Skeptic's Circle the Solstice Edition

Welcome to the 63^rd edition of the Skeptics' Circle, celebrating today's Solstice (June 21 2007 18:06 GMT).

Now if you are in the Northern hemisphere this will be the longest edition of the skeptics' circle and conversely if you are in the Southern hemisphere it will be the shortest.

And now you may want to know how I am going to do this... well the answer is I'm not after all today is still 24 hours long regardless of where you are on the planet and so this edition of the skeptics' circle will be the same length for all.

That and the fact that my lack of ability to come up with anything better leads us straight to the meat of this last fortnight's skeptical round up in no particular order with the exception of the first.

Infophile has a good post, explaining part of what it means to be a skeptic, that really should be a must read for everyone (not just us skeptics).

The Discovery Institutes latest and greatest Dr Egnor continues to offer his ignorance on plate for the rest of us and his recent ideas about dualism (mind/brain) have provided much fodder. PZ of Pharyngula, Blake Stacey of Sunclipse and Orac of Respectful Insolence all take him to task for this.

The Hoofnagle brothers at Denialism has a good couple of posts, on the dangers of unrestricted advertising and how to be a crank

And now for a nice relaxing break a look at some good old fashioned (or not so old fashioned as the case may be) quackery, thanks to Tara of Aetiology, Andrea's Buzzing About, and Orac of Respectful Insolence.

Away from the Bench has a brief look at what went on at DC's Improbable science and DC himself tells how the saga has been some what resolved.

We will follow this up with Aurora Walking Vacation's little illustration of eggs and bad science, Infophile showing the absence of evidence can be evidence of absense and Prof. Bleen tells of the Peer review process at the IJCR

The old adage is that you are what you eat, however Junkfood science explains just what food processing is before illustrating that the point that if you are going to study what is in the food and what it does to the body it might pay to put it in the body (or at least a part of it). On a similar topic the Holford watch shares us the tale of quack being put to the sword on live tv, heck you can even watch the video.

And to finish up where would us loyal skeptics be with such classic targets as UFOs, Creationism and the autism mercury link for us to rant against.

I want to thank everyone who submitted posts for this, I just couldn't include everyone but they were all great posts.

And for all of you who stopped by please do follow all the links, they are great examples of what we want to see more of in this world.

Well that is all from me for this round of the skeptics' circle...
but never fear for it won't be long 'til we next appear...

In fact I hope to see you all at The Skeptical Alchemist in two weeks time for the 64rd Skeptics' Circle on July 5.

Any and all feedback is welcome so that I at least know that you are reading this. You never know, if you don't tell me how bad this is I might have to host it again.