Skeptic Society Magazine

Ivory-tower liberalism

Economist Daron Acemoglu is back in London for his book tour, in the city where, more than 30 years ago, he studied for his PhD at the London School of Economics. His thesis examiner, Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides, later wrote: ‘[Acemoglu’s] thesis is among the best ever written – if not the best at the LSE.’ The Economist has called him ‘world’s most influential...

This Land Is Their Land by David J. Silverman

In September 1970, Massachusetts invited Frank James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag music teacher, to speak at a state banquet marking 350 years since the Pilgrims landed. Officials read his draft, judged it too inflammatory, and handed him a replacement written for him. He refused it and pulled out of the dinner. On Thanksgiving Day he stood on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, beside the statue of...

Framed answer today – here’s the solution for October 29

The last couple of years have seen a huge rise in browser-based puzzle games, tasking players with working out a certain kind of answer using limited guesses. Framed is one of the newest, following in the footsteps of Wordle, but offering a slightly different twist. You’ll still need to work out the answer using limited information and only six tries, but it’ll be movies...

Dead Star Offers a Glimpse Into Our Solar System’s Future

A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope recently spotted something curious. Observing a white dwarf (J1328−1450) located roughly 1,600 light-years from Earth, the team noticed it was surrounded by a rare disc of debris. According to their analysis, recently published in Nature Astronomy, it could offer a glimpse into the future of our solar system.  When a star like...

A Look Back at Julia Roberts’s Best Hair Moments of All Time

There’s hair, and then there’s iconic, era-defining Julia Roberts hair, a mane worthy of awards. The Oscar-winning actor’s million-dollar smile may be her aesthetic signature, but since the start of her career, Roberts’s hair has proved a close second—in all of its many iterations. Roberts and her natural curls breezed onto the silver screen and into the Hollywood scene in the late 1980s, her...