John Ruch, of Boston, Massachusetts, offers me what he calls "more fuel for your anti-polygraph fires," taken from a November 6th article about Gary Ridgway, the recently confessed "Green River Killer," responsible - by his own admission - for at least 48 murders:

Ridgway came to the attention of police in 1983 because his pickup resembled one connected with one of the disappearances. In 1984, he took and passed a polygraph test.

No surprise there. Law enforcement will persist in using the polygraph because it's "technology," and for that reason alone, is much admired by the naïve.

Reader Dan Holland tells us:

I've recently come across something quite shocking. I'm a 23-year-old college student in Savannah, Georgia (Home of Deepak Chopra's Memorial Hospital! Come today and see miracle energy healing practiced next door to real medicine! But I digress). Today, my little sister came home from school stating that she was going to be learning, in her fourth grade history class, about how Africans discovered America. The evidence that she says she was given so far was, "Well, they both have pyramids."

Randi comments: As I've pointed out before, the pyramid is a very basic and stable building form, so there is hardly any mystery that it's been used by many cultures. Fact is, that's the shape of a structure that's already fallen down, so it can't be any more stable than that!

Apparently, there will be handouts and brochures, and the parent who is responsible for this travesty is attempting to obtain books and lectures from the main proponent of this insult to the discipline of history.

One of my friends is a history major at Armstrong [Atlantic State University] with a focus on what's called "women's studies." At Armstrong, this general term is used to promote the study of the influence of minority groups and their roles in history. This is an important and still-emerging discipline in history today, yet his professors disdain his choices as "wasted classes." I feel sure that crackpot theories such as these continually taking the forefront of this discipline is part of the reason that being recognized as a historian who focuses on minorities is still seen as "fringe." I so hate it when bad science shouts louder than good science and thus makes itself heard....

Why does this mentality thrive in no discipline but history? If I tried to claim that gravity was caused by invisible leprechauns holding us down, and that any who disagreed with me were anti-Irish bigots, I'd be off to the loony bin.

My sister managed to bring home one of the handouts today. It's a 34-page booklet, titled "The African Presence in Ancient America: They Came Before Columbus" and it's prepared by one Ivan Van Sertima.

Page 3 has a doozey. It has a map of the line drawn out by the Treaty of Tordesillas. I will quote: "Drawn at the request of King Don Juan of Portugal in June, 1494, before the European "discovery" of South America, on the strength of information gleaned from African mariners in Guinea." Now, to my remembrance of history, and I could easily be mistaken, the fact that the line included Brazil was a mistake, a historical fluke that eventually gave Portugal an American colony.

The next several pages are sculptures of "negroid" heads. Now, to be honest, they don't look like African figures at all to me. They look like faces with exaggerated features, a pretty common trait of ancient sculpture. A few of them look somewhat like the super-exaggerated figure that was used in KKK literature to suggest that Africans evolved from apes while white men did not, but nothing looks like any of the African Americans I see daily.

The next page shows a picture of what Sertima terms "Descendants of black governors of Ecuador." The copy I have makes it very hard to read, but it is a picture of three Africans looking rather royal... in spanish dress. Sertima says they are "Zambo chieftans from Esmeraldas (in present-day Ecuador) who visited Quito in 1599. They are shown here in Spanish dress and Indian ornaments but were descendants of a group of 17 shipwrecked Africans who gained political control of an entire province of Ecuador in short order." I don't know enough about this to attack it, but it seems somehow wrong to me. Perhaps someone with a little more knowledge can handle it?

One reason we're offering this here, and I'd like to know, too.

A few pages later, there is a picture of two thread patterns that both have crosses. Sertima claims they are "identical." Not so, not hardly. The first one has small, thick crosses imbedded in one thick one. It is imbedded in a square that has triangles going outside its edges. The second image shows a thin cross imbedded in a circle, which is contained within a square that has rounded loops in the corners. Also on this page is something even more laughable. He compares the triple crescent found on Mexican shields with the crescent symbol of Arabic descent. If they shared this iconology by more than pure chance, wouldn't the Native Americans have shown some other signs of Arabic influence when the Europeans got there? Also, he claims that the period of strong contact was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 B.C. Islam hadn't been formed then, and certainly held no sway over Egypt and the Phoenicians that he claims had strong ties with America.

The next page compares medieval African smoking pipes with Native American pipes. Now, there doesn't seem to be any connection here, as the embellishments are all different. Of course the basic underlying structure looks similar, as they're both used for the same purpose. Much like a chisel, or a dagger, tools designed for one purpose tend to follow a basic model. Form follows function.

A bit later, he talks about "Black gods" in Mesoamerica. Well, not too unusual, I think, since they had pale-faced gods as well. Cortez rather famously exploited this fact, as I recall.

Then, the next few pages again focus on "Negroid heads," this time, in the giant faces carved by the ancient Olmecs. Again, these look more like what I'd find on KKK posters than any actual African Americans I've ever met.

And more and more of the same.

Here's some gem quotes from a webpage devoted to Sertima as a tribute:

The destruction of African high-cultures after the massive continuous invasions of Europe left many Africans surviving on the periphery or outer ring of what constituted the best in African civilizations. New facts that challenge this image create such consternation and incredulity that an extraordinarily emotional campaign is mounted by some of the most respected voices in the scientific establishment to explain away the new data.

That drift of dynastic Egypt from Africa has now dramatically slowed. Recent archeological finds have caught up with the mythmakers. More and more the history of Africa is being reconstructed upon the basis of hard, objective data rather than upon the self-serving speculations and racist theories about the black barbarians.

Yes, apparently, all historians that disagree with him are racist. Somehow, I am unsurprised. Oh, and here's his reply to a similar criticism by more noted historians:

LIE FOUR: Faced with the startlingly Negroid features of some of the Olmec stone heads, my critics try 4 ways out: (a) They are "spitting images of the native;" (b) they appear dark because some of them were carved out of dark volcanic stone; (c) some were made of white basalt which turned dark over time; (d) ancient Egyptians and Nubians were remote in physiognomy from sub-Saharan Negroes and none of them could have been models for any of the "Negro-looking" heads. Having said all that, they then claim that "races are not linked to specific physiognomic traits."

THE TRUTH: No need to shoot them down on this. They turned the gun on themselves.

No need to answer varied, valid criticisms against the evidence that you use for the bulk of your work? Oh, that's right, their theories are self-serving and racist. No need to examine them for truth, then.

As I said, I believe that the role of minorities in history has been dramatically downplayed in many ways, and our modern school system is just beginning to make up for this gross under-representation. However, inventing a strong connection between the Native Americans and the Africans when there is no direct evidence and the indirect evidence can be explained in many ways that don't involve giving Phoenicians and Egyptians the navigational equipment and technology to build ships that could cross the Atlantic, seems to complicate things rather unnecessarily. If Africans and Native Americans got along so well, where's the influence of the Mesoamericans on Egypt? Where's the tobacco Egypt imported, since they shared pipe designs? Where are the Egyptian and Phoenician records of such trades?

Well, just my opinions on the subject. I don't pretend to be an historian, but I am concerned that this is taught to my sister as fact. Rest assured, I will be finding out how much class time is spend covering this unproven idea and will fight any effort for tax dollars to be spent obtaining materials for it.

Okay, Dan. I just hope that you'll be as willing to accept any good evidence that's offered. And I believe that Van Sertima is really only claiming that Africans were here before Columbus, but so were some Vikings, and maybe others, as well. I recognize in what you've quoted, the same sort of "evidence" that has been offered for many other anthropological claims, in other venues; it's less than compelling, in my opinion. Data-searching can "prove" just about anything, if applied thickly. These notions are originated by people who prefer that things were different, and who examine evidence in a very biased manner in order to support their preferred view. Very much the same process happens in parapsychology and quackery, which is why I've chosen to run this piece here on our page….

Reader Darrel Henschell is a cofounder of the Fayetteville (Arkansas) Freethinkers. He tells us about one Mike Furman, a person who lives in Fayetteville and sells "memberships" for the Sonship branch of the Dennis Lee free-energy scam. Lee has been promising investors a demo of his "generator" for years now. We've discussed this matter in these pages before. Study the way the challenged individual, Mike, avoids answering and dodges about under Darrel's heavy fire. Says Darrel [DAR]:

Unlike the people above him, I think [Furman] is simply duped, sincere but not so bright, and sucked into something he doesn't understand. It pisses me off that he is trying to peddle this scam in our community. He works at a photo lab a couple of miles from my house. A "Charles" responded from Sonship Industries, when Mike Furman contacted them about the offer of my house in exchange for an open and properly observed demonstration. Charles is probably a well-practiced charlatan. I have sent copies of these exchanges to the 120 people on our e-mail list and am thinking of sending it in to Harper's magazine. The latest exchange with my local free-energy guy:

Subj: Re: Dear Darrel, another note from Charlie at Sonship! In a message Mike writes (original spelling):

MIKE: Hi again, Apparantly you didn't go to any of the demonstrations that have been done in each of the 50 states . . .

DAR: Each of the 50 states? Are you sure about that Mike? I did a little checking and isn't it the case that these guys are in fact on the run in several states? Consider:

* Kentucky's attorney general recently filed a lawsuit against Lee seeking to block him and companies connected to him from promoting their generator and holding seminars promoting the free-electricity device. Attorney General Ben Chandler says that these companies are defrauding customers because they don't disclose that their device doesn't actually exist and is based on unproven scientific theory.

* Vermont, New Mexico, and Tennessee have obtained temporary restraining orders barring Lee from conducting his presentations.

*Attorneys general in Idaho and Arkansas have issued warnings to consumers to proceed with caution when dealing with Lee.

* Legal actions against Lee and his companies have been taken in Illinois, Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, and include, among other things, charging a registration fee for a product that doesn't exist, failing to register to do business within those states, and representing that consumers will soon have technology that has not been scientifically proven to exist.

* Alerts have been filed against his companies by Better Business Bureaus in Arizona, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

DAR: (continuing) I had hoped to catch his Arkansas event but I thought it was canceled. Did they go through with it? Was it free or did you have to pay, like you have to pay $100 for their "$100 Free Look Kit?" What do you think of that, Mike? It seems to me that if you charge $100 for something, it isn't free. Am I missing something here? Perhaps you can explain to me how something can be free when you have to pay $100 for it?

MIKE: (continued) . . . or read that there is an open house on November 11, at the headquarters in Butler, NJ, as well as another one later in the month, since you unknowingly said he won't demonstrate the technology.

DAR: No, I said "openly demonstrate" the technology. I wouldn't want to drive to NJ to pay a fee to these guys so I can sit in a chair and watch some wires coming out of a secret box which makes a light bulb come on. Remember, I have seen the videos. I bought the tapes back in the late eighties for my dad. This is not remotely an open, objective, scientific demonstration and this is actually the exact opposite of how scientific claims get verified. They need independent qualified observers to first get taken seriously, not some hopeful fellows sitting in an audience who are all hyped and invested in seeing that light bulb come on or dial move, an audience that does not have access to the workings of the claimed machine and wouldn't understand those workings, and if they were being tricked, even if they did have such access. It takes independent scientists replicating Sonship's claims. Has this ever been done? But before they can even get that far they would first need a consistent theory of what they are actually supposedly doing in the first place. Electrical engineers say they don't even have that:

Yahia Baghzouz, an electrical and computer engineering professor, looked at some of Lee's websites. He wasn't impressed. "I read everything on various websites, and it's just contradictory what they are saying," Baghzouz says. "On some sites they say it's gravity turning the generator; on other sites they say, 'Oh, we have supermagnets that are powered by a battery.' If you power something by a battery, you are using electric power to turn the thing. In many places they said, 'We are not using any input power whatsoever.' That's contradictory."

He's not alone in his opinion. Eric Krieg, an electrical engineer in Pennsylvania, laughs when he hears that Lee has set July 4 as the date for his revelation. "For 15 years he's assigned a date. He said March in one show, July in another. When I first heard him in '96, he said at the end of that year. That's part of keeping the faithful perked up. . . . It's about keeping a flux of new suckers coming in." Krieg has been following Lee's claims since 1996, when he saw a full-page ad for one of his demonstrations in the Philadelphia Enquirer. His first reaction was laughter. "It was amusing how he had butchered science and manipulated all these redneck people," he says.

MIKE: They have demonstrated it to literally thousands of people who came to see them, but they can't go and do personal demonstrations for everyone who asks.

DAR: I submit that they have never demonstrated the existence of such a machine in an open and transparent way. Ever. And my $55,000 offer has been sweetened considerably. I sent a copy of this exchange to James Randi who has a well-publicized offer of one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate a supernatural event. When he read of the offer of my house to you, he said he would add his one million dollars to my offer. So that's $1,055,000 to you, or these guys at Sonship, if they will simply come forward and demonstrate, under straightforward, basic, commonsense observing test conditions (which we will agree to ahead of time), that their machine exists, and works as they already claim it does.

This is a very serious legitimate offer and I will sign a legally binding contract making the offer legally enforceable by you, or by them. All they have to do is back up the claims THEY have already made. Will they do it? What are they afraid of? What are they hiding?

MIKE: Sorry, you don't believe and thanks for the offer.

DAR: I "believe" so strongly that I am willing to sacrifice $55,000 if shown wrong. I am not a wealthy man, so that's a pretty strong belief.

MIKE: We expect to have one of these generators in God's perfect time.

DAR: I thought they already had one? What does God have to do with it? Wouldn't an influx of $1,055,000 help to build quite a few of these elusive babies? It is my understanding that when someone signs up and hands over the money that they have to agree to a disclaimer similar to the following: "I/we affirm that neither UCSA or BWT are making promises about when technologies will be advanced to the market in the future."

But that is the very reason they are signing up in the first place, isn't it Mike? They believe the promise that this technology already exists and will be advanced in the future. And that's the reason you got on board. The only reason these guys would require such a disclaimer, is because they know when pressed to actually back up their claims, they cannot. That's the only reason I can think of. Why else? Perhaps you can think of a reason.

Fascinating, to follow - once more - the obfuscation and fact-dodging that people like Lee and his acolytes engage in. And they get fat on the investments made by people who will never see their money again, nor the imaginary generator they paid for.

Reader John Bernard writes:

I found this book entitled "Future Crimes," and it has several short stories about, not surprisingly, crime in the future. In the story called "The Crime of Transfiguration," this scene occurs:

The window holo sign said "Tantric Sex" in Lavender script.

"You sure about this?" Murrillo asked Dawn O'Leary as they paused outside the entrance.

"It's a known front for confidential consulting."

Gil spat. "Call it what it is: damned fortune telling."

Dawn indicated a red-lit hematite statue in a window. A nude woman had an equally-nude bearded man in a painful hammerlock.

"That's Shirley MacLaine getting the best of the Amazing Randi," she said dryly.

It's a damn lie. Shirley never had me in a hammerlock. A full Nelson, maybe, but never a hammerlock. And we were just kidding.

Reader Shawn Hughes, RN, tells us this heartbreaker:

First, I would like to thank you for your work in confronting those in this world that prey on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of others. The purpose of this letter is to share with you a recent experience I have had.

I am a registered nurse and do legal consulting work. I recently had a client approach me regarding the death of her 6-year-old daughter. This girl had been diagnosed with leukemia about a year before her death. Her physicians naturally recommended the standard therapies which included chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation. Her parents initially consented to the procedures.

The girl's mother explained to me that her daughter seemed to go from being vibrant and healthy to sick and constantly lethargic during the chemotherapy. I responded to this statement by saying that chemotherapy is generally hard on most people, even healthy ones, and even more so when they are young. It was this lady's next few statements that left me speechless.

She claimed that during her daughter's treatment she came across a book written by a "Homeopathic" practitioner. This book claimed that chemotherapy was, in fact, the cause of most cancer patient's problems, and not the cure. The author went on to claim that proper rest and nutrition were shown (in his own case studies) to be the best way to battle "unhealthy" cancer cells. After doing some research of her own on the Internet, the mother took her daughter off all of her medications and refused any further chemotherapy treatment.

Randi comments: As one who has seen the workings of chemotherapy, I'll just say that not only is it a severe and uncomfortable treatment, but it invokes all sorts of depression and feelings of despair. It's understandable that a mother would have a bad reaction to seeing the discomfort her child was going through, and the relief experienced - albeit temporary - when the chemotherapy is discontinued. We have to see this matter charitably. Shawn continues:

The mother claimed that her daughter got better overnight. However, two months later she "suddenly" became ill. The mother told me that the sudden turn for the worse was a result of the medications she had received months earlier that still lingered in her system - another tid-bit she got from this book. The parents returned to the doctor demanding that their daughter receive a blood transfusion - again from the book, perceiving that it would help cleanse her system. The doctors informed her that the leukemia was now terminal. The mother argued with the doctors about every recommendation they made, even going so far as to say that her daughter never had leukemia in the first place.

The little girl died shortly thereafter, from what the mother described as a lack of nutrition and over-medication. The mother wanted to sue the doctors for making her daughter sick with chemotherapy and failing to treat her per her own recommendations.

This little girl was started down the right path and under good care until the seed of misinformation was planted in her mothers head. People who deal with a loved one's sickness often describe an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. I often hear family members of patients say, "There has to be something I can do!" And naturally, as any good mother would do, this lady simply wanted to help her daughter and ease her suffering.

In her moment of despair it appeared that she could become empowered to help her daughter, through this book. It was something she could comprehend and have control over. She did not hide from me the fact that she now "knew something" that the doctors did not know. To her, modern medicine was a conspiracy, and homeopathic medicine was the truth that it sought to undermine.

Unfortunately, the lady would not give me the name of the book. As much as I try to be a skeptic and not a cynic, I find myself shaking my head at people who believe the difference between truth and fiction is nothing more than what they can and cannot understand. To take advantage of the hopeless is truly despicable, but to prey on the helpless, whether directly or indirectly, is criminal.

Please note: we do not know whether the author of this book was a knowing or unknowing quack. Most homeopaths, in my experience, are genuinely taken in by the nonsense, and convince themselves that it works, despite the contrary evidence.

Daniel Sabsay is a prominent force in the skeptical movement. He took on Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson recently re the continuing claims made by Dr. Jacques Benveniste, only two-time-winner of the Harvard "Ignobel Prize." At 22:26 on 10/30/2003, Daniel wrote:

Hello Professor Josephson,

I am intrigued by the correlation between the advent of an automated homeopathy testing machine featured on Dr. Jacques Benveniste's website, and the subsequent two-year absence of ANY new information on the www.digibio.com website. This two-year silence is deafening. Since you are a prominent champion of Dr. Benveniste, I thought you might have some insight into this phenomenon.

Yours in transparent science,

Daniel Sabsay http://home.pacbell.net/sabsay/home Cybernetic Moments

Professor Josephson replied:

Transparent science - I wonder? As the button I wore at a certain event once says,

Beware CSICOP! An organization devoted to propaganda not science.

Anyway, the answer to your question is that I do have some insight. Further research by Benveniste has shown the samples to be affected not only by the "biological signals" applied intentionally in the experiment but, in some way not yet understood, by the experimenters, some of whom facilitate the effect while others inhibit it. For more details, see chap. 4 of "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart (HarperCollins). Thus the situation is that neither the hypothesis that there is no effect nor the hypothesis that the effect can be reproduced on tap, are valid. While it would have been nice if the situation were more straightforward, there are plenty of situations in nature which are of this more irregular character.

Randi comments: Yes, and Benveniste has referred to the fact that when an experiment is attended by, and accessible to, one of his assistants, Jamal, the experiment seems to work better. He calls this, "The Jamal Effect." I kid you not. Previously, the presence of another, former, assistant, Elizabeth Davenas, encouraged good results, too, and though Benveniste mentioned that fact, I don't recall that he honored her by naming a scientific phenomenon after her. Josephson continues:

It is a matter for Benveniste what he puts on his web pages - I have encouraged him to speak more openly about his findings, which make the phenomenon even more interesting from my point of view. But the fact of the influence of particular people is already in the public domain (the book was published in 2001) as I have noted.

Randi again: Incredible. Is there not another possibility that occurs to either Josephson or to Benveniste? Are the windows in their Ivory Tower so heavily frosted up?

The question of what exactly is going on with these irregular phenomena, and what kind of models are appropriate, is beginning to attract attention from all those involved with phenomena of this kind, and I believe some clarity is beginning to emerge. Watch this space!

PS: Benveniste still manifests in person even if his web site is silent, and he is still searching for the truth as he always has been.

Note: Benveniste also responded to Daniel Sabsay, but his response was appended with a strict instruction that it was a private communication, so that it could not be quoted from or shared with anyone else. Yep, that's what we call "transparent science," all right"!

Reader Dan Sweeney became curious and did an investigation of a popular TV show in which a "psychic" purports to read the minds of all manner of pets, usually of vapid celebrities who can afford nonsense:

Sonya Fitzpatrick, star of Animal Planet's "The Pet Psychic," has an amazing ability, an ability perhaps unmatched in history. The talent we refer to, though, is not her alleged skill at reading the minds of animals but her uncanny knack of stating the obvious.

Asked to send Fitzpatrick a picture of a current pet and a history of all past pets owned, I immediately ran into a problem. I don't currently have a pet. But my girlfriend is the proud owner of the World's Greatest Pug, Smokey, so I sent a picture of him. As for the list of past pets I've had, well, I made up all of those - you know, just to see if the psychic could tell these were fictional pets.

She couldn't. While she didn't say much about past pets, she did focus briefly on one - a cat named Sneakers.

"Which animal is it you've rescued?" she asked. "Because I feel you've got some rescued animals." Well, yes. I assume she felt that way because I mentioned in my e-mail that the cat had been rescued as a stray. She asked if the cat was now "in the spirit world," and I replied in the affirmative.

"The one that is in the spirit world, the one that you rescued, it says that it was very, very thin when you got it," she continued. Though I had never met the fictionalized cat, I agreed with her - after all, stray cats are, as a rule, malnourished animals. Having established her psychic credentials by predicting that a stray cat was thin, she moved on to Smokey.

"Let me go back to the pug now," Fitzpatrick stated. "He's adorable." Indeed. Anyone who saw the photo I sent would come to that conclusion - unless they're a heartless pug-hating bastard.

"Can you walk him more often?" she wondered. "Because he really enjoys it when he goes for his walk."

Unbelievable! She's right! Smokey loves going for walks. But wait.... don't most dogs?

Fitzpatrick went on to predict that Smokey loves his doggie treats (right again!) and that he hates getting his nails clipped (damn, she's good). Smokey also apparently wondered about me. Fitzpatrick said that Smokey was brooding about all sorts of things - predictably, the kinds of topics that cold readers have used for decades if not centuries: Would I be moving soon? When did my routine change? Would I consider taking another job?

In other words, the sort of questions that so-called psychics can ask and be correct about, no matter what the answer is. Yes, I would be moving. Well, Smokey's worried about this move. He likes his home. No, I would not be moving. Good. Smokey feared I might be, and he likes his home. By putting an animal between herself and the mark, Fitzpatrick makes cold reading even easier than it is. I'll give her some credit, though: I believe her love of animals is absolutely real. For the rest of it, though, she uses the same dated techniques that have allowed everyone from Nostradamus to John Edward to fool a gullible public.

Dan, I've had a more basic problem with dear Sonya for some time now. Why does she have to ask the owner what the pets name is? Of all the words it hears, the pet would be expected to know its own name! That's the summoning word, the grubs-on! word, the word around which the animal's life turns, don't you think? There are just so many puzzles about all this!

Last week, in New York City, I attended a remarkable live show at the Soho Playhouse on Vandam Street. My good friend Todd Robbins is the "Front Talker" and star of this entertaining, educational, and really fun production. Next week we'll tell you much more about it, but go to www.CarnivalKnowledge.com for a bit of preparation. Whether you're "with it" or not, you'll be fascinated with a man who - really! - eats a light-bulb and - really! - swallows swords. More, anon!