As most of you know, ART is an offspring of CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of claims of the Paranormal) and most of you are subscribers to their excellent magazine. Two of our members felt called upon to comment on articles in the most recent issue, Vol 21, March/April 1997.
On Martin Gardner's article about "Farrakhan and the magic number 19" pp. 16-18.
Unveiling 2x9? Don't Let Any 19 Stand There Naked!
No matter what Martin Gardner asserts, the number 19 is still definitely and indubitably the ninth prime. No other number can claim that distinction. If you put a one, the first prime, in front of the nine you get 19. What is more if you take the square of 19 and add twice 9 to that, you also get a prime, namely 379. Even Martin Gardner can not explain why 379 is a prime, it just is.1 There you have it, all factual.
Moreover, if you multiply a wage of 19 by 2000, the number of working hours in the year, you get 38,000, which is a fine starting salary for an engineer just out of college, or for a young professor of such brotlose Kunst as philosophy. Who however needs to have a Ph.D, which takes him at least, minimum, six additional years of academic slavery to earn. In which time the engineer has amassed hundreds of thousands. All of this is true, I guarantee it.
- Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations (London: Bantam Press, 1994)
On Joe Nickell's article "Something to Cry About: The Case of the Weeping Icon" pp. 19-20
The Icon is Sweating, Not Weeping!
So the icon was sweating from the forehead, not weeping from the eyes. Just because the priest or somebody mislabelled what was happening, you can't blame that on His mama. I think it is outrageous for Joe Nickell to quibble about it being tears or olive oil or whatever. If God can make a cheap print picture of His mom weep miraculously, he just as surely can make her perspire olive oil. Does Joe Nickell really believe the sweat of Our Lady is human sweat? Do we not know that her breasts give the finest wine1, which is therefore known as Liebfraumilch. So definitely expect olive oil as her perspiration. The question Joe Nickell ought to ask is: "Why is she sweating? Is her son again in some trouble with the authorities? Has he gotten into another fight with that Darwin of the Apes fellow, or what?"
- which raises the question: "was her son then a little drunk right from the beginning?" That is, however, a topic for another essay at another time.
Theologian Franz Bibfeldt was featured on the cover of The University of Chicago Magazine (February 1995). He was born in either 1897 or 1947 and is author of the major exegesis, apologia, and hermeneutic philopsophy [!] Vielleicht.
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