MN Skeptics’ Blog

Happy Friday the 13th!

Brianne Bilyeu, , 531 Comments

I have a new post up at Minnesota Skeptics about Friday the 13th! Here’s an excerpt:

The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess for whom “Friday” is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen), or paraskevidekatriaphobia a concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning “Friday”), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, meaning “thirteen”) attached to phobía (φοβία, from phóbos, φόβος, meaning “fear”).

Try saying either of those 13 times in row.

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

Happy Friday the 13th!
{advertisement}

Star Trek: TNG – Devil’s Due

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , 859 Comments

I have a new post up at Minnesota Skeptics about a particularly skeptical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation! Here’s an excerpt:

Upon the away team’s arrival on the surface, Ardra herself appears to the crew and the Ventaxian leader to claim “her planet”. Ardra is able to instantaneously change her appearance, to cause tremors to start and stop at her command, and she even makes the entire Enterprise starship disappear!  But Captain Picard smells a phony. He describes Ardra as being a flim flam artist to his crew, and accuses her of being a fake in front of the Ventaxians.

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

Oh, oh! But I also have to share a fabulous website that I found while looking for images of Ardra. It’s called Fashion It So, and it’s written by two people who are watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for the clothes. Well, I’m guessing they’re watching it because they geek on Star Trek: TNG, but the blog is all about the fashion.

They make off-hand horrifyingly blasphemous (to TNG fans) remarks such as the following in bold:

“We never see these aliens not on their ship (they had a name but I realized I don’t care and neither should you) so getting a great look at their outfits is pretty tricky, but I think we can all agree there’s nothing to see here.”

But since they were discussing the Pakleds, you have to agree with the fashion assessment. And really that’s all the writers are making claims about, so why stick it to them on nerd details? And I get the feeling that these guys do have some geek/nerd cred. I spotted one reference to X-Files, they make some horribly punny jokes, and the most recent entry (yesterday) is a repost of three TNG action figures filmed in stop-action to Beyonce Knowles’s Single Ladies.

As an aside, my favorite description of Ardra’s outfit was

“OF COURSE bitch looks amazing. She’s the devil! So she rolls up in a fucking LEATHER JUMPSUIT with some goddamn CHIFFON attached to just the back of her pant legs, like she couldn’t decide if she was racing dirtbikes or going to the ballet.”

Go. Visit their website. Enjoy.

Star Trek: TNG – Devil’s Due

Star Trek: TNG – Devil's Due

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , 795 Comments

I have a new post up at Minnesota Skeptics about a particularly skeptical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation! Here’s an excerpt:

Upon the away team’s arrival on the surface, Ardra herself appears to the crew and the Ventaxian leader to claim “her planet”. Ardra is able to instantaneously change her appearance, to cause tremors to start and stop at her command, and she even makes the entire Enterprise starship disappear!  But Captain Picard smells a phony. He describes Ardra as being a flim flam artist to his crew, and accuses her of being a fake in front of the Ventaxians.

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

Oh, oh! But I also have to share a fabulous website that I found while looking for images of Ardra. It’s called Fashion It So, and it’s written by two people who are watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for the clothes. Well, I’m guessing they’re watching it because they geek on Star Trek: TNG, but the blog is all about the fashion.

They make off-hand horrifyingly blasphemous (to TNG fans) remarks such as the following in bold:

“We never see these aliens not on their ship (they had a name but I realized I don’t care and neither should you) so getting a great look at their outfits is pretty tricky, but I think we can all agree there’s nothing to see here.”

But since they were discussing the Pakleds, you have to agree with the fashion assessment. And really that’s all the writers are making claims about, so why stick it to them on nerd details? And I get the feeling that these guys do have some geek/nerd cred. I spotted one reference to X-Files, they make some horribly punny jokes, and the most recent entry (yesterday) is a repost of three TNG action figures filmed in stop-action to Beyonce Knowles’s Single Ladies.

As an aside, my favorite description of Ardra’s outfit was

“OF COURSE bitch looks amazing. She’s the devil! So she rolls up in a fucking LEATHER JUMPSUIT with some goddamn CHIFFON attached to just the back of her pant legs, like she couldn’t decide if she was racing dirtbikes or going to the ballet.”

Go. Visit their website. Enjoy.

Star Trek: TNG – Devil's Due

Banachek Visits University of Minnesota

Brianne Bilyeu, , 2,555 Comments

I have a new post up at Minnesota Skeptics about Banachek’s recent mentalism show at the U of MN! Here’s an excerpt:

The opening bit was a card/”body language reading” trick.  Before I tell you the audience’s perspective, I have to go back to when the Hubby and I walked into the auditorium. When Banachek greeted us, he had a deck of cards in his hands. He shuffled the deck and had the Hubby and I flip the middle of the deck up halfway so that we could see one card, but so that Banachek couldn’t. We were told to think very hard about the card, to remember it because he might call on us during the show to try and guess our card. He told us that he was going to use our body language to guess which cards we had drawn.

Banachek helps an audience member bend a spoon with “the power of her mind”!

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

Banachek Visits University of Minnesota

Inner Dimensional Sound Chamber

Brianne Bilyeu, , 524 Comments

I have a new blog post up at the MN Skeptics Blog!

I’d never heard of an inner dimensional sound chamber. To the interwebs!

I found a website called soundheal.com and these are a few of the things that they have to say about the principles of the magic music box:

Inner Dimensional Sound Chamber is a blending of science and metaphysics in vibrational technology. It provides a low level oscillating energy field which assists with the restoration of cellular integrity.

The sound chamber honors the body’s natural geometric ability to heal itself at the cellular level. It sends specialized music or sound through the structure creating interference patterns.

I do not think these words “geometric” and “interference patterns” mean what you think they mean.

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

Inner Dimensional Sound Chamber

A Sasquatch in Minnesota

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , 1,784 Comments

I have a new blog post up at the MN Skeptics Blog!

A Bigfoot sighting in our own backyard? Cool!

Thank goodness for all of the verbal interpretation of the blurry video, otherwise I never would have know that I was looking at a Sasquatch!

Caution: Blurry video and huge leaps in deductive reasoning may cause nausea and/or uncontrollable laughter in some viewers.

To watch the video head on over to the MN Skeptics blog.

A Sasquatch in Minnesota

Metaphysical “Causes” of Illness

Brianne Bilyeu, 799 Comments

I have a new post up over at MN Skeptics! It’s all about one website that wants you to think yourself better:

…this website wants you to understand why YOU are causing yourself to develop such emotion-triggered illnesses such as migraines, nail-biting (Crud – is this an illness? Apparently I have an illness.), anxiety and depression. Oh, and AIDS, mononucleosis, ankle problems, gray hair (again – illness???) and finger problems (hint: you have different emotional problems based on which finger hurts). And did you know that every time you get bit by a mosquito, it’s because you feel guilty about something? I’ll bet you didn’t know you had such command over the animal kingdom!

To read the full article, please go visit me at the Minnesota Skeptics WordPress blog.

Metaphysical “Causes” of Illness

Metaphysical "Causes" of Illness

Brianne Bilyeu, 765 Comments

I have a new post up over at MN Skeptics! It’s all about one website that wants you to think yourself better:

…this website wants you to understand why YOU are causing yourself to develop such emotion-triggered illnesses such as migraines, nail-biting (Crud – is this an illness? Apparently I have an illness.), anxiety and depression. Oh, and AIDS, mononucleosis, ankle problems, gray hair (again – illness???) and finger problems (hint: you have different emotional problems based on which finger hurts). And did you know that every time you get bit by a mosquito, it’s because you feel guilty about something? I’ll bet you didn’t know you had such command over the animal kingdom!

To read the full article, please go visit me at the Minnesota Skeptics WordPress blog.

Metaphysical "Causes" of Illness

Drinking Skeptically…For Night People!

Brianne Bilyeu, , , 752 Comments

I have a new post up over at the Minnesota Skeptics blog! It’s about my experiences at a local Drinking Skeptically…For Night People! event.

Tonight I ended up meeting a lot of new (to me) people. Hello new skeptical friends! I met a nurse, three engineers, a past member of the Secular Student Alliance, some Tim Minchin fans, some people who are pretty excited about going to The Amazing Meeting next week, and a whole mess of atheists (deconverted Catholic over there, former Hindu over there, raised Fundamentalist Christian in that corner, past altar boy in that one – the list went on and on!).

To read the article in it’s entirety, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics wordpress blog.

Drinking Skeptically…For Night People!

The Challenges of Being a Skeptic

Brianne Bilyeu, 1,159 Comments

I have a new blog post up over at the Minnesota Skeptics blog!

The Challenges of Being a Skeptic

In 2009 I discovered The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Shortly thereafter I started reading skeptical blogs and books and listening to other skeptical podcasts. In 2010 I found local meetups and attended my first skeptics’ conferences. Along the way there have been ah-ha! moments, but there have also been challenges.  More on the challenges in a minute.

Skepticism provides for me a way of looking at the world, at evaluating the massive amounts of information that come to us every day. Skeptics have a wide range of interests – politics, medicine, economy, science, the gamut of human rights and social issues, paranormal investigation, and religion, to name a few. But what we all share is…

To read the rest of my article, please go here to the Minnesota Skeptics blog.

The Challenges of Being a Skeptic