Archive for the ‘Meta-Skepdad’ Category
Edmonton Skeptics
I’ve very excited that over the course of the summer our little effort to convene a collective of local skeptics has resulted in lots of new interest, a couple meetings, and some upcoming community education projects. It looks like things are taking off. If you are finding this page because of a search for Edmonton Skeptical groups, or groups in and around Alberta, look us up on either Facebook or (for the time) Meetup.com and come out to a meeting.
As a dad to a little girl who is really starting to build up those cognitive functions, I’m looking forward to having some great community support in the coming years around critical thinking and skepticism.
Check out our new webpage at www.edmontonskeptics.org
Monday Meta: Topic Redux
Mondays? Making up excuses for missed connections.
I’d like to write here every day, but it’s just not going to happen. In the meantime, little two-week breaks from my rants provide opportunity to let new ideas and experiences marinate. We have a medium-sized circle of friends, and when I’m not playing with the girl, pounding away on a keyboard, or puttering about the garden, we’re usually socializing. And, even if those friends don’t have kids of their own — which most of them now do — they always have opinions on child-rearing. What’s a skepdad to do? Commentate on those ideas, of course.
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Monday Meta: A Little More Focus
Mondays? Filling in the Blogging and Communication Gaps.
I gotta send thanks out to any of you who have been hanging on during these moments of Skepdad confusion and transition. The whole idea of the Skepdad Blog has been to explore some issues around (a) skepticism, (b) skeptical parenting, and (c) grasping onto an understanding of what do with this little version of me who is growing up in a culture and community rife with superstition and pseudoscientific messages. My objective is and was to do a lot of thinking and writing on the topic — non-expert that I am — and hopefully cobble together a better understanding of the issues. I aimed for that goal for a number of months then came to the frustrating conclusion that I was aiming at a goal that was beyond the scope of either me or a blog like this. I’ll leave you to figure that out.
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lost musings
If you’ve been privy to the six months that comprise the early development of this blog, visiting often, reading diligently, and participating on the fringes of wordsmithery that drapes this domain in some vague recollection of pandering advice, then you have also witnessed a bumbling fool of a new father attempt to compose the impossible. I often have this deep rooted fear that my own cherry-picked musings on the state of critical thought are in jeopardy, caught in the gravity-well of logical fallacy — and it is with straining effort and scattered triumph that I continue to pluck away on this project. As such, we were traveling recently, bumbling through an international jaunt with our little hatchling in tow, and lest not be saved from our typical mid-vacation discovery of some local bookstore, we spent a few hours wandering the foreign stacks and perusing literature from a bevy of random topics.
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An Imaginative Bonus Question
One would think that keeping a blog on the topics of critical thought, parenting, skepticism, and similarly related ideas is a difficult task — and one would be right. But, unexpectedly, when I set out to write here I was overwhelmed in a different way than I am now, having touched on a small handful of topics and researched twice again as many for future articles. The task is not difficult because there is a lack of subject matter. The task is difficult because there is far more to cover than I had ever anticipated. And I’ve been struggling not for lack of questions, but because I’ve been hesitant to ask the wrong ones.
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Future skep/dad Topics, Perhaps?
I’ve not had much time to sit down and write this week. Truth is, I scraped together some cash and bought myself a new notebook that has been occupying too much of my attention whilst I try out the many new features. That said, the plan in buying the new notebook was to give me more time and convenience in writing for this project (as well as a few others). Convenience? Well, it’s a notebook, so I can sit on the couch, put on some tunes, and type. Time? A rare commodity as a parent, but the new computer is, admittedly, a Mac so (as promised by the onslaught of advertising) its been running all weekend trouble free right out of the box. No more precious hours shared between changing diapers, reading aloud, and wireless connectivity maintenance. Of course, this gives me reason to pause and consider what I should write.
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The Inevitable skep/dad Dichotomy
I’ve realized that my work on this blog can be neatly divided into two categories and I thought it might be useful to define those. Hopefully this will clear things up for new readers. So, if you are a new reader this post is a good post to read because it is going to talk about the difference between these two categories. I’ve simplified them as much as I could and have called them skeptical parenting versus raising critical thinkers — and they are not contradictory ideas. Rather, they compliment each other. And just a few months into this blog are very much at the core of what I’ve been trying to accomplish — and will continue to do.
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Wanna Write for skep/dad?
Of course I’ll need to change some of the tag lines, but I am currently contemplating other contributers to this blog. Consider this a solicitation — and here’s why: I started this little project with some lofty goals of writing about “raising kids to become critical thinkers” and while that still applies and remains the core topic for this blog, a few important things have occurred to me…
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The skep/dad blog is a place for rational, science-minded fathers to express their thoughts, opinions, and ideas about bringing up kids to be critical thinking adults in a world filled with superstition, mysticism, and pseudoscience.
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Brad adds: As of October 2007, I'm soliciting interest for skeptics in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada area who are interested in forming a skeptical society to contact me. Please do so through this blog or via Facebook (through the Edmonton Skeptical Society Group).
Or visit our new website: www.edmontonskeptics.org - Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.- Albert Camus
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- ScienceBlogs
- Claire’s Booklist
- Skeptical Surfer
- Memoirs of a Skepchick
- The Blogfathers
- James Randi Educational Foundation
- The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
- Snopes (Urban Legends Reference)
- Skeptical Mom
- The Skeptic Dad
- The Meming of Life
- Skeptic Magazine
- Junior Skeptic
- The Philosopher Dad
- NeuroLogica Blog
- SkepBitch
- Science Based Medicine
- Pediatrics
- DIYFather.com
- Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
- Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena
- The Museum of Hoaxes
- Bad Language
- Nye Labs
- Bug Girl’s Blog
- Skeptical Kids
- Science Creative Quarterly
- Podblack Blog
- Skeptical Family Forum
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