June 29, 2001

Praying for Bucks, Lumps for Dames, and the Queen Downs Arsenic — and Onions!

My good friend John Patterson, a fervent skeptic, was fascinated by a book that appears to present a magic formula for invoking good fortune — and money — from a deity. A best-seller, "The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life," is to be followed by "The Prayer of Jabez for Teens," and "The Prayer of Jabez for Women." I can't wait for the versions designed for Pets and for Infidels. John wrote a letter to the editor of his local paper:

Of all the recent best sellers, The Prayer of Jabez by evangelist Pastor Bruce Wilkinson, should prove a most welcome book for the opponents of legalized gambling.

With over 5.7 million copies already in circulation . . . hordes of devout believers must have a pretty good idea now as to what it takes to successfully invoke the Prayer of Jabez. Moreover, doing so with the proper intentions — as opposed to the greedy or materialistic intentions that nonbelievers commonly harbor — should enable at least some of Wilkinson's many readers to do great works for the Lord.

For example, they should be able to clean out each and every casino, race track and lottery in the US, so long as they donate the winnings to appropriate faith-based causes. Over time this would all but paralyze the gambling industry while simultaneously enabling faith-based charities to provide more and more of the social welfare services needed these days. That way, the gambling industry and its customers would be funding faith-based charities, not the state and federal governments and the already overburdened tax-payers.

I hope that John Patterson will now turn his insight to the strange phenomenon of football teams (both teams, of course) praying for victory, and other anomalies of faith-based projects such as President Bush's Star Wars plan.


Concerning this strange person Ed Dames, who has a totally unrealistic view of how the world works and how the JREF challenge fits into it, I suggest that readers might want to go to www.ufowatchdog.com for an interesting discussion of his delusions. Click on "Caveat emptor." This is much stronger handling than I would have employed, but makes interesting reading. A correspondent informs me that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), when asked if Dames' fantastic claims about his involvement in a particular missing-child case were true, responded:

Thank you for forwarding the information on Mr. Dames. I forwarded it around to our directors of case management, public affairs, case analysis, and our COO and no one is familiar with Mr. Dames or his company. . . . As I mentioned on the phone, Mr. Dames has no connection with NCMEC. We do not work with or endorse the work of psychics in missing child cases. [Here] is a general statement on this issue: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of over 55,000 missing children since its establishment in 1984. Our toll-free, 24-hour hotline accepts information from all callers, but over the course of our 16-year history, we have no evidence of any cases of missing children having been successfully resolved in direct response to information provided by a psychic.

This is rather in opposition to Mr. Dames' claims. I trust that his claims in regard to the JREF million-dollar challenge and my (non)involvement with him on the Art Bell radio show, will be viewed in light of this information.


I've just been informed by the Library of Congress that my book "Conjuring" has been transcribed into Braille and also recorded on tape for use by the blind. That rather made my day. Now, if my other books were also to be made accessible to those laboring under credophilia....


A couple of readers spotted an error in my discussion of the recent tragic massacre of the Nepalese royal family. I had written: "...reports indicate that king Birendra holds onto his throne with difficulty..." That should have been "king Gyanendra." Birenda was the murdered monarch. As one wag put it, my error "puts a new meaning to the phrase 'death grip'."


While I'm 'fessing up to errors, I'll admit that my acceptance of notice that the word "comprise" was wrongly used, was in itself wrong. No less authorities than Daniel Webster and Jimmy Carter were invoked, the latter quoted as saying, ". . . about 8 percent of our military forces are comprised of women." Mea culpa. I can't fight with Jimmy. ....................


Been there, done that. A reader writes:

Your disparaging comments on the use of astrology in the trading of stocks are of course fully justified — in a more rational world, it wouldn't happen. But I wonder if you've considered the lucrative effects that self-fulfilling prophecy can have in a stock market dominated by irrational herd behavior. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find statistically significant connections between planetary positions and price movements — connections caused solely by some critical proportion of traders making trades in the belief that those connections exist!

I've commented several times about a friend of mine on the New York Stock Exchange (who has only disdain for such gypsy artistry as astrology) and told me that his firm consults an astrologer for the sole purpose of learning what their competitors — who maintain full-time astrologers — might be likely to do as the stars offer their eternal wisdom. But think for a moment. We must wonder whether all the Wall Street astrologers are in place because they themselves perpetuated the myth that some firms actually believe the stuff! And, listening to those brokers is not unlike hearing astrologers, in my experience....


Reuters News Service, London, has come out with a discussion of homeopathy that cleverly avoids making any firm statements of opinion, in true journalistic form. After revealing that Queen Elizabeth imbibes a cup of arsenic and onions in water before major public appearances, to prevent sneezing, Reuters tells us that arsenic, well-known as the poison of choice in mystery stories, is also one of the more commonly used ingredients in homeopathy, though they refer to it here as a "remedy." Well, I carry to my lectures a bottle of "SafeCare Natural Medicine," sold by Eckerd Drugs, and labeled, "Cold & Flu Relief." The major ingredient of this miracle homeopathic water is "Arsenicum Album," which is fancy talk for "white arsenic," which in turn refers to arsenious acid — not to be confused with Arsenio Hall, of course. As we've discussed here not long ago, the dilution of the deadly poison is such that I can chug down any amount of homeopathic water and not notice it at all. No, it's just to illustrate a point in my lecture. I don't use it as a remedy....!

The Reuters article quotes Robert Lawrence, a homeopathic pharmacist, as saying that "There is no toxicity (in homeopathic remedies) because there is usually very little and sometimes none of the original substance." True, but Lawrence doesn't comment on efficacy, here. Reuters says that ". . . the problem for many critics is that homeopathic medicines can be so diluted that there is nothing identifiable in the final dose except water," but Lawrence isn't fazed. "Logically," he says, "it doesn't make sense, but even modern nuclear physics doesn't make sense . . . It depends on the mental modeling you use." Here we have the tired old wheeze that preaches, "Since modern physics isn't widely understood by the public and uses strange language, it's all mysticism and we can do the same." Modern physics does make sense, Mr. Lawrence. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean that we have to accept your mystical views. And this "mental modeling" notion is pure hokum. They can model it all they want; homeopathic materials have zero ingredients.

Get this for a picturesque approach, from the Reuters article:

The "remedy picture" for aurum (gold), for example, can be for those prone to severe depression. The type may be quite acquisitive and powerful, and need to be best at whatever they do (going for gold), but also have a low opinion of themselves. Such patients might be trading in the stock market, and might be the type to jump out of the window, if share prices were to plummet sharply. Aside from this, aurum can also be used for a whole range of symptoms, including mental exhaustion, digestive problems and heart and vascular disorders.

Wait a minute. Not only do we have none of the gold present, but we're dealing with one of the most inert elements in the Periodic Table. Gold can only be coaxed into entering a compound by the use of aqua regia, a potent mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, and then with much difficulty. It's a substance that you can gobble down — if you can afford it — without noticing any effects. When it's not there in the first place, I think we can safely say that it can't enter into any action with the human body. This is an incredible postulation, that a dose of nothing can cure.

Dr. Steven Kayne, yet another homeopathic pharmacist, that is to say, a person who prepares nothing, though with great scientific expertise, warned against the dangers of self-treatment with homeopathic preparations, and stressed that prescribing of remedies was too specialized and could only be done on an individual basis. Quite a picture. "Since you're a middle-aged woman with Jupiter in Aries, you must take several homeopathic doses of nothing before eating any acidic foods or chanting mantras. For you, taking a double-dose of nothing along with candy floss, could be fatal." Kayne also insisted that homeopathy and orthodox medicine can work "in tandem." To me, this is like hitching together a tractor and a kitten to haul an obstinate rock. Homeopathy has been part of the UK's National Health Service since 1948. Kayne said that homeopathy's increased popularity in recent years is partly facilitated in the UK by the Patients' Charter, whereby individuals have the right to say how they want to be treated, and also through medical advice offered on the Internet. He said hits on Internet health care web sites were second only to those for pornographic sites.

I think there's a message in there, somewhere.


I unfairly stated that no readers had suggested there might be more than one solution to the "10 triangles" puzzle two weeks ago. Jaime Arbona had written, "This is probably one of several answers." Also, Rich Scheller and Saar Wilf said something similar. Apologies. The same Jaime Arbona came up with yet another solution, which I show here.

The "W" puzzle appeared to have more than one solution, but this one seems to be the only one.

Okay. This week, the important part of the response is not just the answer. Consider this figure. We have a quarter-circle, with C as the center of that circle, the arc being AB. I have inscribed a rectangle DFCE within this sector. Is the diagonal EF shorter than, equal to, or longer than, the line AC? Now for the important part: give me two distinctly different ways of arriving at the answer to this question. Hint: Since there are no measurements given, the answer is a "unique" one, applying to all possible constructions involved. We used this method to arrive at the solution to another problem, months ago....