Skeptic (Altadena, CA) articles from March 2004

Skeptic (Altadena, CA) archives from March 2004

Replicating the real thing: UFOs, photographs, and the burdon of proof.
March 22, 2004... THERE IS A SET OF SO-CALLED UFO PHOTOS at www.billymeier.com produced by "contactee" Billy Meier in the mid-'70s. A Meier acolyte named Michael Horn has been after myself, Michael Shermer, and the Center for Inquiry West to replicate the Meier...

Researcher claims to have found Star Wars galaxy.(Demon haunted times: all the news that's not fit to print!)
March 22, 2004... DEVON, UK--Amateur astronomer and author, Ham Gransock, says he found the galaxy made famous in the movie Star Wars. "I believe that the Star Wars galaxy is actually the Milky Way," stated Gransock at a press conference for his new book,...

Strange fish: the scientifiction of Charles F. Berlitz, 1913-2003.
March 22, 2004... CHARLES FRAMBACH BERLITZ DIED ON DECEMBER 18, 2003, at University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida, not far from his home in Fort Lauderdale. He was 90 years old. Berlitz was, according to the cover of his Around the World with 80 Words, one of the...

The Texas textbook wars.(News)
March 22, 2004... Houston, TX--It has been more than a decade since presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan stood before the Republican National Convention in Houston and declared Cultural War on ungodly America. Voters quickly sent Buchanan packing to the hinterlands...

Can quantum physics explain consciousness? A report on the Quantum Mind conference.(News)
March 22, 2004... THE SCIENCE STUDY OF consciousness has attracted recent attention from notable academics across many disciplines. The relevance of modern physics to the study of the mind was discussed at a conference in Tucson dubbed Quantum Mind 2003....

Cryonics redux: is vitrification a viable alternative to immortality as a popsicle?
March 22, 2004... ITS THE STUFF OF SCIENCE FICTION and pseudoscientific web sites. The idea of freezing people and then thawing them out decades, if not centuries, later sounds like something out of an episode of Star Trek. But ks there anything to the...

50 things you can do to encourage critical thinking: think skeptically, act locally.
March 22, 2004... HAVING A SKEPTICAL MIND IS great. But if your idea of encouraging skeptical thinking is to argue with anybody you can find, you might not be using your critical reasoning abilities to their fullest potential. There are a lot of opportunities...

Folk myths: Einstein's ability; Newton's orrery.(Forum)
March 22, 2004... Diagnosing role models I found the current issue (Vol. 10, No. 4) to be chock full of wonderfulness. The best item, for my money, was the article debunking the myth that Einstein was learning disabled or had ADD. The article is...

Two Christian viewpoints; Constantine; Palestinians and Jews.(Forum)
March 22, 2004... Thanks From a Christian I just read with great interest Phil Mole's article, "Blame It On the Jews" (Vol. 10, No. 3). If there is one thing I can reasonably count on, it is generally trustworthy research on the part of skeptics because...

Creationism forum.(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... More Attention To Deism I enjoyed Eugenie Scott's "Creation-Evolution Continuum" in SKEPTIC (Vol. 10 No. 4), but I feel you neglect one obvious category--what I would refer to as Deism; the belief that whatever "God's" role may have been...

Evolution issues forum.(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... Group Selection and Religion In Peter A. Corning's review of David Sloth Wilson's book Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and The Nature Of Society (SKEPTIC, Vol. 10 No. 3, 2003), he notes that Wilson promotes the concept of...

Low carb diet forum.(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... Johnson Ignores Experimental Results Sorry to say, "The Skinny on Fat" by Patrick Johnson (SKEPTIC 2004; Vol.10 No. 4, pages 66-74) turned out to be another of the classic debunkings of low-carb diets as consistently done by the desperate...

Teaching skepticism; acausal universe?(Forum)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... Skeptical of Teaching Skepticism Data Michael Dougherty's "Educating Believers" (Vol. 10, No. 4) article describing Iris skeptically oriented honors class should not lead skeptical readers to conclude that paranormal or pseudoscientific...

Free will forum.(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2004... Free Will and Determination Compatible? Whether by my own free volition or some preordained act, I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Phil Mole's article "Zeno's Paradox and the Problem of Free will" (Vol. 10, No. 4). The thing that...

The physician-shaman: early origins of traditional Chinese medicine.
March 22, 2004... THE EARLY HISTORY OF TRADITIONAL Chinese medicine (TCM) has been fraught with speculative and often conflicting claims. One common theme is that "thousands of years" of continuous oral and written tradition have yielded a venerable system of...

Legends of the Dogon: belief in a long-solved mystery resurfaces.
March 22, 2004... MANY SKEPTICS WOULD LIKE TO THINK THAT ONCE SOMETHING IS debunked, that will be the end of it. Readers of SKEPTIC are not so sanguine. Some pseudosciences such as homeopathy and free energy never die. Although we can occasionally claim victory...

The art of imagining UFOs: the search for images of spaceships in European paintings provides an important lesson for all paranormal enthusiasts--do your homework.
March 22, 2004... "Meanwhile the average man had become progressively less able to recognize the subjects or understand the meaning of the works of art of the past. Fewer people had read the classics of Greek and Roman literature, and relatively few people read...

The mass suicide of the Xhosa: a study in collective self-deception.
March 22, 2004... IN 1857, AN EXTRAORDINARY RELIGIOUS frenzy took the lives of over 100,000 Xhosa and Thembu people in what is now South Africa, effectively destroying the Xhosa culture. But until recently a more pervasive self-deception has kept the full truth...

Enchanted flim flam: a skeptical view of Puerto Rico, the Enchanted Island.
March 22, 2004... As a skeptic living in Puerto Rico, known as "La Isla del Encanto" (The Enchanted island), I find myself in one of the world's hot spots of belief in strange phenomena. Belief in astrology, UFO's, spiritualism, alien abductions, strange beings,...

Salt, toothpaste, and the CIA: conspiracy theory in contemporary Indian society.
March 22, 2004... IT IS DIFFICULT, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, TO grow up in the U.S. and not be familiar with at least one conspiracy theory. The JFK assassination, the coverup of the crashed UFO at Roswell, NM, and the plotting of the Freemasons are some of the most...

A skeptical look at African witchcraft and religion.
March 22, 2004... WITCHCRAFT IS A PREVALENT BELIEF AND PRACTICE on the African continent. It permeates and controls the thinking, perception and lives of nearly all Africans, both educated and non-educated. It is an integral part of Africa's traditional...

Design, agency, baloney.(Unintelligent Design)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of Unintelligent Design by Mark Perakh, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004. 420 pages. $32.00. ISBN 1-59102-084-0 MOST OF THE BILLIONS OF religious people--in one or another of humanity's religions--have no problem with natural...

Dawkins, Darwin, and the devil.(A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, Richard Dawkins, Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 271 pages. $24.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-618-33540-4 "WHAT A BOOK A DEVIL'S Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful,...

May Minerva awake you satire, post 9/11.(The Holy Land)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of The Holy Land, by Robert Zubrin. Polaris Books. 308 pages. $14.95 paperback. ISBN 0-9741443-0-4 SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE. Dr. Werner Von Braun. Gene Roddenberry. Doctors Carl Sagan and Robert Goddard. Dr. Buzz Aldrin and Neil...

Big foot con.(The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story by Greg Long. Prometheus BooRs. 2004. 476 pp. $25. ISBN: 1591021391 WHEN GREG LONG'S 2004 BOOK The Making of Bigfoot arrived on my desk, I knew it was from Prometheus Books (which is a...

Blood and passion: a review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and an analysis of who really killed Jesus.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2004... SINCE THE SUBSTITIONARY atonement (the doctrine that Christ died for our sins so that we might be saved from eternal damnation) is central to Christianity, there has been an ongoing fascination among Christians with the sufferings of Jesus....

Who really killed Jesus?(Biography)
March 22, 2004... BECAUSE THE PASSION OF THE Christ follows the account (or rather accounts) in the gospels, the ugly accusation against Jews--that they were responsible for the death of Jesus and must bear that guilt forever--has been raised once more. So, did...

The imperial faith.(God Against the Gods)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of God Against the Gods by Jonathan Kitsch 2004 New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. 321 pages. $25.95 hardback. ISBN 0-670-03286-7 WHILE THE COURSE OF HISTORY at most times seems dictated by impersonal forces beyond the control of...

Cracking the Da Vinci Code.(The Da Vinci Code)(Book Review)
March 22, 2004... A review of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, 2003 New York: Doubleday, 455 pages. $24.99 Hardback. ISBN 0-385-50420-9 ORDINARILY, REVIEWING FICTION doesn't come under the purview of SKEPTIC. However, like The Exorcist in the 1970s, The Da...

The Loch Ness Monster.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2004... in scotland at a lake called loch ness, dragons are said to stir. Modern legends speak of huge, elusive, fearsome beasts lurking in the murky depths. Our hearts accept this idea gladly; it's almost as if this lake should be the lair of ancient...

The monster and the saint.
March 22, 2004... According to modern monster lore, the first recorded Nessie sighting was made 1400 years ago--by a Catholic Saint! It began in 563, almost a millennium before Columbus reached the New World. That year, an Irish priest (soon to be known as...

The modern Nessie story.
March 22, 2004... After Columba, the lake and river were monster-free for 14 centuries. Then, in 1933, the news media suddenly went crazy for sea serpents and lake monsters. It was the year the Nessie story emerged in Scotland, and also the year that...

The Surgeon's Photo.
March 22, 2004... The "Surgeon's Photo," as it is known, is by far the most famous Nessie picture ever produced. It immediately became the gold standard for Nessie evidence, and it has been the major "proof' ever since. More than an icon for the Scottish legend,...

The quest begins ...
March 22, 2004... A VERY BAD IDEA Propelled by the Surgeon's Photograph, Nessie interest continued to soar. In the summer of '34. a wealthy insurance dealer financed the first large Nessie expedition. Unfortunately, it was the Great Depression, and he offered...

Underwater photography.
March 22, 2004... While the LNI disbanded, others kept searching. In 1972, a new Nessie research group (headed by a Dr. Rines) captured spectacular underwater photos, apparently of a plesiosaur! In books, the "flipper picture" (the most famous of these...

Deeper waters.
March 22, 2004... Two years after the LNI disbanded and Dr. Rines' began his search, another new group was formed. Naturalist Adrian Shine's "Loch Ness Project" (also known by other names) would finally shed some light on the situation. Over several years...