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Weird, wacky and sometimes all too true stories from the strange world of real and pseudo-science.
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003 |
CBC News (Feb 25, 02003) and other sources reported that Professor Stephen Snobelen, University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, discovered previously unused manuscripts of Newton's in Jerusalem. One consisted of or contained a chart with his calculations, based on Biblical references, to the end of the world and Newton's return as a saint.
8:40:49 PM Google It!
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003 |
Pity the poor biology professor in Texas, Dr. Michael L. Dini, who's being investigated by the Liberty Legal Institute because he insists his students affirm their belief in science if they want him to write a letter of recommendation for post-graduate studies. Putting the shoe on the other foot, would a scientist wishing to enter divinity school be rejected if she refused to affirm her belief in God and the sacraments of the Christian church? I suspect it would definitely be a problem in the latter case. Ironically, Professor Dini is from a Catholic educational background. [Source: E-Skeptic newsletter, February 5, 02003]
8:03:03 PM Google It!
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Dr. Stephen Wolfram, author of the controversial, bestselling, self-published book A New Kind of Science (2002), spoke at CalTech on February 1, 02003. For two reviews of his one-hour lecture and rebuttal by a panel of scientists, try and get a hold of the E-Skeptic issue for February 6, 02003 from Skeptic.com.
7:50:09 PM Google It!
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Tuesday, February 04, 2003 |
GENEVA--Swiss researchers say they have successfully caused a quantum particle to disappear and reappear two kilometres away without it ever existing in between. [Source: CBC News, Feb 4, 02003; updated Feb 5, 02003]
Further details about this study appear in Nature (Adobe Acrobat PDF file: http://www.gapoptic.unige.ch/I&Hnature.pdf) and on Swiss researcher Nicolas Gisin's Web site at the University of Geneva (http://www.gapoptic.unige.ch/).
10:31:31 AM Google It!
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Monday, December 30, 2002 |
The big freaky science story for 2002 has to be the announcement on December 27, 2002 by the company founded by the Raelian cult that they cloned a human being, a baby girl named Eve. Now there is serious talk about a global ban on human cloning. Check this Google News link for up to the date news about this story.
3:27:57 AM Google It!
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 |
Quoting from physicist Dr. Robert L. Park's weekly What's New column for December 13, 2002 (http://www.aps.org/WN/):
"GENESIS PROJECT: A REALLY GOOD SCAM CAN BE USED OVER AND OVER. Back in the early '70s, an inventor named Sam Leach claimed to have built a car that used ordinary water as a fuel. The idea was simple: You use electrolysis to decompose the water into oxygen and hydrogen and then use the hydrogen as a fuel to run the engine and generate electricity for the separation. So there you have it: You start with water and end up with water plus work. Scientists scoffed: it would take more energy to decompose the water than you could get from the combustion of hydrogen. Ordinarily yes, Leach agreed, but he had a secret catalyst that reduced the energy of decomposition. The great thing about the First Law of Thermodynamics, however, is that it doesn't care what's in your secret box, it gives you the limit of any process. Leach raised millions from investors and then retired to a seaside villa in California. Who needs a car that runs on water when you have a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce? The rumor spread that he had been bought off by the oil companies. Now something called Genesis World Energy is running the same scam over again."
What's interesting about Genesis World Energy is what they don't tell you. The process was developed, claims the Web site, by an anonymous team of "over 400 visionaries from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including science, technology and engineering" that "accomplished what no one else has — the ability to harness an unlimited source of energy from the molecular structure of water." (
12:27:57 PM Google It!
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Friday, December 06, 2002 |
The man who introduced the 20th century world to Bigfoot died on November 26, 2002. Ray L. Wallace's family, according to an Associated Press report published on December 6, 2002, revealed that their father had used carved wooden feet to create the tracks of a giant, mysterious hominid that were dubbed Bigfoot in Northern California and Sasquatch in British Columbia and northern Washington State. Source: "Perpetrator of 'Bigfoot' myth dies at 84," Honolulu Advertiser, December 6, 2002, p. A3.
This story is very much like crop circles in that the British hoaxers revealed how it was done, yet the idea of crop circles refuses to die. This year alone we've seen them in a major feature film, Signs, and in the epic miniseries Taken.
There simply is no physical evidence beyond casts of footprints such as those owned by Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, and motion picture footage of a dubious nature of a human-sized or even smaller primate-like creature. There are no bodies, no bones, no fecal matter, so tufts of hair, no dwelling places yet uncovered. And while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the complete lack of physical proof is compelling. Even though there are Aboriginal (Indian) legends of a primate-like creature, no rational person believes in trolls, goblins, dragons, leprechauns, menehunes, or dinosaurs in Africa.
For further information about Bigfoot/Sasquatch and their skeptics visit Sasquatch Watch Headquarters (Intermountain Research Center) or articles published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the Skeptical Inquirer and other sources.
11:29:46 PM Google It!
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Wednesday, November 27, 2002 |
Magician the Amazing James Randi put his million dollars on the line on BBC Two's Horizon program broadcast on November 26, 2002 at 9 pm in England. The program decided to conduct an experiment with a homeopathic remedy to see whether two samples produced the so-called Benveniste Effect (water with a memory) in which French scientist Jacques Benveniste in 1988, as a result of an experiment, proposed that "water had the power to 'remember' substances that had been dissolved in it."
Quoting from the last paragraphs of the program summary, here once again is solid scientific proof that homeopathic medicine is a sham:
Although many researchers now offered proof that the effects of homeopathy can be measured, none have yet applied for James Randi's million dollar prize. For the first time in the programme's history, Horizon decided to conduct their own scientific experiment.
The programme gathered a team of scientists from among the most respected institutes in the country. The Vice-President of the Royal Society, Professor John Enderby oversaw the experiment, and James Randi flew in from the United States to watch.
As with Benveniste's original experiment, Randi insisted that strict precautions be taken to ensure that none of the experimenters knew whether they were dealing with homeopathic solutions, or with pure water Two independent scientists performed tests to see whether their samples produced a biological effect. Only when the experiment was over was it revealed which samples were real.
To Randi's relief, the experiment was a total failure. The scientists had been no better at deciding which samples were homeopathic solutions than pure chance would have done.
10:44:41 AM Google It!
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Friday, November 15, 2002 |
In this article, "'Noisy Light' is New Key to Encryption" by Sandeep Junnarkar of CNET News.com from November 15, 2002, we learn that
Scientists at Northwestern University say they have harnessed the properties of light to encrypt information into code that can be cracked only one way: by breaking the physical laws of nature.
10:35:45 AM Google It!
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Sunday, November 10, 2002 |
If you think we've got troubles now with global warming, wait till the magnetic poles flip. Robin McKie, Science Editor for England's Guardian Unlimited newspaper Web site, wrote a dramatically titled piece on November 10, 02002, "Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip". Also cited in the article is a Scientific American report due to be released this week (November 11, 02002). The Kyoto Protocol (aka Kyoto Accord) won't be able to handle this sucker, that's for sure. Some scientists quoted in the article are predicting a geomagnetic reversal within the next thousand years. The article ends nicely with a Hollywood publicity angle: you can wait for the movie The Core to see a fantasy use of a nuclear explosive device to halt the reversal.
1:03:38 PM Google It!
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This is it boys and girls! Everything, well ok, just the stuff that fascinates me, about the weird and wonderful scientific discoveries and claims going on around us. I'll also comment on the pseudo-science pontificators and snake oil sales folk -- yes, some are still selling snake oil, just repackaged -- plaguing us right-minded people. It's a mission, not God given, just something I've been meaning to do. My inspiration is Boing Boing and probably a bunch of other blogs I've never heard of before.
12:49:11 PM Google It!
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© 2003 David Mattison
Last Update: 7/13/2003; 11:40:19 AM

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