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Joe Nickell
Joe Nickell (born December 1, 1944) is an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal. Nickell is senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and writes regularly for their journal, ''Skeptical Inquirer''. He is also an associate dean of the Center for Inquiry Institute. He is the author or editor of over 30 books. Among his career highlights, Nickell helped expose the James Maybrick "Jack the Ripper Diary" as a hoax. In 2002, Nickell was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. to evaluate the authenticity of the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' ''The Bondwoman's Narrative'' (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman. At the request of document dealer and historian Seth Keller, Nickell analyzed documentation in the dispute over the authorship of "The Night Before Christmas", ultimately supporting the Clement Clarke Moore claim. Early life, education and family Joe Nickell is the son of J. Wendell and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skeptic Magazine
''Skeptic'', colloquially known as ''Skeptic magazine'', is a quarterly science education and science advocacy magazine published internationally by The Skeptics Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. First published in 1992, the magazine had a circulation of over 50,000 subscribers in 2015. History, format and structure The magazine was co-founded in late 1991 by Michael Shermer and Pat Linse as they formed the Skeptics Society. The magazine was first published in the spring of 1992. It is published through Millennium Press. As of July 2021, Shermer remained the publisher and editor-in-chief of the magazine. The magazine's co-publisher and art director was Pat Linse, until her death in July 2021. Other noteworthy members of its editorial board include, or have included, Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karen Stollznow
Karen Stollznow (born 12 August 1976) is an Australian-American writer, linguist, and skeptic. Her books include ''The Language of Discrimination'', ''God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States'', ''Haunting America'', ''Language Myths, Mysteries and Magic'', ''Hits and Mrs'', and ''Would You Believe It?: Mysterious Tales From People You'd Least Expect''. She also writes short stories, and is a host on the podcast Monster Talk. Career A student of linguistics and history at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, she received First Class Honors in Linguistics, and went on to a PhD in the area of Lexical Semantics. She graduated with her doctorate in 2007. In 2004 she relocated to California to become a Visiting Student Researcher with the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 she became a Researcher for the Script Encoding Initiative, a joint project between the UC Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skeptics Society
The Skeptics Society is a nonprofit, member-supported organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. The Skeptics Society was co-founded by Michael Shermer and Pat Linse as a Los Angeles-area skeptical group to replace the defunct Southern California Skeptics. After the success of its magazine, ''Skeptic'', introduced in early 1992, it became a national and then international organization. The stated mission of Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine "is the investigation of science and pseudoscience controversies, and the promotion of critical thinking." History In late 1991, the Skeptics Society was co-founded by Michael Shermer and Pat Linse, in Los Angeles with the assistance of Kim Ziel Shermer. For the first five years, Shermer and Linse worked on the Skeptics Society out of Shermer's garage. The Skeptic Society formed after a scandal forced an earlier group known as the Southern Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parsec Award
The Parsec Awards were a set of annual awards created to recognize excellence in science fiction podcasts and podcast novels. The awards were created by Mur Lafferty, Tracy Hickman and Michael R. Mennenga and awarded by FarPoint Media. They were first presented in 2006 at DragonCon. In 2009 the awards were described as "one of the most recognizable honors in science and fiction podcasting". The awards were given from 2006 to 2018. Nominations were accepted from the listening public annually in each of the categories. The list was vetted for eligibility by the steering committee, before producers were invited to submit samples of work for consideration by a panel of judges. The panel reduced the list of nominees to five finalists in each category. The finalists' work was submitted for judging and the winner was selected by that panel of authors, podcasters, and others knowledgeable in the field of speculative fiction, podcasting, and/or publishing. Past finalist judges have include ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Regal
Brian Regal is an American historian of science, skeptic and writer. He is an associate professor of the history of science at Kean University in New Jersey. Regal is the author of an encyclopedia of pseudoscience, as well as ''Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads and Cryptozoology'', a scholarly study on cryptozoology. He has also written on the history of the Jersey Devil. Early life Regal grew up in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, in a Catholic family. He developed an early interest for science and the mysterious, which he attributes to television series such as ''Jonny Quest'' and later ''In Search of...''. Discouraged from pursuing higher education by a high school guidance counselor ("kids like you don't go to college"), Regal joined the armed forces, serving as a tank commander. Academic career Going to college after his military career, he graduated with a B.A. in History from Kean University in 1995, then a M.A. in American History and Literature at Drew Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As of October 25, 2021. , president = Santa Ono , provost = Laurie McCauley , established = , type = Public research university , academic_affiliations = , students = 48,090 (2021) , undergrad = 31,329 (2021) , postgrad = 16,578 (2021) , administrative_staff = 18,986 (2014) , faculty = 6,771 (2014) , city = Ann Arbor , state = Michigan , country = United States , coor = , campus = Midsize City, Total: , including arboretum , colors = Maize & Blue , nickname = Wolverines , sporti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger. There were two major types of pterosaurs. Basal pterosaurs (also called 'non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs' or 'rhamphorhynchoids') were smaller animals with fully toothed jaws and, typically, long tails. Their wide wing membranes probably included and connected the hind legs. On the ground, they would have had an awkward sprawling posture, but the anatomy of their joints and strong claws would have made them effective climbers, and some may have even lived in trees. Basal pterosaurs were insectiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plesiosaurs
The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period, possibly in the Rhaetian stage, about 203 million years ago. They became especially common during the Jurassic Period, thriving until their disappearance due to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 66 million years ago. They had a worldwide oceanic distribution, and some species at least partly inhabited freshwater environments. Plesiosaurs were among the first fossil reptiles discovered. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, scientists realised how distinctive their build was and they were named as a separate order in 1835. The first plesiosaurian genus, the eponymous ''Plesiosaurus'', was named in 1821. Since then, more than a hundred valid s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thylacine
The thylacine ( , or , also ) (''Thylacinus cynocephalus'') is an extinct carnivorous marsupial that was native to the Australian mainland and the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. The last known live animal was captured in 1930 in Tasmania. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped lower back) or the Tasmanian wolf (because of its canid-like characteristics). Various Aboriginal Tasmanian names have been recorded, such as ''coorinna'', ''kanunnah'', ''cab-berr-one-nen-er'', ''loarinna'', ''laoonana'', ''can-nen-ner'' and ''lagunta'', while ''kaparunina'' is used in Palawa kani. The thylacine was relatively shy and nocturnal, with the general appearance of a medium-to-large-size canid, except for its stiff tail and abdominal pouch similar to that of a kangaroo. Because of convergent evolution, it displayed an anatomy and adaptations similar to the tiger (''Panthera tigris'') and wolf (''Canis lupus'') of the Northern Hemisphere, such as dark trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phil Plait
Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964), also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objects, as well as engaging in public outreach advocacy for NASA missions. He has written two books, ''Bad Astronomy'' and '' Death from the Skies''. He has also appeared in several science documentaries, including ''How the Universe Works'' on the Discovery Channel. From August 2008 through 2009, he served as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Additionally, he wrote and hosted episodes of ''Crash Course'' Astronomy, which aired its last episode in 2016. Early life Plait grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. He has said he became interested in astronomy when his father brought home a telescope when Plait was 5 years old or so. According to Plait, he "aimed it at Saturn that night. One look, and that was it. I was hooked." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
