Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@aol.com>]

Items of Interest

1)  Alternative" veterinary treatments for Skeptics
2) Skeptics in the Pub
3) Spiked-Online
4) Articles of Note

1) Alternative" veterinary treatments for Skeptics?

I just received an e-mail from a television documentary producer who is 
evidently working on an hour-long program dealing with "the explosion of 
'alternative' medical therapies offered for pets and other animals."  She 
is interested in "exploring the range of possible outcomes for these 
treatments."  If any hot-line subscribers have had a veterinarian suggest 
or provide an "alternative" therapy for one or more of your animals, I'd 
appreciate hearing about it.  I'd particularly like to know if such 
unproven and/or disproved therapies were offered or provided in lieu of 
ones of proven efficacy, and what the pertinent fees were.  Please e-mail 
me off-list regarding the particulars.

Bob Imrie, DVM
coordinator,
NCAHF Veterinary Task Force
<http://www.seanet.com/~vettf/>


2) Skeptics in the Pub

Hi all Don't forget that Skeptics in the Pub is starting up again for 2002.   Our first meeting is John Wall who is an expert on those who propose 'Alternative Histories' for the Earth, where 'Alternative' is very alternative indeed. I look forward to meeting you all and hope to see you there, at the usual place, the Florence Nightingale Pub in central London at 7:30 pm on Wednesday 20 February 2002. For more info (including how to get there instructions and a nice map) and for upcoming speakers, please check out the web site www.skeptics.org.uk/pub.

Nick Pullar 
NickP@coleridge.co.uk


3) Spiked-Online


Hi Barry,

The "Don't Panic Button" column at Spiked-Online is almost always populated with
articles which exhibit healthy skepticism about current fears.

   http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/central/panic/index.htm

An individual such panic/don't article is usually too minor to justify citing in
your "Articles of Note" lists.  But the regularly-updated page is something
which would probably be of interest to your readers.

Regards,
  David V.
DvdS@Austin.RR.com


4) Articles of Note

Debunking Seeing Without Sight
by Leon Jaroff
Time
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,199773,00.html

"Ashen-faced and weeping, ten-year-old Natalia Lulova sat dejectedly in a 
Manhattan law office last week while her mother stroked her hair, consoling 
her. Natalia, who with her family emigrated from Russia three years ago and 
now lives in Brooklyn, had just failed to win a million dollar prize 
offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation to anyone who can 
demonstrate paranormal, supernatural or occult power. It was still another 
of the seemingly endless setbacks to purveyors of the paranormal."



In Ohio School Hearing, a New Theory Will Seek a Place Alongside Evolution
By FRANCIS X. CLINES , New York Times  February 11, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/11/education/11CREA.html


The latest challenge to evolution's primacy in the nation's 
classrooms - the theory of intelligent design, not the old foe 
creationism - will get a full- scale hearing next month before Ohio 
Board of Education members, who are in a heated debate over whether 
established science censors other views about the origins of life.


Back talk
BY ROGER DOWNEY
Seattle Weekly
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0206/news-downey.shtml

"ANGRY E-MAILS from readers are part of a journalist's job. We even welcome 
them as a sign that someone's reading what we write and takes it seriously 
enough to comment. Generally, though, we don't respond. We've had our say; 
the readers theirs: time for both to move on."


Castles in the sea
by Stephen Moss
The Guardian [UK]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4350493,00.html

"Graham Hancock doesn't look mad as he sprawls in an armchair in his small, 
neat house in Kennington, south London. But his critics would say 
appearances deceive: he is either a lunatic, a charlatan, or both. Hancock 
has spent the past 10 years writing books and producing TV programmes which 
argue that everything we are told about ancient history is wrong: 
civilisation didn't start in Sumeria and Egypt around 3,500 BC; it began 
10,000 years before in great cities which subsequently suffered a cataclysm."


Hit or myth?
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=146872002

"The Mothman Prophecies, a stylish new psychological thriller starring 
Richard Gere, has all the elements of a particularly sophisticated episode 
of The X-Files - a frightening red-eyed monster, sinister telepaths, 
disturbing dreams, phantoms, paranoia and creeping madness. Yet the film is 
based on real events that occurred over a 13-month period in Point 
Pleasant, West Virginia, between 1966 and 1967."


Lunar plots sold in Central Asia
February 10, 2002,
By Marina Kozlova (United Press International)

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=02022002-035651-4155r

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (UPI) -- A consulate of the Lunar Embassy has opened
in Almaty and so far five people in the former Soviet republic in
Central Asia have purchased $99 plots on the moon.


Beyond a Doubt
By Blair Anthony Robertson -- Sacramento Bee Staff Writer
Saturday, Feb. 9, 2002
http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/story/1606119p-1682238c.html

The truth is out there. Bob Carroll -- professor by trade, skeptic at heart -- is doing his best to find it.