1.
Nonprofit organization
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A nonprofit organization is an organization whose purpose is something other than making a profit. A nonprofit organization is dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a particular point of view. This is known as the non-distribution constraint, the decision to adopt a nonprofit legal structure is one that will often have taxation implications, particularly where the nonprofit seeks income tax exemption, charitable status and so on. The terms nonprofit and not-for-profit are not consistently differentiated across jurisdictions, in laymans terms they are usually equivalent in concept, although in various jurisdictions there are accounting and legal differences. The nonprofit landscape is varied, although many people have come to associate NPOs with charitable organizations. Although charities do make up an often high-profile or visible aspect of the sector, overall, they tend to be either member-serving or community-serving. e. It could be argued many nonprofits sit across both camps, at least in terms of the impact they make. For example, the support group that provides a lifeline to those with a particular condition or disease could be deemed to be serving its members. Many NPOs use the model of a bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit. Although NPOs are permitted to generate revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion. NPOs have controlling members or a board of directors, many have paid staff including management, whereas others employ unpaid volunteers and executives who work with or without compensation. In some countries, where there is a fee, in general. The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted. Some NPOs may also be a charity or service organization, they may be organized as a corporation or as a trust. Their goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, NPOs have a wide diversity of structures and purposes. Some of the above must be expressed in the charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the authority at each particular jurisdiction. While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose, most countries have laws that regulate the establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes
2.
Center for Inquiry
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The Center for Inquiry is a nonprofit educational organization. Its primary mission is to foster a society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry. CFI has headquarters in the United States and a number of locations around the world, the organization has been described as a think tank and as a non-governmental organization. In January 2016, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science announced that it was merging with the Center for Inquiry, the Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by philosopher and author Paul Kurtz. It brought together two organizations, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Council for Secular Humanism, CSICOP and CSH had previously operated in tandem but were now formally affiliated under one umbrella. By 1995 CFI had expanded into a new headquarters in Amherst, New York, in the same year, CFI founded the Campus Freethought Alliance, organizing college students around its areas of interest. By 1997 CFI had begun expanding its efforts internationally through an association with Moscow State University, between 2002 and 2003 CFI opened two new branches in New York City and Tampa, Florida in addition to expanding its west coast branch into a new building in Hollywood, California. Located on Hollywood Boulevard, CFI West also became home to the Steve Allen Theater, named after the former Tonight Show host, in 2004, CFI continued to expand into cities across the United States with the creation of a network of community organizations called CFI Communities. In 2005 CFI once again expanded its Amherst headquarters with a new research wing, additionally, CFI was granted special consultative status with the United Nations the same year. Since 2006 CFI has been expanding rapidly with a series of new branches in cities across North America and these include new Centers for Inquiry in Toronto, London, Washington, D. C. Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Austin, Texas, the branch in Washington is headquarters to CFIs Office of Public Policy, which represents CFIs interests on Capitol Hill. In January 2016, CFI announced that it was merging with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, according to Paul Kurtz, in June 2009, being at odds with new CEO Ronald Lindsay, Kurtz was voted out as chairman. Kurtz has described the direction of CFI under Lindsay as angry atheism in contrast to his affirmative humanist philosophical approach. The Center for Inquiry Board Statement from 2010, thanks Kurtz for his decades of service and claims that Much of CFI’s success is due to Paul Kurtz’s inspiration and leadership. The release states that with Kurtzs encouragement, new leadership was sought out, the Board according to CFI prior to 2010 had become concerned with Kurtzs day-to-day management of the organization. In June 2008, the board appointed Dr. Ronald A. Lindsay president & CEO, in June 2009, in May 2010, the Board accepted Kurtzs resignation from CFI. It also explores the fringes and borderlands of the sciences, attempting to separate strictly evidence-based research from pseudosciences, CSICOP was, alongside magician and prominent skeptic James Randi, sued by TV celebrity Uri Geller in the 1990s over claims made in the International Herald Tribune. The case ran for years with Geller ordered to pay costs and other charges
3.
Amherst, New York
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Amherst is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 122,366. This represents an increase of 5. 0% from the 2000 census, the town is in the northern part of the county and borders a section of the Erie Canal. The town of Amherst was created by the State of New York on April 10,1818, Amherst was formed from part of the town of Buffalo, which had previously been created from the town of Clarence. Timothy S. Hopkins was elected the first supervisor of the town of Amherst in 1819, part of Amherst was later used to form the town of Cheektowaga in 1839. The Town of Amherst Archives Center is housed in the Former Reformed Mennonite Church, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 53.6 square miles, of which 53.2 square miles is land and 0.39 square miles. Much of Amherst was originally floodplain and marshland, much of which has been drained in recent years to facilitate development of new homes and businesses. The northern part of the town is relatively undeveloped, with the prominent exception of the portions along Niagara Falls Boulevard bordering the towns of Tonawanda. Some sections of northern and eastern Amherst have experienced problems with residential foundations as a result of soil conditions. A few active farms may still be found in the part of the town. Amherst is bordered on the north by Tonawanda Creek and Niagara County, ellicott Creek flows through the town. Areas within Amherst are referred to by the former post office station names and are not legally incorporated, mailing addresses to areas within the town are Amherst, East Amherst, Eggertsville, Getzville, Snyder, and Williamsville. These postal districts are recognized by the post office and widely referred to by citizens. The areas listed below are governed and run by the Town of Amherst except for the Village of Williamsville, Eggertsville is a suburban community in the southwest part of the town, bordering on Buffalo centered around Eggert Road. Daemen College is located on Main Street, the community is named after early postmaster Christian Eggert. Getzville -- A location near the center of the town by Campbell Boulevard, the name comes from early resident Joseph Getz. Audubon - A location in the center of the town situated around John James Audubon Parkway, the town police, courthouse, and main library are located here
4.
World
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The world is the planet Earth and all life upon it, including human civilization. In a philosophical context, the world is the whole of the physical Universe, in a theological context, the world is the material or the profane sphere, as opposed to the celestial, spiritual, transcendent or sacred. The end of the world refers to scenarios of the end of human history. World history is understood as spanning the major geopolitical developments of about five millennia. World population is the sum of all human populations at any time, similarly, world economy is the sum of the economies of all societies or countries, terms like world championship, gross world product, world flags imply the sum or combination of all current-day sovereign states. The English word world comes from the Old English weorold, weorld, worold, a compound of wer man and eld age, which thus means roughly Age of Man. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *wira-alđiz, also reflected in Old Saxon werold, Old High German weralt, the corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally clean, elegant, itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos orderly arrangement. Earth, on the hand, refers to the planet as a physical entity. World was also used to mean the material universe, or the cosmos, The worlde is an apte frame of heauen and earthe. The earth was often described as the center of the world, World can also be used attributively, to mean global, relating to the whole world, forming usages such as world community or world canonical texts. By extension, a world may refer to any planet or heavenly body, especially when it is thought of as inhabited, World, in its original sense, when qualified, can also refer to a particular domain of human experience. The world of work describes paid work and the pursuit of a career, in all its aspects, to distinguish it from home life. The fashion world describes the environment of the designers, fashion houses, historically, the New World vs. the Old World, referring to the parts of the world colonized in the wake of the age of discovery. Now mostly used in zoology and botany, as in New World monkey, in philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe, in others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense. The question of what the world is has by no means been settled, in his Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between forms and ideas and imagines two distinct worlds, the sensible world and the intelligible world. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels philosophy of history, the expression Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht is used to assert the view that History is what judges men, their actions, science is born from the desire to transform the World in relation to Man, its final end is technical application. The World as Will and Representation is the work of Arthur Schopenhauer
5.
Barry Karr
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Barry Karr is the Executive Director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is consulted by the media for all things paranormal, Karr has been involved in many investigations including faith healing, UFOs, firewalking, ghosts and many others. He is an author in two anthology publications, and as an editor of two others. Karr is a proponent of skepticism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. His parents are Angelina and Leo Karr of Arkport, NY, Angelina Karr taught speech therapy for five years in Scio before becoming an elementary school teacher at Hornell in Arkport. She served on the board from 1973-1988 and was active on the New York State Boards Association. Both parents were members of the American Legion, Karr and his four siblings all went through the Arkport school system. Karr began by stuffing envelopes part-time at CSICOP during his year in college. After graduation from State University of New York at Buffalo with a science degree. In 2012 Karr was awarded for his 25 years of service, Karr has been involved in many investigations including remote viewing, ghost hunting, firewalking, UFOs, Satanism, faith healing. About CSICOP, he said, We approach the paranormal with an open mind and we try to show people that claims are made for all kinds of powers and demonstrate that the evidence is not there to support them. People are looking for the mystical, as far as proving or disproving God, Karr was interviewed as saying CSICOP takes no formal stance on the existence of God. There is no litmus test for membership in CSICOP. Karr feels that holding a belief in the supernatural and superstition can detract from the advancement of the human race, people want to make decisions rationally but to do that they need to be aware of science and technology, that does not mix with the supernatural. We believe before you jump into the realm of the paranormal and you should explore some of the rational alternatives. Karr is surprised by people who continue to believe in the paranormal when faced with strong evidence that it does not exist and he states that you can explain 99 out of 100 UFO sightings, and they will still say Well what about this one. Newspapers are in the business to sell newspapers, and people love a mystery, Karr has become worried that mainstream media had fallen into the mode of hype now, explain later. Karr has often asked to test claims of weeping statues but states that claims are denied by the churches involved
6.
Paul Kurtz
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Paul Kurtz was a prominent American skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called the father of secular humanism and he was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research. Kurtz founded the publishing house Prometheus Books in 1969 and he was also the founder and past chairman of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry. He was editor in chief of Free Inquiry magazine, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism and he was co-chair of the International Humanist and Ethical Union from 1986 to 1994. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Humanist Laureate, president of the International Academy of Humanism, as a member of the American Humanist Association, he contributed to the writing of Humanist Manifesto II. He was an editor of The Humanist, 1967–78, Kurtz published over 800 articles or reviews and authored and edited over 50 books. Many of his books have been translated into over 60 languages, Kurtz was born in Newark, New Jersey, into a Jewish family, the son of Sara Lasser and Martin Kurtz. Kurtz received his bachelors degree from New York University, and the Masters degree, Kurtz was left-wing in his youth, but has said that serving in the United States Army in World War II taught him the dangers of ideology. Kurtz was largely responsible for the secularization of humanism and this can be seen in the first article of the original Humanist Manifesto which refers to Religious Humanists and by Charles and Clara Potters influential 1930 book Humanism, A New Religion. He founded the Center for Inquiry in 1991, in 1999 Kurtz was given the International Humanist Award by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He did a lot to expand IHEU as a member of the IHEU Growth and Development Committee and then when he was co-chair, also with Rob and he always pushed IHEU to be bigger and bolder. In 2000 he received the International Rationalist Award by Rationalist International, in 2001, he debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig over the nature of morality. Kurtz believed that the members of the community should take a positive view on life. Religious skepticism, according to Paul Kurtz, is one aspect of the secular humanistic outlook. On May 18,2010, he resigned all these positions. Kurtzs day-to-day management of the organization, Kurtz renewed his efforts in organized humanism by founding The Institute for Science and Human Values and its journal The Human Prospect, A NeoHumanist Perspective in June 2010. Another aspect in Kurtzs legacy is his critique of the paranormal, in 1976, CSICOP started Skeptical Inquirer, its official journal. Like Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, Ray Hyman and others, Kurtz has popularized scientific skepticism and critical thinking about claims of the paranormal
7.
Skeptical movement
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The skeptical movement is a modern social movement promoting the idea of scientific skepticism. The process followed is referred to as skeptical inquiry. Medical quackery was also targeted by such as the Dutch Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij. The Belgian Comité Para has been deemed the oldest broad mandate skeptical organization, using that organization as a template, in 1976, Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi founded the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in Amherst, New York. The North American skeptical organization, which provides journals and publications, Scientific skepticism is different from philosophical skepticism, which questions our ability to claim any knowledge about the nature of the world and how we perceive it. Methodological skepticism, a process of being skeptical about the truth of ones beliefs, is similar. The New Skepticism described by Paul Kurtz is scientific skepticism, for example, Robert K. Merton asserts that all ideas must be tested and are subject to rigorous, structured community scrutiny. According to Hammer, the forebears of the modern skeptical movement are rather to be found among the many writers throughout history who have argued against beliefs they did not share. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion, Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas—no sacred cows allowed, in other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. With regard to the social movement, Loxton refers to other movements already promoting humanism, atheism, rationalism, science education. He saw the demand for the new movement of people called skeptics — being based on a lack of interest by the scientific community to address paranormal. In line with Kendrick Frazier, he describes the movement as a surrogate in that area for institutional science, the movement in so far set up a distinct field of study and provided an organizational structure, while long-standing genre of individual skeptical activities lacked such a community and background. However, skeptical organizations do typically tend to have education and promotion among their goals. Scientific skeptics maintain that empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth, Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Skeptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, Skepticism in general may be deemed part of the scientific method, for instance an experimental result is not regarded as established until it can be shown to be repeatable independently. Some leaders of the movement, including Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, the movement has had issues with sexism. It was raised in a 1985 skeptic newsletter by Mary Coulman and this became known as Elevatorgate, based on Watsons discussion about being propositioned in a hotel elevator in the early morning after a skeptic event
8.
Nobel Prize
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The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895, the prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 23 organisations, the prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden. Each recipient, or laureate, receives a medal, a diploma. The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. The prize is not awarded posthumously, however, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, though the average number of laureates per prize increased substantially during the 20th century, a prize may not be shared among more than three people. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden and he was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill and this invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite, Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, as it was Alfreds brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered and this inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million SEK, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. Because of skepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of Nobels will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobels fortune, Nobels instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organisations were designated or established and these were Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded, and, in 1900, in 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved
9.
Psychologist
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A psychologist is a professional who evaluates and studies behavior and mental processes. In order to become a psychologist, a person must complete either a degree or a doctorate degree. This definition of a psychologist is non-exclusive, in most jurisdictions, members of other professions can also evaluate, diagnose, treat, there are many types of psychologists, as is reflected by the 56 divisions of the American Psychological Association. Psychologists are generally described as applied or research-orientated, the training models endorsed by the APA require that applied psychologists be trained as both researchers and practitioners, and that they possess advanced degrees. People often think of the discipline as involving clinical or counseling psychology, while counseling and psychotherapy are common activities for psychologists, these applied fields are just one branch in the larger domain of psychology. Under the national law, registration of psychologists is administered by the Psychology Board of Australia, before July 2010, professional registration of psychologists was governed by various State and Territory Psychology Registration Board. The Australian Psychology Accreditation Council oversees education standards for the profession of psychology, endorsement within a specific area of practice requires additional qualifications. These notations are not specialist titles, membership with Australian Psychological Society differs from registration as a psychologist. The standard route to membership of the APS technically requires a masters or doctorate in psychology from an accredited course. An alternate route is available for academics and practitioners who have gained appropriate experience, Association membership requires four years of APAC-accredited undergraduate study. Restrictions apply to all individuals using the title psychologist in all states and territories of Australia, however, the terms psychotherapist, social worker, and counselor are currently self-regulated with several organizations campaigning for government regulation. Since 1933, the title psychologist has been protected by law in Belgium and it can only be used by people who are on the National Government Commission list. The minimum requirement is the completion of five years of university training in psychology, the title of psychotherapist is not legally protected. In Finland, the title psychologist is protected by law, the restriction for psychologists is governed by National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health. It takes 330 ECTS-credits to accomplish the university studies, there are about 6200 licenced psychologists in Finland. Originally, a degree in psychology awarded in Germany included the subject of clinical psychology. With the Bologna-reform, this degree was replaced by a masters degree, the academic degree of Diplom-Psychologe or M. Sc. does not include a psychotherapeutic qualification, which requires three to five years of additional training. The psychotherapeutic training combines in-depth theoretical knowledge with supervised patient care, after having completed the training requirements, psychologists take a state-run exam, which, upon successful completion, confers the official title of psychological psychotherapist
10.
Buffalo, New York
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Buffalo is a city in western New York state and the county seat of Erie County, on the eastern shores of Lake Erie at the head of the Niagara River. As of 2014, Buffalo is New York states 2nd-most populous city after New York City, the metropolitan area has a population of 1.13 million. After an economic downturn in the half of the 20th century, Buffalos economy has transitioned to sectors that include financial services, technology, biomedical engineering. Residents of Buffalo are called Buffalonians, the citys nicknames include The Queen City, The Nickel City and The City of Good Neighbors. The city of Buffalo received its name from a creek called Buffalo Creek. British military engineer Captain John Montresor made reference to Buffalo Creek in his journal of 1764, there are several theories regarding how Buffalo Creek received its name. In 1804, as principal agent opening the area for the Holland Land Company, Joseph Ellicott, designed a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown like bicycle spokes similar to the street system he used in the nations capital. Although Ellicott named the settlement New Amsterdam, the name did not catch on, during the War of 1812, on December 30,1813, Buffalo was burned by British forces. The George Coit House 1818 and Samuel Schenck House 1823 are currently the oldest houses within the limits of the City of Buffalo, on October 26,1825, the Erie Canal was completed with Buffalo a port-of-call for settlers heading westward. At the time, the population was about 2,400, the Erie Canal brought about a surge in population and commerce, which led Buffalo to incorporate as a city in 1832. In 1845, construction began on the Macedonia Baptist Church, an important meeting place for the abolitionist movement, Buffalo was a terminus point of the Underground Railroad with many fugitive slaves crossing the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario in search of freedom. During the 1840s, Buffalos port continued to develop, both passenger and commercial traffic expanded with some 93,000 passengers heading west from the port of Buffalo. Grain and commercial goods shipments led to repeated expansion of the harbor, in 1843, the worlds first steam-powered grain elevator was constructed by local merchant Joseph Dart and engineer Robert Dunbar. Darts Elevator enabled faster unloading of lake freighters along with the transshipment of grain in bulk from barges, canal boats, by 1850, the citys population was 81,000. At the dawn of the 20th century, local mills were among the first to benefit from hydroelectric power generated by the Niagara River, the city got the nickname City of Light at this time due to the widespread electric lighting. It was also part of the revolution, hosting the brass era car builders Pierce Arrow. President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6,1901, McKinley died in the city eight days later and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at the Wilcox Mansion as the 26th President of the United States. The Great Depression of 1929–39 saw severe unemployment, especially working class men
11.
Astrology
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Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash
12.
Bart Bok
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Bartholomeus Jan Bart Bok was a Dutch-born American astronomer, teacher, and lecturer. Bok suggested that these globules may be in the process of contracting, the Boks displayed such great mutual enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public that The Boston Globe described them in 1936 as salesmen of the Milky Way. Boks primary research interest was the structure of our galaxy, Bart Bok was an exceedingly popular personality in the field of astronomy, noted for his affability and humor. When asteroid 1983 Bok was named for him and his wife Priscilla, he thanked the International Astronomical Union for giving him a plot of land that I can retire to. After completing high school, he went on to study astronomy at Leiden and Groningen Universities, in 1928, he attended the International Astronomical Union Third General Assembly in Leiden in the Netherlands. Priscilla Fairfield was a professor in Astronomy, and the young Bart Bok was assigned to her reception committee. He was a student ten years her junior, but he fell in love. Priscilla did not accept his proposal at the time, and Bart corresponded with her for the year before she finally agreed. On September 9,1929, two days after moving to the US, the two were married and this caused some awkwardness with their mutual superior Shapley, who regarded Priscilla as something of a protégée and was protective of her. While Bok had the greatest admiration for Shapley, it took Shapley time to build the level of trust with Bok. The Boks remained at Harvard University for almost thirty years, from 1929 until 1957, where he taught astronomy and directed the Harvard Observatory. Meanwhile, Priscilla was also conducting her own research and writing with Bart, but she was not being paid, the Boks had two children, a son, John Fairfield, in 1930 and a daughter, Joyce Annetta, in 1933. Priscilla stayed at home until the children finished high school, so she published less research herself in this period, nevertheless, she was consistently involved with supporting Barts research and their public outreach activities often put them together and gave her some degree of recognition. When Bart became a naturalized US citizen in 1938, he shortened his first name to Bart and they co-authored a number of academic papers on star clusters, stellar magnitudes, and the structure of the Milky Way. Their enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public led to them being well known and we lived in Lexington at the time. The cleaning woman would say to her, Upstairs you go, youve gotta go to work, dont just sit here, and she worked very hard at it, and in the beginning we had eight chapters in the book. We agreed that I would write four chapters and she would write four chapters, and that we loved each other dearly, no problems. Then, after we had gone through this for five or six months
13.
American Humanist Association
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In 1927 an organization called the Humanist Fellowship began at a gathering in Chicago. In 1928 the Fellowship started publishing the New Humanist magazine, H. G. Creel was the first editor. The New Humanist was published from 1928 to 1936, by 1935 the Humanist Fellowship had become the Humanist Press Association, the first national association of humanism in the United States. The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933, signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers and theologians. They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, upon ordination these ministers were then accorded the same rights and privileges granted by law to priests, ministers, and rabbis of traditional theistic religions. Curtis Reese was a leader in the 1941 reorganization and incorporation of the Humanist Press Association as the American Humanist Association, along with its reorganization, the AHA began printing The Humanist magazine. The AHA was originally headquartered in Yellow Springs, Ohio, then San Francisco, California, subsequently, the AHA moved to Washington, D. C. In 1952 the AHA became a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in Amsterdam. As an international coalition of Humanist organizations, the IHEU stands today as the international umbrella group for Humanism. The AHA was the first national organization to support abortion rights. Around the same time, the AHA joined hands with the American Ethical Union to help establish the rights of conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. This time also saw Humanists involved in the creation of the first nationwide memorial societies, in 1991 the AHA took control of the Humanist Society, a religious Humanist organization that now runs the celebrant program. Since 1991 the organization has worked as an adjunct to the American Humanist Association to certify qualified members to serve in this capacity as ministers. The Humanist Societys ministry prepares Humanist Celebrants to lead ceremonial observances across the nation, Celebrants provide millions of Americans an alternative to traditional religious weddings, memorial services, and other life cycle events. After this transfer, the AHA commenced the process of jettisoning its religious tax exemption, today the AHA is recognized by the U. S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit, tax exempt,501, membership numbers are disputed, but Djupe and Olson place it under 50,000. The AHA has over 575,000 followers on Facebook and over 42,000 followers on Twitter, the AHA is also the supervising organization for various Humanist affiliates and adjunct organizations. The Black Humanist Alliance of the American Humanist Association was founded in 2016 as a pillar of its new Initiatives for Social Justice, like the Feminist Humanist Alliance and the LGBT Humanist Alliance, the Black Humanist Alliance uses an intersectional approach to addressing issues facing the Black community
14.
Martin Gardner
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He was considered a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carrolls two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies and he had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and was regarded as one of the most important magicians of the twentieth century. He was considered the dean of American puzzlers and he was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books. Gardner was one of the foremost anti-pseudoscience polemicists of the 20th century and his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, published in 1957, became a classic and seminal work of the skeptical movement. In 1976 he joined with fellow skeptics to found CSICOP, an organization promoting scientific inquiry, Gardner, son of a petroleum geologist, grew up in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. His lifelong interest in puzzles started in his boyhood when his father gave him a copy of Sam Loyds Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks and he attended the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelors degree in philosophy in 1936. Early jobs included reporter on the Tulsa Tribune, writer at the University of Chicago Office of Press Relations, during World War II, he served for four years in the U. S. Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort USS Pope in the Atlantic. His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945, after the war, Gardner returned to the University of Chicago. He attended graduate school for a year there, but he did not earn an advanced degree, in 1950 he wrote an article in the Antioch Review entitled The Hermit Scientist. His paper-folding puzzles at that magazine led to his first work at Scientific American, appropriately enough—given his interest in logic and mathematics—they lived on Euclid Avenue. The year 1960 saw the edition of his best-selling book ever. In 1979, Gardner retired from Scientific American and he and his wife Charlotte moved to Hendersonville and he also revised some of his older books such as Origami, Eleusis, and the Soma Cube. Charlotte died in 2000 and two years later Gardner returned to Norman, Oklahoma, where his son, James Gardner, was a professor of education at the University of Oklahoma and he died there on May 22,2010. An autobiography — Undiluted Hocus-Pocus, The Autobiography of Martin Gardner — was published posthumously, the main-belt asteroid 2587 Gardner discovered by Edward L. G. Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station in 1980 is named after Martin Gardner. Martin Gardner had a impact on mathematics in the second half of the 20th century. His column was called Mathematical Games but it was more than that. His writing introduced many readers to real mathematics for the first time in their lives, the column lasted for 25 years and was read avidly by the generation of mathematicians and physicists who grew up in the years 1956 to 1981. It was the inspiration for many of them to become mathematicians or scientists themselves
15.
Ray Hyman
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Ray Hyman is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz is one of the founders of the skeptical movement. He is the founder and leader of the Skeptics Toolbox, Hyman serves on the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In his teenage years and while attending Boston University as a man, he worked as a magician and mentalist. This fascination with why this happened led him to switch from a journalist degree to psychology, grothe asked Hyman How does a young psychology student get into this parapsychology racket. Hyman replied that it began when he was hired as a magician at age 7 performing for the Parents and this led him to read all about Harry Houdini and his work with spiritualists. By the age of 16 he started investigating spiritualist meetings, Thinking back to age 7, I cant ever remember not being a skeptic. Magicians who perform mentalism debate among themselves using a disclaimer. The disclaimer is supposed to inform the audience that what they are witnessing is entertainment, in an interview with mentalist Mark Edward, Edward asked Hyman if he had ever used a disclaimer during the six years when he performed professionally as a mentalist. Hyman told him he did not remember explicitly using a disclaimer and he remembered always beginning the performance by stating that he did not claim any special powers. He was an entertainer and he hoped they would enjoy the show. After he became a psychologist, he realized that this was an example of the “invited inference. ”By openly stating that he made no claims about the nature of his ability, Hyman had given his audience no reason to challenge him. Indeed, he had invited the onlookers to make their own inferences about the source of the apparent feats of mind reading, most of them concluded he was truly psychic. He obtained a doctorate in psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 1953 and he also became an expert in statistical methods. In 2007 Hyman received a doctorate from the Simon Fraser University for his intellect. For his courageous advocacy of unfettered skeptical inquiry, in 1982, Hyman held the Spook Chair for one year at Stanford University during a sabbatical from the University of Oregon. What the Stanford University psychologists informally call the chair is officially known as The Thomas Welton Stanford Chair for Psychical Research. Thomas Welton was the brother of Stanford’s founder, Leland Stanford, according to Jim Alcock, “His article on cold reading, so Paul Kurtz informs me, has generated more requests for reprints than any other article in the history of the Skeptical Inquirer”
16.
James Randi
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James Randi is a Canadian-American retired stage magician and a scientific skeptic who has extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Randi is the co-founder of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, Randi retired from practicing magic aged 60, and from the JREF aged 87. Although often referred to as a debunker, Randi has said he dislikes the terms connotations and he has written about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was featured on the television program Penn & Teller. The paranormal challenge was terminated by the JREF in 2015. The foundation continues to make grants to groups that encourage critical thinking. Randi was born on August 7,1928 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and he has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone Sr. and reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident and he confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again. Randi often skipped classes and, at 17, dropped out of school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practised as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Torontos Canadian National Exhibition, in his thirties, Randi worked in the UK, Europe, and Philippine nightclubs and all across Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural, One of his earliest reported experiences is that of seeing an evangelist using a version of the one-ahead technique to convince churchgoers of his divine powers. Though defining himself as a conjuror, Randi began a career as a stage magician. Initially, he presented himself under his name, Randall Zwinge. Early in his career, he performed numerous acts from jail cells. In 1967–68, Randi hosted The Amazing Randi Show on New York radio station WOR, Randi, in turn, spoke at Moseleys 1967 Fourth Congress of Scientific Ufologists in New York City, stating, Lets not fool ourselves. There are some garden variety liars involved in all this, but in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of Ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth. Randi also hosted television specials and went on several world tours. As The Amazing Randi he appeared regularly on the New York-based childrens television series Wonderama from 1959 to 1967 and he also auditioned for a revival of the 1950s childrens show The Magic Clown in 1970, which showed briefly in Detroit and in Kenya, but was never picked up
17.
Marcello Truzzi
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Truzzi was an investigator of various protosciences and pseudosciences and, as fellow CSICOP cofounder Paul Kurtz dubbed him the skeptics skeptic. He is credited with originating the oft-used phrase Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, Truzzi was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was the only child of juggler Massimiliano Truzzi and his wife Sonya. His family moved to the United States in 1940 where his father performed with the Ringling Bros. Truzzi served in the United States Army between 1958 and 1960, he became a naturalized citizen in 1961. Truzzi founded the skeptical journal Explorations and was a member of the skeptic organization CSICOP as its co-chairman with Paul Kurtz. Truzzis journal became the journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and was renamed The Zetetic. The journal remained under his editorship and he left CSICOP about a year after its founding, after receiving a vote of no confidence from the groups Executive Council. Kendrick Frazier became the editor of CSICOPs journal and the name was changed to Skeptical Inquirer, after leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar. He promoted the term zeteticism as an alternative to skepticism, because he thought that the term was being usurped by what he termed pseudoskeptics. A zetetic is a skeptical seeker, the terms origins lie in the word for the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho in ancient Greece. A kind way to state these differences might be to say that Marcello belonged to the Pyrrhonian tradition and he accused CSICOP of increasingly unscientific behavior, for which he coined the term pseudoskepticism. Truzzi stated, They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion, most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal, they are out to knock them. When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then move the goal posts. Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say its a mere anomaly, Truzzi held that CSICOP researchers sometimes also put unreasonable limits on the standards for proof regarding the study of anomalies and the paranormal. Truzzi co-authored a book on psychic detectives entitled The Blue Sense, Psychic Detectives and it investigated many psychic detectives and concluded, e unearthed new evidence supporting both sides in the controversy. We hope to have shown much of the debate has been extremely simplistic. The book also stated that the evidence didnt meet the burden of proof demanded for such an extraordinary claim, although he was very familiar with folie à deux, Truzzi was very confident a shared visual hallucination could not be skeptically examined by one of the participators. Thus he categorized it as an anomaly, in a 1982 interview Truzzi stated that controlled ESP experiments have gotten the right results maybe 60 percent of the time. Truzzi remained an advisor to IRVA, the International Remote Viewing Association, Marcello Truzzi on riding roller coasters, as Keynote Speaker at the 1st annual National Roller Coaster Conference, “CoasterMania, ” held at Cedar Point Amusement Park, Sandusky, Ohio -1978
18.
Carl Sagan
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Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his work as a science popularizer and his best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to. Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Brocas Brain and Pale Blue Dot. The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, the book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name and his papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress. Sagan always advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the method, pioneered exobiology. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and he married three times and had five children. After suffering from myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62, Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then Russian Empire and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachels biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagans words and he had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of North American Judaisms four main groups, both Sagan and his sister agreed that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple. During the depths of the Depression, his father worked as a theater usher, according to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagans inner war was a result of his close relationship with both of his parents, who were in many ways opposites. Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had extremely poor as a child in New York City during World War I. As a young woman she had held her own ambitions, but they were frustrated by social restrictions, her poverty, her status as a woman and a wife. Davidson notes that she therefore worshipped her only son, Carl and he would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams. However, he claimed that his sense of wonder came from his father, in his free time he gave apples to the poor or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New Yorks garment industry
19.
Isaac Asimov
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Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of fiction and popular science. Asimov was a writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. His books have published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Asimov wrote hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein, Clarke, he was considered one of the Big Three science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimovs most famous work is the Foundation Series, his major series are the Galactic Empire series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. He wrote hundreds of stories, including the social science fiction Nightfall. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. Most of his science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies, Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly, he described some members of that organization as brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs. He took more joy in being president of the American Humanist Association, the asteroid 5020 Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, and a literary award are named in his honor. His exact date of birth within that range is unknown, the family name derives from a word for winter crops, in which his great-grandfather dealt. This word is spelled озимые in Russian, and азімыя in Belarusian, phonetically, both words are almost identical because in Russian О in the first unstressed syllable is always pronounced as А. Accordingly, his name originally was Исаак Озимов in Russian, however, he was known in Russia as Ayzek Azimov. Asimov had two siblings, a sister, Marcia, and a brother, Stanley, who was vice-president of New York Newsday. His family emigrated to the United States when he was three years old, since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in Yiddish as well as English. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five, after becoming established in the U. S. his parents owned a succession of candy stores, in which everyone in the family was expected to work
20.
B. F. Skinner
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Burrhus Frederic Skinner, commonly known as B. F. Skinner, was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974, Skinner considered free will an illusion and human action dependent on consequences of previous actions. If the consequences are bad, there is a chance the action will not be repeated, if the consequences are good. Skinner called this the principle of reinforcement, to strengthen behavior, Skinner used operant conditioning, and he considered the rate of response to be the most effective measure of response strength. To study operant conditioning he invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box, using these tools, he and C. B. Ferster produced his most influential work, which appeared in the book Schedules of Reinforcement. Skinner developed a philosophy of science that he called radical behaviorism and he imagined the application of his ideas to the design of a human community in his utopian novel, Walden Two, and his analysis of human behavior culminated in his work, Verbal Behavior. Skinner was an author who published 21 books and 180 articles. Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviorism, along with John B, a June 2002 survey listed Skinner as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, to Grace and William Skinner and he became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of the hell that his grandmother described. His brother Edward, two and a half years younger, died at age sixteen of a cerebral hemorrhage and he attended Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a writer. He found himself at a disadvantage at Hamilton College because of his intellectual attitude. While attending, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and he wrote for the school paper, but, as an atheist, he was critical of the religious school he attended. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1926, he attended Harvard University, where he would later research, teach, and eventually become a prestigious board member. While he was at Harvard, a student, Fred Keller. This led Skinner to invent his prototype for the Skinner Box, after graduation, he unsuccessfully tried to write a great novel while he lived with his parents, a period that he later called the Dark Years. Watsons Behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own version of behaviorism, Skinner received a Ph. D. from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a researcher until 1936. He remained at Harvard for the rest of his life, in 1973, Skinner was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II
21.
Philip J. Klass
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Philip Julian Klass was an American engineer, journalist, and UFO researcher, known for his skepticism regarding UFOs. In the ufological and skeptical communities, Klass tends to inspire strongly polarized appraisals and he has been called the Sherlock Holmes of UFOlogy. Klass demonstrated the crusaders zeal for what seems right, regardless of whether it brings popular acclaim, the rest, he said, were frauds. Longtime ufologist James W. Moseley illustrated the ambivalence many UFO researchers feel about Klass, on the one hand, Moseley argued that Klass was sincere in his motives and that his work ultimately benefited the field of Ufology. Klass was born November 8,1919, in Des Moines, Iowa, to Raymond Klass and Anne Traxler and his father was a lawyer recognized throughout the United States as an expert on automobile negligence law. As a Boy Scout he won a ride in an autogyro at the Iowa State Fair and he graduated from Iowa State College in 1941 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. Klass moved from the Midwest to Washington, D. C. when he went to work for Aviation Week, between maintaining his journalistic responsibilities and keeping up with claims from the UFO community, Klass spent much of his adult life as a loner and workaholic. His wife, Nadya, was six years his junior and worked for the Bulgaria service of Voice of America and they had no children of their own, but Nadya had a son who escaped with her from communist Bulgaria in 1973. For ten years, Klass worked for General Electric as an engineer in aviation electronics, dissatisfied with his job, in 1952 he moved to Washington, DC, and joined Aviation Week, which later became Aviation Week & Space Technology. He was an editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology for thirty-four years. Always striving to stay on the edge, Klass published an Exclusive Report on Counter Measures in the November 18th and 25th,1957. This report was referred to the FBI for the disclosure of information classified Secret. An investigation into the disclosure was dropped when the US Air Force told the FBI that the information could not be declassified for purposes of prosecution. Klass wrote some of the first articles on inertial guidance systems, infrared missile guidance and he generally is credited with coining the term Avionics to refer to electronic aviation control, a development he rightly predicted would revolutionize the industry. In 1973 Klass was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and he also was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the now-defunct Aviation/Space Writers Association, the National Press Club, and the National Aviation Club. Asteroid 7277 was named Klass after him, retiring in 1986 as senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, he continued to contribute to the magazine for several more years. Klasss involvement in the UFO field can be traced to his reading of journalist John G. Fullers Incident at Exeter, about a series of UFO sightings in and around Exeter, Klass wrote up his theory in a review of Fullers book which was published in Aviation Week. This was followed by another review of work by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
22.
Skeptical Inquirer
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Skeptical Inquirer is a bimonthly American magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry with the subtitle, The Magazine for Science and Reason. In 2016 it celebrated its fortieth anniversary, for most of its existence, the Skeptical Inquirer was published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, widely known by its acronym CSICOP. In 2006 the CSICOP Executive Council shortened CSICOP’s name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the formal mission statement, approved in 2006 and still current, states that. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, a shorter version of the mission statement appears in every issue, “. Promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial, a history of the first two decades is available in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal published in 1998 by S. I. editor Kendrick Frazier. The magazine was originally titled The Zetetic and was edited by Marcello Truzzi. The first issue was dated Fall/Winter 1976, soon after its inception a schism developed between the editor Truzzi and the rest of CSICOP. One side was more opposed to nonsense, more willing to go on the offensive and to attack supernatural claims. Truzzi left to start The Zetetic Scholar and CSICOP changed the name to Skeptical Inquirer. In 1977 Kendrick Frazier was appointed editor and he had previously been editor of Science News for six years. Kurtz noted that there had been “tremendous public fascination with the paranormal” and it was promoted and sensationalized by an irresponsible media. ”He stressed that “Our interest was not simply in the paranormal curiosity shop but to increase an understanding of how science works. ”Historian Daniel Loxton speculates on the answer to the question that if CSICOP was not the first skeptical publication. Loxton writes that it was because CSICOP organized this scholarship collectively comprised a field of study. The organization was the first to establish best practices, periodicals and professional writers and researchers. In the 1978 Spring and Summer edition, it was announced that the next issue publication would move from semi-annual to quarterly. From 1976 to 1995 the magazine had a digest-sized format, the U. K. magazine The Skeptic was first published in close association with SI. In 2014 the British version was handed back to the U. K. Skeptics, according to Kurtz, in the first twenty years, the magazine attempted to focus on the paranormal. Solving mysteries that were outside the range of normal, frogs dropping from the sky, UFO abductions, cattle mutilations, readers expected the magazine to have explanations. Kurtz states that these were exciting years, especially working with magicians who would often replicate the paranormal claim, the magazine often received criticism from the paranormal community, that they were being made fun of
23.
Kendrick Frazier
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Kendrick Crosby Frazier is a science writer and longtime editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. He is also an editor of Science News, author or editor of ten books. He is a fellow and a member of the council of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Frazier received a B. A. in Journalism from the University of Colorado and he is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the American Geophysical Union. He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Albuquerque, New Mexico and she is an international consultant in community development and a former president of Futures for Children, an organization which works with American Indians of the Southwest. Frazier was the earth sciences editor of Science News in 1969–70 and he was named managing editor in 1970–71, then editor from 1971 to 1977, and remained a contributing editor until 1981. In 1976 Frazier reported on the conference at which the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was founded. The committee published a journal called The Zetetic featuring articles examining the claims of occultism, in August 1977 Frazier became the editor of the journal, and with the first issue of 1978 its name was changed to the Skeptical Inquirer. He has written articles in every issue for years and participated in every national and international conference of the organization since 1977. His comprehensive history of CSICOP was published in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal and he retired as a Principal Member of Laboratory Staff. ”Three prominent scientists gave testimonials about the book. Astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote “Science Under Siege is an antidote to the profound science illiteracy that, today, permeates American pop culture. The Australian Skeptics National Convention in November 2014 and he spoke on organized skepticism of the past 40 years and of today. In 1985 the University of Colorado presented him with the George Norlin Award for outstanding achievement by an alumnus, the American Humanist Association awarded Frazier the Humanist Pioneer Award in 1995 for his effective worldwide advancement of rational skepticism. He received the In Praise of Reason Award, the highest honor from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in 2001. The award is given in recognition of distinguished contributions in the use of critical inquiry, scientific evidence, Other recipients of this award include Carl Sagan, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman and Nobel laureate physicist Leon Lederman. Our Turbulent Sun, by Kendrick Frazier, prentice Hall,1982, ISBN 0-13-644492-X Solar System. By Kendrick Frazier and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Time-Life Books,1985, ISBN 0-7054-0755-1 Science Confronts the Paranormal edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books,1986, ISBN 0-87975-314-5. The Hundredth Monkey, And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal, edited by Kendrick Frazier,1991, Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-655-1
24.
James Alcock
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James E. Alcock is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University since 1973, Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Skeptical Inquirer, and he has also been a columnist for Humanist Perspectives Magazine. In 1999, a panel of skeptics named him among the two dozen most outstanding skeptics of the 20th century, in May 2004, CSICOP awarded Alcock CSIs highest honor, the In Praise of Reason Award. Alcock is also a magician and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. James Alcock was chosen as a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association for making a contribution to the advancement of the science or profession of psychology. In his first television appearance in 1974, Alcock appeared on the TVOntario magazine show, The Education of Mike McManus and he sat on a panel discussing current paranormal research with a parapsychologist and a psychic healer. When asked if he was closed-minded to the possibility of psi, the experiments that have been done. They just dont satisfy the canons of science, until the parapsychologists can present evidence that satisfies the criteria of science theres nothing to investigate, theres no phenomenon there. He was appointed to the Executive Council a few years later, Alcocks 1981 book, Parapsychology-Science Or Magic. Alcock told a Register-Guard reporter who attended the 2003 conference, Science has many voices and we encourage people to listen to scientific evidence, but how do we determine who to listen to. And in the case of printed media, There are lots of things published that are sheer nonsense, learning to evaluate evidence is why workshops like the Toolbox are important. In October 2004 Alcock spoke at the World Skeptics Congress in Italy, as a member of the executive council of CFI, he addressed the opening session of the 2012 6th World Skeptic Congress in Berlin. He outlined the history of the skeptical movement as begun by CSICOP in April 1976 in Buffalo. The San Francisco Chronicle asked Alcock to comment on EVP and ghost-hunter instruments and he suggested several explanations for so-called voices from the dead. One theory is that the devices are picking up snatches of radio broadcasts. Another is called apophenia, which means that people tend to perceive patterns even when there are none, if we play the same piece of tape over and over. We maximize the opportunity for the apparatus in our brain to construct voices that do not exist
25.
Pierre-Simon Laplace
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Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace was an influential French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statistics, physics and astronomy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume Mécanique Céleste and this work translated the geometric study of classical mechanics to one based on calculus, opening up a broader range of problems. In statistics, the Bayesian interpretation of probability was developed mainly by Laplace, Laplace formulated Laplaces equation, and pioneered the Laplace transform which appears in many branches of mathematical physics, a field that he took a leading role in forming. The Laplacian differential operator, widely used in mathematics, is named after him. Laplace is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time, sometimes referred to as the French Newton or Newton of France, he has been described as possessing a phenomenal natural mathematical faculty superior to that of any of his contemporaries. Laplace became a count of the Empire in 1806 and was named a marquis in 1817, Laplace was born in Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy on 23 March 1749, a village four miles west of Pont lEveque in Normandy. According to W. W. Rouse Ball, His father, Pierre de Laplace and his great-uncle, Maitre Oliver de Laplace, had held the title of Chirurgien Royal. It would seem that from a pupil he became an usher in the school at Beaumont, however, Karl Pearson is scathing about the inaccuracies in Rouse Balls account and states, Indeed Caen was probably in Laplaces day the most intellectually active of all the towns of Normandy. It was here that Laplace was educated and was provisionally a professor and it was here he wrote his first paper published in the Mélanges of the Royal Society of Turin, Tome iv. 1766–1769, at least two years before he went at 22 or 23 to Paris in 1771, thus before he was 20 he was in touch with Lagrange in Turin. He did not go to Paris a raw self-taught country lad with only a peasant background, the École Militaire of Beaumont did not replace the old school until 1776. His parents were from comfortable families and his father was Pierre Laplace, and his mother was Marie-Anne Sochon. The Laplace family was involved in agriculture until at least 1750, Pierre Simon Laplace attended a school in the village run at a Benedictine priory, his father intending that he be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. At sixteen, to further his fathers intention, he was sent to the University of Caen to read theology, at the university, he was mentored by two enthusiastic teachers of mathematics, Christophe Gadbled and Pierre Le Canu, who awoke his zeal for the subject. Here Laplaces brilliance as a mathematician was recognised and while still at Caen he wrote a memoir Sur le Calcul integral aux differences infiniment petites et aux differences finies. About this time, recognizing that he had no vocation for the priesthood, in this connection reference may perhaps be made to the statement, which has appeared in some notices of him, that he broke altogether with the church and became an atheist. Laplace did not graduate in theology but left for Paris with a letter of introduction from Le Canu to Jean le Rond dAlembert who at time was supreme in scientific circles. According to his great-great-grandson, dAlembert received him rather poorly, and to get rid of him gave him a mathematics book
26.
David Hume
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David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Humes empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, Francis Bacon, beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Humes compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom, Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Arthur Schopenhauer once declared there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart. Hume is thus regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought. David Hume was the second of two born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, and his wife The Hon. Katherine. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Humes father died when Hume was a child, just after his birthday, and he was raised by his mother. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. His finances as a man were very slender. His family was not rich and, as a younger son and he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. Aged around 18, he made a discovery that opened up to him a new Scene of Thought. He did not recount what this scene was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations, due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the Disease of the Learned. Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a Laziness of Temper, later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Humes physician to make his diagnosis, Hume wrote that he went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills, taken along with a pint of claret every day
27.
H. L. Mencken
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Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the Sage of Baltimore, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and he commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the Monkey Trial, as a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress, skeptical of economic theories, Mencken opposed American entry into World War I and World War II. His diary indicates that he was a racist and privately used coarse language and slurs to describe various ethnic, Mencken also at times seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism, though never in its American form. War is a thing, he once wrote, because it is honest. A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid, Menckens longtime home in the Union Square neighborhood of West Baltimore was turned into a city museum, the H. L. Mencken House. His papers were distributed among various city and university libraries, with the largest collection held in the Mencken Room at the branch of Baltimores Enoch Pratt Free Library. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12,1880 and he was the son of Anna Margaret and August Mencken, Sr. a cigar factory owner. When Henry was three, his family moved into a new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square park in the Union Square neighborhood of old West Baltimore, apart from five years of married life, Mencken was to live in that house for the rest of his life. In his best-selling memoir Happy Days, he described his childhood in Baltimore as placid, secure, uneventful, when he was nine years old, he read Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn, which he later described as the most stupendous event in my life. He became determined to become a writer and read voraciously, in one winter while in high school he read Thackeray and then proceeded backward to Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Johnson and the other magnificos of the Eighteenth century. He read the entire canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Kipling, the site today is the War Memorial and City Hall Plaza laid out in 1926 in memory of World War I dead. At fifteen, in June 1896, he graduated as valedictorian from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, BPI was a mathematics, technical and science-oriented public high school, founded in 1883, which was then located on old Courtland Street just north of East Saratoga Street. This location is today the east side of St. Paul Street in St. Paul Place and he worked for three years in his fathers cigar factory. He disliked the work, especially the sales aspect of it, in early 1898 he took a class in writing at one of the countrys first correspondence schools, the Cosmopolitan University. This was to be the entirety of Menckens formal education in journalism, upon his fathers death a few days after Christmas in the same year, the business reverted to his uncle, and Mencken was free to pursue his career in journalism. He had applied in February 1899 to the Morning Herald newspaper and had hired as a part-timer there
28.
Syllogism
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A syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. In its earliest form, defined by Aristotle, from the combination of a statement and a specific statement. For example, knowing that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, Syllogistic arguments are usually represented in a three-line form, All men are mortal. In antiquity, two theories of the syllogism existed, Aristotelian syllogistic and Stoic syllogistic. Aristotle defines the syllogism as. a discourse in which certain things having been supposed, despite this very general definition, in Aristotles work Prior Analytics, he limits himself to categorical syllogisms that consist of three categorical propositions. From the Middle Ages onwards, categorical syllogism and syllogism were usually used interchangeably and this article is concerned only with this traditional use. The use of syllogisms as a tool for understanding can be dated back to the logical reasoning discussions of Aristotle, the onset of a New Logic, or logica nova, arose alongside the reappearance of Prior Analytics, the work in which Aristotle develops his theory of the syllogism. Prior Analytics, upon re-discovery, was regarded by logicians as a closed and complete body of doctrine, leaving very little for thinkers of the day to debate. Aristotles theories on the syllogism for assertoric sentences was considered especially remarkable, Aristotles Prior Analytics did not, however, incorporate such a comprehensive theory on the modal syllogism—a syllogism that has at least one modalized premise. Aristotles terminology in this aspect of his theory was deemed vague and in many cases unclear and his original assertions on this specific component of the theory were left up to a considerable amount of conversation, resulting in a wide array of solutions put forth by commentators of the day. The system for modal syllogisms laid forth by Aristotle would ultimately be deemed unfit for practical use, boethius contributed an effort to make the ancient Aristotelian logic more accessible. While his Latin translation of Prior Analytics went primarily unused before the twelfth century and his perspective on syllogisms can be found in other works as well, such as Logica Ingredientibus. With the help of Abelards distinction between de dicto modal sentences and de re modal sentences, medieval logicians began to shape a coherent concept of Aristotles modal syllogism model. For two hundred years after Buridans discussions, little was said about syllogistic logic, the Aristotelian syllogism dominated Western philosophical thought for many centuries. In the 17th century, Sir Francis Bacon rejected the idea of syllogism as being the best way to draw conclusions in nature. Instead, Bacon proposed a more inductive approach to the observation of nature, in the 19th century, modifications to syllogism were incorporated to deal with disjunctive and conditional statements. Kant famously claimed, in Logic, that logic was the one completed science, though there were alternative systems of logic such as Avicennian logic or Indian logic elsewhere, Kants opinion stood unchallenged in the West until 1879 when Frege published his Begriffsschrift. This introduced a calculus, a method of representing categorical statements by the use of quantifiers, in the last 20 years, Bolzanos work has resurfaced and become subject of both translation and contemporary study
29.
Science News
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Science News is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to short articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. Science News has been published since 1922 by Society for Science & the Public, American chemist Edwin Slosson served as the publications first editor. From 1922 to 1966, it was called Science News Letter, the title was changed to Science News with the March 12,1966 issue. Tom Siegfried was an editor from 2007-2012. In 2012, Siegfried stepped down, and Eva Emerson became the Editor in Chief of the magazine, in April 2008, the magazine changed from a weekly format to the current biweekly format, and the website was also redeployed. The April 12 issue was the last weekly issue, the first biweekly issue was dated May 10 and featured a new design. The 4-week break between the last weekly issue and first biweekly issue was explained in the Letter from the Publisher in the April 12 issue. The articles of the magazine are placed under News, Life Matter and Energy Atom and Cosmos Body and Brain Earth Genes and Cells The articles featured on the magazines cover are placed under Features. The departments that remain constant from issue to issue are, Editors Note—A column written by Eva Emerson, the magazines editor-in-chief, notebook—A page that includes several sections, Say What. —A definition and description of a scientific term. 50 Years Ago—An excerpt from an issue of the magazine. Mystery Solved—An explanation of the science underlying everyday life, SN Online—Excerpts from articles published online. How Bizarre. —An odd or interesting fact that may not be known to the magazines audience. Reviews and Previews—A discussion of upcoming and recently released books, movies and services, feedback—Letters from readers commenting on the recent Science News articles. While Science News conveys scientific facts, its headlines and articles often contain wry humor, pop-culture references, examples of catchy headlines and opening lines include, From author Bruce Bower, It’s enough to send chills down Ozzie’s and Harriet’s happily married, two-kids-and-a-backyard, 1950s-sitcom spines. All too often, high school students have to decide whether to join in on gulping down booze with the kids or lighting up a cigarette with parking-lot rebels. Welcome to Animation Domination, Stone Age style, from author Susan Milius, A patch over a male Gouldian finch’s right eye works like beer goggles, though the bird doesn’t need booze to flirt unwisely. If limited to using his left eye when checking out possible mates, the most ambitious effort yet to trace the evolutionary history and geography of living birds is ruffling the feathers of some old ideas. A dollop of living yellow ooze has aced a test of navigation, the likelihood of a worker exploding in a burst of toxins increases with age, at least in a species of tropical termite
30.
The Straight Dope
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The Straight Dope is an online question-and-answer newspaper column published in the Chicago Reader and syndicated in eight newspapers in the United States. The column appears under the tagline, Fighting ignorance since 1973, first published by the Reader in 1973, the column is written by Cecil Adams and illustrated by Slug Signorino. To date, Adams has published five collections of his columns, in 1996, the A&E Network briefly aired a show based on the column called The Straight Dope, hosted and co-written by comedian Mike Lukas. A podcast has also released sporadically. Urban legend Snopes. com FactCheck. org TruthOrFiction. com The Skeptics Dictionary MythBusters List of common misconceptions The Straight Dope The Straight Dope at the Internet Movie Database
31.
Bigfoot
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Bigfoot is a simian-like creature of American folklore that is said to inhabit forests, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid, the term sasquatch is an Anglicized derivative of the Halkomelem word sásqets. Scientists discount the existence of Bigfoot and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, occasional new reports of sightings sustain a small group of self-described investigators. Many reports of sightings are attributed to being various animals, particularly black bears, individuals claiming to have seen Bigfoot describe it as a large, hairy, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature, roughly 2–3 metres covered in hair described as black, dark brown, or dark reddish. Some descriptions include details such as eyes, a pronounced brow ridge. The top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, the creature has been reported as having a strong, unpleasant smell. The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as 24 inches long and 8 inches wide. Some footprint casts have also contained claw marks, making it likely that they came from animals, such as bears. Proponents of Bigfoots existence claim that the creature is omnivorous and mainly nocturnal, wild men stories are found among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most cultures have human-like giants in their folk history, each language had its own name for the creature featured in the local version of such legends. Many names meant something along the lines of wild man or hairy man, although other names described common actions it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees. A story told to Charles Hill-Tout by Chief Mischelle of the Nlakapamux at Lytton, British Columbia in 1898 gives another Salishan variant of the name, members of the Lummi tell tales about Tsemekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories are similar to other in the general descriptions of Tsemekwes. Some regional versions contained more nefarious creatures, the stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race that children were told not to say the names of lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a person—sometimes to be killed. In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the people about skoocooms. Less-menacing versions exist, such as the one recorded by Reverend Elkanah Walker, in 1840, Walker, a Protestant missionary, recorded stories of giants among the Native Americans living near present-day Spokane, Washington. The Indians said that these giants lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains, local stories were compiled by Indian Agent J. W. Burns in a series of Canadian newspaper articles in the 1920s recounting stories told to him by the StsAiles people of Chehalis and others. The StsAiles maintain, as do other indigenous peoples of the region, according to StsAiles eyewitness accounts, the Sasquatch prefer to avoid white men, and speak the Lillooet language of the people at Port Douglas, British Columbia at the head of Harrison Lake
32.
Unidentified flying object
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An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, UFOs are often identified after their sighting. Sometimes, however, UFOs cannot be identified because of the low quality of evidence related to their sightings, during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as flying saucers or flying discs. The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as An unidentified flying object, a flying saucer. The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe, the acronym UFO was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAFs official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, Obviously the term flying saucer is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape, for this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name, unidentified flying objects. Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include flying flapjack, flying disc, unexplained flying discs, unidentifiable object, the phrase flying saucer had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph, at the time, he claimed he described the objects flying in a saucer-like fashion, leading to newspaper accounts of flying saucers and flying discs. In popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft, between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. The term Ufology is used to describe the efforts of those who study reports. UFOs have become a prevalent theme in culture, and the social phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and psychology. Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history, an example is Halleys Comet, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC. Such sightings throughout history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. On January 25,1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word saucer in association with a UFO. In April 1897, thousands of people reported seeing airships in various parts of the United States, scores of people even reported talking to the pilots. Thomas Edison was asked his opinion, and said, You can take it from me that it is a pure fake, the largest had an apparent size of about six Suns, he said
33.
Parapsychology
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It is identified as pseudoscience by the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists. Parapsychology research is conducted by private institutions in several countries and funded through private donations. Most papers about parapsychology are published in a number of niche journals. Parapsychology has been criticised for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research and it has been noted that most academics do not take the claims of parapsychology seriously. Para is from Greek, and means beside, closely related to, the term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the psychical research in order to indicate a significant shift toward experimental methodology. The term originates from the Greek, παρά para meaning alongside, in parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis experiences that is not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is derived from the Greek ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet, the term was coined by biologist Berthold P. Wiesner, and first used by psychologist Robert Thouless in a 1942 article published in the British Journal of Psychology. The Parapsychological Association divides psi into two categories, psi-gamma for extrasensory perception and psi-kappa for psychokinesis. In popular culture, psi has become more and more synonymous with special psychic, mental, in 1853, the chemist Robert Hare conducted experiments with mediums and reported positive results. Other researchers such as Frank Podmore highlighted flaws in his experiments, agenor de Gasparin conducted early experiments into table-tipping. Over a period of five months in 1853 he declared the experiments a success being the result of an ectenic force, critics noted that the conditions were insufficient to prevent trickery. For example the knees of the sitters may have been employed to move the table and no experimenter was watching above, the German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner tested the medium Henry Slade in 1877. According to Zöllner some of the experiments were a success, however, flaws in the experiments were discovered and critics have suggested that Slade was a fraud who performed trickery in the experiments. The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882 and its formation was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet. Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad. Areas of study included telepathy, hypnotism, Reichenbachs phenomena, apparitions, hauntings, in the 1880s the Society investigated apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane
34.
Alternative medicine
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Alternative therapies or diagnoses are not part of medicine or science-based healthcare systems. Contrary to popular belief, significant expense is paid to test alternative medicine, almost none show any effect beyond that of false treatment. Alternative treatments are neither the same as experimental medicine, nor traditional medicine — although the latter, Alternative medicine has grown in popularity and is used by a significant percentage of the population in many countries. While it has rebranded itself, from quackery to complementary or integrative medicine—it promotes essentially the same practices. Newer proponents often suggest alternative medicine be used together with medical treatment. Despite being illegal to market alternative therapies for treatment in most of the developed world. Alternative therapies are based on religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural energies, pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud. Regulation and licensing of alternative medicine and health care providers varies between and within countries, Alternative medicine is criticized for being based on misleading statements, quackery, pseudoscience, antiscience, fraud, or poor scientific methodology. Promoting alternative medicine has been called dangerous and unethical, testing alternative medicine that has no scientific basis has been called a waste of scarce research resources. It has been suggested that the very idea of any alternative treatment that works is paradoxical. Practitioners of complementary medicine usually discuss and advise patients as to available alternative therapies, patients often express interest in mind-body complementary therapies because they offer a non-drug approach to treating some health conditions. In addition to the underpinnings of the popularity of alternative medicine. One of the most critical is the placebo effect—a well-established observation in medicine, CAMs popularity may be related to other factors that Edzard Ernst mentioned in an interview in The Independent, Why is it so popular, then. Ernst blames the providers, customers and the doctors whose neglect, there are 40 million websites and 39.9 million tell lies, sometimes outrageous lies. They mislead cancer patients, who are encouraged not only to pay their last penny, at the same time, people are gullible. It needs gullibility for the industry to succeed and it doesnt make me popular with the public, but its the truth. An analysis of the reasons why this is so points towards the relationship as a key factor. Providers of CAM tend to build better therapeutic relationships than mainstream healthcare professionals, in turn, this implies that much of the popularity of CAM is a poignant criticism of the failure of mainstream healthcare
35.
Barbara Forrest
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Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute, Forrest is a graduate of Hammond High School. She has taught philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University since 1988 and presently is a professor of philosophy in the Department of History and she co-authored Creationisms Trojan Horse, The Wedge of Intelligent Design, with biologist Paul R. Gross. The book examines the goals and strategies of the intelligent design movement, the authors analyze the absence of a scientific intelligent design hypothesis, IDs religious foundations, and the political ambitions of intelligent design proponents. They examine the movements Wedge strategy which has advanced and is succeeding through public relations rather than scientific research. They also highlight intelligent design creationisms relationship to public education and to the separation of church, Forrest was a key expert witness for the plaintiffs in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. The defendants were represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian, not-for-profit law center whose motto is The Sword, after Forrest had been deposed, the TMLC tried but failed to have her stopped from testifying. In a motion to have her removed as a witness, they described her as more than a conspiracy theorist. Judge Jones denied the motion and Forrests testimony began on October 5 and she wrote, On September 29, I noticed that DI had posted a transcript of an interview I had done—except that I hadnt done it. If DI thought this would unsettle me, they were ignoring the fact that I had just been through two killer hurricanes, I could only shake my head at their doing something so jaw-droppingly stupid. During her testimony the defense lawyers asked the court to exclude Forrest from testifying as expert witness. Judge Jones allowed them to present their case for dismissing her, aguillard which determined that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the United States constitution. Her testimony had a significant impact on Judge Joness decision, a year after the ruling Forrest, commented in a telephone interview It was very clear to everyone who followed the case that intelligent design is not science. The Discovery Institute has been trying for years to foment a court case, and they finally got one dropped in their laps and what was ironic is they didnt want it. They knew what this case would do to them, an essay by Forrest, The non-epistemology of intelligent design, its implications for public policy, was published online in March 2009 as part of a special issue of the journal Synthese. The issue was titled Evolution and Its Rivals and was guest edited by Glenn Branch and James H. Fetzer, Forrests essay strongly criticized philosopher Francis J. The note was perceived as directed at Forrests essay and drew angry denunciations from the guest editors, who were not consulted about the statement, at least one philosopher has withdrawn a paper from Synthese as a result. Forrest worked with Zack Kopplin and helped begin the campaign to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act law, the repeal effort, SB70 of 2011, failed in the Senate Education Committee by a 5-1 vote
36.
Bill Nye
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William Sanford Bill Nye, popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, television presenter, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the PBS childrens science show Bill Nye the Science Guy, currently, he is the CEO of The Planetary Society. Nye was born on November 27,1955, in Washington, after attending Lafayette Elementary and Alice Deal Junior High in the city, he was accepted to the private Sidwell Friends School on a partial scholarship and graduated in 1973. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University and graduated with a B. S. in mechanical engineering in 1977, Nye occasionally returns to Cornell as a guest-lecturer of introductory-level astronomy and human ecology classes. Nye began his career in Seattle at Boeing, where, among other things, he starred in training films, later, he worked as a consultant in the aeronautics industry. In 1999, he told the St. Petersburg Times that he applied to be a NASA astronaut every few years, Nye began his professional entertainment career as a writer/actor on a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle, Washington, called Almost Live. The host of the show, Ross Shafer, suggested he do some scientific demonstrations in a six-minute segment and his other main recurring role on Almost Live. was as Speedwalker, a speedwalking Seattle superhero. The segments national popularity led to Nyes hosting a television program, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Each of the 100 episodes aimed to teach a specific topic in science to a younger audience, with its comedic overtones, the show became popular as a teaching aid in schools. When portraying The Science Guy, Nye wears a blue lab coat. Nye has also several books as The Science Guy. In addition to hosting, he was a writer and producer for the show, all of it was filmed in the Seattle area. His voice is heard in the Dinosaur attraction in Disneys Animal Kingdom park and he appears in video form in the Design Lab of CyberSpace Mountain, inside DisneyQuest at Walt Disney World, where he refers to himself as Bill Nye the Coaster Guy. His Science Guy persona was also the spokesman for the Noggin television network during 1999. Nye remained interested in education through entertainment. He played a teacher in Disneys 1998 TV movie The Principal Takes a Holiday. From 2000 to 2002, Nye was the expert in BattleBots. In 2004 and 2005, Nye hosted 100 Greatest Discoveries, a series produced by THINKFilm for The Science Channel
37.
SkeptiCamp
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SkeptiCamps are smallish grassroots conferences where scientific skeptics come together and participate and present. The SkeptiCamp concept was founded in 2007 by Reed Esau, and was inspired by Daniel Loxtons 2007 essay on the state of the Skeptical movement. And from attending The Amaz. ng Meeting 2007 annual conference that focuses on science, skepticism, the SkeptiCamp format also allows ad hoc group formation, and avoids the overhead associated with more formal content channels. The first SkeptiCamp was held in August 2007 in Denver, and was organized by Reed Esau along with Rich Ludwig and Crystal Yates-White. The first SkeptiCamp in Northern California was hosted by the Monterey County Skeptics in Seaside, CA on January 3,2015, mentalist and skeptic activist Mark Edward emceed the event
38.
William B. Davis
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William Bruce Davis is a Canadian actor and director, best known for his role as the Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files. Besides appearing in many TV programs and movies, Davis founded his own acting school, in his personal life, Davis is an avid water-skier, lectures on skepticism at events such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquirys CSICon, and advocates for action on climate change. In 2011 Davis published his memoir, Where There’s Smoke, the Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man. Davis was born in Toronto, Canada, to a lawyer father and he began his acting career as a child in 1949, in radio drama and summer stock theatre. His cousins Murray and Donald Davis ran the Straw Hat Players in Ontario in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when they needed a boy they gave William his first professional acting job. He went on there to have a career as a boy actor on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio before his voice broke. In 1955 he enrolled in the University of Toronto to study philosophy, in 1959, he graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. While at university he switched his attention from acting to directing and with his partner, Karl Jaffary, took over, in 1960 Davis went to England to train at LAMDA. He worked in the UK for the five years directing in repertory theatres. He was artistic director of the Dundee Repertory Theatre and he returned to Canada in 1965 to work at The National Theatre School of Canada and soon, at the age of 28, was appointed artistic director of the English Acting Section. During this period he was active as a freelance director at major Canadian theatres. In 1971 he joined the newly formed Drama Department at Bishops University in Lennoxvile, while there he became the founding artistic director of Festival Lennoxville, a professional summer theatre that ran for the next decade. Returning to Toronto in the late seventies Davis spent several years as a drama director. In demand as a teacher during this period, he resumed acting after an absence of nearly twenty years. Davis earned a number of roles on stage and film before accepting the position of director of the Vancouver Playhouse Acting School. Davis writes in his memoir, And so, in the fall of 1985, we hitched our second hand boat to our second hand car and drove across the country. Acting roles became more frequent leading to his role, The Smoking Man. In addition to The X-Files, Davis has played a range of roles, on series from Stargate SG-1 to Smallville
39.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
40.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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The series premiered on March 10,1997, on The WB and concluded on May 20,2003, on UPN. The series narrative follows Buffy Summers, the latest in a line of women known as Vampire Slayers. In the story, Slayers are called to battle against vampires, demons, like previous Slayers, Buffy is aided by a Watcher, who guides, teaches, and trains her. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy surrounds herself with a circle of friends who become known as the Scooby Gang. The series received critical and popular acclaim, frequently being listed as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, although such ratings are lower than successful shows on the big four networks, they were a success for the relatively new and smaller WB Television Network. Buffys success has led to hundreds of products, including novels, comics. The series has received attention in fandom, parody, and academia, Buffy Summers is the Slayer, one in a long line of young women chosen by fate to battle evil forces. Buffy receives guidance from her Watcher, Rupert Giles, Giles, rarely referred to by his first name, is a member of the Watchers Council, whose job is to train and guide the Slayers. Giles researches the supernatural creatures that Buffy must face, offers insights into their origins and advice on how to defeat them, Buffy is also helped by friends she meets at Sunnydale High, Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris. Willow is originally a wallflower who excels at academics, providing a contrast to Buffys outgoing personality and they share the social isolation that comes with being different, and especially from being exceptional young women. As the series progresses, Willow becomes a more assertive character and a powerful witch, in contrast, Xander, with no supernatural skills but very athletic, provides comic relief and a grounded perspective. It is Xander who often provides the heart to the series, Buffy and Willow are the only characters who appear in all 144 episodes, Xander is missing in only one. The cast of characters grew over the course of the series, Buffy first arrives in Sunnydale with her mother, Joyce Summers, who functions as an anchor of normality in the Summers lives even after she learns of Buffys role in the supernatural world. Buffys younger sister Dawn Summers is introduced in season five, a vampire with a soul, Angel, is Buffys love interest throughout the first three seasons. He leaves Buffy as he believes he isnt good enough for her and he goes on to make amends for his sins and to search for redemption in his own spin-off, Angel. He makes several guest appearances in the seasons, including the last episode. At Sunnydale High, Buffy meets several other students besides Willow and Xander willing to join her fight for good, Cordelia Chase, the archetypal shallow cheerleader, reluctantly becomes involved. Daniel Oz Osbourne, a student, rock guitarist and werewolf
41.
Pseudoscience
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Pseudoscience consists of claims, beliefs, or practices presented as being plausible scientifically, but which are not justifiable by the scientific method. The term pseudoscience is often considered pejorative because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or even deceptively, accordingly, those termed as practicing or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterization. The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has philosophical and scientific implications, differentiating science from pseudoscience has practical implications in the case of health care, expert testimony, environmental policies, and science education. The word pseudoscience is derived from the Greek root pseudo meaning false and the English word science, an earlier recorded use of the term was during 1843 by the French physiologist François Magendie. From time to time, though, the usage of the word occurred in a formal, technical manner around a perceived threat to individual and institutional security in a social and cultural setting. A number of principles are accepted by scientists as standards for determining whether a body of knowledge, method. Experimental results should be reproducible and verified by other researchers, statistical quantification of significance, confidence, and error are also important tools for the scientific method. During the mid-20th century, Karl Popper emphasized the criterion of falsifiability to distinguish science from nonscience, falsifiability means a result can be disproved. For example, a statement such as God exists may be true or false, Popper used astrology and psychoanalysis as examples of pseudoscience and Einsteins theory of relativity as an example of science. The point is made there is no physical test to refute the claim of the presence of this dragon. No matter what test you think you can devise, there is then a reason why this does not apply to the invisible dragon, sagan concludes, Now, whats the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all. During 1942, Robert K. Merton identified a set of five norms which he characterized as what makes a real science, If any of the norms were violated, Merton considered the enterprise to be nonscience. These are not broadly accepted by the scientific community and his norms were, Originality, The tests and research done must present something new to the scientific community. Detachment, The scientists reasons for practicing this science must be simply for the expansion of their knowledge, the scientists should not have personal reasons to expect certain results. Universality, No person should be able to easily obtain the information of a test than another person. Social class, religion, ethnicity, or any other factors should not be factors in someones ability to receive or perform a type of science. Skepticism, Scientific facts must not be based on faith, one should always question every case and argument and constantly check for errors or invalid claims. Public accessibility, Any scientific knowledge one obtains should be available to everyone
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Transcendental Meditation technique
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The Transcendental Meditation technique is a specific form of mantra meditation developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is often referred to as Transcendental Meditation, or simply TM, the meditation practice involves the use of a mantra and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per day while sitting with ones eyes closed. It is reported to be one of the most-widely practiced, and among the most widely researched meditation techniques, with over 340 peer-reviewed studies published. Beginning in 1965, the Transcendental Meditation technique has been incorporated into schools, universities, corporations, and prison programs in the USA, Latin America, Europe. The technique has since been included in a number of educational and social programs around the world, the technique has been described as both religious and non-religious, as an aspect of a new religious movement, as rooted in Hinduism, and as a non-religious practice for self-development. Advanced courses supplement the TM technique and include an advanced meditation called the TM-Sidhi program, in 1970 the Science of Creative Intelligence, described as modern science with ancient Vedic science, became the theoretical basis for the Transcendental Meditation technique. The technique is recommended for 20 minutes twice per day, other authors describe the technique as an easy, natural technique or process, and a wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state. Practice of the technique includes a process called unstressing which combines effortless relaxation with spontaneous imagery, TM teachers caution their students not to be alarmed by random thoughts and to attend to the mantra. Scottish chess grandmaster Jonathan Rowson has said that his TM practice gives a feeling of serenity, energy and balance, but does not provide any powerful insight into your own mind. Laura Tenant, a reporter for The Independent, said that her TM experience includes going to a place which was neither wakefulness, sleeping or dreaming, worldwide, as many as four to ten million people are reported to be practitioners. The TM technique consists of repeating a mantra with gentle effortlessness while sitting comfortably with eyes closed. The mantra is said to be a vehicle that allows the individuals attention to travel naturally to a less active, one author discusses neurological theories about the importance of selecting the correct mantra. According to these, the mantra enters the nervous system via the brains speech area. TM meditators are instructed to keep their secret to ensure maximum results, to avoid confusion in the mind of the meditators. The Maharishi is reported to have standardized and mechanized the mantra selection process by using a set of mantras. Professor of psychiatry, Norman E. Rosenthal writes that during the training given by a certified TM teacher, each student is assigned a specific mantra or sound, TM students are therefore given a specially suited mantra. Author George D. Chryssides writes that, according to the Maharishi, using just any mantra can be dangerous, gordon Melton and Bainbridge write that the mantras are assigned by age and gender. In 1984,16 mantras were published in Omni magazine based on information from disaffected TM teachers, according to Chryssides, TM teachers say that the promised results are dependent on a trained Transcendental Meditation teacher choosing the mantra for their student
