I do, inevitably botch up the act of staying cool and articulating my inherent scepticism. I try to explain that I apply critical thinking to anything and everything presented to me, whether it’s a question of religion, the perceived dangers of fast food or whether or not to cancel a business trip due to a swine flu “pandemic”.
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