Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@AOL.COM>]

Why 'fact' TV keeps trotting out Bigfoot
By OLIN CHISM
Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/dmn/news/stories/091602dnnewlearningtv.2e74.html

"A continent called Atlantis sank beneath the waves of the eastern Atlantic 
long ago and rose again in the Andes Mountains more than 5,000 miles away. 
The hairy hominid Bigfoot scares campers in the forests of the Pacific 
Northwest. A mysterious "energy vortex field" suspends gravity in Oregon. 
Dogs and dolphins can detect cancer in humans."



A Giant Leap for Conspiracy Theorists
By MARTIN MILLER
LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-lv-aldrin11sep11.story

"Between TV psychics talking to dead people and living pets, and movies 
about crop circles, it's been a busy summer for skeptics. It just got busier."


Nostradamus was most popular among those who bought books seeking 9/11 
explanation
By Michael Roknick
Sharon Herald
http://www.sharonherald.com/localnews/recentnews/0209/ln091002f.html

"Searching for answers can lead to the strangest places."


Kokomo closer to probe of odd hum
Associated Press
http://www.indystar.com/article.php?hum09.html

"City leaders have narrowed to four the list of firms being considered to 
study a mysterious hum that dozens of residents say they can hear."


Virgin statue's secret a hole in the head
By GREG ANSLEY
New Zealand Herald
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=2797070&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

"The weeping Virgin of Rockingham appears to have joined the long list of 
fakes that have plagued Christendom since splinters of the "true cross" 
carved out a market in the Middle Ages."


Virgin seeping, not weeping
By Simone Pitsis
The Australian
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5079799%255E2,00.html

"IT is the type of news most witnesses to Rockingham's weeping statue don't 
want to hear - but which sceptics would argue was inevitable."


Traders puzzled by eery 911 closing of S&P futures
By KRISTINA ZURLA
Dow Jones Newswires
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020911/ap_wo_en_bu/us_911_futures_1

"In an ironic twist, the September Standard & Poor's 500 futures contract 
closed Tuesday at 911.00 — a day before the one-year anniversary of the 
terrorist attacks."



Satellite Combs Mountain for Noah's Ark
By Irene Brown
Discovery News
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020909/noah.html

"With its sharp digital eyes and a vantage point 280 miles above Earth, a 
commercial remote sensing satellite is joining a centuries-old quest for 
Noah's Ark."


Mysterious hysteria hits Moleli High School
By Sifelani Tsiko
Zimbabwe Herald
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=14148&pubdate=2002-09-13

"A mysterious hysteria has hit Moleli High School in Msengezi, affecting 24 
students at this Methodist Church-run school."


Fitzsimons wins Skeptics 2002 bent spoon award
New Zealand Press Association
http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2048460a11,00.html

"Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons is the winner of this year's New 
Zealand Skeptics bent spoon award."


Were the lunar landings faked?
by Stuart Jeffries
The Guardian [UK]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,791222,00.html

"In 1968, the film director Stanley Kubrick was secretly approached by Nasa 
officials. They asked him to direct the first three moon landings from a 
special set. As a result, Kubrick worked for 16 months at a specially-built 
sound stage in Huntsville, Alabama, creating footage of the Apollo 11 and 
12 missions. In July 1969, a Saturn V rocket with Neil Armstrong, Buzz 
Aldrin and Michael Collins on board was launched into a low orbit and 
remained there while Kubrick's footage was released to the media. The three 
men made a perfect splash down in the Pacific after millions of television 
viewers had been captivated by the so-called moon landing. Months 
afterwards, he filmed the Apollo 12 mission in the same way."



What Lowell Really Saw When He Watched Venus
By LEON JAROFF
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/science/space/10VENU.html

"While an observatory in Arizona bears his name, Percival Lowell is best 
known for his obsession with Mars and his conviction that intelligent life 
had once existed on the planet."


Into The Black
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-09-05.htm

"To those who spend their time scanning reams of dry defense-spending 
documents, the black budget is a well-known bit of excitement. It is the 
discrepancy that's left when all the known weapons procurements, research 
programs, and technical developments are added up. It's also where 
groundbreaking technologies, such as stealth, are developed under code 
names like "Black Light," "Classic Wizard," and "Link Plumeria." These 
technologies are kept secret during their gestation because to even hint at 
the ideas behind them would be to reveal too much. This year, according to 
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the U.S. military's 
black budget will rise to levels not seen since the 1980s, from $16.2 
billion last year to $20.3 billion."


9-1-1 on 9-11 not as eerie as it seems
by John J. Goldman
Los Angeles Times
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/4065982.htm

"So many people wanted to bet the numbers 9-1-1 on Sept. 11 that the New 
York state lottery stopped selling the combination the day before the 
anniversary of the World Trade Center attack, officials said Thursday."


Viewing 9/11 as the Big Lie
By Scott Shane
Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.journal12sep12001641.column

"Of the many events marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this 
week, one of the most peculiar is the scheduled publication of the 
English-language edition of a French best seller asserting that the 
official version of the tragedy is a total fabrication by the U.S. government."


Skeptics Challenge Friday The 13th Superstitions
Wireless Flash
<http://www.ncbuy.com/news/wireless_news.html?qdate=2002-09-12&nav=VIEW&id=L6348OM476A020912>

"An LA-based skeptic's society wants to prove once and for all that 
superstitions are super stupid."


Apex court admits plea against introduction of astrology course
The Hindu
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/09/14/stories/2002091404001300.htm

"The Supreme Court today admitted a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by a 
scientist and two others challenging the University Grants Commission's 
move to introduce "Vedic Astrology'' (Jyotir Vigyan) courses in the Indian 
universities."


Was 'Old' Map Faked to Tweak the Nazis?
By EMILY EAKIN
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/14/arts/design/14MAP.html

"The Vinland Map must be the world's most contested piece of parchment. 
Donated to Yale University by the philanthropist Paul Mellon in 1957, the 
map, which famously describes the Viking discovery of North America, has 
been stuck in scholarly deadlock ever since. The subject of endless studies 
and counterstudies, the map is either a rare medieval artifact — the first 
cartographic representation of the continent — or else a modern fake."


Think about it: Your brain's always working
By Fern Shen
Washington Post
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestlife/134532684_wkidspostbrain11.html

"Why do humans use only 14 percent of their brains?"


Searching for the light
by Bob Downing
Akron Beacon Journal
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/4049325.htm

"I went in search of the mysterious Brown Mountain Lights, but I failed to 
find any ghostly flickering or gleaming."


Big trouble in the world of "Big Physics"
By Leonard Cassuto
Salon
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/16/physics/index.html

"In February 2000, a promising young physicist named Jan Hendrik Schön 
published some startling experimental results. Schön and his partners had 
started with molecules that don't ordinarily conduct electricity, and 
claimed they had succeeded in making them behave like semiconductors, the 
circuits that make computers work. The researchers reported their findings 
in Science, one of the flagship scientific journals."


Abducted by the Media
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0916/p08s02-comv.html

"Reporting the exception, rather than rule, has all but made many headlines 
and news broadcasts a parade of ongoing, out-of-proportion crises. From 
this summer's intense focus on child abductions, to last summer's equally 
intense focus on shark attacks, this sensational emphasis reveals a 
penchant for the bizarre rather than the factual."


Health supplements: R.I.P.
Joanna Blythman
Saturday September 14, 2002
The Guardian 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,790733,00.html

Millions of Britons take herbal vitamin and mineral supplements, either as a preventative measure or to treat specific ailments. But we may not be able to for much longer