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Over the past couple of years, I’ve assembled from many different sources what I think is an amusing set of observations on getting old – an art that I’ve been working on for the last 30,000 days or so.  Having just lost two very valued friends and learning that another two of them are about to pass away as well, I’d like to share this with SWIFT readers.  I’m well aware that the topic isn’t of the sort that usually appears here, but I have to admit that I’ve been very lax in contributing to this giddy site, and I promise to appear here much more frequently from now on, since things have now somewhat stabilized for me...   

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ESPDo You Have E.S.P.? is a downloadable lesson module for use in high school and junior high school science and psychology classes that allows students to explore the scientific method, critical thinking and parapsycholological research through an examination of the history of possibly flawed research methods of E.S.P. claims. Students can come to their own conclusions about the existence of paranormal abilities as they conduct E.S.P. experiments and learn first-hand about the pitfalls of bias, experimenter error and fraud in the laboratory. Classes may share their results with the James Randi Educational Foundation for publication online and view cumulative data from schools around the country on our website.  

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This week is vaccine awareness week, sponsored by the harmful anti-vaccine crowd, to better spread their misinformation. In response, the science based medicine community, as well as a number of other skeptics, are running a counter-campaign, attempting to correct misinformation and to spread some real vaccine awareness.

I am not a scientist, nor do I claim expertise in that direction, at all.  However, as a professional magician, I do understand two facts about our species in considerable depth: I know how people are deceived, and – more importantly for this present discussion – how they deceive themselves.  Others with proven expertise in medicine will provide every sort of fact and lots of figures on how many – literally millions – of human lives have been saved since medical science came up with vaccines back in the 1770s.  In fact, it would be difficult to offer a more striking example of a powerful, dependable, scientific discovery that has proven itself so positively, for more than a century now.  Unfortunately, there are uninformed, biased people currently preaching loudly that we should abandon this great discovery and allow life-threatening infections and diseases to again take over as decimating elements in our pursuit of health and longevity.

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A genuinely alarming piece of news from the China Association for Science and Technology, an agency for which I spoke in Beijing some years ago, should get our attention, folks.  Scientific literacy – by which we mean the basic understanding and knowledge of scientific concepts and processes – can be a critical factor for making personal decisions and participating in civic and cultural affairs, and the CAST has found that only 3.27 percent of the Chinese people have basic scientific literacy, which signifies a failure to keep pace with developed countries. This was just revealed in a report at the group's 12th annual meeting. This was the eighth survey that China has conducted on the subject since 1992.

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The James Randi Educational Foundation is pleased to announce the formation of a new education advisory panel. The JREF's mission includes educating the public and the media with reliable information about the paranormal, the supernatural, and the pseudoscientific, while promoting critical thinking as a tool for making reasoned and reliable decisions about such unproven claims. The JREF is committed to expanding the impact of its educational programs through innovation and a focus on effectiveness and accessibility. We think this new educational advisory panel, which will focus primarily on the JREF's K-12 educational initiatives, will be a valuable tool to help us better achieve our mission.

The panel will be made up of individuals with broad experience in areas at the intersection of skepticism, critical thinking, and education. Its primary function will be to provide the foundation’s president and director of educational programs with informed opinions and recommendations related to the JREF’s efforts in the educational arena, focusing on resources for teachers to advance critical thinking in their classroom. This will be done through occasional review of JREF educational resources in development, and by recommending possible future projects relating to educational resources for the classroom and beyond. 

  1. Last Week at Science-Based Medicine
  2. Happy Hallowe’en, Harry!
  3. Apocalypse, Eventually
  4. A Cool Musical Example of Pareidolia