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I have always been a skeptical person. I don’t believe in ghosts or any supernatural beings. I believe in science, and critical thinking. I first discovered the skeptic community back in 2005 when I discovered the Skepticality podcast. Nowadays I read a lot of skeptic blogs, and listen to a lot of skeptic podcasts. I have learned so much in the last four years thanks to the skeptic community. The more that I learn to think critically, the more I learn to spot all the misinformation being spread about many topics; From the Moon hoaxers, to the 911 truthers, to the antivax crowd, and all the “alternative medicine” quacks. There is a lot of nonsense out there. Critically thinking needs to be taught more in high schools. Learning how to think really should be a top priority in schools.

One of my favorite person in the skeptical community is the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait. He has a great blog, is the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and an excellent speaker. I have watched many of his talks online and they all are incredible. This past summer he was a speaker at Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex and did a great talk about skepticism. You can watch it below:

I have always been intrigued by astronomy. Of course there was no astronomy teaching in my high school. I took one astronomy course in college and loved it. One of my favorite blogs is BadAstronomy.com. I have been reading that blog for quite some time, and learn something every day from Phil Plait. His video chats are really good. He has great ways of explaining really complex things. Lately he has been answering questions from high schoolers, and while his answers are geared toward high schoolers, really anybody can learn from them. I don’t think the average person knows much about astronomy. Astronomy is one of the sciences that gets ignored, or at least it did in my school. Thanks to the internet, and the Bad Astronomer I can learn all I want about astronomy.