http://www.litrix.com/madraven/madne001. htm
Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), which I cite several times in this book, is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of mumbo-jumbo. The text is now available online via this link.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/
This ambitious online magazine, founded by my friend Anthony Barnett, has quickly established itself as one of the most intelligent, free-thinking forums for geopolitical debate.
http://www.csicop.org/si/
The website of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal includes many excellent debunking articles from its publication The Skeptical Inquirer, ‘the magazine for science and reason’.
http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/
The Why Files, run by the National Institute for Science Education in the US, explores the science (and maths) behind recent news stories, from cellular biology to political opinion polling.
http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html
A comprehensive guide to health fraud and quackery which exposes the pseudo-science behind so-called ‘alternative remedies’.
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
A website run by Professor Alan Sokal which includes a comprehensive archive of papers relating to his famous hoaxing of the post-modernists at Social Text.
http://www.au.org/site/PageServer
The price of both secular and religious liberty is eternal vigilance, and since 1947 the pressure group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has acted as an unsleeping watchdog. This is its homepage.
http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/
Otherwise known as ‘the unofficial Christopher Hitchens website’. Hitchens is an old friend of mine whose pugnacious, wide-ranging journalism both enlightens and provokes. This site enables one to keep up with his prolific output from publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/
A blog run by Professor Norman Geras, whose bracingly iconoclastic observations on modern political follies are interspersed with his thoughts on cricket, movies and the songs of Bob Dylan.
http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.asp
This frequently updated register of urban legends should be the first port of call whenever you notice new stories or rumours which seem too good to be true. More often than not, they are indeed too good to be true.
I recommend this loopy creationist website on the ‘know your enemy’ principle. These people truly believe, inter alia, that dinosaurs roamed the earth only a few thousand years ago.
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/default.asp
This has no particular connection with mumbo-jumbo or rationalism: it is simply the website of Britain’s most brilliant and enduring singer-songwriter. Those who haven’t yet discovered him should hasten to do so.