Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[SkeptInq@aol.com]

 Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest 12-15-99

 Visit the CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine website at
http://www.csicop.org. Receiving over 200,000 hits per year, the CSICOP site
was rated one of the top ten science sites by HOMEPC magazine.

  In this week's SI DIGEST:
 --RELEASE: The Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Century
 --REPORT ON NOV. CONFERENCE "MONKEY BUSINESS IN KANSAS"
 --AMERICAN SCIENTIST: Review of the Recent Carl Sagan Bios
 --AMERICAN SCIENTIST: 100 (or so) Books that Shaped a Century of Science
 --LA TIMES BOOK REVIEW: Michael Crichton's "Timeline"

 THE TEN OUTSTANDING SKEPTICS OF THE CENTURY

 In a century filled with UFO sightings, psychic claims, doomsday prophecies,
quack therapies, pseudoscientific gadgetry, conspiracy claims, New Age
spiritualism, and paranormal mystery-mongering, which individuals rank as the
ten outstanding skeptics of the last one hundred years? Who are the brightest
champions of science and reason-exposing deception, uncovering fraud,
identifying nonsense, and solving so-called "mysteries"?

 Skeptical Inquirer magazine polled those who should know best: the Fellows
and Consultants of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal (CSICOP), an international organization of scientists and
scholars that has tracked the paranormal and the pseudoscientific for the
past 23 years.  Nominations could be chosen from any combination of science,
scholarship, writing, public education, outreach, investigation, activism,
leadership, or other qualities.  The only restriction was that the
individual's major contributions have been made in the twentieth century.

 To find out the results, go to
http://www.csicop.org/articles/19991214-century/  or check out the Jan/Feb
2000 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

 REPORT ON NOV. CONFERENCE "MONKEY BUSINESS IN KANSAS"

 The following is a report on a recent conference and campaign organized in
response to the Kansas evolution debate.

 The Campus Freethought Alliance Travels to the Land of Oz

 By Amanda Chesworth, CFA Coordinator

 When CFA first learned that the Kansas School Board would no longer require
the testing of leading scientific theories in both the origin of life and the
origin of the universe we asked ourselves what could be done not only to
voice our dissent but to work to reverse the decision and champion science in
the process. Our answer was to send a distress signal across the country in
the form of our SOS Campaign: Save our Science - Save our Schools.

 Campus Freethinkers and Young Freethinkers spent the next month creating the
campaign's strategy, focus and message. We produced a petition that will be
circulated throughout the country over the next few months. We gathered
resources from various outlets and packaged those together for use by local
groups to ensure activity on both the local and national level. As we have
seen, many states are following Kansas' example with respect to science
education and it is both science and future generations of science students
that will suffer the consequences. The SOS Petition will be sent to the
relevant Departments of Education and School Boards across the country and to
any state legislatures that are or may be involved in past, present and
future decisions of this kind. The petition will be sent on February 12,
2000: Darwin Day. The campaign, however, will continue on long after Darwin
Day. We will continue to champion science, defend our constitutional rights,
promote the separation of church and state, and battle religious
fundamentalism for years to come. Depending upon future decisions made by
those who decide what we will and will not be taught in the science
classroom, the petition will continue to collect signatures and each year on
February 12 will be sent to the appropriate outlets. To add your signature to
the petition and to view the unfolding campaign please check regularly at our
new website: www.campusfreethought.org. We urge everyone to get involved!

 One aspect of our campaign was to join the Council for Secular Humanism at a
conference in Kansas last weekend. The conference was entitled " Monkey
Business in Kansas: A Rational Response." Individuals for Freethought at
Kansas State University and the Freethought Group at the University of Kansas
welcomed other campus freethinkers from across the country to their home
state. We also met a few Young Freethinkers from Topeka and Emporia, Kansas
who are involved in the newly organized high school freethought organization.

 The weekend began in the hotel lobby of the Wyndham Garden on Thursday
night, November 4. Students gathered to have a demonstration briefing and
share ideas for the signs and posters we would hold up at state line the
following morning. Although "Party Like it's 1633" and "Ban Gravity" were
popular favorites, we settled on "Honk if you Support Evolution," "The Bible
is not a Biology Text," and "Teach me Evolution!" The next morning we set up
on the Missouri side of state line and held up our signs towards Kansas.
Gabriel Carlson, CFA's Vice President, donned a monkey suit and paraded down
the streets with pride. Several newspapers and television stations came by to
gather material, one coming from as far away as Sweden! Swedish TV had
arranged a trip to Kansas to cover CFA activities, as they also wanted to
visit Columbine, Colorado and cover that story. The footage is for a program
that attempts to introduce important issues across the world to high school
and college students in an MTV format. We tried our best to present the issue
MTV-style! If nothing else, then, we were cool.

 Friday afternoon we enjoyed a number of presentations on the
creation/evolution issue. Molleen Matsumura from the National Center for
Science Education discussed not only how creationism is running rampant
throughout the United States but also across the world. Turkey, Russia and
several other countries have been infiltrated with the US' latest export:
creationist missionaries! NCSE is the leading organization battling
creationism. Please visit their website and offer your support (www.ncse.org).

 Saturday was a day of lectures at the Kansas University Medical Center. Dr.
Massimo Pigliucci an evolutionary biologist from the University of Tennessee
in Knoxville riveted the audience with an interesting and informative talk
entitled: "Creationism and Evolution in the US: on Anti-Intellectualism and
Scientism." This lecture can be found at his website. Another resource on his
website was the topic of an informal lunch organized with Dr. Pigliucci and
the students. At an Ethiopian restaurant in walking distance from the
conference, Dr. Pigliucci discussed with the students the origin of Darwin
Day at his University and its development over the years. As many of you
know, CFA groups will begin to celebrate Darwin Day this year with various
activities and events going on across the country that help to promote
science literacy, and Dr. Pigliucci has offered to share with us his
resources as well as his guidance. At his campus he has created an annual
celebration that now includes lectures, exhibits, activities, and a series of
workshops for elementary and secondary schoolteachers on how to teach
evolution. Other ideas abound for the celebration of Darwin Day and we hope
to begin working on this immediately. If you would like to help, drop us a
line!

 Sunday afternoon saw CFA's Debate Circuit at full swing with a 5-panelist
debate discussing God or Causality? With two evolutionists, two intelligent
design theorists and one compatibilist, the audience heard arguments and
counter arguments from all sides of the issue. Although the CFA clearly has a
bias, it is promoted without silencing the opposition. The newly launched
Debate Circuit not only includes creation/evolution debates but a series of
other debate topics of interest to freethinkers. If you are interested in
hosting a debate in your area please contact us or visit our website where
you will find our Debate Kit. We are eager to watch the Debate Circuit grow
and develop until we have debates going on throughout the school year, across
the county.

 At some point on Sunday the conference ended but the enthusiasm and courage
to hold the banner of science, reason and free inquiry high above our heads
remained alive and well - invigorated by the new friendships and exciting
ideas that are often a result of the meeting of Great Minds.

 Thanks to all of the students who participated and helped make our Kansas
Conference a huge success! We look forward to the next time!

 AMERICAN SCIENTIST: REVIEW OF CARL SAGAN BIOS

 Chris Impey an astronomer at the University of Arizona’s Steward
Observatory, reviews the two recent bios of Carl Sagan by Keay Davidson and
William Poundstone.  Go to
http://www.amsci.org/amsci/bookshelf/Leads00/Impey.html#chris impey

 AMERICAN SCIENTIST: 100 (OR SO) BOOKS THAT SHAPED A SCIENCE

 In the Nov./Dec. issue of New Scientist, Philip and Phylis Morrison review
what they consider to be the most influential or important science books of
the last century.

 To read the article, go to http://www.amsci.org/amsci/bookshelf/century.html

 LA TIMES REVIEW OF MICHAEL CRICHTON'S "TIMELINE"

 Author Iain Pears reviews Michael Crichton's latest novel "Timeline" in the
Sunday, November 14, 1999 edition of the LA Times.

 For the full article, and to read a book excerpt go to:
http://www.calendarlive.com/calendarlive/books/lat_chrichton.htm

 "Timeline" combines all the ingredients that make Crichton's books
compulsive reading: a fast-paced story, a hefty dollop of scientific
speculation set out convincingly enough to be persuasive and an almost
cinematic structure that not only keeps the reader turning the pages at a
fair clip but also more or less guarantees that, in due course, it will be
reincarnated as a movie. For all that he keeps to a proven recipe, however,
"Timeline" is in many ways more ambitious than many of Crichton's previous
works, in its looking not only forward into the high-techery of advanced
quantum mechanics but also backward into the distant past of the 14th
century. One side deals with how a group of researchers is sent back into the
France of the Hundred Years' War to rescue one of their number accidentally
marooned there; the other deals with how they survive once they arrive.
Ranged against them are Machiavellian entrepreneurs in the present and
villainous condottieri in the past; in their self-aggrandizing ruthlessness,
they parallel each other in a pleasing demonstration that some things, at
least, never change.


 __________________________

 SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
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