Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

The Mystery of John Titor: Hoax or Time Traveler?

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
time-travel

This is our planet’s bleak future: a second Civil War splinters America into five factions, leaving the new capital based in Omaha. World War III breaks out in 2015, starting with Russia and the U.S. trading nukes and ending with three billion dead. Then, to top it all off, a computer bug delivers where Y2K sputtered, destroying our world as we know it. That is, unless an audacious time traveler successfully traverses the space-time continuum to change the course of future history. In late 2000, that person signed onto the Internet. A poster going by the screennames “TimeTravel_0” ... Read More

More like this: Science
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Build Your Own Electric Ghost

October 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Illustration showing how the "mystic" pushes a button on the floor to achieve her trick

Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you sure it wasn't just a balloon with a face drawn on it? With the slow and steady rise of household electricity in the early 20th century, spiritualists and mystics had new tools to convince people that they were able to communicate with and conjure supernatural beings. Skepticism was a prominent theme in the electrical hobbyist magazines of the 1910s and '20s and writers who knew about how to create seemingly magical phenomena with electricity took a lot of pleasure in showing off how these tricks worked. The pages of magazines like Science and Invention, ... Read More

More like this: Time Machine
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Linguistic Myths and Adventures in Etymology

March 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The alarm went off. What does that mean? Recently, a friend who is learning English couldn’t quite figure it out. Isn’t the alarm going on, not off, he asked. Comprehending such phrases is often one of the more difficult steps in learning a language. These idiomatic expressions are collections of words that mean something different than each word’s dictionary definition. For example, “that barking dog next door is driving me up the wall,” if taken literally, could mean that the neighbor’s poodle has recently earned a driver’s license and is using a car to accelerate up the ... Read More

More like this: Education, Skeptic's Café
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Presidents’ Day: Just Another Presidential Fable

February 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In the United States, February brings “Presidents’ Day” and some familiar stories, such as George Washington chopping down ye olde cherry tree, circulate anew. Sweet as it may sound about not lying to one’s father, this story is not true. Nor, to bite into a story of more recent vintage, did he have wooden teeth. Let’s skeptically consider a few of the many fables that regularly appear about current and past presidents, and critically think about the purposes they may serve. First, we need to address the initial fable of a “Presidents’ Day.” Yes, Martha, there is no such ... Read More

More like this: Politics, Skeptic's Café
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Numerology Doesn’t Know the Score

January 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Numerology Doesn’t Know the Score

We entered the new year with all sorts of expectations and excitement, but I’m sure none compared to the chills from realizing 2012 will see the last major numerical date event — using the Gregorian calendar — for almost another century: December 12, 2012 — better represented as 12/12/12. I know, just a few months ago, we achieved 11/11/11. But not until 2101 will we be able to write 01/01/01, just as we did on that numerically glorious day of January 1, 2001. Disappointing I know, but should we celebrate or cower? Is this the end of the world, as the Mayans sort-of predicted? No, ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
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Full Moon Myths Leave Skeptics Howling

December 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A stock image of the holiday season is a night scene of Santa and his reindeers silhouetted across a full moon, his sleigh packed with presents ready to be delivered throughout the evening. While this joyous image fits some of our romantic notions of being moonstruck, it contradicts some widely held beliefs about the negative effects of full moons. (And never mind that the odds of experiencing a full moon on Christmas Eve itself are very small: the last one was in 2007 and the next may not appear until 2026.) A teacher I know, complaining about her students’ boisterous behavior in the ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
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Why Isn’t Climate Change on More Lips?

December 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

What do most Americans know is happening, but few talk about? Global warming. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe the Earth is heating up, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsons poll. Yet most live as though global warming isn’t taking place, even while knowing that it is. That’s understandable. Thinking about the life we’ve known on Earth changing inexorably, often in harmful ways, is so horrifying that you may feel like clicking away from this article right now. Who can stand such distressing feelings? “Well there’s nothing I can do about it," so many shrug. ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Dr. Placebo — Half Quack and Half Savant

November 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

[Cue the drum roll] Ladies and gentlemen, introducing tonight, the magical, the amazing, the astounding, the one, the only [cue the cymbal] — DR. PLACEBO!! Performing sleights of hand that will amaze you, entice you, and lure you into miracle cures that will release you from your hard-earned cash. Come see never-before effects. Well, maybe always-seen effects. Step right this way … OK, perhaps I’m more cynical than skeptical here, but given the successful selling of sham products such as balance bracelets and homeopathy, it’s important that we learn to think critically about one ... Read More

More like this: Health, Skeptic's Café
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Critical Thinker Explains Skepticism vs. Cynicism

October 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Several Skeptic’s Café columns have invoked the work of MacArthur Foundation “genius” James Randi and his James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF. This nonprofit “promotes critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas,” and is one of the key players in the world of skeptical and critical thinking. In honor of International Skeptics Day (October 13), we turn the tables on the president of JREF, D.J. Grothe, who routinely interviews skeptical thinkers for his podcast series “For Good Reason,” by ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
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Conversion Therapy Fails to ‘Pray Away the Gay’

September 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

"Pray away the gay" joins other notable catchphrases in our popular culture and comedians' repertoires, (perhaps like "wide stance" did just a few years ago.) This time it's due to the efforts of Michele and Marcus Bachmann, who run a Christian counseling center practicing what is called "reparative therapy." Skeptical thinkers may ask how a simple prayer could change people's core sexual orientation. Could heterosexual-oriented people "pray to be gay"? More seriously, why is there a treatment for something that is not an illness? A critical investigation into the practice of conversion ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
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