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>>>Skeptical Digest 20.4 (Winter 2007)
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--Please forward as widely as possible without spamming anyone--
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>>>CONTENTS>>>
>>>Skeptical Stats>>>Dubious News>>>In this
issue>>>Administrivia>>>Skeptics in the Pub>>>

>>>SKEPTICAL STATS>>>
1. Fastest zorb ride (a sport in which practitioners hurtle
down a hill inside a giant, translucent, inflatable ball) as
verified by police radar: 32mph over 820 metres

2. Proportion of snakes to people, residing in the village of
Choto Pashla, West Bengal, where most of the reptiles are
poisonous monocled cobra: 1:2

3. Number of people, spread over 70 different countries, said
to be affected by high levels (above 10 parts per billion) of
naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water: 140 million

4. Number of children in Britain aged between 5 and 19, taking
hyperactivity medication: 400,000

5. Total value of two, 372-year-old, church bells, complete
with inscription reading "Love God", stolen from a village
church near Andover, Hampshire: £30,000

6. Value of a 40-million-year old Egyptian fossilised whale
before it was allegedly destroyed by European diplomats who
drove over it in two 4-wheel-drive cars: $10,000,000 (US)

7. Total mass of a light green, coconut-sized gemstone,
believed to be a diamond by its owner who claimed it didn't
scratch when tested with a garage grinder: 8,000 carats

8. Total fines issued to two 19-year-old Devonian boys, who
tested deodorant and subsequently refused to pay for it as they
didn't like the smell: £163

9. Fine issued by Chinese police to two lovers who hugged in
public, on Qi Xi, the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day:
nearly £330

10. Number of people who were given a free outfit by a newly
opened London clothing store, after responding to a company
publicity stunt by queuing in the rain wearing nothing but
underwear: 40

11. Number of legal appeal proceedings recently brought to the
Kenyan High Court, by the group 'Friends of Jesus', seeking to
overturn Christ's conviction and subsequent execution on the
basis of a human rights violation: 1

12. Yearly number of road accidents in Britain, attributable to
insects: 650,000

13. Average value of items carried in a typical school bag, by
British children of secondary school age: £265

14. Number of people who signed an online petition requesting
that the government did not slaughter 'Shambo', a black
Friesian bull living in isolation at a Hindu temple in Wales,
who tested positive for the bacteria which causes Bovine TB:
24,000

15. Percentage of the British public responding in 2005, who
supported some type of ban on experiments which cause suffering
to animals: 80
16. Percentage of British animal studies conducted in 2005, in
which an anaesthetic was used: 40
17. Percentage of British animal studies conducted in 2006, in
which an anaesthetic was used: 38

18. Average price of an ecstasy tablet in Portsmouth, UK: 50
pence.

19. Total amount gambled on the result of the latest series of
Big Brother: 110 million

20. Average speed of the two Voyager space probes, launched 30
years ago to explore Jupiter and Saturn: more than 950 miles
per minute
21. Number of languages in which a greeting was recorded, for
inclusion with each probe: 54
22. Amount of power the Voyager craft need to function: the
equivalent of 3 standard light bulbs

23. Equivalent power of the impact of the 320 metre wide
asteroid dubbed 99942 Apophis, in the unlikely even that it
collides with the Earth in 2036: 850 million tons of TNT.

24. Average number of handbags one woman is likely to own over
her lifetime, according to research conducted by an Essex
shopping centre: 111

25. Average total cost of these handbags: £8,436

>>>DUBIOUS NEWS>>>

>>>Barry L. Beyerstein, 19th May 1947 - 25th June 2007
Barry Lane Beyerstein was a sceptic. He held a Professorship in
Psychology at Simon Fraser University, the chair position in
the British Columbia Skeptics Society, and he was a co-founder
of CSICOP. In addition to this, he was a husband and father.
Whilst many tributes and accounts of Barry's life have focused
on his achievements and extensive voluntary contributions to
science and scepticism, the account on page 19 of the magazine
gives the heartfelt sentiments of Barry's daughter, Lindsay.
Her words immortalise Barry's personality far more
appropriately than mine ever could.

>>>It's life, Jim... but not as we know it. The famous Star
Trek quotation may perhaps be a tired line, but this time it
might have an element of truth. In August 2007, the New Journal
of Physics published a paper by researchers working for the
Russian Academy of Science, the Max-Planck Institute, and the
University of Sydney explaining that, under a specific set of
conditions in space, inorganic material may adopt the
characteristics of living organisms. The group's findings add
significantly to the debate surrounding the existence of
inorganic and alien life, although they are, for now, purely
theoretical. The group took inorganic dust particles and used
computer simulations to model their behaviour when immersed and
held in a plasma (the fourth state of matter consisting of
charged particles created when electrons are dissociated from
the atomic nuclei of a superheated gas). The model demonstrated
that the particles would absorb electrons from the plasma thus
attracting positive ions, and that under zero gravity
conditions the dust particles would sometimes form helical
structures comparable to that of DNA. This dust-formed double
helix has the potential to store and retain varying amounts of
information through its two electrostatically stable states,
while sections of the structure can be copied from one helix to
another (bifurcation) and the chain can even in a sense
metabolise, using new plasma to persist and grow. In these
respects, the structures possess some of the characteristics
attributed to 'life', but that doesn't mean that if they were
to exist in reality they would be 'living'. More correctly,
these findings further blur the boundaries of 'life.'
Previously, most scientists held that life could only occur in
the presence of liquids such as water, but as Seth Shostak, a
senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute said,
"If you could have life in the hot gases of a star, or in the
hot, interstellar gas that suffuses the space between the
stars, well, not only would that be 'life as we don't know it'
but it might be the most common type of life." Shostak also
noted that our existing ideas about what defines 'life' are
already inadequate. The relevant principles the research paper
considers are "autonomy, evolution, progeny and autopolests".
But under these strict categories, as Shostak pointed out,
mules (the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female
horse) could not be considered as living. That leaves us facing
the potential absurdity that inorganic dust structures fulfill
the academic criteria for life, but hybrid mammals do not.
Perhaps it's science itself that now needs to evolve.

>>>According to various newspapers, including The Times and the
Daily Mail, in late 2007, beachcombers in Southwest England may
find themselves inundated with colourful plastic bath toys that
will have floated over 17,000 miles of sea to reach the shore.
The story began on 10 January 1992, when a Pacific storm washed
three 40-foot containers from a ship bound for America from
Hong Kong. Inside the containers were packages containing
28,800 yellow ducks, green frogs, blue turtles, and red
beavers, rubber bath toys produced by a Chinese manufacturer
for the US company The First Years and packaged in fours. Their
journey has taken them halfway around the world through
Alaskan, Japanese, Hawaiian, Arctic, Atlantic, Canadian,
Scottish and Cornish waters. The toys' progress has been
meticulously charted by Seattle-based oceanographer Curtis
Ebbesmeyer; supposedly they have traversed the North Pacific
from Alaska to Japan and back to North America in around 3
years. Their progress was twice as fast as the surface water
during this trip, earning them the title 'hyper-ducks', but the
toys averaged one mile per day even when challenged by Arctic
ice. Two thirds of the friendly flotilla have already made
their way successfully to foreign beaches, but the remaining
internationally noted yellow icons are expected to be carried
by the Gulf Stream to Cornish beaches in late 2007. Although
their journey might seem trivial, the toys' adventure may
contribute largely to oceanographic studies of water currents.
This is not the first instance in which an accidental spill has
aided study, either - in 1990, 61,000 Nike running shoes were
lost overboard from another ship before being discovered on
further beaches worldwide. Assuming scientists' models of
surface currents are correct, UK residents may well find up to
10,000 brightly coloured bath toys in the near future. Each is
now worth a £50 bounty from the manufacturer as its
contribution to science.

>>>Spot the odd one out: acupuncture, saffron (the Middle
Eastern spice), exercise, St. John's Wort, ketamine,
electro-convulsive therapy and omega-3 fatty acids. Stop
reading at the end of this sentence and really consider for a
moment - which of the list has not been employed by health
'practitioners' to treat depression? The answer: all of them
deserve to be listed, none are odd. While many treatments for
depression historically vary on the (non-standardised) scale of
barbaric to pseudoscientific, it seems one of the more unlikely
weapons to be considered in the recent treatment arsenals is
that of ketamine. The journal Biological Psychiatry published
findings from a preliminary study conducted by the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), suggesting that the drug
acts remarkably quickly as an antidepressant, relieving some
patients' symptoms within two hours. The significance of these
results is obvious given that the most common medications
currently used to treat depression typically need four to six
weeks to take effect. In fact, the small-scale research
returned results showing that 71% of participants experienced a
halving in their measured depression after one day. In studies
with established medication, it took eight weeks for 63% of
participants to experience the same effects. Unfortunately
every silver lining has a cloud. Aside from apparently being a
powerful, if short-lasting anti-depressant, ketamine is also a
psychedelic and a dissociative anaesthetic often used in
veterinary medicine. The drug is popularly abused in clubbing,
producing hallucinogenic effects and out of body experiences at
higher concentrations. Although only small (subanaesthetic)
concentrations of ketamine were administered to research
participants, the possibility of hallucinations remained. If
participants did experience this, ketamine would be easily
separated from the inert placebo, reducing the validity of
results and making participants more likely to provide false
positive reports of its efficacy. Either way, it would seem
best to find a new but similarly acting medication. Ketamine
was classified as a Class 'C' drug, effective in the UK from
January 2006. Possession of the substance can now yield a two
year jail term, while individuals caught supplying the drug can
earn 14 years behind bars - certainly long enough to cause
depression in itself.

>>>IN THIS ISSUE OF THE SKEPTIC (20.4, Winter 2007)

Features:
Exposing the Myth of Alcoholics Anonymous. Part 1: History and
(Lack of ) Effectiveness (Steven Mohr)
Believe it or Not (Sally Marlow interviews Mark Vernon)
Inside a Camphill Community (Matthew Provonsha)

Columns:
Editorial (Victoria Hamilton and Chris French)
Hilary Evans's Paranormal Picture Gallery
Hits and Misses (Wendy M. Grossman)
Rhyme and Reason (Steve Donnelly)
Philosopher's Corner (Julian Baggini)
Sprite (Donald Rooum)
ASKE News
Letters

Reviews:
Paranormal Claims: A Critical Analysis by Bryan Farha
How to Start Your Own Secret Society by Nick Harding
The History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin
Freemasonry by Giles Morgan

>>>SOURCES FOR SKEPTICAL STATS>>>
1,3 ABC News (Australia); 2 AFP; 4,5 BBC News; 6 AHN Media -
FeedSyndicate; 7,9,11 Reuters; 8,10 Metro; 12,13 Esure; 14
http://www.wevaluelife.org; 15 Ipsos MORI; 16,17, Home Office
Research Statistics; 18 Drugscope; 19,24,25 This is London; 20
http://www.spaceflightnow.com; 21,22 http://www.astronomy.com;
23 NASA

>>>ADMINISTRIVIA>>>
Thanks to this issue's clippings contributors: Mark Williams,
Sid Rodrigues, the Wizard's Star List, Skeptic News. A special
thank-you to Sid Rodrigues, who persistently and indefatigably
keeps filling The Skeptic's blog
(http://ukskeptic.livejournal.com) with news stories and
pointers.

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Book review section: reviews at skeptic.org.uk
Article ideas and other editorial queries: edit at skeptic.org.uk

Unsolicited commercial email is NOT welcome at any of these
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>>>ENDS>>>

>>>SKEPTICS IN THE PUB>>>
Skeptics in the Pub meets (usually) on the third Tuesday of
every month at 7:00pm at the The Penderel's Oak, 283-288 High
Holborn, London WC1V 7HP (Nearest tube: Holborn and Chancery
Lane). A £2 donation is requested to cover the guest speaker's
travelling expenses and sundries. Non-skeptics welcome. Turn up
at any time during the night. Detailed directions, a list of
upcoming speakers and a map of how to get to the pub can be
found at http://skeptic.org.uk/pub.

Tuesday 19th February 2008
Paul Taylor "Why don't creationists just shut up?"

The talk will be followed by informal discussion in a relaxed
and friendly pub atmosphere. Skeptics in the Pub is a regular
evening for all those interested in and/or skeptical of the
paranormal, alternative medicine, psychic powers,
pseudo-science, UFOs, alien abductions, creationism, Fortean
phenomena, cult religions, water-divining, lost civilizations,
etc. Further information and mailing list announcements
available from pub at skeptic.org.uk. Suggestions for speakers
or offers to speak are gladly welcomed.

>>>END ANNOUNCEMENTS>>>