RationalWiki:To do list/archive2015
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   | 85 | Phosphorus. Currently, the link redirects to the "Category:Elements" page. It's essential for life, it's the title character in White Phosphorus (sometimes used to horrific effect in warfare), it's why phosphates are called phosphates, and modern agriculture is using so much we're starting to face a shortage. What's not to love about this element? |
| 116 | TransethnicCreate draft. As nonsensical as this idea is, perhaps we should define it at least? |
| 80 | Frank Miller A once critically acclaimed comic book writer & artist now a generally right wing sexist/misogynistic and racist who published Holy Terror. See Linkara's reviews for more information. |
| 83 | Long Island Medium yet another of the many people who claim they can talk to the dead |
| 75 | Bono deserves his own article, especially in terms of talking about why he's such a polarizing figure, why he and U2 are a popular target to attack these days, and debunking the more spurious claims. |
| 83 | Prop 65, named after the IQ of the people implementing it, is the reason everything in California causes cancer. By law, everything must state whether or not it contains any possible carcinogens or heavy metals in any quantity, but since virtually everything does, the result is that everything comes with a warning label that most people ignore. A number of small law firms exist only to sue companies that don't put this label on their products. |
| 130 | Symbionese Liberation Army One of the cults responsible for the downfall of the New Left. Most famous for the kidnapping and brainwashing of Patty Hearst. |
| 110 | ScienceProvesIt.comCreate draft[1] a project of AIG. |
| 90 | Sesame Credit, the Authoritarian game designed by Tencent that gives you points and benefits for toeing the CPP's line, and will become mandatory in 2020. |
| 136 | Marcus Garvey was an early founder of the Pan-African movement and black nationalism, but he tended to see blacks and whites as two different peoples who would be unable to coexist and therefore believed all people of African descent should return to their homeland. He had a famous dispute with W.E.B Dubois and was against the idea of "racial mixing" in order to prevent mulattoes. He is also considered a prophet of Rastafari. |
| 92 | 1980 October Surprise, A conspiracy theory that the Ronald Reagan administration stole the election from Jimmy Carter by negotiating with Iran to delay hostage releases until after Carter left office. I don't have time, but it does seem on mission to me. |
| 112 | Joy of SatanEdit draft, Neo-Nazi UFO Satanic Cult, large presence on the Internet |
| 74 | Biblical Creation Ministries is a UK-based creationist organization "committed to developing a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary model of earth history consistent with the broad parameters given by the Bible’s story-line" (i.e. publishing pseudoscientific research, debating evolutionists, and spreading creationist ideas). |
| 94 | The Panama Deception is a documentary about the 1989 US invasion of Panama. It asserts that the US invaded in order to renegotiate the Torrijos-Carter Treaty , but also states that the US tested energy weapons in order to test them. This film won an Academy Award for Most Unexceptional Documentary. |
| 97 | Conspiracy theorists tend to call themselves Political prisoners. We could make a list of actually political prisoners and cranks who call themselves that. It would be similar to our whistleblower page. |
| 140 | Bill Cosby should be discussed, especially why he was an idol and a voice of wisdom, his comments before the accusations, and his massive hypocrisy. |
| 115 | Village atheistCreate draft. The stereotype of the evangelical atheist did not begin with "New Atheism". The character of Miles Bjornstam from Sinclair Lewis's Main Street is one starting point. |
| 66 | Fulton Lewis, who was an influence on modern conservative talk radio with Charles Coughlin. If Coughlin provided the ranting style, Lewis provided the fact-free loopiness. |
| 106 | Something on the LessWrong "LessWrong SequencesCreate draft Treated as scripture there (in the sense of being proclaimed as the foundational text but roundly ignored in practice). The actual content is somewhere between stopped clock and Sherlock's criticism |
| 119 | The Voldemort EffectCreate draft, a neologism created by Maajid Nawaz, occurs when someone is afraid to name someone or something which can lead to them ignoring the problem. The idea comes from the Harry Potter universe where no citizen is willing to name Voldemort out of fear of retaliation; this is usually used against liberals who are supposedly afraid of calling out Islamic terrorism. |
| 74 | I personally think that an article on Sacco and Vanzetti as well as their trial is desperately needed. |
| 71 | P. J. O'Rourke, an epically quotable loveable bastard. |
| 137 | r/K selection theory, an obsolete biological concept, also taken up in the past by racialists (particularly Rushton) and currently a conservative meme (that conservatives are K and liberals are r, therefore science - frequently from people who previously didn't believe in evolution). This doesn't make coherent sense on any level, but we could do with a dissection of the meme version. (Koanic Soul of course gibbers wonderfully.) PZ Myers has a good dissection to crib from. |
| 104 | ADoseofBuckleyCreate draft, a Canadian humorist who posts YouTube videos under the tagline "Angry Humour From An Angry Man." He posts videos on everything from pop music and ad campaigns to social concerns, with purposefully snarky comments. In particular consideration to watch, and comment on either in an article or side-by-side list or refutation are his videos about Slutwalk, patriarchy, the Oregon bakery case (as a side note in the patriarchy video) nice guys, marijuana (specifically 420), AlterNet (in a video entitled Fox News vs. Alternative Media), and obesity. His YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9kMnSZQd53hE-1sb1f9sdA/videos?feature=hovercard |
| 68 | Aaron Copland, an American composer with a distinctly populist streak in both his music and his apparent politics; had to testify before McCarthy, and was almost tried for perjury afterwards. FBI kept a very close watch on him for some while. |
| 76 | Islamic Society of North America is the largest Muslim group in North America. It has been accused by Stephen Schwartz as a Wahhabi front group. The Justice Department had considered them as co-conspirators to radical Islamic groups. |
| 73 | Muslim American Society is a front group developed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Its official policy is to keep this relationship ambiguous and they claim that Jihad is a "divine legal right" of Muslims. It has also been labeled as a terrorist group by the UAE. |
| 64 | Allan Kardec, who codified modern spiritist doctrine. The Portuguese version of Wikipedia has a more complete article on him. |
| 86 | Copulin, the latest gibbering nonsense from the manosphere. There are real things of this name, but the MGTOW version is Barely Noticeable. ZOMBIFYING VAGINA GOO! |
| 70 | Binding arbitration and its use as a tool for exploiting those without real economic power. |
| 81 | Soong May-ling, who lived a very long and storied life far too complicated to even attempt to summarize here. She and her husband had a unique synergy while in power, and she's also one of those people who eludes easy classification into "good"/"bad" categories. So basically, an article that will avoid being either hysterical ranting or effusive gushing. |
| 74 | A new moral panic called Chemsex that involves taking drugs and having lots of sex. It is a real, dangerous problem though in the LGBT community even if it is very minor though. |
| 109 | Judicial review denialismCreate draft, the latest form of right-wing pseudolaw created to oppose same-sex marriage, by denying that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision is legally binding, which is being trotted out by Republican pundits ad nauseam. Could possibly be just a section in Judicial review. |
| 132 | Cryosaunas are the hip new exercise woo based on whole-body cryotherapy (WBC). While WBC has legitimate uses in treating the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, cryosaunas were popularized by some professional athletes claiming that WBC alleviates post-exercise soreness. As a result, casual athletes are now jumping on the bandwagon. The practice's lack of regulation has come under scrutiny after a cryosauna worker was killed inside one on October, 2015. |
| 80 | Naprapathy, a variant on osteopathy and chiropracty. Popular in Scandinavia. |
| 90 | The Killian documents controversy, a.k.a. the forged documents which "proved" that Dubya didn't go to war. |
| 80 | The International Jew is an antisemitic booklet made by Henry Ford. He later launched The Dearborn Independent in order to expose the vast Jewish conspiracies. |
| 70 | Neotantra is a new age cultural appropriation of the spiritual practice tantra in Hinduism and Buddhism. It involves unconventional sex, called tantric sex, which is "sacred". |
| 68 | Liberty Central is wingnut organization run by Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas's wife. It has been used as prominent evidence for Clarence Thomas's conflict of interest. |
| 94 | Engrams are a supposed mental image of past pain in the "reactive mind" on Scientology. They are also a legitimate explanation for the consistency of memory; in neuroscience engrams are biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain which are a part of a biological neural network. |
| 84 | Not Dead Yet is a disability rights group that is opposed to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. They argue that legalization will place pressure upon severely handicapped people to end their lives and avoid "being a burden" on others. They protested the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, and also protested the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby for its positive portrayal of assisted suicide. |
| 86 | The Palestinian right of return is a claimed right of those who lived in what is now Israel prior to 1948 and left it in the course of the fighting - Unlike any other refugee situation this right is claimed to be inheritable (including through adoption). There might be on-mission stuff to say about whether this unique interpretation of international law for this one case holds water |
| 113 | FIFA. The world's largest sports governing body is a filthy, corrupt cesspool. |
| 72 | Tim Farron is the new LibDem leader. He is in favor of the UK taking in more refugees,voted against the tuition hike, replacing trident, and bedroom tax, but also voted against the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. |
| 90 | Omar Al-Bashir (or any of the various other spellings) supreme dipshit of (North) Sudan and only sitting head of state to ever be accused of war crimes, I am sure we can elaborate on his guilt or innocence and maybe there are even some apologists for his deeds in some woo-ish crank corners... |
| 76 | Yoshiro Nakamatsu, Aka "Dr. NakaMats" - Prolific Japanese inventor and Ig Nobel Prize recipient. Has made some genuinely useful contributions (such as various advances on floppy disks) but most often his work goes into straight-up crankery and woo. |
| 108 | A Chinese therapy called paidaCreate draft ("pat therapy" or "slap therapy") was covered earlier this year by the BBC. There has been at least one death associated with it.[2] |
| 70 | The Automotive city has been one of the driving forces in city design for the last century, and is heavily tied into the politics of race and class. |
| 80 | Christian persecution, documenting and debunking the widespread claims that Christians are being persecuted in modern America / Europe, and discussing real Christian persecution in non-developed countries (possibly merge with Christophobia)? |
| 77 | We need to have a page on "modern day Nostradamus" Gary Spivey because just look at him. What is this? The inverse of a tinfoil hat to better attune to the messages from God? |
| 74 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger |
| 70 | Ken Jebsen a former radio persona and all around kook and woo-meister. Got fired for an antisemitic dog whistle and instead of toning it down he went off the deep end completely. Likes to make common cause with Jürgen Elsässer and is/has been a major Pegida apologist. English WP has nothing on him but German WP does. He's also rather active on Youtube |
| 104 | How to Good-Bye DepressionCreate draft If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?. Might be a Poe, might be a racist joke, but dude has a website. |
| 73 | Greyhound Therapy: The "medical treatment" of putting unwanted/undesirable/troublesome patients, such as the mentally ill, on a bus and sending them on a one-way trip to the next state over. |
| 134 | Nudism wooCreate draft Especially in the 19th century when nudism first became a political movement instead of just people foregoing clothes, a lot of woo was associated with it. Be it antisemitism, nationalism or the believe that nudity was some kind of panacea. Some of this woo still remains, as a short visit to one of the places where it is practiced will show you. |
| 113 | Gentrification. When the white hipsters discover your funky and quaint neighborhood and price you out of it. |
| 91 | Consensual crime - A.k.a. victimless crimes, e.g. recreational drugs, prostitution, gambling, sodomy (in some jurisdictions), etc.. |
| 71 | Tom Wolfe. Started his career as an avant-garde journalist. Turned into a conservative Very Serious Person and satirist of left-wing sensibilities in novels like Bonfire of the Vanities. |
| 70 | The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental organization that's much saner than Greenpeace but which still has an axe to grind. |
| 94 | European refugee crisis, 2015 European refugee crisis, Syrian refugee crisis, or maybe just Refugees. Lots of missional stuff here. We have Immigration (stub), but IMHO refugees is not the same thing as (economic) immigration (although there is obviously a large overlap). |
| 66 | Bill Whittle, available on Wikipedia already. Cited by anti-gun control persons. |
| 100 | Gabor FeketeCreate draft a physics crank and troll. Emails physicists pretending to be from the Nobel committee; has attained some small fame for this in the field. [3][4][5][6][7] Has been at this for years[8]. |
| 81 | Pink Ribbon/Susan G. Komen for the Cure/pinkwashing. Highly visible, highly questionable breast cancer awareness organization. Their antics include suing the bejezus out of other charities and plastering pink ribbons on carcinogenic products (and firearms). Is more interested in self-promotion than actually doing something against breast cancer. A general article on awareness raising/awareness campaign would also be nice. |
| 77 | A Joe job is a spamming technique for smearing a target by spoofing the sender ID so an unflattering or otherwise damaging message seems to have come from the target. See the Wikipedia article on Joe job. |
| 73 | International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement - Surely there are some conspiracy theories to debunk here. |
| 72 | Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and Stoic philosopher. |
| 77 | The al-Quds day is an antisemitic shitfest-lollapalooza invented in 1979 by Iranian supreme dipshit Khomeini and thus almost certainly part of our mission statement, if possible flamewar-bait. |
| 102 | BoughtCreate draft, a movie about how vaccines and GMOs are evil -- and, worse, corporationy. (c.f. this examiner.com article) |
| 105 | Koanic SoulCreate draft: a deeply nuts ([9][10][11]) scientific racist site that actually gets >0 play in neoreaction. Mr. 74 liked them too. Vault-Co is also a fan. With added Bitcoin.[12] |
| 66 | The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness is where Arianna Huffington of the eponymous Post apparently gets at least some of her wackier notions. Also connected in some way or other to the late medical marijuana and St. John's wort advocate and half-hearted Libertarian Peter McWilliams. |
| 77 | It might be useful to have an article on forensic science. Science News has a recent article on the problems and prospects of the field.[13] |
| 98 | Jennifer HoultCreate draft, because we should be weary of someone who had a false memory of child sexual abuse back in the day, still believes it, and does research on sexual abuse (because there is good chance her research is heavily tinged by her conspiratorial views). Also a parental alienation denier (why not, since both false memories and parental alienation are heavily linked?) |
| 81 | We should have an article on the "Right to be Forgotten". It has been in the EU for awhile now but there is a push to pass such a law in the US. It seems positive for those little mistakes we make on the internet but raises some interesting free speech questions. It also seems to get abused i.e. George Osborne. |
| 64 | Allan Savory and his concept of holistic grazing, interesting ideas and solutions about ecology of arid landscapes, claims he can help reduce global warming, but a bit of research reveals a lot of controversy over the man and his project. Unknown Hero ? Or full-of-shit opportunist ?. |
| 79 | Central South Slavic diasystem - a bullshit concept in Slavic linguistics invented by nationalists to support splitting Serbo-Croatian into separate Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin languages, whereas in fact they are standardized based on the same subdialect of the same dialect of Serbo-Croatian, are 100% mutually intelligible, have 95% identical lexis and 99% identical grammar. This is absurd to the point that Croatian linguists cite books written by Serbs as excellent sources of information on Croatian. Subject of content-forking articles on Wikipedia. |
| 86 | Heightism - It's somewhat overlooked as a form of discrimination but there have been studies showing a wage gap between shorter people and taller people, and I have heard anecdotes about tall people not being taken as seriously when they're the victims of crimes. Not to mention the stereotypes. |
| 71 | The stuff that's happening with the Migrants around Calais (The ones Cameron called a swarm) and the ferry strikers. Right wing response should be covered in this. |
| 66 | RationalWiki:Please climb the Riksdag dressed as Batman |
| 102 | Article Four of the Articles of ConfederationCreate draft - Not sure the Most Unexceptional way to title the article, but I've noticed a lot of sovereign citizen nuts screaming about it in youtube videos where they get themselves arrested. They apparently believe that it's the basis for them not having to obey the law. Based on wikipedia, and my reading of that particular article just says States can't bar citizens of other States from entering unless they're criminals or homeless (apparently tMigrants around Calaishe Constitution made that part more PC), and has to treat them the same as citizens of the State they're entering. Thought we should tackle this. |
| 73 | Some kind of LessWrong-to-normal-person glossary, giving the terms the rest of the world uses for concepts Yudkowsky gave his own names to so he would seem more original. |
| 93 | The Federalist, the latest socially conservative website masquerading as a force of reason. |
| 107 | The concept of a Baby BrainCreate draft which is basically the other side of the Mommy instinct coin. The idea that once a (previously competent) woman has had a baby, she magically is unable to do anything other that look after the baby (and often by implication, he husband.) |
| 86 | Max Keiser is an American film maker who hosts shows on RT and Press TV. He is a goldbug and supports Bitcoin. |
| 71 | The Book of Matt, by Stephen Jimenez, which attempts to debunk that Matthew Shepard's murder was motivated by homophobia. |
| 105 | Cuckold, currently a redirect to Manosphere glossary, but the history of its use as a generic term of abuse would be good to write up, particularly with the recent prominence of cuckservative. [14] has some well-traced history, [15] has an anecdote on how it became common on 4chan (posters trolling /pol/ with interracial cuckold porn). "cuck" has a long history in both /pol/ and neoreactionary circles; as it happens, Robin Hanson of overcomingbias.com (predecessor to LessWrong) has done the hard thinking on cuckoldry (and how). Honestly, it's like these people literally spend all day every day thinking about nothing but BIG BLACK COCKS. More: [16] |
| 116 | Mommy UniversityCreate draft. Whereas the Mommy instinct is the notion that mothers magically know how to care for their children better than healthcare professionals, Mommy University is the even bolder notion that mothers know more about everything than everybody else. Products are hawked as having been "invented by a mom," for example, as though this makes the product better. Mommy bloggers are notorious graduates of this University, and tend toward a surprising level of anti-vax and food woo. (See also "sanctimommy," and the recent hashtag #MomHarder ) |
| 73 | Bristol Palin, from out of the shadow of her mother comes a new challenger to all things ironic and hypocritical, shouting at teh gays and promoting abstinence while simultaneously having children out of wedlock. |
| 80 | Mamajuana is a herbal alcoholic alternative medicine that is supposedly an aphrodisiac, flu remedy, digestion and circulation aid, blood cleanser, kidney and liver tonic. |
| 136 | The Rind et al. controversy |
| 80 | Okra, particularly the Facebook meme that it's a miracle cure for diabetes. It does help slow and regulate glucose uptake, though it's not the miracle cure it's touted as in way too many woo sites, videos, etc. Snopes, Healthline with papers linked; this paper appears to be the one originally hyped beyond reason. |
| 80 | Frivolous lawsuits[17] are often cited as arguments for tort reform or as proof that corporations can't accomplish anything because little people hold them back or other bullshit, and they're almost always fake or misreported.[18][19][20] |
| 81 | Lists of weird laws are generally cherry-picked if not made up entirely. |
| 133 | The Medea hypothesis since we have an article on the Gaia hypothesis. There isn't a lot of info on the Wikipedia article.[21] |
| 85 | Opposition to pornography, separate and distinct from the article on pornography, since the opposition (Fight the New Drug, The End of Porn By Wire, SWERFs, Judith Reisman, certain religious groups, etc.) on both ends of the horseshoe tends to have its own special flavor of batshit arguments and questionable tactics. |
| 72 | The Dominican Republic, the bigger one, land of Rafael Trujillo, next to Haiti. Not to be confused with Dominica, the smaller one, land of bizarre coups. |
| 82 | Peshmerga, the ragtag band of Kurdish freedom fighters that are successfully holding against ISIS. |
| 87 | Fred Rogers. If more Christians were like him, this site would be vastly different. So would the world. |
| 94 | The idea of a Feminazi (currently a redirect to Rush Limbaugh) should be discussed, and its minority status made clear. [22] |
| 72 | Eliot Spitzer - the former attorney and governor of New York who had quite an impressive list of transgressions involving prostitutes and use of state funds to pay for them. His successor, David Paterson, might warrant an article too. |
| 87 | George Pataki. Former Republican governor of New York, currently running for President. May be of more note if he does well enough in the primaries, but he's one the very few sane Republicans left, even if he is a tad boring. (Currently redirect to 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination.) |
| 72 | Advanced Training Institute — the homeskoolin' organization behind the Duggar |
| 90 | Cathy Young - a self-described feminist who has been very critical of the movement since the early 1990s. She writes about gender issues, tending to focus on men's issues, and also speaks out against some of the SPOOK hysterics on the subject of rape and especially campus rape. Also one of the Gamergate supporters, and by extension a critic of its opponents. In addition, she comments on politics as a self-described libertarian. |
| 85 | Senkaku Islands - a bunch of uninhabited (but close to some oil) islands owned by Japan which China, rather dubiously claims as their own (as the Diaoyu Islands) and have in recent years threatened war with Japan over. With the latter's alliance with the US this dispute has the (albeit quite unlikely) potential to lead to a Third World War. |
| 87 | Internalized racism - Same reason as the below. Definitely related to False consciousness. |
| 80 | Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander, Harvard neurosurgeon. Widely popular book that claims to prove an afterlife exists; see eg here from The Spirit Science; one rebuttal here. |
| 70 | Al Murray - A British comedian Most Unexceptional known for his "Al Murray the Pub Landlord" act; a satirical impersonation of a right-wing, jingoistic publican. Recently however, he ran for Parliament as joke candidate for the Free the United Kingdom Party (or FUKP) in the same constituency as Nigel Farage. This of course, pissed off a lot of people who never got the joke, to the extent that he actually had break character a few times on his Facebook page. |
| 85 | Genocide Watch - given their "2014 Countries at Risk" report lists the U.S. as a 10 (because "Colonists, US Army & slave traders" are going to kill "Native Americans & African slaves" and Japan as a 10, because the "Japanese Army" are going to kill "Chinese, Koreans and Philipinos" they appear to be way off the scale. It's a "countries at risk" report, not a "Countries that did bad shit in the past" report.[23] (Correction/comment by ScepticWombat: The "10" is a phase in genocide, specifically denial, not a risk factor for an imminent danger of genocide. Genocide Watch's description of the 10-stage model of genocide is found here) |
| 65 | Lionel R. Milgrom, associated with the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College of Science, has produced irony meter-stressing levels of quantum woo, tangled up with homeopathy.[24][25] |
| 62 | Theodore Gray |
| 85 | Lokiarchaeota, a transitional form from about two billion years ago. See Lokiarchaeota. |
| 106 | Troubled teen homeCreate drafts, Christian and secular, for the abuse in them. (Example coverage from 2011, but I've seen a more recent one].) RW already has coverage of one, Hephzibah House, that is currently shoved as a section in Magdalene laundries where it doesn't belong. |
| 68 | Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, French comedian and raging anti-semite. Friends with Jean-Marie Le Pen in spite of being half African himself. Supposedly invented a reverse nazi salute. |
| 72 | Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. Three editors at a vanity publishing house, exasperated by all the stupid manuscripts by conspiracy nuts they're forced to read, mock their clients by making up a Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory incorporating all of the lesser ones. Alas, inevitably, actual conspiracy theorists take their joke seriously, and start stalking them. A brilliant commentary on the gullibility of just exactly these types - a breath of fresh air after Dan Brown. |
| 81 | The Moynihan report. |
| 104 | Dogs NaturallyCreate draft - "the most complete source of natural health care for dogs" [26]. Has been called the NaturalNews of dog ownership. Animal abuse for the wootastic. |
| 65 | Theodore Dalrymple, British retired physician and conservative commentator who's written for Taki's Magazine and Townhall.com among others. His principal thesis: liberal intelligentsia and the welfare state have prompted the British underclass to devolve into lazy, scummy, entitled savages. Like Roger Scruton, the guy broadly seems to resent (and advocate the repeal of) the entire 20th century. |
| 96 | Pink tax or things aimed at women being priced higher than the male equivalent. Is it real or just a conspiracy made up by people on tumblr. |
| 72 | A bunch of parapsychology journals: Journal of Parapsychology [27]; Journal of Consciousness Studies [28][29]; Journal of Near-Death Studies [30]. One we already have is Journal of Scientific Exploration. |
| 103 | Manifesto for a Post-Materialist ScienceCreate draft: Document arguing against scientific materialism. Cowritten by Rupert Sheldrake. ID supporters like it, as do Christians (Mormons?). The original is here, the fawning HuffPo is here, the less-fawning SciAm blog is here; Skeptiko forums likes it. A skeptical view is here, snarky comments here here and here. |
| 131 | Suriname Small country in South-America; on-mission as it's the source of quite a bit of herbal nonsense and its ... interesting ... take on politics (the current present is a convicted drug smuggler in the Netherlands, and accused of playing a part in the december killings). |
| 85 | Akiane Kramarik: Child prophet and painting prodigy or hack exploited by her parents? It's worth it for RW to assemble the evidence scattered all over the web. |
| 102 | Alive.comCreate draft[31] is an alternative medicine quack fest from Biritsh columbia, it is a magazine and website about "natural" (ie Bullshit medicinal ways. it is full of random quackery |
| 134 | Midbrain activationCreate draft: woo marketed to parents in India to pay for coaches to train up their kids' midbrains. Skeptics in India deal with this one a bit. [32][33] |
| 141 | Ateshgah of Baku, This structure in Azerbaijan has been subject to some controversy for a while. It is an abnormally well preserved shrine of some sort just outside of Baku that depending on who you talk to, is either a Zoroastrian Fire Temple, a Hindu Temple, or both. While it was long assumed to be a Zoroastrian Fire Temple some Parsis back in the 19th century who visited the place doubted that and suggested that it could be a Hindu Temple. This association at first seems a bit far fetched due to its geographical implausibility (and the differences between Zoroastrianism as it was practiced during the Sassanian Empire and Zoroastrianism as it is practiced now in India). While the association with Hinduism isn't entirely made up, as it is clear that Hindu Merchants liked visiting the shrine as is evident by the inscription they left behind, the idea that it was founded as a Hindu Temple, or was only a Hindu Temple is rather far fetched. However the existence of a relatively even sided controversy has never dissuaded the Hindutva types from claiming that said controversy is settled in their favor and this case is no exception. The other wiki has an extremely one sided article on this building. I would advise visitors visiting the page with Google Chrome to visit the same page in other languages (specifically Russian, Azerbaijani, and Persian) to compare with the English article. They are all well balanced, presumably because Indians don't speak any of those languages... Given that Wikipedia seems to have ditched neutrality for this one article, and given our critique of Hindu Nationalism and our evaluation of their various claims, it would make sense to have an article evaluating this issue. |
| 102 | Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and BehaviorCreate draft, by Marimba Ani. One of the most popular black supremacist books. Some of its analysis is arguably defensible, but it's also full of bizarre woo and pseudohistory, such as this bit about blacks being more capable of absorbing "divine energy" due to their dark skin, and virtually every stick-shaped object (including, I shit you not, umbrellas) being a manifestation of the white man's fear of the black man's penis. |
| 75 | Hyperphysics: reader suggestion. "It's hosted by Georgia state University, and is run by Rod Nave. At first glance it seems to be an education resource. My problem is the creationist slant of the site. False claims made include: DNA is a true code, and that amino acid selection during protein synthesis is not chemically determined [34] Other pages directly relate to god, and creationism. [35]" |
| 73 | Sharyl Attkisson: CBS journalist and woo-pusher. Anti-vaxxer [36] [37] and general BSer. Also hates Wikipedia because it notes her anti-vaxxing. |
| 135 | Human nutrition; we have so many articles on food woo, why not a basic list of all nutrients you really need? Essential nutrients and what they do. Proteins lipids and carbs, various vitamins, trace metals, etc. |
| 77 | Eurasian Economic Union - Putin's club for aging autocrats |
| 103 | PsycheTruthCreate draft - A channel on Youtube with over 880,000 subscribers, yet it's jam-packed with woo. |
| 82 | Interposition, the concept that U.S. state asserts rights to oppose actions of the federal government that the state deems unconstitutional. Under the theory of interposition, a state may "interpose" itself between the federal government and the people of the state by taking action to prevent the federal government from enforcing laws that the state considers unconstitutional. Interposition has not been upheld by the courts. Rather, the courts have held that the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional lies with the federal judiciary, not with the states. |
| 90 | Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist "philosopher". His Wikipedia article is puffed-up to ridiculous proportions ("no really, he's a philosopher!") His transhumanist novel is an Objectivist diatribe. Even other transhumanists find him too annoying and not useful. |
| 88 | The Freikorps, the infamous Weimar Republic-era volunteer paramilitary group that was well known for it's brutality (partially a result of personnel being derived from former Sturmtruppen) and regular use against communists. Like many shock troops left over from WWI, it soon became entangled with fascist elements. |
| 140 | Laplace's demon -- the whole idea of scientific determinism and how it doesn't work/gets falsified. |
| 80 | Just ran into this really cogent counterargument to the idea that the bible is divinely inspired.[38] Could make an article from this, or part of one. |
| 136 | Great Zimbabwe (Better idea: a list of the major non-Egyptian African civilizations, to smack racists on the heads with.) |
| 72 | Michael Tellinger, a South African politician and "ancient aliens theorist", or his book Slave Species of God. |
| 71 | Bruno Bettelheim. Made a name for himself as a child psychologist and author of the "refrigerator parent" theory of autism. Turns out to have been mostly a fraud; his only academic degree was in art history. Still widely cited and respected. |
| 141 | Serial killer. We have several articles on individual instances. I could see that an article on stereotypes vs. reality might be relevant, as would some comment on their prominence in Western pop culture. |
| 71 | 3HO "Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization", founded by a Sikh from India, but membership is mostly white Americans. Declared heterodox by mainstream Sikhs, it's teachings are primarily derived from Kundalini Yoga. There are some sex abuse accusations and cult accusations.[39] They own a billion dollar security firm. |
| 100 | Lindsey DuncanCreate draft and his companies agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission a fine of $9 million for false claims about weight loss from their green coffee bean extract. |
| 77 | David Silverman, or at least more about American Atheists |
| 90 | Geuzen. They were a lose collection of Calvinist Christians who would launch terrorist attacks against Dutch towns (e.g. burning down churches associated with Catholicism; raping nuns when nunneries ran out of supplies to raid) to force people into converting to their religious ideology. They later set up ships for piracy attacking Spanish Catholics. Other than that, they believed Muslim Turks to be more favourable than Catholics and used the crescent in medals. (But see wp:Geuzen before you do anything about it.) |
| 71 | Another Tumblr trend that needs a thorough thrashing, Headmates or "multiplicity" is the trend of claiming multiple personalities and believing that integration of them is evil. |
| 100 | AuroraTekCreate draft I stumbled on this Webshite today; they sell a "Self-Charging Electric Scooter" for $1500 ... their "science" page talks about travelling faster than light, and their news page talks about "my contact with human-appearing extraterrestrials" ... It has all the indications of being complete bullshit (but didn't investigate too deeply)... ((I'm writing this; it'll be up in a few hours so no removing it tyvm ~$catb0t(Totally |
| 147 | Isaac Bonewits was a prominent Druid and Neopagan as well as the only person to receive a degree in magic from an accredited university. (UC Berkeley of course.) He also wrote a commonly-used list of how to spot cultishness in an organisation. A fascinating fellow. |
| 60 | Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer Could do with a real article for all the anti science they do. |