February 18th, 2010 by strimmer · 1 Comment
A few months ago I wrote an article on the Winchester Mansion in San Jose California. It was the first article in a series I will be doing on the more popular woo-woo stories Northern California is known for. In that article I praised the management of the Winchester Mystery House for not hyping up the hundreds of paranormal stories that surround the house despite the fact that the house is touted as the most haunted place in the world by many websites and articles on the subject. Nowhere on the mansions official website could it be found stories of the house being haunted. This seems to have changed in the few months since then as a visit to the site will now show the opposite. The houses unique architecture and mysterious story is no longer the center piece, it has now been replaced by mysticism and paranormal stories.
The Winchester Mystery House’s website now features a page dedicated to the alleged hauntings of the house, featuring a plethora of anecdotal accounts of sighting and sounds of those spirits who roam the grounds there. Another page titled Spirit Sightings, is dedicated to reporting the strange occurrences people report while visiting the house and encouraging those who have had similar experiences to share their stories. It features a graph outlining the reported incidents that have taken place every year broken down by month, as well as a count of how many incidents have taken place in each room. Most of the stories that are featured on this page have to do with the patron thinking their name was called or thinking they saw someone (or thing) go around a corner.
Tags: Northern California · Paranormal · Shane
February 10th, 2010 by strimmer · 4 Comments
The Sacramento Coalition of Reason (SacramentoCoR) has gained some local attention today with a Sacramento Bee article about the organizations ten billboards that have emerged from Rocklin to Davis, as a member organization this article also mentioned the Sacramento Area Skeptics. SacramentoCoR is an organization comprised of the agnostic, atheist, freethinker, humanist, and skeptic organizations in the Sacramento area. It is not an independent organization, rather a single source meant to promote such related groups to the general public. SacramentoCoR is doing this through it’s website, sacramento.unitedcor.org, and through its billboard campaign.
SacramentoCoR is a local chapter of the national organization, United Coalition of Reason, unitedcor.org. Its website states that:
The primary focus of United CoR is local. As such, it doesn’t compete with other national organizations, and its local work is geared toward fostering the success of existing groups, not changing their nature or adding new groups or an additional organizational level to the mix. A central goal is to help unaffiliated nontheists learn about local activities and, ideally, get involved.
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Tags: Northern California · Sacramento · Shane
January 27th, 2010 by strimmer · No Comments
2009 was a great year for the promotion of science. It happened to be a culmination of several major scientific anniversaries, each with there own celebration of sorts. It was the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and 150th anniversary of his publication of the On the Origin of Species. There has been Darwin Day celebrations around Darwin’s
birthday for several years but last years unique milestone resulted in a much wider celebration then usual. Sacramento did its part by hosting its 12th annual Darwin Day event with featured speaker Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society. 2009 was labeled as the International Year of Astronomy by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 2009 was marked to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei’s observations of the moons of Jupiter though a telescope, the first documented astronomical use of a telescope; furthermore, it was 400th anniversary the publication of Johannes Kepler’s Astronomia Nova, the seminal work documenting planetary motion.
It is important that we keep the momentum of science promotion from 2009 into this year. There are efforts in the astronomy community to keep many of the celebrations alive and well through 2010. A great example of this is the 365 Days of Astronomy project, which had an astronomy podcast for each day of 2009. It was so popular that it has been extended through this year as well!
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Tags: Science · Shane
January 22nd, 2010 by strimmer · No Comments
Tags: Shane · Skepticism
December 21st, 2009 by strimmer · No Comments
Thanks to the many skills of fellow Sacramento Area Skeptics Organizer Catherine Osborn, starting this month the SAS will produce a monthly newsletter that will be distributed at our monthly Drinking Skeptically events. It will then be posted to this website on the subsequent Monday in PDF format. Enjoy!
Sacramento Area Skeptics December Newsletter
Tags: Shane · Skepticism
November 6th, 2009 by strimmer · 1 Comment
It is not a new phenomena for movies to claim that they are based on a true story even though they are just as accurate to an event as any other movie, or as Roger Ebert states “Remember, even in a movie ‘based on a true story’, nothing before the actual end credits needs to be true.” Introducing a movie as being based on actual events is an easy way to get potential moviegoers to see the film and for those who see it, more into the film. This is especially true in the case of horror movies, since the goal of the movie is to scare you, it makes it that much easier if you believe that what you are watching had actually once happened. This has been the case with some paranormal based horror films recently. They have tried to advertise or imply that the movie was more or less based on actual events; however, further research into these stories shows other more likely explanations.
Some movies have been filmed in such a way that it gives off the impression that it was real, such as “The Blair Witch Project” or the much more recent “Paranormal Activity”. Making it seem as if it had been filmed mainly on hand held cameras by the characters themselves, giving the sense that it may have actually taken place. “Paranormal Activity” even went as far as having no introductory or closing credits just a note (SPOILER ALERT) dedicating the movie to the two main characters. Aside from the occasional rumors that these movies may have been real, any research or a quick run to the internet movie database will show a list of actors and production crews involved. Other movies however, have chosen to advertise there films as actually based on true events.
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Tags: Movies · Paranormal · Shane · Skepticism
November 4th, 2009 by strimmer · 1 Comment
Northern California is a unique place for skeptics. We house several important universities as well as many top scientists and skeptics, facts that we can all be proud of; however, it is also the birth place to a whole lot of woo-woo. I will start documenting some of the more popular phenomena Northern California is known for on this site in future posts. Some of the stories many of you may be familiar with but there may be some that are surprising and new. In the spirit of last weekends Halloween holiday, I will start off by covering Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s mansion.
The Winchester mansion began construction in 1884 on more than 160 acres of property in what was at the time a more rural setting in the South Bay. The 160 bedroom mansion now sits on only 4 acres in the middle of San Jose and more commonly called the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Winchester who amassed a fortune as the son of Oliver Winchester, inventor of the repeating rifle. There are several origin myths as to why she felt the inspiration to move out West from New England and have her house continuously expanded on until her death in 1922. The majority of these myths revolve around her being so saddened by the death of William and her daughter that she felt the need to consult a mystic/”psychic”. It is not known what the mystic told Mrs. Winchester exactly but the majority of the accounts are similar to the story I first heard, that the “spirits” of those killed by the popular Winchester firearms were angry with the family and wished to do harm to them. The Winchester family had a curse on them and the early passing of Sarah’s husband and daughter were do to this curse. The mystic then continued that she must run away from these spirits. The cross country move and the constant construction, which includes doors that open into walls and stairs that lead into the ceiling, were in an attempt to lose the ghosts that were chasing her. This unusual story is lent further credence with the fact that Sarah Winchester slept in a different room of the house every night.
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Tags: Northern California · Paranormal · Shane
October 9th, 2009 by strimmer · No Comments
It is important to keep in mind that atheism and skepticism are separate. For skeptics the line separating the two can become blurry from time to time. This could be due to the fact that many if not most skeptics consider themselves atheists and that most of our intellectual skeptic hero’s are atheists (James Randi, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins); however, there are many notable skeptics who are not atheists or agnostics (Harry Houdini, Martin Gardner, Hal Bidlack). Skepticism is a methodology which promotes critical thinking and the scientific method. There is no reason to needlessly burn bridges with important skeptics because they hold religious beliefs, or as Daniel Loxton put it in What do I do Next, “You don’t, after all, have to be against god to be against fraud.” It is important for skeptical groups to remain areligious for this reason. When religions make testable claims or hold stances that are blatantly anti-scientific then it is up the the skeptic community to call them out on it; otherwise, religious dogmatic claims are not the purview of science.
The differences between skeptics and atheists have come front and center recently after Bill Maher was announced to receive the Richard Dawkins Award by the Atheist Alliance International. Maher hit it off with the atheist community after his movie Religulous came out, which culminated in being awarded the prize at the AAI convention in Burbank, California this last weekend. An atheist organization giving an atheist a prize is not of concern to skeptics; however, when the criteria for the award states:
“The Richard Dawkins Award will be given every year to honor an outstanding atheist whose contributions raise public awareness of the nontheist life stance; who through writings, media, the arts, film, and/or the stage advocates increased scientific knowledge; who through work or by example teaches acceptance of the nontheist philosophy; and whose public posture mirrors the uncompromising nontheist life stance of Dr. Richard Dawkins”.
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Tags: Atheism · Shane · Skepticism
September 19th, 2009 by admin · No Comments
Sorry for the huge delay. The page is up, and will continue to improve with new content and features.
Tags: Uncategorized