A sad day for Skeptics
I have decided to temporarily come out of retirement for the following blog…..
For those of you that know me, you will be aware that I have a serious distaste for Psychics, tarot reader and other such purveyors of bullshit that seek to exploit people of a vulnerable position. With that in mind I am very sad to learn from James Randi’s site, Robert Lancaster, a Skeptic that has taken the fight to one such purveyor of Bullshit, Sylvia Browne, has suffered a stroke.
This is a man that spends a large percentage of his time trying to educate people on why they should not turn to people like Browne for advice at times of need or for life changing decisions.
Robert is primary reason on why I am a Skeptic myself. I read his blog about Sylvia Browne after her criminally inaccurate assessment of the Shawn Hornbeck case, I finally realised the damaging affect so called psychics could have on people.
I wish that I had an ounce of the conviction that this man has at standing up to people like Browne as he has the courage of his convictions.
I wish him a speedy recovery as the world needs people like him. At the same time, my thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Please feel free to check out his site to see how much time, investigation and accuracy this man devotes to freeing the world of exploiters of people of a vulnerable nature and please check out his health status here.
Thank you for reading
August 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Damn, sorry to hear it. I admired his work…
Good to see you back on the moose though. Shame it wasn’t for better reasons.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Its was great to see your post - I have missed you! Meant to write and tell you earlier…
November 1st, 2008 at 9:41 am
Important news for all supporters of Robert Lancaster:
Unfortunately, the renewal for the domain name “stopsylviabrowne.com” came due during the first weeks after Robert’s stroke, and it expired. A domain squatter noticed this fact, and snatched up the domain before anyone noticed. So now that domain contains non-skeptical content that we should not be endorsing via hyperlink.
I’ve written up what we all need to do here:
http://skeptools.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/skeptics-load-your-google-bombs/
But to quickly summarize:
DO: Start using STOPSYLVIA.COM in all links to the site including buttons and so on.
DO NOT: Use any .NET or .US or other domains you may have heard of, even if they work. For google ranking purposes it is important we all link to the same address.
DO: Include “Sylvia Browne” in the text part of your hyperlink.
DO NOT: Include the word “Stop” in the hyperlink. Google will already rank this site well for searches for “Stop Sylvia Browne” because of the content. We need it to be boosted for searches for “Sylvia Browne”.
DO: VERY IMPORTANT! Go back and revise any old posts or content you have on your site to reflect the new link. This will simultaneously boost the correct site and hurt the bad guy who stole the domain.
DO: Consider adding a link like this to your signature file on any forums you frequent.
DO NOT: Bother linking in places like blog comments or Wikipedia where they use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on all user-submitted links.
Again, all the gory details are in that blog post above.
I thank you for your attention to this, and I’m sure Robert and Susan Lancaster thank you too.
–Tim Farley
http://whatstheharm.net