Forum

- 1 August 1991

Who’s An Old Bag, Then?

Even the most republican-minded skeptic must admit that monarchical feelings sometimes have their uses. New Zealand was recently visited by Jacqueline Stallone. She arrived in a blaze of publicity, widely airing her views on astrology and other psychic matters.

And then…oh dear, on the Holmes programme, several critical remarks about our own dear Queen, culminating in the insult heading this note. From that time, Mrs Stallone has been dumped by the media, and we have heard and seen no more of her nor of her paranormal views.

Who says Royalty doesn’t have its uses?

Bernard Howard, Christchurch

Yet Another Logo

I was thinking of the way Canadi<n airlines avoid coming down on either side of the English vs French controversy. Then it occurred to me that we could do the same thing about our spelling, and generate a logo at the same time:

s<eptics

Hugh Young, Porirua

Having It Both Ways

I read with interest the review of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society book, Life — How Did It Get Here? By Evolution And Creation, reviewed by PAB in the December 1990 issue of the NZ Skeptic. There are many, many items in this book with which skeptics could disagree.

One which I was very intrigued with is to be found under the heading “Making A Choice”. It reads, “The future has already been determined by the Creator”. Further down the page we read, “God gave us the freedom to choose whether we would serve him or not”. How can we have freedom to choose if the future has already been determined by the Creator?

Alf Hamlyn, Dargaville

Skeptical Agenda

Several NZSCICOP members took part in a four-lecture series on the sceptical view of the world organised by the Wellington WEA late in 1990. The course was put on in response to astrology and other New Age subjects that the WEA had offered in recent years.

There were sessions on evolution and creationism by Dr Gordon Hewitt, probability and evidence by Tony Vignaux, scientific UFOlogy and crop circles by Fieke de Bock, and a philosophical view of scepticism by Dr Ken Perszyk. The course was well attended and stimulated enough interest that a similar course might be offered again this year.

In December, Paul King attempted to crush the fingers of a number of Wellington members when he demonstrated a mismatch between “knowledge” and “belief”. Our reaction times were measured and then our courage and rationality challenged when Paul placed our fingers below a heavy suspended weight which was released in plenty of time for us to react. He didn’t have many takers!

Paul emphasised the difficulty of getting college students to think rationally and critically. Members agreed that it was of primary importance to get critical thinking into school, and it was hoped that this theme could be taken up later by the group.

In March, Dr Bob Brockie, a biologist and animal ecologist with the DSIR, spoke on “The Stone-Age and Medieval Hangover”.

Bob pointed out how distressingly current remain the old theories about the operation of the universe — demons causing illness and death as punishments, the four-element theory of alchemy and astrology.

He showed how the development of modern scientific methods of healing, tested by clinical trials using statistical techniques and by a rigorous system of peer review still had not eliminated the last traces of superstition. Though they may claim to be the heralds of the “New Age”, practices like homeopathy and biodynamic farming are merely residues of these ancient primitive ways of thinking.

Discussion was prolonged, but not enlivened, by an interloper who insisted that ESP had been proved to work by quantum theory. We disagreed.

Tony Vignaux

Going up in Smoke Not for the Squeamish

“Keep an eye out for an excellent QED [BBC TV] programme on spontaneous human combustion,” wrote the Editor of the British & Irish Skeptic. That was in July 1989. On 15 February, TV1 viewers at last had an opportunity to see it.

Starting with the amazing, apparently supernatural burning of a solitary person in a closed room, we were led through a series of hypotheses, scientific tests, computer simulations, and practical demonstrations using animal bones and fat, and even an old armchair. The emphatic conclusion was that the three cases of apparent spontaneous combustion investigated could all be explained straightforwardly on the basis of existing knowledge of the physical world. No yes-butting around, or letting the mystics have the last word.

In all cases, a source of ignition was close at hand — electric fire, gas cooker, and suchlike. Once ignited, the burning clothes on an unconscious person can generate enough heat to evaporate water from the outer parts of the torso, and then act as a wick on which the body fat will burn for several hours. This explains why in many of these cases the limbs are not consumed, while the torso, including bones, is reduced to ash. The heat produced causes fat to be deposited on the ceiling and walls, and plastic objects, especially those in the upper parts of the room, are melted.

Bernard Howard