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The REALL News

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The official newsletter of the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land

Volume 3, Number 5 -- May 1995


Electronic Version

If you like what you see, please help us continue by sending in a subscription. See the end of newsletter for details.


In This Issue

From the Editor -- Bob Ladendorf
From the Chairman -- David Bloomberg
The Curse of the Space Mummies -- Martin Kottmeyer
REALLity Check -- David Bloomberg


Purpose

The Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL) is a non-profit educational and scientific organization. It is dedicated to the development of rational thinking and the application of the scientific method toward claims of the paranormal and fringe- science phenomena.

REALL shall conduct research, convene meetings, publish a newsletter, and disseminate information to its members and the general public. Its primary geographic region of coverage is central Illinois.

REALL subscribes to the premise that the scientific method is the most reliable and self-correcting system for obtaining knowledge about the world and universe. REALL not not reject paranormal claims on a priori grounds, but rather is committed to objective, though critical, inquiry.

The REALL News is its official newsletter.

Membership information is provided elsewhere in this newsletter.

Board of Directors: Chairman, David Bloomberg; Assistant Chairman, Prof. Ron Larkin; Secretary-Treasurer, Kevin Brown; Newsletter Editor, Bob Ladendorf; At-Large Members, Prof. Steve Egger, Wally Hartshorn, and Frank Mazo.

Editorial Board: Bob Ladendorf (Newsletter Editor), David Bloomberg (electronic version editor), (one vacancy).

REALL
P.O. Box 20302
Springfield, IL 62708

Unless stated otherwise, permission is granted to other skeptic organizations to reprint articles from The REALL News as long as proper credit is given. REALL also requests that you send copies of your newsletters that reprint our articles to the above address.

The views expressed in these articles are the views of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of REALL.


From the Editor

-- Bob Ladendorf

As David mentions in his column, we are playing catch-up on our newsletters. The "real" world has imposed its will on us at work and in each of our home lives. Unfortunately, the irrationality of human beings has not lessened in the meantime, as David's "REALLity Check" shows.

This month, Martin Kottmeyer returns to our pages with a long article on "space mummies." As always, his wealth of detail to support his arguments are often convincing, if not just overwhelming. Hope you enjoy it.

No sooner are we finishing this issue than we are already working on the next one. Look for it soon.

As a reminder, if you have any further comments or suggestions, please send them to me at REALL's address listed elsewhere on this page, or send us e-mail at the following addresses:

Bob Ladendorf -- robertcl49@aol.com (NOTE: 1st 8 are letters)

David Bloomberg -- david.bloomberg@f2112.n2430.z1.fidonet.org

/s/ Bob Ladendorf


From the Chairman

-- David Bloomberg

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. The issue you're reading now is the first late REALL News we've had, but we'll do our best to also make it the last. This is the May issue, and you should be getting the June issue in another couple weeks. My schedule has been hectic lately, and combined with other factors, May just became too short a month.

Speaking of my hectic schedule, I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of the last video we showed (at the May meeting). Normally I preview them before showing them to the group, but I didn't have time and we hadn't had a problem before. Coupled with the library security guard's inability and/or unwillingness to fix the sound system, a video of what was probably a very interesting lecture turned into a poorly-lit slideshow with bad sound. I will be contacting both the library and the producers of the video about those problems, in hopes of avoiding them in the future.

Of course, one way to avoid poor video quality is to have real live speakers at our meetings. So, if you have a topic you'd like to present to our members, please call/write/e-mail me to let me know, and we'll see about setting up a date for it. Remember that our meetings are generally on the first Tuesday of the month. I say "generally" because June's meeting has been cancelled (the library's rooms were all "booked" up for their annual book sale) and the first Tuesday in July is Independence Day (not to mention, my anniversary).

The same goes for writing articles, of course. We are always looking for new authors!

Illinois Science Teachers Association

On a completely different topic, the Illinois Science Teachers Association (ISTA) will be holding its annual conference this year right here in Springfield. Those of you who are longtime REALL members may remember that REALL, along with Gateway Skeptics (St. Louis' local skeptics group), the National Center for Science Education, and the St. Louis Association for Teaching and Education went in together on a booth at the conference two years ago, when it was held in Collinsville. At that booth, we distributed information on countering creationism, along with other topics of interest to both skeptics and science teachers.

With the conference being held in Springfield this year, I would like REALL to again participate. However, in addition to the money necessary for a booth, we need people in that booth who are familiar especially with the evolution/creation controversy, both the scientific arguments and the political ones. Two years ago, we were faced with everything from a creationist scientific equipment salesman in the booth across the way, who harangued us at every opportunity, to school teachers whose districts wanted them to teach creationism, and who were looking for information on what they could do about it.

If you're interested in contributing some time to manning the booth, please let me know as soon as possible.

/s/ David Bloomberg


The Curse of the Space Mummies

by Martin Kottmeyer

Ufologists are diligent when it comes to spotting similarities between UFO cases, but often seem to turn a blind eye to the differences. Raymond Fowler and Budd Hopkins found it significant that Betty Andreasson and Sandra Larson share identical nasal implant operations, but are silent on the very dissimilar appearance of the surgeons. Andreasson reported 4-foot tall gray-skinned entities with bald, pear-shaped heads. Larson reported a 6- foot tall entity with metallic arms and wrappings over the head. She referred to it as a "mummy."

The difference between the entities is all the more surprising when you begin to tally up all the other features the two cases share beyond the sinus operations. They both experience floating sensations and travel through walls. Both are given tummy exams. Both are temporarily caged in body-molded transparent enclosures. Both see a realm on a distant landscape that is as bare of vegetation as a desert, which has square buildings in it. Both travel through tunnels. Both are drawn into transport bubbles.

While Andreasson does not report encountering any mummies, there are features of her account which hark back to the country most of us associate with mummies, Egypt. She saw pyramids. They are distinctly based on the Egyptian style. Besides the similar angles and flat facing, there is an indenting of some faces exactly like the Great Pyramid of Cheops. This feature of indentation is not widely known, but is accessible in popular works like Andre Pochan's The Mysteries of the Great Pyramids. She also saw a big head like the Sphinx. The Phoenix encountered by Andreasson continues the theme since it was a bird sacred in Egypt. Herodotus even mentions it in his ancient account of Egypt.

In an earlier paper, "The Alien Booger Menace" (The REALL News, Vol. 1, # 6), I demonstrated that similarities like nasal implants may point towards cultural borrowing rather than shared experience. Comparing the reports of Larson and Andreasson turns up many disparities which contribute to the case against shared experience. Larson was encased in a transparent cube for exhibition purposes. Andreasson was encased in a transparent body mold and then had liquid poured in with her for purposes of transport. The liquid repeats an experience reported by Louise Smith from the 1976 Kentucky triple abduction, and written up in Abducted! It may be relevant to note that this book includes an account of the Larson case. Smith's dramatic experience of liquid being poured over her has a notable precursor in the earthling encased in fluid in the "Ordeal" episode of the 1972 series U.F.O. Unlike Larson, but like Mona Stafford of the Kentucky triple abduction, Andreasson has her eye pulled out of its socket. This bizarre claim recalls a magic trick performed by Filipino psychic surgeons and explained by William Nolen in his book Healing. Doctors know the optic nerve does not possess the elasticity needed for such a feat, but the public apparently does not. Philip Ward's Dictionary of Common Fallacies has an entry devoted to an idea more common earlier in this century that surgeons sometimes remove eyes, wash them, scrape them, treat them, and replace them.

Andreasson seems to try to improve the Larson case in some ways. The brain removal, too reminiscent of Star Trek's worst* episode ("Spock's Brain"), does not recur in Andreasson. Larson took a shower after her encounter to get rid of any alien germs. The aliens ask her about soap and she gives them a sample. Andreasson, on the other hand, enters a chamber where she is bathed in a cleansing light and is handed a new garment afterwards. This is recognizably a variant of the decontamination procedure in The Andromeda Strain (1971) involving a brilliant light that destroys skin bacteria. It also burns off all body hair in the movie. That part does not recur in Andreasson, but we've come to expect that aliens associated with UFO experiences never provide evidence of that intriguing sort.

The entity change away from the mummy may be another attempt at improvement. Mummies seem out of place in American culture. They are more associated with a kitsch form of old horror movies than the modernity of space travel. Moviemakers try to be creative, but there is a distinct tendency to favor aliens with a futuristic quality. That means they are usually bald, since hairiness would be connotative of apes; and big-headed or brains with little or no body, since that would be the logical extrapolation of human evolution if trends over the past few million. years were continued. Examples from film, TV, comics and SF pulp illustrations number in the dozens. One bad film buff, I think it was Michael Weldon, demonstrated the dilemma for abductees by his reaction to an obscure Latin American film involving mummies from outer space. It was an a priori hopeless premise. "Space mummies?"

Andreasson's aliens, with their hairless, pear-shaped heads, are utterly conventional. The style is recognizably part of a family of alien forms created for the TV series The Outer Limits, but their immediate precursor is demonstrably the alien designed for The UFO Incident, the 1975 television-movie adaptation of The Interrupted Journey. The movie is remarkably faithful to the book and the design of the alien is also quite true to drawings that have appeared in the book, and were elaborated on for David Baker for the April 1972 issue of NlCAP's UFO Investigator. But that faithfulness is not flawless. There is a sharp angle to the inner comers of the eye sockets where the original shows a rounded curve. The pupils of the eyes are much larger. Andreasson's drawings reflect these alterations. There are four close-ups of the aliens and the right eye is always different in appearance to the left. On three of the shots the eye on the left appears blank with an absence of white to it: it is reversed on the second close-up. The disparity seems like it could be due to heavy glass being used by the designer and the camera angle creating the effect. Whatever the reason, Andreasson repeats the disparity in her drawing of Quazgaa. Quazgaa is also drawn with a feeler crease above the eye which is prominent on the movie alien, but seems an extrapolation of a feature on Baker's drawing. Baker's drawing includes a mouth-opening covered by a membrane. The movie and Andreasson show slits for mouths. Presumably Andreasson's experience of having a needle stuck into her naval is similarly borrowed from the movie.

The status and superiority of credibility granted the Hill case over other cases can be reason enough for Andreasson favoring the UFO Incident aliens over space mummies. The movie could also force the choice from the power of visual images being greater than verbal descriptions such as Larson gave in Abducted! It seems obligatory to ask, however, if it is reasonable for Andreasson to favor the Hills' aliens, why didn't Larson borrow it also? Larson, after all, got into ufologists' hands because she saw The UFO Incident, and it made her concerned about a time-loss and UFO sighting she experienced a few months earlier.

One possibility is that it relates to her falling into the hands of APRO which had a special interest in the Pascagoula abduction of 1973. It was a famous case that had national exposure. There are several popular accounts such as an article in Rolling Stone magazine and the mass-market paperback Beyond Earth, but it was only people with APRO who called attention to the mummy-like appearance of the Pascagoula entity and deemed it a feature that enhanced the credibility of the case. Larson was said to have had no prior interest in UFOs and had little knowledge of the subject. This is perhaps true, despite the involvement of the movie. About the only details that could be based on the movie involved the final warning not to talk because she would not be believed.

Much of the case seems different from anything reported before. Only the Pascagoula case seems reprised, and then in only two particulars. They both involve tummy exams by mummies. It is no stretch to believe she picked up these motifs in conversation with UFO buffs or researchers prior to her hypnosis sessions. Other than this, the two cases are different. The UFOs are different. The Hickson story is brief while Larson's is rich in detail and lengthy with multiple operations and a trip to another realm.

The question returns for Pascagoula; if it was reasonable for Andreasson to favor the Hills' entity, why did Charles Hickson opt for space mummies? The power of visual imagery drops out of the picture because The UFO Incident wasn't around yet in 1973. Fame might still favor such a borrowing, but the verbal description may have seemed vague and forgettable. The drawing in The Interrupted Journey is crude, sketchy, and rather like a caricature of an angry guy wearing a cap. It's not convincingly alien. More, the tale of a woman being given a horrific pregnancy test might be an incongruous choice for a male abductee. (Admittedly, Sammy Desmond repeated the needle in the navel despite the contra-indication. People are funny.) Yet another factor is that Hickson's report comes across more like a vivid nightmare than an exercise in active imagination and story-telling. Dreams often possess aspects that are bizarre and seemingly impenetrable to reason. It might help if we knew the source of Hickson's aliens, but they initially seem so different from conventional aliens it looks like a hopeless task tracking it down.

Fortunately, the Lorenzens saved historians a big headache by themselves covering similarities between the Pascagoula entity and a case out of Peru involving a man designated C.A.V. The man encountered three mummies with a generally human profile, but the legs were joined and they slid along the ground. They were about 5'9" in height. The face was mostly featureless save for a sort-of nose. The arms seemed normal, but the hand consisted of a group of four fingers stuck together and a separate thumb creating the impression of pincers or claws. The match to the Pascagoula entity is remarkably good, and I have to agree with the Lorenzens that the odds against happenstance are too remote to be considered. They add that neither Hickson nor Parker (the other Pascagoula experiment) had prior UFO interest, and the case appeared "only" in the APRO Bulletin and chapter 8 in their 1968 book UFOs Over the Americas.

"Only" is not exactly how I would describe a Signet paperback which was mass-marketed across America on wire racks in drug stores and five and dimes, but perhaps they were being modest. The Lorenzens further wondered why, if both cases involve fabrication, this particular form was chosen. "Why not a more acceptable and more frequently reported type?" More believable occupant encounters were readily available. They temporarily prefigure Fowler and Hopkins in their style of argument by ignoring the equally striking disparities between the two cases in these remarks from Encounters with UFO Occupants. Happily, they rectify this shortcoming in their next book Abducted! when they grant, "The only real difference between the two descriptions was that the Peruvian said the skin of the creatures was sandy-colored and that they had 'bubbles' where the eyes would be which moved around." This is at least a start. C.A.V.'s UFO is shaped like a disc. Hickson's UFO is shaped like a fish. C.A.V.'s entities were lost and asked to see our chief. They carry on an extended conversation about a variety of things including how we are endangering the balance of the universe and how they are able to reproduce by fission. C.A.V. tries to abduct one of the mummies as they try to leave in an effort to get rich, but they were too slippery. They don't try to abduct him and conduct a tummy exam. If the entities are the same because they are real, why are their craft and behaviors so different?

The fish shape of the craft and the tummy exam with the eye are critical clues to what is going on here. They are not part of the C.A.V. case, but they are part of UFOs Over the Americas. Chapter 3 is called 'Underwater UFOs' and features a June 1959 incident from Buenos Aires involving an object generally shaped like a huge fish. The eye over the tummy is a compositing of cases on page 206: an 1880 incident involving a luminous ball suspended in mid-air, leaving the percipient terror-stricken, which is followed by a brief account of the Hill case and their physical examination, after which the authors discuss how UFOs could induce hypnotic effects and shock.

The blending and distortion of the elements of these cases is identical to the way dreams remix and composite recent memories to come up with a dramatic experience. The choice of the mummies by Hickson's mind stems from the title given the chapter relating the C.A.V. case: "The Flesh Crawlers." It was the scariest-looking alien in the book. It worked. Charlie Hickson's personal account is reprinted in UFO Contact at Pascagoula and includes this line: "My flesh crawls when I think about those three things that appeared through the opening."

With respect to C.A.V., the Lorenzens' objections about acceptability and frequency collapses with the realization that C.A.V. hailed from Peru. Peruvian culture is significantly different from the one the Lorenzens were living in. Mummies were pervasive in Incan religion. Incan leaders were embalmed with great care and their remains were worshipped like a god. It would be placed in temples. Sacrifices would be made to it. It was brought out for festivals. People were assigned to take care of the mummy. One archaeologist found a Necropolis of 429 mummies which demonstrated the antiquity of the practice in Nazcan culture. It would take an expert in Peruvian folklore to track down the immediate cultural precursors to C.A.V.'s experience, but we don't need a detailed analysis to understand that a Peruvian might find the idea of space mummies far more believable and emotionally resonant than would people in the USA.

It is also relevant to add that C.A.V. saw a psychiatrist who felt that he had probably imagined the experience. He had just learned one of the trucks used in his business had suffered an accident, and he was overextending himself with multiple businesses and familial responsibilities. C.A.V. admits the possibility of hallucination or dream, but doesn't agree. Richard Greenwell, an ufologist who interviewed C.A.V., has also given his opinion: "Personally, I consider the experience unreal - but interesting." (FSR Nov/Dec. 1970) Ufologists may argue the cases reinforce each other, but it seems likelier they undermine each other. If C.A.V.'s case is psychologically and culturally explicable, those elements which recur in later UFO experiences are probably equally unreal.

And equally interesting. C.A.V.'s gliding space mummies are a product of Peruvian culture that illuminates the processes of cultural transmission and story formation in abduction experiences. The Lorenzens introduced it into America where it briefly took root by influencing Hickson. Under their nurturing it spread to Larson. Andreasson almost included it in her account, but the entities of The UFO Incident won out. It was close though. In The UFO Incident the entities walk. In Andreasson's remix the entities glide. Just like the Lorenzens' space mummies. The mummies put a curse on any attempt to understand these four experiences as similarly real experiences that support the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). The pattern of similarities and differences only makes sense with the premise that it is humans, not aliens, that are running the show. The ETH won't work. At least, not without an awful lot of bandages.

* "Spock's Brain" was rated officially the worst episode in Entertainment Weekly's current Star Trek collector's edition, 79th of 79.

{This article originally appeared in issue #1 of Promises and Disappointments, and has been reprinted with the permission of the author.}

[Martin Kottmeyer is a frequent contributor to The REALL News.]


REALLity Check

by David Bloomberg

Batman, Robin, and Mary

I'd like to start this month's column with a brave story of true heroism, the type we don't often get a chance to talk about in these pages. This is a story of a true icon taking action and tackling a problem when so many others just like her would only stand around and cry.

So, "What happened?" I hear you ask. Well, according to the AP, in a Chicago Tribune article (5/16), a teenager in Connecticut was allegedly trying to climb onto the roof of a parochial school, trespassing, which could have led to other allegations had he been successful. But thanks to the quick actions of a 400-pound Virgin Mary statue, he never had a chance. The teen slipped while attempting his climb, hit the statue, and the statue toppled onto his legs, pinning him there until the police arrived.

So many Virgin Mary statues seem to be crying about society these days, it's nice to see one take some action!

Was it OJ's?

Speaking of crying Virgin Mary statues, Nature (4/20) reports on one in Rome which is weeping tears of blood. A Cardinal there immediately proclaimed it a miracle, but a city magistrate wasn't so sure, so he confiscated it for testing. Doctors at a Roman hospital confirmed that the red liquid is indeed blood, and that it came from a male. The Cardinal has said that it is therefore obvious that the statue is weeping the blood of Jesus. The magistrate was unconvinced by this leap in logic, and has asked the FBI to carry out DNA tests and compare the tears with the blood of the statue's owner.

More news as I receive it.

Inquiring Minds (at Harvard) Want to Know

Nature also reports (5/4) that Harvard University has apparently begun an investigation into John Mack, the professor of psychiatry who thinks his patients have been abducted by aliens.

There have been rumors of this sort floating around for a few months now, but they had been rather difficult to verify. Now Nature says that a purported draft report from the investigating committee criticizes Mack for failing to require physical evidence and saying he was "professionally irresponsible" to lend credence to the abduction tales. Other critics have gone further (myself included), saying he has apparently abandoned scientific objectivity and may have caused the memories himself through his "co-creative" hypnosis sessions. Several newspapers across the country have reported similar stories.

"Theories" in Alabama

It appears that Alabama's state board of education needs to do some learning of their own. Specifically, they need to learn what the scientific term, "theory" means. I can only presume they really haven't a clue, because otherwise they would not have recently adopted science teaching guidelines which specify that teachers and textbooks must emphasize that evolution is only a "theory" (Science, 4/7).

In September, the board will be selecting textbooks under these guidelines, and many concerned scientists fear that they will pick creationist textbooks (such as Of Pandas and People) now that the guidelines have been loosened.

Unfortunately, Alabama is not the only state in which things like this have happened. In at least one portion of Louisiana, teachers have been instructed to read a disclaimer before discussing evolution. And, closer to home, as I mentioned in my Chairman's column, there are still districts here in Illinois which teach creationism, though they are generally quiet about it. Even though we haven't had much in the way of articles about creationism lately, it's still here and shows no signs of going away.

McMartin Movie

HBO helped strike a blow against irrationality this past month, by airing its dramatization of the McMartin preschool trial, Indictment: The McMartin Trial. This trial took six years and cost $16 million and ended up convicting nobody for the simple reason that there was no evidence.

Unfortunately, this lack of evidence didn't stop the prosecutors from pushing ahead with the trials, and this movie portrays the lead prosecutor as being blind to the facts while pushing ahead with the accusations.

Most of the articles I have seen reviewing this movie have indicated that it is mostly sticks to the facts, which I applaud. Documentaries galore can be put forth on a given subject, but nothing seems to attract public attention like a movie. Too many times these "based on a true story" movies are used to promote unscientific causes, such as facilitated communication, alien abductions, and, of course, repressed memories.

I'm sure HBO will continue to air Indictment for a little while, at least, so keep your eye on the TV listings if you haven't seen it yet.

Are You Getting Sleepy?

ABC's Primetime (5/31) took a brief and, frankly, almost meaningless look at hynposis (in fact, I'm probably giving it too much space here for what it was worth). I say it was almost meaningless because, from an investigatory journalism point of view, well, it wasn't really investigatory.

First, they sent in a staffer who wanted to quit smoking. The hypnotist went through his session and then taught her some basic "self-hypnosis" methods to help when he wasn't around. The reporter then related that 27 percent of people who go to hypnotists are still smoke-free after two years, and said it was "slightly better" than those who used other methods. Now I don't know about you, but 27 percent doesn't exactly sound like a stunning success rate to me.

They went on to say that hypnosis had even less success with such problems as eating disorders. They attributed this lessened success to the complexity of an eating problem. For smoking, the hypnotist can simply say, "Stop smoking." For an eating problem, they cannot say, "Stop eating," but must tell the person to "eat right," which brings in a host of complications.

Next, a hypnotist "put under" the reporter himself. He was filmed going through different suggestions, such as suppressing his sense of smell (the hypnotist put a bottle of ammonia under his nose and he said he couldn't smell anything), suppressing his concept of the number three (she had him count to ten, and he skipped three), and suppressing his sense of pain (she had him stick his hand in a chest of ice-water, but he said he felt nothing). Then she implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion to say "February" instead of the word "three." So, when she brought him out and asked him what 5 - 2 (five minus two) was, he said "February" and couldn't understand why everybody was laughing at him, until it wore off in about 10 minutes and he saw himself on tape.

So, what did this whole thing tell us? Not much. Early in the piece, they mentioned that stage hypnosis is a big entertainment craze in Britain now and showed a guy supposedly being hypnotized with a mere finger snap, but they never mentioned it again. Well, I was at such a show once, a number of years ago. I knew several of the people picked from the audience to be "hypnotized" in much the same way. To "prove" that they were hypnotized, the hypnotist took a lighter and held it under their outstretched hands. In turn, each of them yelped in pain, until the last one. With this one apparent success, the hypnotist ended that part of the show. I talked to each of the participants I knew, and they all said that they merely went along with what he and the audience expected them to, none of them wanting to ruin the show. The last one, the apparent success, added that he wasn't any more hypnotized than the rest, but he did have callouses on his hand, which prevented him from feeling the burn of the lighter as much as the others had.

The reporter mentioned in passing that hypnosis has been used recently to "recall" memories of the past, and also added a warning at the end of the story, reminding viewers that not all hypnotists are trained in therapy, and that they should be careful to see only those who are. Well, at least there was one meaningful sentence in the story.

The Other Side of the Story

Will Miller, the host of The Other Side, NBC's daily dose of nonsense packaged as a half-hour talk show, has left the show because he was tired of the sleaze, according to the Chicago Tribune (5/11). To my knowledge, NBC hasn't commented on the future of the show, which I've heard has pretty low ratings. If it goes off the air, it will help restore some of my lost faith in the general public.


A Nod to Our Patrons

REALL would like to thank our patron members. Through their extra generosity, REALL is able to continue to grow as a force for critical thinking in Central Illinois. Patron members are those giving $50 or more. To become a patron of REALL, please see the membership form below. Patron members are:

David Bloomberg, Springfield Bob Ladendorf, Springfield
David Brown, Danville John Lockard, Jr., Urbana
Alan Burge, D.D.S., Morton Robert Smet, Ph.D., Springfield
Wally Hartshorn, Springfield Edward Staehlin, Park Forest

Letters to the Editor

We at REALL encourage letters to the editor about any article or topic covered in The REALL News. We want to make this a forum for all our members. (Letters may be edited if too long. Name, address and phone number must be included with the letter.)


Skeptics Online

If you have a computer and a modem, you owe it to yourself to participate in the skeptic message areas on the computer BBS networks. Here in Springfield, call The Temples of Syrinx at (217) 522-4707. David Bloomberg operates this BBS, which carries the FidoNet SKEPTIC, EVOLUTION, UFO, and FMS conferences, internationally distributed message areas for discussing topics of interest to skeptics. He is also carrying ParaNet conferences, all dedicated to UFO and paranormal topics. In addition, he has recently added several Usenet conferences, including Sci.Skeptic, the Skeptic Listserver, Talk.Origins, and various Alt.Folklore groups. You can also find a wide variety of skeptic, scientific, UFO, FMS, evolution/creation, and urban legend text files there.

The Temples of Syrinx -- (217) 522-4707


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