An upcoming film entitled ‘2012’ feeds on the current paranoia of some people that the world will end on December 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar, that a rogue planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, and that solar flare will consume the planet in flames. These are all highly-imaginative fiction, of course. NASA [...]

The modern skeptic ‘thinks that belief in X ought to be proportional to the amount of evidence supporting X.’ That means ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’
Thus, modern skeptics do not necessarily reject new claims; it’s just that they weigh them against the evidence attendant to the claim. That puts to light conspiracy theories. The burden [...]