Tools for Dragon*Con Skeptrack
September 2, 2009 at 12:38 am | In skeptical events | Leave a CommentIf you follow me on Twitter (or on Facebook or Friendfeed), you’ve probably seen me talking about Dragon*Con in the last few weeks. Although the event is primarily known by science fiction, fantasy and comic book fans for its programming in that area, it has rapidly become one of the largest skeptic meetings in the world.
Dragon Con
Yes The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas is still the largest in terms of sheer attendance by skeptics: over 1000 skeptics in one room in 2009. But Dragon*Con’s skeptic programming room Skeptrack actually offers more panels, lectures and other events than you get at TAM, and an awesome list of guests. If you are anywhere near Atlanta this weekend, come to the Atlanta Hilton downtown and check it out.
Tools for keeping up with TAM7
July 10, 2009 at 5:53 pm | In skeptical events | Leave a CommentThis weekend I am at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7 (TAM7) in Las Vegas. This is a fantastic annual gathering of skeptics.
Tools for keeping up with TAM7 this weekend include:
- Live streaming video on UStream.tv courtesy JREF
- Aggregate Twitter feed of posts from the show
- Flickr search for photos tagged TAM7
…and of course my own Twitter feed that you can see at right or access directly @krelnik on Twitter. Even if you’re not here, there’s plenty of vicarious fun to be had.
Keep an eye on that live video feed this coming Sunday (July 12). Around 11 AM Pacific time (6 PM GMT) I will be presenting a paper with Christian Walters on measuring the skeptic web.
Web archiving is an important skeptic tool
June 10, 2009 at 2:26 pm | In articles, skeptical activism | 4 CommentsTags: chiropractors, psychics, simon singh, wayback
You may have noticed a new badge appeared recently on the right side of this blog that says Keep Libel Laws out of Science. It has to do with an ongoing legal case in England where a major chiropractic association is suing science writer Simon Singh for libel over an article in which he referred to certain chiropractic procedures as “bogus.” I encourage you to click the badge and sign the petition.
Today there was a fascinating development in this case that relates directly to skeptical software tools. Because the case hinges on whether or not chiros promote procedures they know to be “bogus”, skeptics have been scouring chiropractic websites in the UK looking for evidence of this. In response, another chiropractic association has advised its members to take down their websites entirely! This is stunning.
Internet Archive Wayback Machine
As skeptics one of the key things we do is hold woo-woos feet to the fire when they make ridiculous claims. Perhaps the most public place of all to make a claim is on a website, because it is instantaneously visible to everyone on earth who chooses to look. Tracking claims made on websites is thus an important skeptical technique.
But this move by the chiropractors reminds us that the web is mutable thing. Any content anywhere on the web can be changed at any time. Paranormalists and pseudoscientists can edit their web sites constantly to present a moving target or to remove evidence of their missteps. In order to do our jobs as skeptics, we need to be constantly aware of this and use tools to compensate. Fortunately such archival tools exist. One is the well-known Internet Wayback Machine, but several others (including commercial products) exist.
After the jump, I’ll talk more about some of the uses of these tools and show you how to use them as a skeptic.
Continue reading Web archiving is an important skeptic tool…
Yes, contextual advertising is full of woo-woo. Get over it already.
April 14, 2009 at 10:11 am | In articles | 6 CommentsThe reason that Google is taking over the known universe (instead of Skynet) has a great deal to do with their inventions in the areas of advertising. They have a stable of advertising products with spiffy names like AdWords and AdSense. Millions of dollars flow through these programs every month. The ads sometimes seem ubiquitous.
Advertising on skeptic websites can present interesting problems. In order to understand why this is, you need to understand how contextual ad placing works, and how that interacts with what we do. Read on.
Continue reading Yes, contextual advertising is full of woo-woo. Get over it already….
What’s the harm in promoting your web site?
April 5, 2009 at 7:09 pm | In meta, whatstheharm.net | Leave a CommentSomewhat by accident, February and March turned into a mini promotional tour for What’s The Harm?. I gave presentations in Atlanta, Boston and on the fourth JREF cruise off the coast of Mexico, and I was interviewed on the radio and for podcasts.
What brought all this on? Well, the website had just celebrated its first birthday in January, and I thought it was a good time to take stock and see how it did in its first year of existence. Plus the Atlanta Skepticamp was coming up so I needed something to talk about! So I put together a presentation, and then continued to adapt it as I gave each talk.
Continue reading What’s the harm in promoting your web site?…
Why skeptics should pay close attention to Wikipedia
December 8, 2008 at 4:51 pm | In articles, skeptical activism | 7 CommentsI’ve mentioned in several articles how important I feel it is to reach out to what Michael Shermer calls fence sitters: the people who have no strong opinion on skeptical topics. These are people who are neither skeptics nor believers. If we can reach these people before they’ve been swayed by a “believer”, we can educate them about what science has to say about the topic areas of skepticism.
An obvious way to do this is through search engine results. Build a website on a particular topic, and do your best to get it ranked highly by Google. Then when “fence sitters” reach out for information on that topic, you’ll be ready for them. Needless to say this takes a bit of effort. For some topics it is very difficult to elbow your way into that crucial first page of search engine results, due to huge amounts of competition.
But what if there were a way to post good science-oriented material on an existing website that is almost guaranteed to be in the first page of search engine results? Then you could focus on the material itself, and not even have to worry about setting up your own site and optimizing it for searches.
Such a website exists, and it is called Wikipedia.
Continue reading Why skeptics should pay close attention to Wikipedia…
Skeptics! Load your google bombs!
November 1, 2008 at 9:00 am | In articles, skeptical activism | 13 CommentsTags: googlebomb, stopsylvia.com, sylvia browne
There’s an important task we need all skeptics to perform this week. It is to help one of our own and to help the movement. Please read on for instructions on what to do, but let me explain the technology behind this first.
The Long Tail of Skeptical Web Sites
October 27, 2008 at 11:05 am | In articles, skeptical activism | 9 CommentsTags: long tail
Two new skeptical websites have drawn a great deal of attention recently. One is skepticblog and the other is Stop Jenny McCarthy.
Skepticblog is a new group blog by the cast and crew of the upcoming skeptical television program The Skeptologists. It sure seems to have a lot going for it. It has a snazzy graphic design. It has several nationally known skeptics like Michael Shermer, Phil Plait and Steven Novella. The first crop of articles covers such varied skeptical topics as UFO’s, Sylvia Browne, Kevin Trudeau and one of my favorites, internet misinformation.
Stop Jenny McCarthy is a new informational site from the mold of Stop Kaz and Stop Sylvia Browne. The idea is to focus tightly on the specific claims being made by one person, and show how and why they are incorrect. This site is much smaller and is done in a much simpler visual style. As of now it only has a handful of pages.
I found it interesting that these two sites were launched in the same month.
What can you do? Shop at Amazon.
September 6, 2008 at 2:32 pm | In skeptical activism | 6 CommentsTags: books, videos
This seems to be “Web 1.0″ week here at Skeptools, quite by accident. My last post was about hyperlinks, which is about as simple as you get. And I continue today with another very simple early-web technology. Fear not, I’ll get more cutting edge as we go on.
Near the end of my interview on the Skepticality podcast last week, we talked about skeptical activism. Many skeptics wonder what they should do to advance the cause. “What can I do?” For me, What’s The Harm is the first of my personal answers to that question.
What’s a good answer for you? Well that depends on your interests and skills. I will post more on that in the future, as I have many ideas that might appeal to you.
But until then here’s something very simple that any skeptic can do that supports the skeptic movement in a very real way. It requires little additional effort from you, assuming you already occasionally buy things from Amazon.com.
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