As I have indicated in an earlier blog, I wrote an article about the conjectures Graham Hancock makes in his book entitled Magicians of the Gods for Skeptic magazine (Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods). I also appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) […]
My article entitled Conjuring Up a Lost Civilization: An Analysis of the Claims Made by Graham Hancock in Magicians of the Gods[1] was published in Skeptic magazine on Sept. 14, 2017 It has been an interesting road to the final publication. Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic magazine) asked me to join him on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast #961 and Youtube video cast (JRE) in a debate […]
At some time between 5 and 7 pm on November 13, 1985, the Mayor of Armero, Colombia, Ramon Antonio Rodriguez, was notified to evacuate the city because of the potential for an eminent mudflow geologists call a lahar from recent activity on nearby Nevado del Ruiz volcano. Rodriguez was aware of the lahars that had […]
Note: this paper will be published in Skeptic Magazine in March, 2017 In case you are not familiar with how college football determines the four teams that are picked to contend for the national championship, I refer you to the Selection Committee Protocol which is a guide on how the committee chooses the four playoff […]
Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) are remarkable. They come from animal (including human) embryos and can morph into any cell in the body such as brain, bone marrow, intestine, muscle, or blood cells. Biologists call them pluripotent and can isolate them from an embryo and grow them in laboratory petri dishes. In the halcyon days […]
After the Madrid terrorist bombing on March 11, 2004, a latent fingerprint was found on a bag containing detonating devices. The Spanish National Police agreed to share the print with various police agencies. The FBI subsequently turned up 20 possible matches from their database. One of the matches led them to their chief suspect, Brandon Mayfield, because of his ties with the […]
When the World Trade Center was being built in 1973, Dr. Irving Selikoff, an expert on asbestosis and cancers caused by asbestos, was an outspoken critic of the wholesale spraying of the floors of the two structures with insulator containing copious quantities of asbestos for fire-proofing. He knew the potential dangerous hazards of asbestos as […]
The term fracking conjures up so many knee-jerk-bad reactions that I am hesitant to broach the subject. I suppose if I am going to wade into the topic I should give some bona fides to display my knowledge of the petroleum industry, but not too many bona fides so that I might be seen as a […]
A few lucky souls have stumbled on diamonds in glacial debris around the Great Lakes and further north into Canada for centuries. Geologists have known that the sources of those diamonds represented a vast wealth of hidden treasure somewhere in the frozen tundra of northern Canada, but it was not until the late 1980s that a […]
Last summer I attended the annual fourth of July parade in our local town with my family. We enjoy watching the floats, pageantry (I am embellishing a bit here), and the copious quantities of candy thrown at us. Nearly every local business has a float — well a truck with the company name on it […]