» Continued from Part 2

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
24. Should killers have spiritual advisers up to execution time?

=== Noted
25. Prophet Motive (Sylvia Browne)
26. Exorcism and suggestibility study: False memories of possession can
be created

=== Books
27. Guidance Counseling
28. JK Rowling is far ahead of the Spice Girls in personal wealth

=== The Butt Of Jokes Around The Corner
29. 'A bottom is a lot like a crystal ball'
30. Bigfoot's Buttocks

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations

24. Should killers have spiritual advisers up to execution time?
The Associated Press, Jan. 2, 2001
http://www.uniontrib.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SAN QUENTIN -- In his last hours on Earth, California death-row inmate Thomas Thompson fought to stay alive and, failing that, yearned to be with his spiritual adviser until the last moments.

He lost the first battle and won a compromise on the second, staying in a cell adjacent to the Rev. Margaret Harrell until about 20 minutes to midnight. Later, he was able to gaze at her face through the glass windows of San Quentin State Prison's death chamber.

The state maintains that such visits with spiritual advisers pose too much of a safety risk. It's an argument some inmate advocates find hard to believe.

''What are they going to do, hit someone with a Bible or the Koran or something?'' said Robert Bryan, a defense attorney who isn't involved in the Harrell case but represents several death-row inmates.

On Thursday, the issue goes before the California Supreme Court, where Harrell's attorneys will argue that spiritual advisers should be removed at the last feasible moment before executions, which in California can take place any time after midnight.

San Quentin prison spokesman Lt. Vernell Crittendon says allowing someone like Harrell to stay after 6 p.m. means that an outsider is present as the execution team begins preparations.

''Those folks turn around and they now know the identity of the individuals carrying out the ultimate punishment on behalf of the citizens of California, and that may cause some concern,'' Crittendon said.

The state-employed prison chaplain may remain with the inmate longer, if so requested. However, even the official chaplain must leave well before the prisoner is led into the death chamber.
(...)

Death-row inmates take into prison their First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but there's no national standard for access to spiritual advisers, said Robert Lynn, immediate past president of the American Correctional Chaplains Association, the religious arm of the American Correctional Association.

''We in the ACCA would like to see a uniform policy nationwide regarding executions with hopefully as much humane treatment as possible toward the condemned,'' he said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* The vast majority of civilized countries do not commit premeditated murder as form of punishment.

=== Noted

25. Prophet Motive
Brill's Content, Nov. 27, 2000
http://brillscontent.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The self-described psychic Sylvia Browne is a frequent guest on such TV programs as Larry King Live and The Montel Williams Show. She drops by to promote her books (most recently, the best-selling Life on the Other Side) and her New Age pantheism, and occasionally to solve a missing-person case. For the most part, Browne delivers simple entertainment. But her claims that she has solved crimes, assisted enforcement, and directed victims to missing loved ones are something else entirely. They concern real people and real tragedies, and exploit misfortune for lively programming. What's more, talk-show hosts such as King and Williams fail their audiences by accepting Browne's claims without question or, in Williams's case, enthusiastically endorsing them.

Browne has appeared on Larry King's show three times since 1999 and The Montel Williams Show about 25 times since 1995. Whenever she appears on either program, Browne asserts her legitimacy as a ''psychic detective'' with claims that range from the vague and unverifiable to the patently false.
(...)

Producers at Larry King Live would not comment on the veracity of Sylvia Browne's claims. Says CNN spokesperson Erin Sermeus: ''Larry King's responsibility is to be a fair host and interviewer, and it's up to the viewers to draw their own conclusions.''

As for Williams, he often seems more of a cheerleader than a disinterested observer.
(...)

Producers for Montel Williams refused to comment for this article.

Brill's Content has examined ten recent Montel Williams programs that highlighted Browne's work as a psychic detective (as opposed to her ideas about ''the afterlife,'' for example), spanning 35 cases. In 21, the details were too vague to be verified. Of the remaining 14, law-enforcement officials or family members involved in the investigations say that Browne had played no useful role.
(...)

Moreover, the FBI and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children maintain that to their knowledge, psychic detectives have never helped solve a single missing-person case.

''Zero. They go on TV and I see how things go and what they claim but no, zero,'' says FBI agent Chris Whitcomb. ''They may be remarkable in other ways, but the FBI does not use them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. Exorcism and suggestibility study: False memories of possession can be created
Skeptical Inquirer, Jan. 1, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Couple the re-release of The Exorcist and the Halloween broadcast of Possessed, a TV docudrama about a purported exorcism in a mental hospital, and you've got a prescription for a sudden jump in the number reported demonic possessions.

''Quite a number of people who watch these exorcism films will be affected and develop symptoms of hysteria. These films will be a fullemployment bill for exorcists,'' says Elizabeth Loftus, a University of Washington psychologist and memory expert (and a CSICOP Fellow).

Loftus recently completed a demonic possession study that is to be published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. She conducted the study with Giuliana Mazzoni, a Seton Hall University psychology professor and a University of Washington visiting scholar; and Irving Kirsch, a University of Connecticut psychology professor. The research demonstrated that nearly one-fifth of those who previously said that demonic possession was not very plausible and that as children they had not witnessed a possession later said possession was more plausible and they may have witnessed one.
(...)

Loftus says the three experiments tell a consistent story. When people are exposed to a series of articles describing a relatively implausible phenomenon, such as witnessing a possession, they believe the phenomenon is not only more plausible but also are less confident that they had not experienced it in childhood.

''We are looking at the first steps on the path down to creating a false memory,'' says Loftus.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Books

27. Guidance Counseling
Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
For a man who openly courts the wrath of God, Pastor William R. Grimbol is remarkably sanguine about divine retribution. Lightning bolts, frying him where he stands? He doesn't buy it.
(...)

Lucky for him.

Grimbol has written a book called ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Life of Christ.''

So it's come to this, has it.

Perhaps there should be no surprise. The ''Complete Idiot's Guides'' -- those paperbacks with the bright orange borders that are a staple of almost any bookstore checkout counter -- have been brave from the start. The series began in 1993, attempting to hold the hands of the computer-confused with ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to DOS.'' This is a market niche to which their competitors, the ''For Dummies'' books, have largely remained faithful. A relatively small portion of the 300 current ''Idiot's'' titles continue in this vein, including paeans to Java 1.2, Microsoft Visual InterDev and the ever-popular ''Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating an Html4 Web Page.''

But then the publishers crossed the line.

They began to think cosmically. There are far more idiots in this world than simply those who try to run computers, they realized. Their backlist -- which sells some 3 million copies every year -- has come to defy parody.

The following are real, we-are-not-making-this-up titles:

''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your IQ.''
''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Psychic.''
''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pro Wrestling.''
''The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Vietnam War.''
''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Sex on the Net.''
''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.''

We scoffed, we tittered, we found it amusing when they produced these titles. But now this series is getting scary.

The publishers are trying to reduce to the level of the complete idiot the entire universe, its meanings and the powers that most definitely Be. Their current bestseller is ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Catholicism.''

This is a strange but understandable metaphysical path the books have taken. It's an engineer's view of how the world works. You seen one operating system, you seen 'em all, right? Can't you just hear the editorial meeting? The one where somebody said, ''Hey look, if we can explain Windows, how complicated can Judaism be?''

Yes, indeed, that would be exactly where they have ended up, having recently published ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Judaism,'' by Rabbi Benjamin Blech.
(...)

Blech has turned down the suggestion that he write ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Kabala.'' Kabala is the esoteric tradition passed on among Jewish mystics that deals with the secrets of the universe. Recently, its study has become trendy on the West Coast, especially among movie stars like Madonna, Blech explains. But, he says, ''it is dangerous to some extent to the uninitiated. It is not something you should write lightly about.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


28. JK Rowling is far ahead of the Spice Girls in personal wealth
The Economic Times (Times of India), Jan. 1, 2001
http://www.economictimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Joanne Kathleen Rowling, or more aptly the wizard behind Harry Potter, sold her first book after a number of rejections, to Bloomsbury for the pound sterling equivalent of $4,000 in 1997.

Today, first editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone are on the market for upwards of 12,000 UK pounds/ USA $20,000!).
(...)

And for Bloomsbury, the series accounted for an estimated 20% of overall sales of $34 million last year and has doubled revenues and profits since 1998. Goblet, at $25 a copy, is likely to push this year's sales to $50 million, which has lifted pretax profits by more than 50%, to $6.4 million.

And there are three more books in the series. Book rights have been sold to England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden. The publisher is not discussing Rowling's advance, but she is worth some $24 million, well ahead of Spice Girls. In fact, with royalties of 11.5m pounds, advances 2 million pounds, and the sales of film rights to Warner Bros for 1m pounds, she is third in the list of US women earners.
(...)

Amazon.Com accounted for about 10 per cent of the print run for the new book and teamed up with FedEx to deliver 250,000 copies the first day the book was available to the public. Amazon.co.uk , the British subisidiary of Amazon.com, said advance orders of 400,000 copies made it the biggest seller in the short history of online bookselling.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== The Butt Of Jokes Around The Corner

29. 'A bottom is a lot like a crystal ball'
The Independent, Dec. 22, 2000
http://www.independent.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[...more offbeat news...]
(...) Inside, Sam Amos, 43, is a picture of normality. She doesn't look the kind of woman to make a living from staring at people's bottoms.

Amos, a telesales worker by day and clairvoyant by night, started reading posteriors four years ago as a dare.
(...)

Word got around, and people desperate to know what their future held started sending Amos Polaroids. Then the photocopies arrived.
(...)

Amos, who is single and lives with her two daughters aged eight and 18, claims superficial lines on the buttocks reveal as much about one's destiny as palms. The left cheek relates to the past, and the right to the future, she says. The lines underneath are connected to relationships, and those at the bottom of the spine indicate how many children a person is going to have. How does she know all this? ''I couldn't tell you. It's just what I feel,'' she admits. ''When I'm doing a reading I just look for the shape of the bottom, and how it hangs, basically.''

The clairvoyant, who has cast her eye over a couple of hundred bottoms, has correctly predicted that one woman was going to win a competition, that another was going to pass her driving test, and that someone's car was going to break down. ''Clients want to find out about people who have passed over more than anything,'' she says. ''[Dead] people do come through because the bottom is kind of like a channel. It's a focal point, like a crystal ball.''

How does she feel about working with backsides?

''It's OK, you've just got to get your head round it. The first couple of minutes for me are awkward, but when I get focused on it, it's fine,'' says Amos, who charges £30 for the half-hour readings.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


30. Bigfoot's Buttocks
New Scientist, Dec. 23, 2000
http://www.newscientist.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The imprint of a hairy backside in the mud of Washington state is the strongest hint yet that Bigfoot is roaming the North American far west, according to researchers who made the discovery.

Many people doubt whether the giant primate, commonly known as Bigfoot, actually exists. Hundreds of its supposed footprints have been photographed and cast, but this is one of the few body impressions of the hypothetical creature.
(...)

Most stories of the bipedal apelike creature are dismissed as misidentifications or hoaxes. But Fish and others think Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it is known in Canada, may be living hidden away in remote wilderness areas.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), which includes some trained scientists, sponsored a 13-person expedition in September to look for evidence in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in southern Washington state.
(...)

After placing apples in a muddy spot one evening, the investigators returned the next morning to find an impression which, they say, shows the left forearm, hip, thigh and heel of a large primate. They believe the impression was made as the creature sat down and reached over to pick up the bait.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]