NEXT SKEPTICS SOCIETY LECTURE AT CALTECH: Sunday, February 1, 2:00pm. Baxter Lecture Hall. K.C. Cole, Los Angeles Times science writer and the author of the new book, THE UNIVERSE AND THE TEACUP: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty, will demystify mathematics, showing how it illuminates everything from the O.J. Simpson verdict to the errors that undermine THE BELL CURVE. Math helps us to break the mind barrier; in its elegance, it simplifies problems so we can understand and solve them. Cole will also discuss practical problems and public perceptions of mathematics, and how we misunderstand the probabilities of everyday life.

1. Sunday, 2:00pm, March 8, 1998, Baxter Lecture hall, California Institute of Technology

Magical Day of Skepticism and Magic With
Bob Steiner, Magician and Skeptical Writer
ESP: A DEMONSTRATION
Learn From the Man Who Has Convinced Millions.
Spend an afternoon with magician and author Bob Steiner, who has convinced millions of people that he is psychic, yet has never taken one penny from those who believed that he was; who has dazzled and successfully deceived not only true believers, but also financial wizards, science reporters, police bunco experts, and last but not least, dedicated, learned skeptics. See Bob Steiner demonstrate whad reading works; see his demonstration of how a skilled reader can take in very bright people. Gain an understanding of how intelligent people get lured into the web of a skilled con shark.

Bob Steiner is a CPA and a professional magician. He was National President of The Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), served as Chair of the Occult Investigation Committee of the S.A.M. for ten years, is an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle (London), is a Fellow of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is on the Board of Advisors of The National Association of Bunco Investigators, and was Founder and First Chair of Bay Area Skeptics. His nine books include Don't Get Taken!

2. Sunday, 2:00pm, April 19, 1998, Baxter Lecture Hall, California Institute of Technology MINDS, BRAINS, AND MACHINES. Or, My Dinner with the Cambridge Quintet (Erwin Schrodinger, J.B.S. Haldane, Ludwig Wittgenstein, C.P. Snow, and Alan Turing) A Scientific Speculation John L. Casti Santa Fe Institute, Author of Paradigms Lost, Searching for Certainty, and Would-Be Worlds

System theorist and popular-science writer John L. Casti takes us to an imaginary dinner party involving five of the great intellectuals of the mid-20th century physicist Erwin Schroedinger, biologist J.B.S. Haldane, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, novelist C. P. Snow, and mathematician/computer pioneer Alan Turing. Casti considers the nature and meaning of mind and machines in the context of what the pioneers of computers and artificial intelligence thought in the context of an imaginary dinner conversation one stormy summer evening at Snow's room at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1949. Don't miss this unique and unusual work of scientific speculation.

John L. Casti is a member of the faculty of both the Santa Fe Institute and the Technical University of Vienna. He is the author of numerous popular science books, including Paradigms Lost, Searching for Certainty, Complexification, Five Golden Rules, the recent Would-Be Worlds about computer simulations, and his latest upon which this lecture is based, The Cambridge Quintet: A World of Scientific Speculation. Dr. Casti is considered one of the pioneers in the new sciences of chaos and complexity. Autographed copies of The Cambridge Quintet will be available.

Many of you probably saw, or saw advertised, the "alien abduction" film aired on UPN (a rapidly-growing competitor for Fox) Tuesday night, January 20, that featured long-time UFOlogist Stan Friedman, UFO abduction hypnotist Yvonne Smith, some abductees, other "experts," and yours truly as the lone skeptic. The film was a fake, of course, and the UPN folks knew this in advance. The give-away was the credits at the end that listed the actors (if you can call them that) who "starred" in the video. I especially enjoyed the mother who ran outside to see the aliens for herself, wine glass in hand! Most of the guest filming was done at the producer's home in Studio City. We were to look into the camera instead of at her asking the questions, and they intentionally had no host for the show. None of us were shown the video in advance and, in fact, I was told that the film was just an excuse to do a show on alien abductions. None of the people I talked to who worked on the production (the aired program, that is, not the video) believed the video was real. In fact, they told me it was really, really bad, and seemed amused about the whole thing. Again, it was just an excuse to do a show on alien abductions. Interestingly, one of the camera operators told me he knows someone who worked on the Fox alien autopsy film who proudly boasted (privately) that "that was my head," meaning he created the head for the fake alien body. I inquired whether he might go on record so stating, and he said "absolutely not." So mum's the word and $$$'s reason.

This past Sunday, January 18, the Los Angeles Times magazine ran a story about Dr. Laura Schlessinger, entitled "I Don't Do therapy," subtitled "The Country's Top Female Radio Personality. Calls Herself a Prophet. What She Frequently Calls Others Is an Entirely Different Matter." By Janet Wiscombe. It is quite revealing. Below are some highlights.

My take on the matter: As you know, Dr. Laura was on the board of Skeptic magazine, but quit a couple of months ago, "offended" by the God issue we dared to raise. Laura believes you cannot be moral without belief in God. In actual fact, it is LAURA who apparently cannot be moral without belief in God. She has made it clear that she had a loose and morality-free youth, was a wild-child of the sexually-free 60s and 70s, it appears she had an affair with a married man with three children, who subsequently left his wife and married Laura (at least that is how it appears from the Times interview but she can now conveniently hide behind the Talmud's injunctions against "gossip"). But she obviously cannot say, or even think "the problem is in me, not my callers...it is ME who cannot be moral without belief in God...it is ME that is morally weak..." but she can rant and rave on the air about how all of US cannot be moral without belief in God, how all of US cannot find meaning in life without belief in God. Well, Dr. Laura, speak for yourself. You have. And you continue doing so. Also: like most cult gurus who start out small and tentative, I think Laura is actually starting to believe her followers who treat her like some goddess. Notice the opening line below in which she calls herself a prophet. Is there not something in the Torah/Talmud about how modesty is a virtue, or at least how you should at least keep your mouth shut if you think you have become god-like in your powers?

"I am a prophet," she proclaims with unapologetic grandiosity. "This is a very serious show." It can also be a very unforgiving show. An undercurrent of breathtaking anger surges not far beneath the jokes and laughter. For all the chumminess and girlish teasing, there is a drum beat of invective as Schlessinger rips into people, snarling insults at often pathetically needy callers, their friends, members of their families. You are lying! she will hiss. Don't give me that crap; it won't fly here! She will demand of callers: after me, I am a dummy! I am a dummy! And they do. Every weekday, devoted listeners from Juneau to Johannesburg tune in to Dr. Laura's no-nonsense confessional to hear how to live moral lives. She doesn't care how people feel; she cares about how they act. "I don't do therapy," she says, "I do the Ten Commandments." Verily, she's not interested in mental health; she's interested in moral health. And she is unequivocal about her beliefs: Don't leave your kids in child care - "stranger care." Don't shack up with anyone until you're married. Don't get an abortion or a divorce. Control your animal urges. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Don't be weak, selfish or stupid. Stop whining. Get a life. Grow up! Have little kids and a rotten marriage? You made your bed, Honey-baby: Deal! Want someone to go along with your manipulative, irresistible little games and give you warm fuzzies? Call somebody else! Considering therapy? What for? Terrible childhood? Get over it!

"She has contempt for people," says Salvatore Maddi, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine. "She is a very angry woman. She has an authoritarian frame of reference. She gives orders. She dictates to people. That's not the way you develop personal responsibility. That's the way you develop followers."

Says Rabbi Susan Laemmle, dean of religious life at USC: "Healthy people don't want to be ordered around."

She met Bishop [SCHLESSINGER'S CURRENT HUSBAND] in the mid-'70s when she was a 28-year-old full-time physiology instructor at USC and he a professor in the department of biological sciences with a wife and three children. L.A. radio legend Bill Ballance, who "discovered" Schlessinger in 1975, says they dated awhile, but he quickly lost her to Bishop, who left academia in 1981 to work in biomedical research and manage Dr. Laura's career. "She is the smartest woman I ever met," Ballance says. When he first knew her, Schlessinger was a soon-to-be divorcee who had moved California from New York and was living with her parents in the San Fernando Valley. Ballance has many nice things to say about her, an affection that apparently isn't mutual. At the mention of his name, Schlessinger says her comments about him are strictly off the record. Here, in the heart of privilege and piety, many subjects are verboten. Bishop won't discuss his divorce. Schlessinger used to talk publicly about her estrangement from her mother but no longer will. To do so, she says, would be gossip, and gossip is against her religion. Five years ago, she told a reporter she was an only child. Now she says she has a sister 11 years younger but that they don't have a relationship. Period. She often talks on the radio about the difficulty she had getting pregnant and told reporters about undergoing fertility treatment after her tubes were untied. Since she conceived Deryk only a few months after her marriage to Bishop, it's confusing. Asked for clarification, however, Dr. Laura bristles, charging "the liberal press" with trying to undermine her by making her look like a hypocrite.

Last March, Dallas Morning News columnist Marilyn Schwartz chided Schlessinger for acting like a prima donna while in town to deliver a couple of high-ticket speeches, one to the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas. Schwartz wrote that Schlessinger was cold and ungracious to fans and hosts and refused several hotel rooms and taxis because, she said, they aggravated her allergies. Dr. Laura went on the air the next day and wept, saying the remarks had triggered a personal and spiritual crisis. Schwartz then wrote another column quoting several people who had attended the event who described Schlessinger as arrogant, rude and insulting. "I don't think there was anyone in the room she didn't offend," says Joyce Schiff, a manufacturing representative in Dallas who attended the lecture. Schlessinger was critical of Jews she deemed insufficiently orthodox, Schiff says, and was highly critical of working women. Schwartz says she's never experienced anything like the avalanche of mail and telephone calls from fans and critics of Schlessinger. "Schlessinger tells people to stop sniveling and take responsibility," Schwartz says. "Then her husband calls me and she gets on the phone and screams at me like a crazy person and slams down the phone. I was shocked." Schlessinger says she can't believe that the episode hasn't died but can't let the subject drop. She mocks Schwartz as "that terrible woman" and, in an oblique reference to Schwartz's column, snaps: "She spouts morality and isn't moral." Still, Schlessinger maintains she can't defend herself against vicious attacks because of her religion. "I have to eat a lot of shit," she grumbles. "It makes you want to get vengeance, but I control it."

Soon after the Dallas episode, Dr. Laura hired a public relations team. GCI media consultant Kevin Bellows believes the media has been hard on her client but concedes that it's fair to say Schlessinger is thin-skinned: "She is panicked about what people will say about her."

Schlessinger has also been involved in at least two personal legal embroilments. In 1994, she and her husband filed a lawsuit against Sylmar Medical Center and four physicians who treated Bishop for a cardiac condition - he for medical negligence, she for emotional distress after watching him collapse at home. Schlessinger claimed she was "sickened and traumatized" and suffered great emotional disturbance, shock and injury to her nervous system" and had to hire myriad professionals - including physicians, psychologists and counselors - to get through the ordeal. She and Bishop dismissed the suit in 1995."

A bill has been introduced in the WA state legislature that would insert into textbooks a disclaimer identical to the one adopted by the AL Board of Educ. in 1995. Text is attached. Unfortunately, one sponsor, Harold Hochstatter is the chair of the Education Committee, to which the bill has been referred -- this makes it unlikely that the bill will be killed in committee; another sponsor is former state director of the Concerned Women for America Chapter. Washingtonians should express their opinions to the chair of the education committee, as well as their own legislators. Contact information is as follows:

Harold Hochstatter , Legislative Office: 115-B Institutions Building; P.O. Box 40482; Olympia, WA 98504-0482; Telephone: (360) 786-7624; Fax: (360) 786-7819; Toll-Free Legislative Hotline:1-800-562-6000; mail: hochstat_ha@leg.wa.gov

This information comes to us through the National Center for Science Education. For further information on this and other creation-evolution controversies brewing around the country, contact them at:

Molleen Matsumura
Network Project
Director
National Center for Science Education
molleen@natcenscied.org
P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709; ph: 510/526-1674; fax: 510/526-1675; toll- free 800/290-6006

Here is the Bill: SENATE BILL 6394
State of Washington
55th Legislature
1998 Regular Session By Senators Hochstatter, Stevens, Oke and Swecker Read first time 01/16/98. Referred to Committee on Education. AN ACT Relating to science textbooks; and adding a new section to chapter 28A.150 RCW. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON: {+ NEW SECTION. +} Sec. 1. A new section is added to chapter 28A.150 RCW to read as follows: All science textbooks purchased with state moneys must have the following notice placed prominently in them.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals, and humans. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact. The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This process is microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things. There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record for a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of "Instructions" for building a living body?

Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday, you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth."