Weekly Roundup #4

   Here comes another weekly roundup of blogs, podcasts and various sites that you should check out! It hasn’t been the most active week for Skeptical Monsters and I do apologise for that. I started playing Xbox again and that’s never a good sign for my blogging. My art has also been distracting me from writing and I’m really bad for balancing my hobbies (my art blog that you should check out - Idle Emma’s Ideal Spot – because I’m all for shameless promotion of my blogs). While I haven’t been writing much, I have at least been scanning my google reader for interesting blog posts worth sharing and listening to all those hours of podcasts.

   So, leaving my ramblings aside – here’s some stuff that you should read:

• From Bad PR - “We don’t clean often or thoroughly enough!” says cleaning product manufacturers, “Some of our members wash cars less often than others!” says breakdown service and “Women have sex on holiday!” says creepy firm asking men to pay to for female holiday companions.   
• From Supernova Condensate - Astrotropes: Humanoid Aliens and Milkshake Lakes.
• From Bad Astronomy – Earthlapse, New research points toward “no” on arsenic life and Titanic antarctic vortex antics.
• From Leaving Fundamentalism – This is what we’re up against, a post on how the Texas Republican Party election platform for 2012 wants to stop critical thinking in schools, and Are Children Naturally Rebellious Against God? (a guest post over on The Way Forward).
• From the Merseyside Skeptics Society - Exploring TCM: Dr & Herbs, Liverpool
• From The Crux - We (Apparently) Found the Higgs Boson. Now, Where the Heck Did It Come From?, a long, but quite thorough post on what you should know about the Higgs.
• From Hayley is a ghost - So you’ve seen a dodgy advert… some tips and advice on making complaints on dodgy adverts.

   Now, for some podcasts to please your ears, and there’s plenty of them this week. Really, just subscribe to them in itunes.

• The Reality Check #200
• The Infinite Monkey Cage: Symmetry
• The Pod Delusion #144
• Skeptics with a K #76
• Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe #365
• Skeptoid #318 – The Loch Ness Monster
• Skeprechauns #26 – 50 Shades of Skeprechaun

   And the sites, images, videos and articles from around the internet:

• Video – Via the Atheist Media Blog – Mr. Deity and the Hitch (if you don’t watch Mr. Deity, just start. It’s hilarious).
• Site - What-if? - Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday.
• Comic - Jesus and Mo – rooms
• Video – Via Token Skeptic: The What If Machine: Portal
• Article - Fukushima nuclear accident down to human factors
• Article - Computer watches you play a game, then beats you at it
• Video – Via Token Skeptic: Higgs Boson: A Metaphor To Explain The Particle, Or Further Confuse You
• Video – Via Skeptical Squirrel: Secrets of our Living Planet

So ends another weekly roundup. I hope people find these mildly useful and enjoy them.