It's that time again.
The Skeptics' Circle has once again descended upon the blogosphere to try to do battle with the rampant credulity therein and by bringing a whiff of skepticism and critical thinking into what is, sadly, a free-for-all of posting first and asking questions later. Hard as it is to believe, the Circle has been existence for three years now, and, in fact, the very first edition first appeared on February 3, 2005 on the blog of its founder, St. Nate, who sadly has given up blogging and, even more sadly, has deleted his blog so that it has now become a spam blog. Over the three years that the Circle has been in existence, I've been consistently impressed and amazed at the usually high level of quality of the posts and the creativity of the hosts. This time around, Rod Clark at The Skeptical Surfer takes on the challenge of hosting and upholding the tradition. He's having a bit of a hard time, though, as he's still "high from the chelation." Fortunately, he's overcome that problem to serve up a cracking good bunch of skeptical blog posts in the 78th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle.
The next meeting will be on January 31 and will be hosted at Podblack Blog. Information on how to submit and deadlines is here. Guidelines for submitting posts to be included in the Circle can be found here.
Of course, here I must make the obligatory biweekly plea: If you have a skeptically-oriented blog, you should consider hosting a Circle yourself. The schedule is here, and guidelines and helpful suggestions for hosts are here. Peruse them. Cogitate about them. And then drop me an e-mail. I'll peruse your blog, cogitate upon it to make sure that Deepak Chopra or Michael Behe isn't trying to slip a ringer in, and then get you on the schedule.