In latest Scientific American there is an excellent article: Skeptic - Skepticism as a Virtue.
You can find it online at www.sciam.com. On left side click on Current Issue scroll down three quarters, and on right of two columns find the title. Only one page, but I enjoyed it very much.

Thanks wwh

Clickable version: http://www.sciam.com

stales

So which one of you wants to be known as The King of Sciam?

Dear Fiberbabe: If I am the King of Sciam, will you be my Anna?

Dr. Bill,

I thought I was your Anna [pout]

A good read. The website - www.skeptic.com is certainly mows down all those half-truths you pick up, as is www.urbanlegends.com - that is if you believe in any of that stuff [grin].
What's the story with the 'c' and 'k' in sceptic. I have always written it with a 'c', I guess because the 'k' would have made me think I was writing in German (schaut skeptisch:-|).
'K ' is of course, as the artikle(!) states from Greek and the 'c' form from Latin. It is quite rare that we find this Greek form though, [question tag]? I can only think of 'sk' in a few words - none of Greek origin either, I think.

Dear by: my dictionary gives both, and says "sceptic" is chiefly British.

oh no, dr. bill! don't tell me you'd go with the latter-day 4th sense of skeptic!

-joe (the cynic) friday

http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/

Dear joe (gone to the dogs) friday: I cannot fathom fourth meaning of your dictionary.

Blame the "k" on the old lexicographer:
&hand; This word and its derivatives are often written with c instead of k in the first syllable, -- sceptic, sceptical, scepticism, etc. Dr. Johnson, struck with the extraordinary irregularity of giving c its hard sound before e, altered the spelling, and his example has been followed by most of the lexicographers who have succeeded him; yet the prevalent practice among English writers and printers is in favor of the other mode. In the United States this practice is reversed, a large and increasing majority of educated persons preferring the orthography which is most in accordance with etymology and analogy. Syn. -- Infidel; unbeliever; doubter. -

dear bill, it's not my dictionary -- I refer you to your URL.

So if you're a true believer, then you are an antisceptic?

I had an uncle who didn't believe in war and conflict.
He got drafted with three other like-minded guys and and they all ended up driving a sceptic tank.

Dear tsuwm: my genius is rebuked.:

fourth meaning:
"a seeker after truth; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite convictions."

Thanks for the artcle. I've bookmarked it and will check it out later when I have some time.

A related word is "zetetic."

I've been reading Skeptical Inquirer (SI) since about 1980 when a prof introduced it to me. It was such a breath of fresh air - confusing time for me. Nowadays I prefer Skeptic magazine. Oddly, the only reading material that my wife and I have in common is the Skeptic Magazine. I'm surprised she likes it.

I've begun to find SI a bit too harsh, but when I first heard of it, it was such a wonderful thing for me. I felt like I was suffocating, surrounded by people who believed things that for the life of me I couldn't imagine any sane person believing. I was so happy at my good fortune for discovering these people who also found these unbelievable stories just a little TOO unbelievable - and actually were willing to spend a little time to research.

In my hs, we had a "Monsters, Mysteries, and Myths" club. I was the only skeptic and I'm sure the others wondered why I was in it, if I wasn't there. So did I sometimes.

Many years before that, in 8th grade, we were told about an artifact that had been found somewhere - this object that was presented as a battery. Everyone just accepted it and that it could only have been there because aliens gave us the technology. I came up with two alternate ideas: 1) maybe it was actually something else and it just had this ancillary, serendipitous property that it could be used as a battery, and 2) there was a secret society of people who knew things in advance of the rest of society and they had the knowledge that they just gave to us when they thought we were ready or they kept it to maintain control over us. Everyone (including the teacher it seemed to me) thought I was fishing and being completely unreasonable for not accepting the obvious truth - that this was a gift from aliens. Mind you, I didn't say my ideas were right, only that they seemed more reasonable to me than visiting aliens. I mean, if aliens left the technology, how come it wasn't a 20 million volt battery made from some material we wouldn't even be aware of?

About the time I started reading SI, there were some debates going on in the popular press. I like this skeptical stuff because it gives you an alternative. You hear these stories told by the true believers and you think, "yes. given this information, their conclusions must be true." But you always wonder (or *I* always wondered) is that really the way things happened?
SI gave me some extra info I never had before.

So I loved Joe Nickel's "Inquest on the Shroud of Turin." (And I've actually met and talked with him a number of times, listened to him speak, and perform some magic. We were both members of KASES at the time, KY association of scientists and skeptics.) I loved reading Gould's books (though there were parts of them I found irritating - his writing seems a little formulaic to me), and Dawkin's and Sagan's and Asimov's and Hansel's and Gardner's and Randi's (met Randi twice, but didn't get a chance to talk with him) and many others. To me, these books were like a keg of cold beer after a long spell in a dry county. I was dirt poor at the time - I almost dropped out of school and on numerous times I did not buy class books - but I would buy these things hot off the press and I would keep my SI subscription flowing (well, except for a very few times when I just couldn't afford it).

k

Dear tsuwm: my genius is rebuked.:

Rebuked or debunked?

Dear WO'N: I thought I was borrowing from Shakespeare.

1.SCENE I. Forres. The palace.
... Tragedy of Macbeth. Shakespeare homepage | Macbeth | Act ... the palace gate.
MACBETH
Bring them before ... and, under him, My Genius is rebuked; as, it is ...
http://chemicool.com/Shakespeare/macbeth/macbeth.3.1.html

Dear FF: your customary enjoyable post reminded me of an anecdote illustrating occasional merit of skepticism. A father of a girl applying to an Ivy League college among other questions on his part of the application was asked if his daughter had leadership aptitude. He felt compelled to be honest, and answered that while he could not say she had shown leadership aptitude, she was an excellent follower.
Promptly he received an acceptance, with a comment: "Since all of our other applicants have leadership aptitude, it seems quite desirable that we should have at least one good follower."

On filling the need for followers:

hahahahhaahahahaaha (sorry, can't resist)


True story:

I often watch television with my kids (well, not so often recently, but that's only because I'm so busy). The oldest is a little too big to do this now, but when she was younger, I would get home late from work, eat a bit, take a walk, and lay down on the couch facing the tube. The youngest would lie atop me and the oldest would lie in front of me in almost spoon fashion, with her head resting on my arm.


On this particular occasion, it was very late and I think the youngest might have been in bed already. My recollection is it was just me and the oldest who was about 6 or 7 at the time. We were watching Beavis and Butthead together. It was an episode where they go to visit a psychic. She looks into this crystal ball and says, "I see you are not ze Aaaa students." BnB are unimpressed. "And I see you are not ze Bbbb students." They're slightly more surprised. "And I see you are not ze Ccccc students!" Their mouths are now agape and they're absolutely astonished that this woman can tell all this just by looking into the crystal ball.


It's pretty funny. (Well, for those of us sufficiently demented to watch it in the first place.) In any case, my daughter turns around and says to me, "Daddy, I love Beavis and Butthead, but nobody's that stupid. Not really."


Poor kid. I didn't have the heart to tell her.


k

Dear FF: There can be a brief but appealing period of skepticism in the young. Of all too short duration. One day while walking to the beach with my kids, the next to oldest girl announced that she wanted the middle swing at the beach. I told her to remember that there might be another little girl already in it, so she might have to wait a bit. She said "You make her get off it." I said, "Her daddy might be bigger than I am." With the utmost conviction she replied "Oh, daddy, nobody's bigger than you are!"

Then there are adult skeptics. The guy across from me in Organic Chem lab mentioned that he had vacationed in Europe, spending several days in Budapest, and after visiting several museums, his friends talked him into going by himself to visit a local spiritualist, who was alleged to be remarkably successful in getting messages from departed family members.
He said he didn't believe in spirtualism. But they said:"You'll be surprised about the things he can tell you about your great-grandparents." Having nothing better to do that afternoon, he decided to go.
He went alone. There was no answer to the doorbell, but he tried the knob, and found the door to be unlocked. So he went in, and knocked on the door that bore the spiritualist's name. Again, there was no response. He noticed a large gong with a mallet hanging beside it, and took the mallet and hit the gong very hard. Instantly the door opened, and there stood a little wizened male grinning at him. "So I punched him in the mouth as hard as I could." "What in hell did you do that for?" My mother told me always to strike a happy medium."

"So if you're a true believer, then you are an antisceptic?"

Dear WO'N: If you're a true believer, you're an "anti"-dope.

Really cute story about yer kid. You got me unawares with the one about your friend.

It's great that your daughter has such confidence in you. We got a call once and my oldest picked up. Caller wanted to talk to me, but my Amy was suspicious. "Are you a telemarketer?" she asked. This guy goes off on her, screaming at her, telling her she's a bad girl and deserves to be spanked and that she better hand the phone over. She comes down the stairs in tears and hands me the phone (she was maybe 9 or 10 at the time) and says in a trembling voice, "Daddy, I think I did something bad." I asked her what happened and she explained. Chickenshit had already hung up. Needless to say, I was not amused. I told her she did exactly the right thing, that next time if someone said something like that to her that she was to issue a certain string of profanity, and under no circumstances would she ever get in trouble for having done so. She was relieved a little, but was still upset because she was afraid this piece of garbage might track her down. However, she didn't want me to actually do anything. I'm kinduva useless wimp, so she kept asking me if she could call her Uncle Danny (my baby brother with black belt in six different martial arts) to deal with this guy.

Hey, at least she doesn't have unreasonable expectations of her old man. I couldn't help chuckling though. "Sure, you can call him if it will make you feel better." (As for me, I called the phone company and the police. Of course, the phone company said they couldn't track it down, which claim I believe to be a complete lie.)

k

You can find another good debunker site at http://www.snopes2.com/

Sense of truth.-I think well of all skepticism to which I
may reply "Let us try it." But I no longer want to hear
anything of all those things and questions which do
not permit experiments. This is the limit of my "sense
of truth" for there courage has lost its rights.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

I like that site, sparteye - espec. the "urban myths about cars - some of those are so funny!!

...a handy site to bookmark. Silliness, or maybe it's meanness, is blithely accepted by the innocent and well-meaning far too often these days. Not to mention that it's hugely entertaining if you've enough time to browse!