A Post In Honor of International Skeptics Day (Holiday occurring 10-13-2017 & 1-13-2018)

Today is Friday the Thirteenth; and as you may recall, dear reader, from my previous postings here on Blogger, there are some folks who suffer from a case of Friggatriskaidekaphobia on this day. The "ailment" called Friggatriskaidekaphobia is associated with the fear of being born on Friday the Thirteenth.

If knowing that someone is afflicted with Friggatriskaidekaphobia makes you skeptical, dear reader, you've picked the right day to feel this way for October thirteenth, which is today, happens to be International Skeptics Day! It is also celebrated on January the thirteenth.

According to cute-calendar.com; this unofficial holiday "celebrates true facts and the exposal of wrong ones by being skeptic and asking the right questions."

This aforementioned web-page also states the following:

"Being skeptic does not exactly mean to not believing anything but to always keep in mind that things could also be different than the way they seem. Scrutinizing things instead of always accepting them can lead to brand-new insights."

Living creatures are not the only ones known to be skeptical. The figurine featured in the image above (where she is spending some of her time within my indoor succulent garden), certainly looks skeptical to me, so I've given her the name Lady Skeptic. If she looks familiar to you, it may be due to the fact that you recognize her her face as I've featured her in prior entires here on Blogger that discuss Halloween.
Lady Skeptic's initial visit to my home was in 2011, which I discussed in a blog post at that time. In any event, she initially came to me courtesy of Steve Mohr, who is the sole proprietor of More & More Antiques, a shop on NYC's UWS, that has been selling my fauna-flora-insect-themed postcards, which can be viewed via thumbnail format in the images directly below.

All of the images featured on these postcards are from both versions (digital and softcover) of the book that I co-authored with "my" female cardinal, whose name is Cam.

It's titled, Words In My Beak Volume One.

Cam has been known to be a bit skeptical when various fauna types first show up in my urban garden, which is something she alludes to in her narrative when she is discussing the first time house finches as well as mourning doves appeared here.

But it not such a bad thing to be wary of one's circumstances. On a web-page for timedate.com, the writers remind their readers that "according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, skepticism is an attitude of doubt towards a particular object or a piece of knowledge, whether it is philosophical, religious or scientific. It is only with this attitude that human society and its understanding of the world around it has been able to evolve and develop - many scientific claims, myths and hoaxes throughout history have been brought to light and debunked due to the hard work of skeptics who refused to stop questioning and doubting. Who knows, without Galileo Galilei's skepticism, for example, we may still be believing that the Sun moves around the Earth?"

Moreover, the writer of the aforementioned page encourages folks to "be skeptical (or sceptical if you live in a country that follows British English) of everything! Don't accept any claims made by family, friends, colleagues or strangers without doing your own research."

Not bad advice in this era of fake news!

ADDENDUM FALL 2018: 

Hardcover versions of Volume One, Two and Three can now be found wherever books are sold.

MY BOOK SERIES

Please click here to go to my blog post that provides details as to where you can get these books. Additionally, I have rendered some images from these books into other formats and they are available via Fine Art America (FAA). Some of my other photographs (Black & White Collection, Kaleidoscopic Images and the famous Mandarin duck who visited NYC) can also be found on my FAA pages.