Check out this week's GLOBE (April 21, 1998) featuring a story entitled "PSYCHIC WHO TALKS TO DEAD IS A PHONY!" The headline alone is quite remarkable for a tabloid, actually boldly pronouncing the truth about a psychic. The story, of course, is about the latest psychic medium James Van Praagh (whom one of you amusingly called James Van Fraud), and quotes me (Michael Shermer) extensively and gives SKEPTIC magazine a nice plug. The author is Lynn Allison, who interviewed me by phone for nearly an hour and nicely outlined Van Praagh's various techniques to get information on people by normal means, and also makes reference to 20/20 where Van Praagh was "exposed" and "profiled as little more than a con man." Amazing! It would appear that the truth is finally trickling down to the general population. Gosh, maybe even his book sales will trickle down to under 50,000 copies sold a week, his average for the past 14 weeks. Van Praagh calls me "very closed-minded." Ah, come on James, I liked it better when you called me a "rat fink."
Don't count on it, but after the 20/20 show on Van Praagh I received a call from a CBS station in Seattle, WA and an ABC station in Denver, CO, both of whom want to have me and Van Praagh on the same stage live for a showdown. Of course I agreed, but I advised them that Van Praagh would never go for it. Unless he can put plants in the audience (and I don't mean the green types), I won't let him get away with anything so he will bomb and look bad. Of course, if I can't control the audience selection then it could be a problem. In any case, I haven't heard back from either station in a week, so I suspect Van Praagh declined.
The next Skeptics lecture at Caltech is at 2pm this Sunday, in Baxter lecture hall, with John Casti of the Santa Fe Institute, on "MINDS, BRAINS, AND MACHINES." Casti will be lecturing on artificial intelligence and computers. he is the author of PARADIGMS LOST, SEARCHING FOR CERTAINTY, COMPLEXIFICATION, FIVE GOLDEN RULES, WOULD-BE WORLDS, and his latest book THE CAMBRIDGE QUINTET: A WORK OF SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION. Casti is one of the pioneers in chaos and complexity and computer simulations modeling such complex systems as the economy.
One of the main writers for Newsweek will be attending our May 22-24 Skeptics Society Caltech conference on GOD, RELIGION, AND MYTHS and JAMES RANDI'S SOLVED MYSTERIES WORKSHOP, which may result in a story in that august publication. If you haven't signed up yet send an e-mail to skepticmag@aol.com and will send you the application.
The 1997 Pulitzer prize for General Nonfiction went to our very own Jared Diamond for his book GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, carried in the Skeptics Society book catalogue and on which Jared lectured at the 1997 Skeptics Caltech conference. It is a brilliant piece of scientific reasoning about history and a great read to book. The prize for history went to SUMMER FOR THE GODS: THE SCOPES TRIAL AND AMERICA'S CONTINUING DEBATE OVER SCIENCE AND RELIGION by Edward J. Larson. This is easily the best book ever written on the Scopes' trial and Larson really did his homework. Larry Mantle and I hosted Larson on my (at present) bi-weekly science edition of Airtalk on KPCC, the NPR affiliate for So. Cal., and he did a great job of summarizing the Scopes' trial and the various positions on the relationship of science and religion.
Thanks to the hard work of Skeptic magazine contributing editor and conspiracy theory expert Nick Gerlich, the Skeptic.com web page is now updated and the hit rate has accelerated significantly. Check it out and tell everyone on your e-mail list to check it out. All back issues of Skeptic are posted with several articles from each available to download, as well as how to order any back issues, book, and video tapes from the Caltech lecture series, plus interesting news items, latebreaking stories, etc. Thanks Nick for undertaking this task and for continuing to update the web page. And thanks for wading through the mile-high pile of JFK assassination theories documents for our year-end 35th-anniversary of the assassination issue of Skeptic.
On the new skeptic.com web I've downloaded an update I wrote for Skeptic on the Holocaust revisionists, after attending their annual conference a couple of weeks ago. Check it out. Hint: Jewish Holocaust revisionist David Cole has recanted and left the movement; and David Irving says he has proof that Churchill, and maybe even Roosevelt, knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen in order to draw America into the war. Interesting stuff.