Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@aol.com>]

 A big one today. Thanks to Joe Littrell and a host of others...


Historian Irving Denied Appeal
 Associated Press
 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010720/ts/britain_holocaust_suit_2.html

 "Historian David Irving, who questioned the extent of the Holocaust, on
 Friday lost his bid to challenge an earlier ruling that branded him an
 anti-Semitic racist and an apologist for Hitler."


New Consulting aid:  http://web.locallink.net/~jalewis/handprint/


 Polygraph Theism
 By William Saletan
 Slate
 http://slate.msn.com/framegame/entries/01-07-19_112286.asp

 "Two weeks ago, besieged by speculation that he had killed former
 Washington intern Chandra Levy, Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., launched a
 strategic retreat."


 Sex-mad 'ghost' scares Zanzibaris
 By Ally Saleh
 BBC News
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1446000/1446733.stm

 "Fear has struck residents of the Zanzibar Islands after rumours of the
 re-emergence of a sexually voracious ghost that attacks people while they
 sleep in their beds at night."

Note:  see CSICOP website: http://www.csicop.org/sb/9512/i-files.html


 Still Bearing Witness
 by Robert Davey
 Village Voice
 http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0129/davey.shtml

 "Not many miles from where TWA Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean,
 south of East Moriches, Long Island, and just a few days before the fifth
 anniversary of the crash, eight eyewitnesses came to the Wyndham Wind Watch
 Hotel in Hauppauge to share their memories of the tragedy. The official
 investigation has identified more than 200 people who reported seeing a
 streak of light before the explosion. These eight witnesses are not
 satisfied with the formal explanation of what they saw."


 Baskin-Robbins lawsuit puts family in dis-flavor
 By CLAIRE BOOTH
 Knight Ridder Newspapers
 http://www.bergen.com:80/morenews/fifi19200107197.htm

 "Since they became national news, the Janze family as been maligned for
 everything from filing a supposedly frivolous lawsuit to how they named
 their daughter."


Monks to Lift Century-Old Curse
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010723/od/curse_dc_1.html

"Greek monks have agreed to lift a century-old curse on an island village
to "never sleep again'' for bringing the wrath of the Ottoman empire on
their monastery, the village's mayor said on Monday."


Best of the Web Today
BY JAMES TARANTO
OpinionJournal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95000862

"We usually like the Fox News Channel, but when we saw a preview for this
weekend's "Judith Regan Tonight," we had an urge to pelt our television
with rotten fruit. Here's how Fox's Web site describes Regan's lineup of
guests:"


Sharks: a whale of a tale
By MARYLN SCHWARTZ
Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/columnists/marylnschwartz/421397_schwartz_19liv.html



"First we heard the tragic story of a small boy being savagely attacked by
a shark in Pensacola, Fla. And just this week we've been told of two more
shark attacks in Florida."


Americans buying kidneys in Manila
BY MARINA JIMENEZ AND STEWART BELL
National Post
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-buy22.html

"''Kidney, kidney,'' the woman with the ponytail and the crooked teeth
cackles, pointing the way to a one-room shack made of corrugated tin and
scraps of plywood. ''Kidney, kidney!''"


Salon.com
Somewhere between 10 million and 50 million people worship Sai Baba as God
incarnate, and they stream into Puttaparthi from six continents, sleeping in
one of the ashram's 10,000 beds or at one of the town's many guesthouses.
Meanwhile, the growing number of ex-devotees who decry their former master

http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/07/25/baba/print.html


From Richard Wiseman:

the science museum in london have just staged an exhibition of my work into
ghost - some of the material is available on line at:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/wellcome-wing/ww_frame.asp?site=2d

simply click the 'ghostbusters' word that runs at the bottom of the page.


Failure to deliver psychic services gets woman 4 years in prison
Pam Louwagie
Star Tribune
Wednesday, July 25, 2001

http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?story=84599542&template=metro_a



A woman from Albert Lea, Minn., who advertised psychic services in
tabloid newspapers, collected money from customers, then apparently
didn't deliver on her promises was sentenced Tuesday in federal court to
more than four years in prison.


 Alien Hunters Scan the Heavens
 By ANDREW BRIDGES
 Associated Press
 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010725/sc/alien_flashes_1.html

 "Not content to just listen for aliens, a group of California scientists
 has begun looking for them, too."


 Theory dismissed
 BY MICHAEL COREN
 San Jose Mercury News
 http://www0.mercurycenter.com:80/premium/scitech/docs/obelisk24.htm

 "The heavy lifting needed to build the Egyptian pyramids may not have been
 on the backs of slaves, but from the lightest of sources -- the wind. This
 controversial theory gained new support last month with an experiment by
 the California Institute of Technology."


 Astrology school sets off controversy
 By ROBERT McCLURE
 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
 http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/32348_astrology23.shtml

 "College degrees in astrology?"

Missouri sues company behind TV psychic Miss Cleo
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/07/25/psychic.lawsuit/index.html

"The Missouri attorney general has filed two lawsuits against a television
psychic hotline for false advertising, fraud and other unlawful business
practices, alleging the company bilked consumers out of money and caused
them significant injury."


From skeptic Eric Kreig

Dennis Lee has just started a 50 state tour to take promote and get people to
sign up to have free electricity machines installed in their homes.  He will
also try to get them to pay for plans to convert their cars to run mostly on
water.  His tour schedule is found at: http://ucsofa.com/2001_tour.htm
He claims to demonstrate a number of phenomenon which are unexplained
by conventional science.
   Eric Krieg of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking encourages
skeptics to check out one of his shows and says, "you may never get a chance
to get such a colorful mix of bogus science, conspiracy theory, MLM pitch
all wrapped up with plenty of Jesus talk".   He provides a controversial
response
to Dennis's claims at:  http://www.phact.org/e/dennis.html
    Skeptics interested in checking out a show are encouraged to contact Eric
at
eric@phact.org