A big "hi" to anyone that's arrived via Media Watch, or via Scienceblogs or via Crikey, or any one of the other new inlinks of the last few days. The spike in traffic, and presumably new subscribers, means I guess I should be picking up my game and including far more pages of thoughtful analysis of current skeptical issues.
Or maybe I'll just carry on beating people up with words for the sin of credulity, and posting the occasional deranged music clip. That might be the way to go. Stick with what you know, they say.
For anyone who didn't see the Media Watch piece, it's linked from the screenshot above. I'll actually have some streaming video in place here for when the ABC archive the clip later*. I'd chatted with a researcher for the programme during the day and helped to (not entirely successfully) hunt down some video, but had no idea that I'd get a screenshot, a quote and a shoutout popping up on my TV, followed closely by an "achievement unlocked" box. I nearly spat sushi in my lap.
Of course, the existence of the XBox achievement above implies the existence of this one:
Which must have popped up on Stephen and Mario Fenech's TVs last night. Yes, they got a drubbing, though intriguingly when asked to comment by Media Watch, claimed that they'd received no payment for their tireless promotional work.
I don't know about you, but I'm skeptical. I do think it's more likely that they haven't been paid yet and after this debacle, won't be. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a cynical blogging hack with no insight whatsoever. Maybe they just prefer looking like credulous numpties than like venial hacks. Who knows?
For
Charlie Brown's sins, well, he appears to be handling the backlash much better that Stephen Fenech (who has been deleting tweets while whistling and looking at the ceiling, and denying everything). Charlie has
blogged on the matter here, and has linked back to my post on
QLink's "scientific evidence" for his readers to get an idea of what QLink is really all about. Australian Skeptics, for their part, have offered Charlie any assistance they can give on future miracle claim stories, and I really hope Charlie takes them/us up on the offer. And I must say I'm heartened by the calm way Charlie is going about responding. Now if he'll just fit in a retraction on the Today programme, I'll be
really happy.
And finally, cheers to everyone who tweeted on the
#mediawatch hashtag last night, and those on
Facebook who tagged me in posts about the story. And especially to those who promised me more beer at
TAM OZ.
*I'm currently having to multi-hop uploads to YouTube due to having no proper internet connection here at home. They first get uploading in a resume-ready fashion over 3G to my web server, from where they go to YouTube. It takes a while.
posted @ Tuesday, November 9, 2010 10:17 AM