Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from March 2003

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from March 2003

The Skeptics Society.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... The Skeptics Society is a member-supported 501(c)(3) nonprofit scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, that does the...

What is a skeptic?(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... What does it mean to be a skeptic? Some people believe that skepticism is rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse "skeptic" with "cynic" and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that...

'I was brillig: the great dilution delusion.
March 22, 2003... ON NOVEMBER 27, 2002, the BBC-TV program Horizon, featuring a test of homeopathy, was broadcast in the UK. Many viewers expressed their conviction that we'd heard the death-knell of this form of quackery; I disagreed. To explain my reluctance...

Demon haunted times: evolutionists give up creationism to be taught in schools.
March 22, 2003... WASHINGTON, D.C. Leading members of the scientific community, along with creationists, concluded a week-long summit in the nation's capital by agreeing on a resolution that demands both evolution and creation be taught in public schools. ...

Is baked Alaska half-baked?
March 22, 2003... Alaska's High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a magnet for conspiracy theorists. The High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), located near Gakona, Alaska, began in 1990. It consists of a high-power...

Darwin, Design and Democracy. (News).
March 22, 2003... A Report on a Conference on Intelligent Design Theory, July 26-27, Kansas City, MO How Do ID Proponents Behave When Preaching To the Choir? DEPENDING ON YOUR PERSPECTIVE, Intelligent-Design (ID) theory is either a radical and important...

Big foot, bigger hoax. (News).
March 22, 2003... AFTER A FEW QUIET YEARS, 2003 APPEARS TO BE the year of the Return of Bigfoot--or, the Death of Bigfoot, depending on who is doing the talking. Our old friend Sasquatch, the toast of Hollywood in the heady days of Harry and the Hendersons,...

Stupid "Pet Psychic" Tricks: crossing over with Fifi and Fido on the Animal Planet network.
March 22, 2003... IF DAVID LETTERMAN WANTS TO EXPAND his "Stupid Pet Tricks" segment on the Late Show to include stupid pet psychic tricks, I believe we have a winner. Move over James Van Praagh and John Edward, there's a new television show in town. The Animal...

Forum.
March 22, 2003... Best Science Teaching Article Despite the fact that the title of Massimo Pigliucci's article, "What Do We Do About Creationism?", did not suggest it, the article is possibly the best on teaching science I have ever read. Of course, I am...

Forum: artificial intelligence forum.
March 22, 2003... Commentaries on Steven B. Harris' article "A.I. and the return of the Krell Machine" from skeptic vol. 9, no. 3, with responses form Dr. Harris Science is the Krell Machine I enjoy your magazine and its intriguing content. The most...

Will computers ever think? A critique of Steven Harris's perspective on artificial intelligence.
March 22, 2003... The Question and the "N" Word In his article "A.I. and the Return of the Krell Machine" (SKEPTIC, Vol. 9, No. 3) Steve Harris suggests that because computers are getting faster and smaller exponentially, they will someday rival the human...

When brains fall out: the origin of a skeptical maxim.
March 22, 2003... In one of those curious coincidences that sometimes suggest to the more gullible that there's something going on behind the here and now, I recently came across one of my favourite aphorisms in two unrelated quasi-scientific sources in the...

On the shoulders of midgets.
March 22, 2003... ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY QUOTED--and misunderstood--remarks in the history of science is Isaac Newton's famous line about "standing on the shoulders of giants." In recent years, versions of it have appeared around the edge of a British coin...

Ockham's Razor cuts both ways: the uses and abuses of simplicity in scientific theories.
March 22, 2003... IN CARL SAGAN'S NOVEL CONTACT, heroine Ellie Arroway manages to travel through wormholes into uncharted regions of the universe, rendezvous with intelligent extraterrestrial life, and return safely to earth to tell her colleagues about her...

Psychic for a day: or how I learned Tarot cards, palm reading, astrology and mediumship in 24 hours.
March 22, 2003... ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2003, I FILMED a television show with Bill Nye in Seattle, Washington, for a new PBS science series entitled Eyes of Nye. This series is an adult-oriented version of Bill's wildly successful 100-episode children's...

Do we fear the right things?
March 22, 2003... "MOST PEOPLE REASON dramatically, not quantitatively," said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Even before the honor of 9/11, many Americans feared flying. "Every time I get off a plane, I view it as a failed suicide attempt," movie director Barry...

Blind research: are the hard sciences immune from experimenter effects?
March 22, 2003... IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, AS IN EVERYDAY life, our beliefs and biases often influence how we observe and interpret the world. In experimental psychology and clinical research, this problem is widely recognized, which is why experiments in these...

A Roswell requiem.(Roswell, New Mexico)
March 22, 2003... During the last decades of the 20th century the alleged flying saucer crash at Roswell developed into the UFO world's most influential and celebrated myth. After 55 years of commercial exploitation the mythology has reached frenzied heights...

Days of the future past.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A review of How to Build a Time Machine, by Paul Davies, Viking, 2002, 132 pages. "Where exactly are the past andfuture?' PAUL DAVIES NEEDS ONLY 23 PAGES to explain how to conjure up a device capable of transporting its users into the...

Einstein, Batman, and the surfer: a skeptical view of time travel.
March 22, 2003... IN THE EARLY 19005 THE FRENCH POET and novelist, Guillaume Apollinaire, wrote a story entitled "Le Roi Lune" (the Moon King). In his tale a belt with fantastic powers allows its wearer to make love to all women of all centuries. If that isn't...

Gospel fictions.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... A BOOK FOR ANYONE WHO HAS EVER WONDERED * What was most important to the Gospel writers, even more important than recording literal or historical truth? * Why do the Gospels vary so much when the writers obviously knew what those...

The Chronology projector conjecture: the mind is still the safest way to time travel.
March 22, 2003... IN AN EPISODE OF THE ORIGINAL STAR TREK series, Dr. McCoy falls through a time portal in a city "on the edge of forever" and changes the past in a way that erases the Enterprise and her crew, with the exception of a landing party, Captain Kirk,...

Wrong questions, no answers. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A Review of The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning and Public Debate by Phillip Johnson, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2002. 191 pages. ISBN: 0-8308-2294-1 Phillip Johnson inhabits a world in which in-defined groups of people engage...

Quantum physics and Western Mysticism. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A review of Nature Loves to Hide: Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality by Shimon Malin, Oxford University Press, May 2001, 289pages. Hardcover $27.50. ISBN: 0195138945, Colgate University professor Shimon Malin's book Nature Loves to...

Double your biblical pleasure. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A Review of Secret Origins Of the Bible by Tim Callahan. Altadena, CA: Millennium Press, 2002, pages, 120 illustrations, $29.95, ISBN: 0-9655047-8-6. Secret Origins of the Bible is two books in one. First, it is a book about the science of...

I knew you would say that. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A review of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils. By David G. Myers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. $24.95. 322pp. 0-300-09531-7 IMAGINE YOURSELF A CONTESTANT on the classic television game show Let's Make a Deal. You must choose one of...

Mind matter metaphors. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... A review of The Origin of Minds: Evolution, Uniqueness, and the New Science of the Self by Peggy La Cerra and Roger Bingham. Harmony Books. 247 pp. $22.95. ALFRED NORW WHITEHEAD ONCE famously quipped that all Western philosophy consists of...

Alien life.
March 22, 2003... "Space... is big. Really big. You just wouldn't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's...

Secret Origins Of the Bible.(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... "Tim Callahan blends his remarkably diverse knowledge of ancient history, linguistics, archaeology, mythology, numismatics and of course the Bible itself to examine scriptural 'trurhs' long held inviolate by religious fundamentalists. Secret...