Lots of news, some good & some bad. On the bad side, the Illinois State Board of Education did, indeed, pass the new science standards without even a single mention of the word "evolution." They apparently left their spines behind in an effort to pass the standards without controversy. But I guarantee that next time these things come up for review (allegedly in about three years), I’ll put this issue at the forefront of discussions and generate the controversy myself if I have to!
On the good news front, my short article on Therapeutic Touch ended up on the desk of the State Journal-Register's medical writer, Tony Cappasso. He has been doing some investigating and interviewing, and I expect to see an article in this weekend's paper addressing this unscientific practice being promoted by St. John's Hospital.
In other news, we’ll be having elections at September's meeting (the day after Labor Day). I know I promised they'd be at the previous meeting, and I hated to disappoint everybody who came to that meeting just for that reason, but Rich Walker just had too much stuff to tell us! So if you want to help us out with things like you've read about here, please come and volunteer!
Speaking of Rich Walker, he gave another great presentation! I was hoping he'd tell us which Lotto numbers to play, but I guess he just ran out of time (hmmm, maybe I should have said that he did tell us which ones to play, and use that as encouragement for people to attend more meetings).
The next meeting will actually be headlined not by the elections, but by our own Wally Hartshorn, talking about "High Weirdness By Web." Wally is one of the founding members of REALL and is the webmaster at our unofficial site (www.reall.org). If you want to know what's really out on the Web, as it pertains to REALL, don't miss this meeting!
And speaking of weirdness, the following meeting, Tuesday, October 7, will feature our own Professor Steve Egger talking about serial killers and related topics. Professor Egger is a nationally known expert on the subject and just had another book published (coincidentally around the same time as the Andrew Cunanan killings, though he claims he had nothing to do with any of that). One topic we can expect him to address is the use of "psychics" on serial murder cases (notice how none of the great "psychics" pinpointed that houseboat?), and the whole presentation should be extremely interesting. Another REALL meeting you won't want to miss!
