ISSUE #3
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The Newsletter of Science and Reason in Hampton Roads
Issue 3 (September 2001)
Editor: John Robinson
Admin Notes: This month's SRHR meeting will be Thursday, 13 September, in Room 130 of the ODU Mills Godwin Building. For those interested, the ODU Presidential Lecture series begins again in two weeks, with a 20 September address by General Wesley Clark, Commander of NATO forces during the Kosovo conflict; it'll be in the Mills Godwin Auditorium at 8PM.
Editorial Blather: Some rare kudos for Hollywood this month. I recently rented the Jim Carrey movie "Man On The Moon," a biography of the late comedian Andy Kaufman. On top of Carrey's superb performance, there is another item in the movie to make it of interest to skeptics: Kaufman, crippled by terminal cancer, flies to Asia to visit a famous psychic surgeon. He waits in a long line of hopeful supplicants and is finally admitted to the operating room. Perched painfully on the table, Kaufman looks across the room at the "surgeon" and, exactly as described by James Randi and other debunkers, sees him concealing a handful of animal entrails in his hands, to be "extracted" during the session.
Kaufman smiles ruefully. He has spent his entire professional life in character, performing one attention-grabbing stunt after another (biographers have claimed that he never appeared in public unless it was in support of one of his stage personae). Now he too has fallen victim to a publicity scam, and it's too late for conventional procedures.
Given the movie industry's slavish devotion to one type of paranormal foolishness after another (see this summer's movie listings for more evidence), this little concession to common sense is a welcome relief.
Out! (in) Out! (in) OUT! An August 10 Reuters article reports that New Jersey faith healer Jess Guevarra has been indicted for sexual assault after having sex with a 29-year-old Maryland woman. Police said that Guevarra told the woman that intercourse with him would drive out demons she believed possessed her. See the article at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010810/od/healer_dc_1.html
Conscience of the King: Aides to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe have reported that their boss is being haunted by the ghost of Josiah Tongogara, a former Mugabe rival who died in 1980. So far a witch doctor, a rain goddess, and an oracle have tried to help Mugabe to no avail; no word on whether Jess Guevarra is interested in the case, or what his fee might be. See the online version of the August 12 London Sunday-Times article at: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/08/12/stifgnafr01002.html
All Bases Covered: A September 5 Associated Press story claims that the late humanitarian leader Mother Teresa underwent an exorcism while hospitalized in 1997. Rather than coming from the Weekly World News or some other bastion of journalism, this story was broken by Henry D'Souza, the Catholic Archbishop of Calcutta. The story indicates that Mother Teresa did not personally request the ritual; rather D'Souza asked for the exorcism to be performed when she began having trouble sleeping. See the Washington Post story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/aponline/20010905/aponline172521_000.html
Father Rosario Stroccio, who actually performed the ceremony, stated later that mother Teresa was not possessed by any kind of demonic entity. His testimony: http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia
Look on my Works, ye Mighty: On 5 September French authorities destroyed a 100-plus-foot statue of Aumism sect leader Gilbert Bourdin in the Alpine village of Castellane. The statue was erected without legal authorization in 1990, among several legal temples and shrines, which severely complicated the destruction effort. This was the latest in a series of French anti-cult activities provoked by the 1994 mass suicide of 74 members of the Order of the Solar Temple sect.
Aumism (no relation to the Aum Shin Rikyo cult that I can find) is described as "a synthesis of all religions to drive away 'extra-terrestrial forces'," and claims about 425 members worldwide. Founder Bourdin died in 1998 while under investigation for rape, attempted rape,and sexual assault; his followers expect him to be resurrected any day now (no word on whether the years he spent dead would count as time served, nor whether he might share a cell with Jess Guevarra). See the BBC story, photos, and links to the anti-cult campaign at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1528000/1528231.stm
Hey, it COULD Happen: Italian geologist Luigi Piccardi claims that signs of a mysterious creature living in Loch Ness, Scotland, may be the result of earthquakes. During such an event, he claims, the loch's surface would bubble and roil, and growling noises would fill the air.
Piccardi is one of a small group of researchers who claim to be finding intriguing links between science and mythology. Other geologists suggest that the story of the biblical Great Flood might have derived from a rapid flooding of what is now the Black Sea area. Receding glaciers from the last Ice Age caused the water levels in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to rise, they claim, which eventually toppled a rock blockage at what is now the Strait of Bosporus and swiftly flooded out the lowlands.
The August 5 story (Boston Globe Magazine, pg. 4) is available online at: http://www.boston.com/globe/, but you'll have to pull it up in the archives. NB: the Globe charges for archived issues. This story is also available on Lexis-Nexis; search on LOCH NESS.
You Pays your Money and . . . . Health authorities in Baja California are continuing their year-long crackdown on illegal alternative health clinics near Tijuana, which offer unorthodox treatments to gravely-ill U.S. patients who have given up hope for a cure north of the border.
The clinics, catering mostly to an American clientele, had been operating in violation of Mexican law, which requires specific research protocols to be followed before experimental treatment may be offered to patients. The August 13 Los Angeles Times story is available on Lexis-Nexis or online at: http://pqasb.pqarchiver. com/latimes/ Search on DECEPTIVE HEALTH; the Times charges for archived stories.
He Sees Dead People: Another LA Times column on August 15 skewers John Edward, the alleged TV medium currently tearing up the airwaves on the Sci-Fi Channel. A quick quote: "Visiting a taping of Edward's show in New York several months ago left two distinct impressions. The first was that he is simply a gifted performer, a carnival act who gradually pulls information out of his audience - 'Someone close to you has passed. . . . I'm seeing a father figure. . . . There's an 'R' or a 'B' - Robert or Bob or Roger. . . . '" - in the same way such an approach has been wowing the naïve (and bilking them out of money) since long before the picture tube existed. On and on the questioning goes, often until the awestruck audience member is reduced to tears.
"The second reaction, in multiple parts, was more troubling and complex. First, for the people who desperately want to believe that Edward can contact the dead, it is virtually impossible to convince them otherwise; and secondly, splashing entertaining poppycock across television - and thus potentially into 98% of U.S. homes - changes the dynamic of those old-style carnival hucksters, putting an imprimatur of legitimacy on such fare. 'It must be real,' you can almost hear some people saying. 'It's on TV.'"
Brian Lowry's piece on Edwards is available online at the LA Times address just above; search on MEDIUM CHANNEL DEAD.
(End of Issue 3)
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Comments/Questions/Suggestions/Threats? E-mail them to
me at tympani@att.net -- John A. Robinson, editor