Briefly stated, a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence. The use of skepticism is thus an essential part of objective scientific inquiry and the search for reliable knowledge. — Paul Kurtz in The New Skepticism, 1992, p. 9. Scepticism, or skepticism, is neither denialism nor a movement. Based on the Greek skeptomai, which means to think or consider, it usually means doubt or incredulity about particular… Read more
January 12, 2019
13th January – Celebrating International Skeptics Day
January 12, 2019 By Kylie Sturgess
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December 31, 2018
Happy New Year! Tim Minchin and 15 Minutes
December 31, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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With the help of the Born Woke Youth Theatre Collective, a new song was launched last night, which has a nod to investigations like those done by Jon Ronson on the influence of social media. I hope your 2018 ends well and 2019 starts even better. Read more
April 5, 2018
What Happens When You Turn Air Conditioning “Down”? Talk the Talk Podcast Investigates
April 5, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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This is a segment from the podcast Talk the Talk – something that we ended up doing some research into via social media. What does changing the settings on air conditioning really involve? Do you turn the machine up to make it colder, or down? What happens if it’s too cold? Different perspectives on the matter changes our use of language, and this is what our data showed us, in helpful video format! Read more
April 1, 2018
Australia’s Ruddock Review into Religious Freedom Extended
April 1, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
Over the past few months, there’s been a number of groups (the Atheist Foundation of Australia or AFA, is just one of many) who have been sending in feedback to the Ruddock Review into Religious Freedom. Many representatives (like the AFA) spoke to the review panel in person too. Back in 2017, after parliamentary debate over the same sex marriage legislation [which became law on December 9th, with Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove signing off on the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms)… Read more
March 23, 2018
Into March And… Marching Off Facebook? #deletefacebook
March 23, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
There’s a lot going on right now in “real life”, which is kind of a problem in itself – the age-old “where does real life and online intersect?” Yep, I’m talking about leaving Facebook, good guess. Firstly, if you haven’t checked out a couple of interviews I nodded towards with the previous blogpost (in regards to starting off 2018 with some skeptic-supportive reading), there’s Let’s Be Reasonable, an interview with Rebecca Fox, who is the author of How to Be Reasonable (By… Read more
February 7, 2018
Token Skeptic Week Two at #FringeWorld 2018 And The Curiouser And Curiouser Bookclub!
February 7, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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Just a quick round-up on what’s been going on – firstly, there’s a new short episode of some of the running about I’ve been doing for Fringeworld 2018 over on the SoundCloud page: Some of the recommendations / heard good things about that I have for the #FringeWorld week-or-so to come (and check listings, as some of these may end very soon!) include: Séance | An Immersive Experience Ray Bradshaw: Deaf Comedy Fam Djuki Mala Zoe Coombs Marr Simon Taylor… Read more
January 30, 2018
Token Skeptic Week One At Perth’s #FringeWorld 2018
January 30, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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Kinda-sorta transcript: Everyone’s making recommendations and seeing shows around Perth, and I’m no exception. For my first week I took part in Seeking Basic Needs And Other Tales Of Excess, an audio tour involving stories of migration, notions of need and simple acts of transcendence – and honestly? A little long, and I was reminded of a Perth Festival show I took part in back in 2016 called A Mile in My Shoes. Great audio, fascinating monologues, but yes, a… Read more
January 27, 2018
Token Skeptic At The 2018 #FringeWorld Media Launch
January 27, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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Kinda-sorta transcript below: As you can hear by the sounds of the Media Launch behind me, it’s the start of the Fringe World Festival here in Perth, found at the fringeworld.com.au site, with the hashtags for this year being #FringeWorld, #Let’sFringe (no apostrophe included) and the occasional #PerthFringe popping up as well. This year I arrived at the Pleasure Gardens and immediately stepped into a pile of chewing gum, walked in front of of a forklift carrying half the Speigeltent across the… Read more
January 22, 2018
Nineteen Lies and One Truth
January 22, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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I promised myself that I’d keep at least one blogpost every week this year and due to my studies have fallen behind already. So, here’s a game for you and feel free to join in on the comments. I tried learning French during my first year of teaching full-time, and only managed to give myself a headache at the thought of understanding the numbering system. It might have been better if I studied something useful like business studies, since at least… Read more
January 9, 2018
Please Let Us Not Forget… Oprah Winfrey And That 2020 Bid
January 9, 2018 By Kylie Sturgess
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Like everyone else in Australia who should be gearing up for a busy 2018, the lure of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff got me out of piles of research yesterday morning and down to the bookstore, only to learn that physical copies of the book are arriving next week and not this week as reported. Bugger. So, I take to the online version (NOT the Wikileaked edition), which is available everywhere, with an occasional typo. So far, I’m up… Read more
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