Skeptic: Extraordinary Claims, Revolutionary Ideas, and the Promotion of Science

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2008 July–December

July 2nd: The Real Evolution Anniversary: Michael Shermer celebrates the 150th anniversary of the 1858 discovery of natural selection by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
July 9th: Charlatan: Quackery Then & Now: Harriet Hall, MD reviews Pope Brock’s Charlatan. America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam.
July 16th: Lying for God: Paul Gross reviews Lauri Lebo’s The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America.
July 23rd: announcing our 2008 Conference: The Skeptics Society announces its 2008 Conference at Caltech: ORIGINS — The BIG Questions.
July 30th: Toward a Type 1 Civilization: Michael Shermer postulates a “Type 1” civilization in which exists a “globalism that includes worldwide wireless Internet access, with all knowledge digitized and available to everyone…
August 6th: Does science make belief in God obsolete?: This is the third in a series of conversations presented by the John Templeton Foundation. The conversation explores the BIG Questions (the theme of this year’s Skeptics Society Conference at Caltech), among which is “Does science make belief in God obsolete?”.
August 13th: Redefining Near Death Experiences: Sebastian Dieguez presents a rejoinder to Mark Crislip’s “Near Death Experiences & the Medical Literature” (eSkeptic June 18th, 2008), calling for a redefinition of NDEs.
August 15th: Proof of Bigfoot?: Michael Shermer responds to the recently claimed Bigfoot find. Plus, we present a brief history of Bigfoot summarized from Daniel Loxton’s two Junior Skeptic issues bound into Skeptic magazines Vol 11 No 2 and Vol 11 No 3.
August 20th: Flagella Myths: Mark Perakh discusses how Intelligent Design proponents created the myth that bacterial flagella look like man-made machines.
August 27th: Money, Markets & Morality: We present ABC Radio National’s show All in the Mind, a debate recorded for National Science Week in Australia, between Dr. Michael Shermer and shareholder activist and Crikey founder, Stephen Mayne.
September 3rd: announcing the Fall Season of Caltech lectures: The Skeptics Society is pleased to announce its Fall season of the Skeptics Distinguished Lecture Series at Caltech. This continues the fifteen-year-long series, presenting over 200 lectures by some of the most distinguished experts in the world.
September 10th: Shermer in Australia: Michael Shermer shares his stories after a two-week tour of Australia sponsored by the Australian government for their annual National Science Week.
September 17th: What Makes People Vote Republican?: We link to Jonathan Haidt’s article on science and politics entitled What Makes People Vote Republican? on Edge.org, with commentaries on it by Michael Shermer and others.
September 24th: How to Resolve the War between Science & Religion: Shawn K. Stover, an associate professor of biology at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, discusses how to resolve the war between science and religion.
October 1st: Was Vanity Fair Hoaxed?: Mark Bellinghaus, a first rate skeptical investigator of all things Marilyn, sheds some light on how a recent Marilyn Monroe hoax fooled Vanity Fair magazine.
October 8th: Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth: Skeptic magazine’s very own Skepdoc, Harriet Hall M.D., punctures the acupuncture myth and tells you why “almost everything you’ve heard about acupuncture is wrong.”