No time for inserting illustrations this week. Sorry. Webmaster Jeff Kostick is chomping at the bit waiting for this.....

An anonymous reader informs me:

Since January 13, 2002, Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) has been treating patients at an "alternative medicine" clinic. This clinic is targeting patients "with complex, chronic health problems that have not been successfully treated by mainstream medicine." If OHSU has the money to hire these "practitioners," why don't they have the money to test some of these outrageous claims? This sounds to me like they want to dump their difficult cases. Loren Pankrantz of OHSU and NCAHF (National Council Against Health Fraud) is quoted in the newspaper article (The Oregonian, 1/4/03) as saying this has no place in a medical school. As a chronically ill person, I think it is an insult to patients.

A reader alerts us:

In a recent (December 2002) issue of Reader's Digest, I noticed an advertisement for an "amazing" new product. Check out http://www.snorestop.com/pages/MaxSprayPg.html. In the advertisement, a photograph of about 1/2 of the product's container is shown. Along the bottom of the photograph, I made out the top of the letters "HOMEOPATHIC," and couldn't believe it. The advertisement actually suggests a wife using this stuff on her husband without his knowledge, as stated in the printed advertisement: "One spray and he's silenced for the rest of the night. He doesn't even have to know about your little secret weapon."

Now, I may be mistaken, but wouldn't it be morally wrong, perhaps even illegal to go around administering such "powerful and potent medicines," as homeopathic remedies are claimed to be, to unsuspecting victims... errr, patients? If I snore, and my wife hates it, she needs to just tell me, because if she starts trying to play "Doctor" with me while I sleep, and I'm not referring to "Doctor" in the fun, married way, then she is soon to be an "ex-wife of a chronic snorer." Only I and my real doctor give me medicine, and boos and hisses at Reader's Digest for even allowing such stupidity into their pages. They should get off their fence and either become a Christian magazine or stand behind the science they often claim to support.

Reader Tim Converse, of Santa Cruz, California, observes:

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but every now and again something presents itself in an unexpected place that catches me off guard. This past Thanksgiving Holiday my wife and I flew from California to Virginia to visit with her family. On the plane ride I happened to grab a copy of the "Sky Mall" catalog/magazine from the seat pocket and flipped through it. Mostly useless stuff, but something I could distract myself with.

Flipping through it I came to a page advertising watches. What caught my eye, however, were the pictures at the top of the page. At first glance they didn't make sense until I realized that they were Kirlian photographs!

Here's the deal offered on this full page:

Improve your well being with a Philip Stein watch! The Teslar Chip Technology is build into every Philip Stein watch to protect against harmful electromagnetic fields, caused by cell phones, computers, fluorescent lighting and other electrical sources. Watch wearers experience more energy, less stress, and reduced exhaustion after long trips. Other positive effects are symptom reduction of arthritis, migraine headaches, depression and anxiety.

There follows a series of endorsements, which I seriously think should be looked into.....

Dr. Scott Morley, D.SC., Ph.D., M.D., (M.A.) showed that the Teslar Chip eliminated ambient electromagnetic fields from his patients. Dr. Doris J. Rapp, M.D., reports, "I am recommending it ("Teslar Inside") to all my patients and colleagues. Dr. John Upledger, M.D., observed "I immediately noticed that exhaustion, which I usually experienced after long trips, was no longer present, after wearing a watch with "Teslar Inside." Dr. Glen Rein, Ph.D., confirmed immune system components increased by 78% in the presence of the Teslar Chip.

There are four Kirlian photos featured top center in a two by two arrangement. They show a clear progression of a very weak aura to a very strong aura and the caption, "Kirlian finger photograph showing increased energy wearing a Philip Stein watch with Teslar Inside."

Amazing, yes? Well, hold on to your hat. The price for these marvels of "Teslar" technology? Starting at $159.00! Or if you want to get the Holiday Special with a Diamond on the face and Two (count 'em: Two!) Teslar chips inside: $995.00!

My reaction to the whole thing? Well, let us just say that my wife was convinced I was about to go to every seat in the plane and rip that page out of every copy of "Sky Mall" I could get my hands on!

Would that have been over-reacting?

Well, I don't think so, Tim, but others might disagree. Just grind your teeth, as I do, and wonder once again why the FTC and FDA can't or won't do anything about such swindles....

Bob Park's web site, which is a MUST read for all, at http://www.aps.org/WN, reports on yet another plea for further tax dollars to be flushed down the pseudoscience drain:

HYDRINO ROCKETS: BLACKLIGHT IS STILL LOOKING FOR APPLICATIONS. Alas, NASA's troubled Breakthrough Propulsion Project never managed to break through anything. But the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in Atlanta thinks maybe a thruster based on BlackLight Power's method of persuading hydrogen to enter a hydrino state, below the ground state, could achieve performance orders of magnitude greater than chemical rocket propulsion. So NIAC contracted with the Mechanical Engineering Department at Rowan University in Atlanta, to test the idea. Well, they just issued the final report for the 6-month Phase I study. They "successfully test fired" the thruster. "However, due to time and cost constraints successful measurements of the exhaust velocity have not been completed." Not to worry. "These concepts will be proposed for an ongoing Phase II study."

Translation: we fumbled the research, and want some more money. Sure, folks, we got lots of that! Just back your truck up to the loading dock....

Looks as if I was misled by my own teachers, who told me that Newton was an astrologer. True, there was confusion between "astrology" and "astronomy," in Newton's time, but that doesn't get me off the hook. I reverse myself on that point, gladly.

There has been a list of "validations" of astrology circulating about for years now, said to have originated with a John Harris. I think it would be an interesting and useful project for a young student to look into each of these quotes with a view to examining them for validity. It sounds very impressive:

Issac Newton, entering Cambridge, was asked what he desired to study. He replied, "Mathematics, because I wish to test judicial Astrology." In later years, when chided by Halley for his belief in the validity of astrological principles, he replied: "Evidently you have not looked into astrology; I have." Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician and physicist. He is considered one of the greatest scientists in history, who made important contributions to many fields of science. His discoveries and theories laid the foundation for much of the progress in science since his time. Newton was one of the inventors of the branch of mathematics called calculus. He also solved the mysteries of light and optics, formulated the three laws of motion, and derived from them the law of universal gravitation. Newton's laws of motion are the most fundamental natural laws of classical mechanics. Newton stated them in his book Principia Mathematica (1686). Taken together, Newton's three laws of motion underlie all interactions of force, matter, and motion except those involving relativistic and quantum effects.

Many US presidents/Governments have consulted Astrologers, not just Reagan. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking of his Horoscope said: "I always keep my weather eye on the opposition of my seventh house moon to my first house Mars." He was ten years old when his first horoscope was drawn for him by the father of Li hung Chang. In an article on "Roosevelt and astro-science, Dudley Clark relates that Col. Roosevelt had his horoscope mounted on a chess board which always stood on a table in his room in the White House.

Hippocrates: "the most revered name in medicine": "A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no rights to call himself a physician."

Dante: Astrology was "the noblest of sciences."

John Ruskin: "The greatness or smallness of a man is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth."

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Astrology is astronomy brought down to earth and applied to the affairs of men."

Tycho Brahe, when he discovered his first nova, erected an astrological figure for the moment from which he correctly predicted the Thirty Years War. He said, "The stars rule the lot of man."

Kepler, discoverer of Kepler's Laws of motion in orbits, successor to Tycho Brahe as astronomer to Emperor Rudolph and author of many astrological pamplets, said "An unfailing experience of mundane events in harmony with the changes occurring in the heavens, has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief."

Sir Walter Scott: "Do not Christians and Heathens, Jews and Gentiles, Poets and Philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences."

Dr. Charles Nordmann: " X-rays coming from the stars which abundantly emit these rays, exercise influence on the life organisms of each of us."

Sir Francis Bacon: "The natures and dispositions of men are, not without truth, distinguished from the predominances of the planets."

Sir Thomas Aquinas: "The celestial bodies are the cause of all that takes place in the sublunar world."

Sir W. Drummond: "The science of astrology is a holy thing."

John Milton: "Knowledge by favour sent down from the empyrean, to forewarn us timely..."

Because of greater awareness perhaps, the famous and the successful often seem more prone to accept the magic of the stars. Evangeline Adams once asked a famous client, naturalist John Burroughs, why he believed in astrology. His eyes turned toward the heavens. "Why shouldn't I? Everything in the universe influences everything else, so naturally the stars must influence man."

Benjamin Franklin, who selected a date for Washington's inauguration by means of an astrological Election, in his 1733 Poor Richards Almanack, named after an Astrologer-physician who in 1677 published a textbook on medical astrology.

Mark Twain: "I was born with Halley's Comet and I expect to die upon its return," and he did.

Goethe wrote an astrological description of his delayed birth, to which he added: "These auspicious events, which the astrologers subsequently interpreted for me, may have been the causes of my preservation."

Shakespeare, in his many allusions to astrology, evidenced a deep interest in and a thorough knowledge of the science. Speaking in the words of King Lear, he says, "The stars govern our conditions."

Randi notes: Yes, and in "Henry IV" Shakespeare also quotes a player: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves...." And in "King Lear," he writes: "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeit of our own behaviour — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars...." Could this be selective quoting at work....?

The famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung became very interested in astrology and wrote about it in his books. His daughter is a practicing professional astrologer, and some modern scientists certainly do not laugh at astrology. They are using research methods to try and understand why the beliefs of astrology seem to be true. They are discovering exciting things about the different kinds of energy that each planet emits, and are beginning to realize that the Moon really does have a powerful effect upon living things.

Well, I leave it to that young scientist who can check out these quotations properly. I'll add a quotation from "Lexicon Technicum: or An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences," 1704-1710, the "First English Encyclopedia":

ASTROLOGY is an Art which pretends to foretell future things from the Motion of the Heavenly Bodies, and their Aspects to one another and also from some Imaginary Qualities which the foolish Admirers of this Cheat will have to be in the Stars as the Causes of great Sublunary Effects; though they have no tolerable grounds to prove that there are any such things.... And therefore as I with that such a ridiculous Piece of Foolery as this may be quite forgotten, so I have every where omitted explaining any of its Terms, unless they fall in with Astronomy.

As you read this, The Amazing Meeting is under way, speakers are honing their material, and the JREF is in near-panic trying to get all working smoothly. I'll try to get a report ready for next week....