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Reader Carlos Q. Coutinho sends us a most interesting video file. By far the most famous of all “evidence” for the Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti/Abominable Snowman claim, is what’s known as the “Patterson film,” a very shaky – probably 40-second – 16-mm record that appears to show a strange, furry, bipedal creature walking away from the camera. The original film no longer exists, for unknown reasons. Carlos tells us that some industrious soul has taken the time to “stabilize” the sequence – that is, to register each image of the main figure in the same spatial relationship to the one immediately preceding it, so that the jerky motion is minimized. The results are very revealing, indeed. Says Carlos:
I ran across this and I thought you might appreciate it. Someone took the famous Bigfoot footage, and stabilized it ... now you can clearly tell (of course) that it's just some guy walking: See www.bigfootencounters.com/files/mk_davis_pgf.gif
To me, this shows a man in a costume. The gait is very human, it does not in any way resemble what we might expect of a species closer to simians, and the posture is human, as well. Mind you, we cannot know that a Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti/Abominable Snowman would not walk very much like a member of our own species, but it seems a safe assumption that there would be a big difference. Once again, a bit of applied technology has resulted in our seeing further into an old data source and having a better sense of what it might convey to us.
Ah, but Mr. Coutinho presents us with another gem along with this one. He has given me a quotation from science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein that I’d not known of previously, but will use often:
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
I have already concluded what “industry” author Heinlein refers to….
At www.randi.org/jr/2006-01/010606netherlands.html#i7 I published a complaint about the reluctance of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) to officially come to grips with the facts about homeopathy. I wrote that their treatment of this “alternative” nonsense was “a good example of bureaucrats playing the game of waffling with words.” Well, news from reader Andy Calloway has now made me eat that comment. Says Andy:
After reading your commentary on Jan 6th, I was annoyed enough to contact the NHS Direct to challenge their encyclopaedia entry that seemed to promote Homeopathy as a viable cure to some illness. Well, it appears that they have listened as I've just received the following response:
Regarding your recent comments to NHS Direct New Media about our encyclopaedia entry on homeopathy. Your comments were passed to our Clinical Director and he has asked me to inform you that the encyclopaedia entry about homeopathy has now been removed from the website. The topic is currently being reviewed, during which process your comments will be taken into consideration and the updated version will go back onto the website as soon as possible.
Obviously I don't know what their new page will say, but I remain optimistic. Also, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who contacted them after you raised it, but nonetheless, it gives me a kind of warm feeling to think that they may actually listen to the little guy!
Andy, we’re all “little guys,” and your contribution here provides us all with substantiation of the fact that if you complain enough in the right way and the right language, often enough, to the proper authority, there’s a good chance that you’ll have an effect. I’d like to think that – as you suggest – others also made comments to the UK NHS as a result of what appeared here – but in any case, the JREF will take a moment to feel a certain satisfaction…
Thanks for this welcome news!
I’m told that Dr. Rupert Sheldrake – see www.sheldrake.org/ – is still carrying on about why he won’t participate in the JREF million-dollar challenge. He now whines that he’s been in touch with me, but had little good to say about me and doubted whether he could get a fair test. He also expressed his fear about associating serious scientific research with a reward of this sort. Well, it’s hardly unusual for a monetary prize to be offered to the first person to demonstrate some phenomenon or solve some problem in science. Does the name Alfred Nobel sound familiar?
Also, as we’ve pointed out to Dr. Sheldrake several times before, it’s the person who demonstrates a paranormal, supernatural, or occult ability who would receive the $1,000,000 prize, not the experimenter – unless that were to be the same person. So, I’ll once again make it clear to Rupert: any man, woman, child, or beast – since he has a psychic dog in his stable of psychic performers – who would be able to score appropriately in his telephone, telepathy, being-stared-at, or pet experiments, can take the prize, and any tests would be done by an independent agent, not by me. That would get around the dreaded monster that he so fears, the “unfair” test.
I must point out that this has been clearly outlined to Dr. Sheldrake several times before, but his memory seems to be failing. I’ve taken this opportunity of helping him recall….
For more information on this strange man, see www.randi.org/jr/011703.html.
Reader Professor Olac Fuentes, University of Texas at El Paso, brings us more disquieting news from the quackery front:
I just read a couple of messages from people from Brazil and Slovenia [on your site] complaining about legalized homeopathy in their countries. I wonder if either of those countries has a National School of Medicine and Homeopathy (www.ipn.mx/ecus2.cfm?id_nivel=2&id_escuela=16), as my country, Mexico, does. In case you are wondering, it is not a small private school, rather, it belongs to the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico’s second largest institution for higher education, and it is completely supported with tax money.
Professor, I’ve been to Mexico many times, and I’ve looked into traditional “healers” – the “curanderos” – who ply their trade there. Now that I’m aware of the official stance on homeopathy, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Mexico, too, is plagued by this illness known as “faith-based” medicine…
A reader, formerly a chiropractor, and who wishes anonymity, writes:
I do not believe I will ever practice chiropractic again, because I see no ethical way to practice. Spinal manipulation has limited uses at best and some forms of manipulation can be dangerous, cervical manipulation, for example. The problem is that I now have over $150,000 worth of non-dischargeable student loans and it looks like my credit is ruined for the rest of my life.
I realize this is my own fault for taking out the loans. I was stupid and lacking in critical thinking skills at the time. But, just curious, what would you do if you were me? Would you try to hire an attorney and fight the school for fraud? Would you just move on and try to forget about it? Would you write a book to warn other potential students?
I often feel like I have ruined my life with this massive debt. I still have a lot of joy in my life: I have a great wife, a rewarding (non-chiropractic) job, and many wonderful friends. But I still feel like I was bamboozled by the chiropractic profession.
No rush to answer me, but I’m just curious about your thoughts on this subject. I cannot encourage you enough to continue warning potential students about the rampant quackery in the chiropractic profession. Many students take out massive loans when they are in their early 20s only to discover later that chiropractic is a fake, unethical profession. By then, it’s too late and they are in debt forever.
Yes, my friend, you were certainly bamboozled – as any victim of chiropractic is. As for writing a book warning others of your plight, I cannot see it becoming a popular read because it contains facts that the public just doesn’t want to know. Another problem here is that those who sign up for instruction in chiropractic, obtain diplomas, and start into practice, discover that the monetary rewards are so huge, that they can’t resist staying with the business, even if they recognize that they’re quacks.
You’re an exception; you care.
Reader Kevin Delgado, referred to at www.randi.org/jr/070904that.html#6, fourth paragraph, shares a happy event with us, and his comments on attributions that have been made:
I wrote to you back in 2004 and talked about a friend of mine who found out he had a brain tumor. I thought you might like to hear an update, and a good update it is.
His tumor grew faster than his doctor expected and he began having more frequent and more severe seizures. After almost a year of not getting any help from acupuncture, crazy chicken blood concoctions, aroma therapy, praying bishops and many other idiocies, he went to a different doctor. This guy operated and removed about 50% of the tumor, then put my friend on radiation and chemo. Now, halfway through the chemo, the doctor can't find any tumor tissue! The seizures have almost completely stopped. He gets to have his life back! A small victory, I know, but one that's very important to those of us who know and love him.
Of course, most people congratulate him on his "miracle." What miracle? It was a triumph of SCIENCE! Woo-woo doesn't figure into it! God (or a demon, or maybe aliens) put the damn tumor in his head and science got rid of it. Kudos to reason and science!
Thanks for the good work!
From The New York Times column written by Maureen Dowd:
Despite George Washington and the cherry tree, we no longer have a society especially consecrated to truth. The culture produces an infinity of TV shows and movies depicting the importance of honesty. But they're really talking only about the importance of being honest about your feelings. Sharing feelings is not the same thing as telling the truth. We've become a country of situationalists.
My comment that I had no idea who “Zerbrowski” might be, referring last week to the name of a “psychic” applicant for the JREF prize thrown out by Sylvia Browne, caught the eye of reader Carl Fogel. He tells us:
Zerbrowski is a continuing character in Laurell Hamilton's novels about a zombie-raising vampire-executioner named Anita Blake, specifically chapter three of "The Laughing Corpse." He's a disheveled Regional Preternatural Investigation Team detective who has very faint psychic powers and likes to… Er, not that I read such things!
No, this knowledge of Zerbrowski came to me in a vision...
I believe you, Carl. But I also believed Nixon….
Reader Dale Duxbury offers us some interesting ads….
A couple of the latest offerings from a Colorado publication called "Nexus – Colorado's Holistic Journal." I've included the address for info on the tuning forks; it's worth a look. I was also fascinated by the offer for ET/UFO negotiation. Old Slim (the dowser) is not so dumb. He's chosen an area not subject to any method of investigation I can imagine.
FYI: I periodically skim through the Homeopathic remedy section of the local Whole Foods market and, being aware that you do a lot of public speaking, noticed one I thought might interest you. It's called Gelsemium sempervirens (common name, Yellow jasmine). It's for treatment of stagefright! I try to help where I can.
Click for Larger Images
Do look at the www.toolsforwellness.com products....!
Reader Barry Kendall in Ontario, Canada:
I recently took a tour of the Royal Ontario Museum [ROM] in your and my hometown. There were Biology exhibits which took evolution for granted. There were Archeology exhibits dating civilizations thousands of years before Adam could have existed according to Genesis.
On my way out I picked up a copy of ROMLife, a periodical giving information about special events, exhibits, courses and lectures offered at the ROM. On page 7 two courses are listed: "Ayurveda Body and Mind Healing" – introductory and intermediate level.” The information on the first course goes as follows:
Ayurveda, the extraordinary body and mind medicine of India, is one of the world's oldest and most complete systems of natural healing. It provides the tools and techniques to guide you back to wellness by exploring your individual requirements for good health and how needs change according to age, seasons and living circumstances.
There is similar baloney given about the second course. They are given by Luiza Ormonde, a practitioner and teacher of Ayurveda for the past ten years. Each course costs $155 plus $20 for materials. Ayurveda sure is lucrative, isn't it?
Why doesn't the ROM just offers courses in introductory and intermediate Intelligent Design and be done with it?
Randi comments: And in courses in “Tarot Cards for the Stock Market,” “Praying for Higher Test Grades,” and “Witchcraft as a Profession”….
Janet Asimov is the wife of the late Isaac. She has written a fascinating book, “Notes for a Memoir,” on her husband, his work, and her astute observations on this most excellent example of our species who left us in 1992, just after beginning his 8th decade of teaching us how to think and how to face reality. Nature robbed us – again – by taking Isaac from us, but he understood and he went.
This book contains many excerpts from Dr. Asimov’s personal letters. Janet tells her reader, “In public, in speeches, and in his published writing, Isaac tried to be kind to conventional believers, but he let himself go in his letters.” How fortunate we are to have those letters, and to have Janet Asimov share some of them with us. I will quote one excerpt for you. Here is the Isaac that I knew, gloves off and getting right to the point:
…I was on a two-hour [radio] show. For the first hour, I discussed the origin of life, development through chance of nucleic acid molecules, of evolution by natural selection, etc., etc., etc. In the second hour, the listeners phoned in questions, and some of them were from Fundamentalists who were simply furious with me. They quoted from the Bible and denounced me as someone who would steal the beauty of the universe – as though the conceptions of evolution and the long history of the stars were not infinitely more beautiful than the story of a petulant God making and destroying a pint-sized basketball of a world.
One questioner, her voice shaking, would refer to me only as that man and addressed her questions (or rather her denunciations) only to the announcer. You would have been proud of me, though. I was calm and polite and smooth and in answering these people, I kept saying, “Science concerns itself only with the evidence of the senses. We neither back the Bible nor refute it. The Bible doesn't concern us one way or the other.” Of course, that reduced them to gibbering fury and the announcer would then cut them off.
The trouble is that these people have a comfortable little world of miracles and literal-word-of-the-Bible and associate only with others who live in the same world and go to a Fundamentalist church on Sunday and (like the green peas in the pod who thought the whole universe was green) honestly think that all the world thinks as they do.
They don't read books on the scientific view, or go to lectures, or attend courses – and then, they have the radio on and to their disbelief and horror, someone is spouting blasphemy at them and speaking of life originating by chance and mankind developing through the blind forces of natural selection and never mentioning God.
Hey, that’s our Isaac….
Bearing in mind Uri Geller’s abysmal record of helping sports teams and stars perform well, I note that he’s now applying his mystical talents to boxer Peter McDonagh , who will come up against Michael Gomez for the lightweight crown on January 28th at the national stadium in Dublin. Geller says he will
…totally erase any bad thoughts from McDonagh’s] mind and there will be no “ifs,” it will all be “when's,” so not “if he wins,” “when he wins.” I'm not a miracle worker but I can help and I believe in Peter and I think he can beat Gomez.
Now, as we all know, these “psychics” speak with forked tongues, so we must try to fathom what this actually means. First, Geller says that he’s only putting positive thoughts into McDonagh’s head, and warns that he’s not a miracle worker. To me, that sounds like a preparation for failure. He also hedges with, “I think” rather than “I’m convinced.” Perhaps Uri needs some positive thoughts, himself…?
The only one making any definitive predictions here is the fighter himself. He says:
I respect Gomez as a fighter but he's bitten off more than he can chew with me, this will be a great fight and I predict that I will stop him in the seventh round.
Now that’s what I call a forthright declaration. No shilly-shallying here. McDonagh says he’ll win, and he says when it will happen. I like that. Let’s see, on the 28th….
Reader Arnold Rosner, of Hamilton Square, New Jersey:
I got a stock "tip" on this device: www.sniffex.com/default.asp. The demo says "it can be described as a magnetic interferometer which shows, via the device pointer [!], the zero gradient of the magnetic field..."
And you and I can be described as Greek gods with incredible powers. I'll bet both descriptions are equally accurate. At least my description is English.
Looks like ideomotor rears its ugly head and gets patented once more. The device pointer appears to be a free-swinging telescoping antenna, couple of bucks at Radio Shack. If this thing works I'll eat one, with some homeopathic sleeping pills for dessert.
Arnold , we’ve been looking into the very interesting history of the Sniffex stock; the device itself is no mystery. There’ll be more on this matter soon. Stay tuned….!
January 17 th was the 300 th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, one of my very favorite dead people. Ben and I would have gotten along famously, but I planned my birth poorly.
You may not know that he was the one who assigned the "plus" and "minus" designations to the terminals of a battery, and that was what became accepted. The choice he made was backwards, since electricity flows from what he said was negative to what he said was positive, but in reality, it doesn't actually matter. A choice had to be made one way or another, and Ben had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. He lost….
Sigh.
Reader Terry Polevoy, MD, in Canada, sends us this alert for those north of the border:
Please place this on your web sites and/or circulate this to your friends and professional associates who are interested in cancer quackery. The CCRG, my favorite quack cancer clinic in Ottawa, will be exposed in this CTV's investigative report, Saturday, January 28 th, 7-8 p.m. We've waited for this kind of report for years. From the CTV site:
He's not a scientist nor a physician, but from his clinic in an Ottawa shopping mall, former computer analyst William O'Neill runs the Canadian Cancer Research Group. Over the years, O'Neill has made some stunning claims about his success in battling cancer and other diseases, but his detractors accuse him of selling false hope to the desperately ill. This week, a W-FIVE investigation into the man and his methods.
From advance reports, this report will be definitive and strong. We’ll look forward to having a review by Dr. Polevoy.
Our friends at Skepchicks, International are organizing another calendar project to follow-up on this year's sell-out spread. But this time, they're including gentlemen as well. If you'd like to possibly appear in this work, please visit forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=50419.
And as if this weren't enough work, they've also released their first "Zine," known simply as "Skepchick." It can be perused at your leisure at www.skepchick.org. Mind the scissors.
Next week, as you know, The Amaz!ng Meeting 4 will blossom forth at the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. The work that went into preparing this record-breaking event was massive, and has surely earned Linda, Kramer, and Jeff their places in Valhalla, Eden, or wherever they want to go. As for a web-page next week, that’s possible, but it would be abbreviated. Let’s see.
Looking forward to seeing many of you in Vegas….!
