Skeptic's Guide to the Universe

One of my favorite podcast is Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

I have been listening to it for years.

Last week I bumped into this article/video: Umbrella Man.

Great video by a great filmmaker named Errol Morris.

I sent it to my brother Steve, but had just listened to the Skeptic's Guides and thought "I should send it to them"...

This morning while driving to work I got excited when during the latest podcast of Skeptic's Guide, they were talking about the JFK assassination and then Umbrella Man was brought up, the link being sent to them just today from a listener.

Right at that very second, my iPhone rang with an alert, my daily morning text from Mrs. Wonderful (Sandra, my wife). While driving I couldn't really rewind back, so once I got to work, I re-listened.

Sure enough my name was mentioned as sending in the link at roughly the 6:45 min mark.

Very cool

Link to the actual podcast: http://media.libsyn.com/media/skepticsguide/skepticast2011-11-26.mp3
Link to the show notes: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&pid=332

I would highly recommend the podcast!

Here is my message to them:

Long time listener to the podcast, thank you for providing me an hour of week of solid skeptical (in my mind, common sense) thought.

I just saw this video about the Umbrella Man on the nytimes.com site. I thought the story truly drives home the ideas of not seeing conspiracy or sinister things in events or actions, when you can never dream up all of the non-sinister things that could explain it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/the-umbrella-man.html

Thanks again for the show,
Tim

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Obama as Chess Master: 'Think of Him as Bobby Fischer' - The Atlantic

Interesting article...

Obama as Chess Master: 'Think of Him as Bobby Fischer' - The Atlantic

The start of the article:

I've published a series of harsh assessments of the savvy and game plan that the Obama Administration brought to the debt-ceiling fight. For a change of tone, here is a reader's argument today that such judgments are both hasty and unfair. In fact, by this view, we're watching a master vision unfold.

Worth considering in full. Some alternative views soon -- I'll save them for later because this is long enough as is and deserves its own space. The reader writes:
>>It's pretty clear to me that Obama is the chessmaster. Stop looking at this politically - let's look at policy. Obama has been a master of accomplishing things, even with the Tea Party Terrorists hell bent on shutting down the government and ruining the full faith and credit of the United States.

Brain is an interesting thing

Check out the below video clip, goes to show you that what you see is all based on how your brain puts the information together.