Polls about psychics and conspiracy theories, and RSS Feeds

At OU, we have the Scripp's Survey Research Center who has a site: newspolls.org. They recently published findings that say 1 in 12 Americans have "seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world" and 1 in 5 "personally knows someone who has seen a UFO. Although these are extremely vague descriptive stats, its still pretty wild that 1 in 12 Americans are mistaking mysterious objects in the sky with otherworldly visitors.

Another study from the same group is saying that nearly 2/3 of Americans "think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings".

Although these results aren't terribly surprising, this is what Skeptics are up against. There is still a lot of work to be done with just the basic misconceptions such as UFOs, conspiracy theories, and the other topics we deal with such as psychics, ghosts, and superstitions. Although there are new things popping up everyday that are presented in an uninformed way that require some basic critical thinking, we still have the life long battle against these other beliefs that will almost inevitably continue to transcend time and culture.

Also, I just registered the blog as a feed for RSS readers and news aggregaters. In order to subscribe just click the link to the left of the page and it will bring up all of the options for all of the different readers and whatnot. Also, if you don't already use an RSS reader or aggregater I highly recommend Feedreader - its freeware and extremely easy to use and edit. This is probably the easiest and most efficient way to keep up with blogs and the news.

So, continue to watch out for those watching out for UFOs and government conspiracies, and get Feedreader!!

Word,

David