Skeptic back issues from January 2000:
'Twas brillig...Uri Geller & the moving compass trick
Jan 01, 2000; ... Observations on a Bizarre World by James Randi In JANUARY 2000 I appeared on ABC TV's morning talkshow The View, hosted by Barbara Walters and others. The occasion for the invitation was that they had hosted the well-known "psychic" Uri Geller in 1999, when he was touring the U.S ....
Why aren't there more women in Skepticism?
Jan 01, 2000; ... NEXT TIME YOU ATTEND a skeptics' meeting, look around. What you don't see will be as obvious as what you do see--a white, older, largely professional group, with few to no women. Sadly, this pattern repeats across the country. This skeptical chick has gone to conferences in Washington, ...
E-scams: Too good to be true
Jan 01, 2000; ... They show up in your e-mail ...the promise of money, material goods, or simply good luck-if you only forward that e-mail to 10 other people. Sound familiar? The chain letter has graduated, and is now an e-scam. We could have guessed it would happen. Chain letters always preyed upon ...
The Mars man
Jan 01, 2000; ... The brilliant and revolutionary space scientist Dr. Robert Zubrin, lectured on Sunday, January 16, 2000, at the California Institute of Technology, on the subject of his latest book, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. Author of the international bestseller The Case for ...
Boo!
Jan 01, 2000; ... In celebration of Halloween, on Sunday, October 31,1999, at the California Institute of Technology, the Skeptics Society hosted Dr. Barry Glassner, Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, and author of the highly-acclaimed book The Culture of Fear, as part of the ...
A history of heaven--Dante to the Internet
Jan 01, 2000; ... On Sunday, November 21,1999, science writer Margaret Wertheim gave a brief history of heaven from ancient times to the present,induding its latest incarnation in cyberspace. In the Christian West, humans have always dreamt of a higher plane; of a perfect world that exists outside the ...
Urban legends too good to be true
Jan 01, 2000; ... On February 13, Dr. Jan Harold Brunvand entertained a standing room only audience at Caltech. The "King of Urban Legends"did not disappoint them. Alligators in the sewers? A pet in the microwave? The vanishing hitchhiker? You know these are true because they hap_ pened to a friend of a ...
Skeptics visit world famous museum of questionable medical devices
Jan 01, 2000; ... On Tuesday, March 21, the Skeptics Society visited Bob McCoy's Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, picked as one of the top five tourist attractions in the Twin Cities by the New York Times, but rated by the Skeptics Society as the number one museum for all skeptics (located at 201 Main St., ...
Americans continue to doubt evolution
Jan 01, 2000; ... According to a new Yankelovich poll, commissioned by People for the American Way, an overwhelming 83% of Americans think Darwin's theory of evolution, not creationism, belongs in science class. Yet a CNN-- USA Today-Gallup poll found that 68% of those surveyed favored teaching creationism along ...
The changing religious landscape the 2000 Gallup & Barna polls
Jan 01, 2000; ... For years SKEPTIC has tracked the ever-changing religious landscape of beliefs. Although overall rates of belief (and disbelief) remain steady, the variations within the numerous variables that go into what we know as religion and spirituality are in constant flux. Want a steady ...
Virgin ice cream
Jan 01, 2000; ... American Atheists News, January 14, 2000. Faithful supplicants from as far away as Canada and Seattle are trekking to Houston, Texas,where believers say an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe has appeared in an ice cream stain on a sidewalk. "She knows that we need her, declared one excited ...
Noah's flood in the Black Sea?
Jan 01, 2000; ... The freshwater Black Sea was inundated almost overnight 7,500 years ago by a catastrophic flood of Mediterranean saltwater. This summer a team of deep-sea explorers will return to verify their findings from last summer to further test the hypothesis that this may have been the source for the ...
Cult mass suicide/homicide: Jonesboro/ heaven's gate replay?
Jan 01, 2000; ... As we were going to press with this issue reports came in of an apparent mass suicide or homicide by a doomsday religious cult with hundreds dead. In the preceding weeks, cult members sold all their possessions and received a book of matches each day at prayer time, practicing lighting them. The ...
ABC pays damages to psychic network
Jan 01, 2000; ... LOS ANGELES, February 15. (AP)-ABC paid more than $900,000 to a Psychic Services Network worker who claimed a secretly made videotape shown on "PrimeTime Live" ruined his reputation. Mark Sanders received a check from the network last week, his attorney, Neville Johnson, said Tuesday. A 1993 ...
Recovered or false memories?
Jan 01, 2000; ... Since SKEPTIC began in 1992 we have been following the debate about recovered memories versus false memories, with a strong slant to the probability that most so-called "recovered" memories of childhood sexual abuse, particularly those for which no corroborative evidence exists, are actually ...
Skeptics' forum
Jan 01, 2000; ... THE WHOLE WORLD ISN'T CRAZY This is my first letter to any publication of any kind. I just had to say thank you for a great magazine. I have a limited education and some articles have been a challenge, but I would not have you change a thing. I have been a skeptic all my life-59 years, ...
Race & sports
Jan 01, 2000; ... JON ENTINE'S TABOO: WHY BLACK ATHLETES DOMINATE SPORTS AND WHY WE ARE AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT IT RACE IS TO AMERICA WHAT THE GODDESS DISCORD was to Homeric legends'-invite her to the banquet and she brings trouble with her, ignore her and she visits trouble on you. From Thomas Jefferson's ...
Breaking the taboo
Jan 01, 2000; ... WHY BLACK ATHLETES DOMINATE SPORTS AND WHY WE'RE NO LONGER SO AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT IT IF YOU CAN BELIEVE that individuals of recent African ancestry are not genetically advantaged over those of European and Asian ancestry in certain athletic endeavors, then you could probably ...
Totem and taboo
Jan 01, 2000; ... IN APRIL 1989 THE AUTHOR OF TABOO produced an NBCTV documentary titled Black Athletes--Fact and Fiction. The purpose of this program was to examine the question of whether the dominance of black athletes in highprofile sports such as basketball and Olympic running events could be traced to ...
The final taboo
Jan 01, 2000; ... JON ENTINE'S BOOK, TABOO, IS A DIRECT, POWERFUL, and, effective challenge to an orthodoxy that has developed over the last SO years or so for very understandable, though not valid, reasons. This orthodoxy says, "Yes, racial variation does east in our species, but it is quantitatively and ...
Blood, sweat, and fears
Jan 01, 2000; ... WHY SOME BLACK ATHLETES DOMINATE SOME SPORTS AND WHAT IT REALLY MEANS IN AN ESSAY ON MAN, THE 19TH CENTURY English poet and essayist Alexander Pope elucidated the pitfalls of speculating on ultimate causes derived from immediate events: In vain the sags with retrospective eye ...
The heat of the soul
Jan 01, 2000; ... METAPHYSICAL DUALISM, the idea that the mind and the body are distinct entities (which may or may not interact), has been the subject of contentious debate since the ancient Greeks. But its full flowering was realized during the 17th century by the Continental Rationalists, particularly Rene ...
Perpetuum mobile
Jan 01, 2000; ... THE DREAM OF INFINITE FREE ENERGY WELL, THE PACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE is breathtaking these days, isn't it?" Dan Rather asked rhetorically on the CBS Evening News. "Now a backyard tinkerer in Mississippi says he's built a machine, a kind of perpetual motion machine, that defies the ...
Attention deficit disorder
Jan 01, 2000; ... IN THE 1960s, AMERICANS discovered illegal mind-altering drugs for themselves. In the 1990s, Americans discovered a legal mind-altering drug for their children. Although it is illegal drugs that draw the attention of the media and law enforcement agencies, over the past decade there has been a ...
Chiropractic
Jan 01, 2000; ... CONVENTIONAL OR ALTERNATIVE HEALING? WHAT SHOULD CHIROPRACTIC'S ROLE BE in the future of medicine? Should chiropractors position themselves as primary care physicians and take advantage of the current popularity of alternative medicine, or should they limit their practice and focus to ...
The grand old man of evolution
Jan 01, 2000; ... AN INTERVIEW WITH EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST ERNST MAYR Ernst Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany, on July 5,1904, making him, at age 95, the grand old man of evolutionary biology, one of the primary architects of the modern synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theory, and arguably one of ...
Nonzero & nonsense
Jan 01, 2000; ... GROUP SELECTION, NONZEROSUMNESS, HUMAN GAIA HYPOTHESIS HOLY LEVIATHAN SUPERORGANISMS, once thought to be as imaginary as dragons, may actually exist. First James Lovelock proposed the Gaia hypothesis, which portrays life on earth as a giant superorganism that regulates its own ...
Chicken Soup for the evolutionist's soul
Jan 01, 2000; ... CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE EVOLUTIONIST'S SOUL Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright, Pantheon, 2000, $27.50, 435pp., ISBN: 0-679-44252-9 HUMANS ARE patternseeking,storytelling animals. We look for and find patterns in our world and in our lives, then weave narratives around ...
Watching the watchdogs
Jan 01, 2000; ... A review of The Watchdogs: A Close Look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups by Laird Wilcox, 1998, P O. Box 2047, Olathe, KS: Editorial Research Service; with new Addenda, 1999, 103 pp. Softcover. $19.95. ISBN 0-993592-89-2. LAIRD WILCOX IS THE founder of the 5,000plus-title Wilcox ...
Hocus-pocus history
Jan 01, 2000; ... HOCUS-POCUS HISTORY WHAT IF FDR KNEW ABOUT PEARL HARBOR? Review of Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, The Free Press, 2000, ISBN 0-684-85339-6, 374 pages, $26.00. WHEN A MAGICIAN pulls a rabbit out of a purportedly empty hat, we do not ...
How the history of life was discovered: Part I
Jan 01, 2000; ... IF you've ever thought about being a detective you'll love science! A lot of scientific work involves thinking like a detective: questioning, observing, hypothesizing, testing, and drawing conclusions. Charles Darwin, as you will see, was one of the world's greatest science detectives ....
Bob Friedhoffer madman of magic
Jan 01, 2000; ... GALAPAGOS ISLAND SNAKE EGGS EFFORT: Make your friends jump with surprise when they open an envelope. ROUTINE: This is a make-it-yourself toy from my book Toying Around With Science that's really a wonderful practical joke. You hand an unsuspecting victim an envelope marked ...
What is a skeptic?
Jan 01, 2000; ... 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 challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a ...
'Twas brillig... Are science and religion compatible?
Jan 01, 2000; ... ARE SCIENCE AND RELIGION COMPATIBLE? Dr. Michael Guillen, ABC TV News Science Editor, has once again shown his limited understanding of what science is all about He either doesn't know, or chooses not to know, what science claims. To quote him from a recent broadcast: Think ...
X-files and x-fictions
Jan 01, 2000; ... THE SKEPTICAL REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED-OR WILL IT? KILL YOUR TELEVISION. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. Everyone has heard these sentiments and many people agree with them. But how marry people live them? I've been off the plug-in drug cold ...
Dumbth news from this is true
Jan 01, 2000; ... ANCIENT HISTORY: Robert Allen, editor of Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage argues that Oedipus, the mythological Greek figure known for killing his father and marrying his mother, should probably be known for something more common: road rage. That's right, he says, road rage is not a ...
Intelligent design meets congressional designers
Jan 01, 2000; ... INTELLIGENT DESIGN MEETS CONGRESSIONAL DESIGNERS ON MAY 10TH, a House Judiciary Committee hearing room was the site of a three-hour briefing on paleontology, biology, and cosmology. Although presentations were at times quite technical, the speakers were not there to discuss the latest ...
The democracy of choice: Science & religion in Oregon
Jan 01, 2000; ... IF you READ E-SKEPTIC you have probably noticed more amides lately about conferences at universities throughout the U. S. on the interaction of science and religion Michael Shermer's descriptions of them are humorous because the leaders, in their effort to make creation science more credible, ...
Why we should debate creationists
Jan 01, 2000; ... WHY SHOULD WE DEBATE creationists? According to a Gallup Poll published a few years ago in the U.S. News and World Report of 23 Dec 1991, these percentages of Americans believe that: 1. God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,00 years. 2 ....
Designing critics
Jan 01, 2000; ... I WAS A SPEAKER AT A CONFERENCE called "Intelligent Design and Its Critics," which examined Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), at Concordia University of Wisconsin, June 22-24, 2000. The conference was organized by Angus Menuge of the Philosophy Department at Concordia. (I participated in a ...
ID works in mysterious ways
Jan 01, 2000; ... CLEARLY, WHEN IT COMES TO RELIGION everyone has an opinion and passions run deep. It is, therefore, espesally important to express our thoughts on the subject with clarity and clarification, which I tried to do in my book How We Believe: The Search For God in an Age of Science ( W. H ....
Skeptics' forum
Jan 01, 2000; ... RECOVERED MEMORY STUDY NEW STUDY ON REPRESSED MEMORIEs IS BAD SCIENCE In the last issue of SKEPTIC, you published a Reuters wire service report about a survey of British psychotherapists conducted for the British Psychological Society by Dr. Bernice Andrews and associates, ...
The pundit of primate politics: An interview with Frans De Waal
Jan 01, 2000; ... Frans de Waal is no stranger to primate politics, both the human and non-human kind. Although he is a professor of psychology at Emory University, he is also Director of the Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution. In other words, he doesn't just teach about the ...
Why does something exist rather than nothing?
Jan 01, 2000; ... SHE ASTONISHING SUCCESS and great explanatory power of such modern scientific theories as quantum mechanics and relativity have left some readers more bewildered than enlightened. Many anxiously flip pages, delving into the scientific speculations of today's great physicists, hoping that such ...
Personal Gods, deism, & the limits of Skepticism
Jan 01, 2000; ... "The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." -H.L. Menken THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION (S&R), and even the one between skepticism and religion, is warming up. At least, that is the ...
Shermer's agnosticism: A philosophical examination
Jan 01, 2000; ... IN HOW WE BELIEVE: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Michael Shermer tries to explain why people believe in God.l Along the way and as a preparatory task, he presents a challenging case for agnosticism in which he advances substantially two arguments. In this brief philosophical ...
Can a skeptic have faith?
Jan 01, 2000; ... TO THE EXTENT THAT SKEPTCIS AS A GROUP can be said to be of a single mind, all share a deep commitment to the application of reason to any and all ideas. Invariably, this commitment is expressed in the form of an abiding confidence in the cognitive and epistemological authority of science and ...
The Bible belting of America
Jan 01, 2000; ... THOUGHTFUL SKEPTICS distrust stereotypes. Besides being superficial, they are often vicious. I had long assumed that the stereotype of Bible Belt Christians was remote from reality. As north Louisiana's resident atheist, I changed my mind after publicly dueling with religious denizens of the ...
Brought into the fold
Jan 01, 2000; ... SCIENTOLOGY AS A CASE STUDY ON INFLUENCE AND PERSUASION IN RELIGION THE USE OF TECHNIQUES OF INFLUENCE AND PERSUASION on potential religious recruits is as old as religion itself, and the reason is obvious-in order to survive and compete religions must gain adherents. This process of ...
Revisiting the monkey trial
Jan 01, 2000; ... July 2000 marked the 75th anniversary of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which raised issues such as academic freedom and the discussion of the relationship between science and religion that are still relevant today The most famous aspect of the trial occurred when Clarence Darrow called William ...
God's HMO
Jan 01, 2000; ... PRAYER, FAITH, BELIEF & PHYSICAL WELL-BEING NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, I (WJM) was visiting the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ire-- land, and was being taken around to the various sites in a horse drawn cart by one of the locals. When we came back to the cart after visiting ...
'Twas brillig... Wall Street moves into high gear!
Jan 01, 2000; ... Nothing surprises me airy more. I received an e-mail invitaton from a chap described as "your favorite psychic-- stock-guru, Marcus Goodwin" (I assure you he's not any favorite of mine!) who, Iam told is "very please [sic] to make this exceptional announcement" to the investing public. "On ...
Paradigm shifts and Bible perspectives
Jan 01, 2000; ... How New Views of Nature Impact Culture WE LIVE IN A TIME WHEN OUR VIEWS of nature are undergoing a farreaching paradigm shift, namely, a common evolutionary and ecological view that is cutting across the lines of individual sciences. This new model calls for an evolutionary process ...
Both sides now
Jan 01, 2000; ... BOTH SIDES NOW A review of Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould, 1999, New York. Ballantine. ISBN 0-345-43009-3 STEPHEN JAY GOULD iS justly honored not only for his contributions to science but also for his sensitive and humane ...
The natural & the supernatural
Jan 01, 2000; ... SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND THEIR DEFENDERS Further commentary about Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould I FIND MYSELF IN GENERAL agreement with Michael Ruses assessment of Gould's NOMA model of the relationship of science and religion, ...
God and Darwin
Jan 01, 2000; ... A review of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, by Kenneth R. Miller. New York: Harper Collins Inc, 1999, 338 pages. ISBN 0-06-017593-1 And: God After Darwan: A Theology of Evolution by John E Haught Boulder CO: Westview Press, Perseus ...
Holy man, Holy war, wholly fiction
Jan 01, 2000; ... HOLY MAN, HOLY WAR, WHOLLY FICTION A review of Holy Man, Holy War, by Fred Berry, Jr. 1997. Houston, TX: Emerald Ink Publishing, 144 pages. ISBN 1885373104 PERHAPS THE FACT THAT we have no reliable portrait of Jesus of Nazareth-that he was in certain early mosaics ...
Of science, poetry, and awe
Jan 01, 2000; ... A Review of Skeptics and True Believers: the Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion, by Chet Raymo, Walker: New York, NY, 1998. $23.00. ISBN 0-8027-1338-6 I "MET" CHET RAYMO ONLINE during a that about his book arranged by the Rationalists of East Tennessee (transcript at ...
What would father do?
Jan 01, 2000; ... WHAT WOULD FATHER DO? A Review of Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology Of Atheism by Paul C. Vitz. Spence Publishers. 200pp., ISBN:189062252. $14.95 ON FAITH OF THE FATHERLESS, Paul C. Vtz joins the ranks of Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box) and Michael Drosnin (The Bible Code) in ...
Desperately seeking spiritualism
Jan 01, 2000; ... DESPERATELY SEEKING SPIRITUALISM A review of The Buddha From Brooklyn, by Martha Sherrill, Random House, 2000, $25.00, pp. 378. ISBN 0-679-45275-3 THERE IS A HUMOROUS scene in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters when his unfulfilled and neurotically Jewish character fails to ...
Bob Friedhoffer: Madman of magic
Jan 01, 2000; ... MYSTIC TUBES OF CAIRO EFFECT: Egyptian tubes move in a mysterious way. ROUTINE: "Many years ago, when the Egyptian pyramids were being searched, strange items were unearthed. I'm going to show you two of the oddest items that were found in a small pyramid discovered in Cairo, ...
'Twas brillig: John Edward and the art of cold reading
Jan 01, 2000; ... Observations oh a Bizarre World by James Randi The James Randi Educational Foundation continues to receive lots of inquiries about "psychic" John Edward, who holds forth on the SciFi Channel, pretending to speak to dead people. The general technique is known as "cold reading," sometimes ...
Fresh fish
Jan 01, 2000; ... TRAWLING FOR THE TRUTH BEHIND THE BUMPER BATTLE KNOWN AS THE "FISH WARS" IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE FISH. Christian motorists felt it was good. The fish was fruitful and multiplied, and iterations developed: "Jesus,"the Greek "Ichthus:'a fish with a cross inside ....
The future is our foundation
Jan 01, 2000; ... Foundation For the Future Symposium Draws Together Leading Thinkers to Honor E.O. Wilson and Focus on Our Survival IN MID-AUGUST, 2000, the Foundation for the Future (FFF) brought together 70 outstanding scholars, scientists, and diplomats from around the world, and even a skeptic-this ...
Skeptics host symposium on race & sports
Jan 01, 2000; ... On Sunday, September 17, at the California Institute of Technology, the Skeptics Society hosted a scientific symposium on race and sports, centered around Jon Entine's controversial book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About it The Skeptics Society is not ...