A short bit about Flat Earthers. (uh well, it got bigger.)

I am and have been a man of science, reason and fact-based life. 

Unlike some, I do not care if you yourself hold religious views. 

                    I used to. I used to rail against religion the way some people rail against smoking cigarettes or eating red meat. I've given up on it, having realized that religion is one of those things you can't argue people out of. So, I don't bother. If you wish to continue believing I can't stop you. But you can still hold religious views, express religious faith and worship in the manner that suits you without eschewing science and reason. While the two are not wholly compatible, they can and do co-exist without friction. Some consider there to be non-overlapping magisteria, that is to say, the two things each have their own provinces which they do well in just so long as they stay within their realm -- keep to their own lane, so to speak. A prime example of what happens when religion attempts to speak to a question of science is when religious zealots attempt to define the fundamental nature of our home planet. For anyone who has studied science it's a settled issue - - the earth is a very slightly oblate spheroid some 12742 km in diameter, that turns on it's N-S Axis once every 24.025 hours, and orbits it's primary star at a distance of some 151.42 million km once every 365.25 days. These facts are not conjecture, or suppositions, they are known. They are observations, made using instruments from the primitive  -- a pole of known length -- to the incredible -- a ring laser gyro, or focused light prism gyroscope. The first attempt to divine the circumference of the earth was done by Eratosthenes in 245 BC; see Wikipedia's explanation of how, here : Wikipedia on Eratosthenes

Fool Moon Madness!

Every so often, I or someone I know will post a social media note about how they had a completely crazy day and just need to decompress. Then some usually well-meaning person will chime in with "Yeah, full moon's coming", as if that explains everything.  Well, I hate to be a big fat Buzz Killington, but no, it actually does not explain it.  Statistically, people do not lose their sanity more during the full moon, even though the terms "Lunacy" and "Lunatic" derive from the latin word for the moon -- Luna. Humanity is very tied to the moon. In fact, some have speculated that without the tidal forces between the Earth and the Moon, we humans may not have evolved. (myself, I don't try to speculate. It's one of those incalculables. ) So, we have ages of social conditioning and a considerable amount of confirmation bias which drives most people's belief in Full Moon Madness.
Except, there is simply no statistical evidence that any such phenomena occur. Hospital Emergency Departments, Fire stations, police dispatchers -- statistics gathered from all of those do not show any marked uptick in "madness"  -- accidents, assaults, fires, homicides etc -- during the nights of the full moon.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1316181/

Why Psychics are the Bunk.

We've all seen them. Commercials on late night television -- someone selling their services as a psychic, medium or tarot reader. What most people don't realize is, they're all Bunkum. 

Bunkum, Hoax, Fraud, Flummery, Mummery Smoke and Mirrors, Bullshit. They're all synonyms for something false or fake that some few believe to be true.

Homeopathy is Bunk.

Yes, I'm not going to soft-soap it. Homeopathy is bunk. bollocks. built on stupidity. 

In the 1800s one Samuel Hahnamann came up with the idea that if a substance taken internally at regular strength caused certain symptoms, and if giving that substance in lesser, diluted forms caused lesser symptoms, then diluting it until there couldn't possibly be any more of the substance in the solution -- so that there was a negative amount of substance in the solution -- must then cure those symptoms. To this he added in the mumbo jumbo of praying over the water and slapping the bottle of solution being mixed against a leather bound book -- usually but not always a copy of the christian bible. The resulting stew of pseudoscience he passed on to his followers, who keep at it to this day, diluting stuff in water, alcohol or glycerin, sometimes dropping drops of it on sugar pills, and then selling the resultant useless crap for big sums of money. Because of placebo effect, and a phenomenon known as "regression to the mean" or because human beings sometimes get well on their own, People allow themselves to be deluded into thinking the stuff works, when in fact, it is only water, alcohol, glycerin or sugar pills. Entertainer and renowned skeptic James Randi has often challenged homeopaths to bring him a "fatal overdose" of Homeopathic sleeping pills, which he takes entire boxes of without ill effect (other than perhaps on his blood sugar.)

I am also reminded of the statement made by comedian Tim Minchin, who has said "if a vial of water can remember the memory of one drop of onion juice why doesn't it remember all the poo that's been in it ?"
One of these days I'm going to have to look for some quality research on why this stuff (and other weird quack treatments) persist in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.
Somehow, I suspect it will be for similar reasons to why people continue to subscribe to damnedfool ideas like flat earth, geocentrism and young earth creationism.