Here’s a fact for you: One in every eight births in Talladega County, Alabama is to a teen mother, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health. You might be thinking what that has to do with censorship and banned books. Well, not much- unless you happen to live...
Science & Nature
Across the Great Divide: “When Fantasy Meets Reality: The Conjuring”
It’s August 1st, and that means a new edition of my paranormal column, Across the Great Divide! This time around I discuss the new horror movie, The Conjuring. There’s always a suspicious rift between what is real and what is fantasy when it comes to films based on actual events;...
Banned Books Awareness: “The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments”
Growing up in the 1980s many of us had our interest in science inspired and popularized in the television show, MacGyver. Come on, who could forget such classic scenes like when he made a defibrillator out of some candlesticks, a microphone cord, and a rubber mat? Or how about...
Across the Great Divide: Stump the Ghost Guy
I wouldn’t say that I have a unique point of view among paranormal researchers, but it is a rather rare one. Most people exist huddled at opposite extremes; that is, they either have a passionate belief in paranormal phenomena, convinced by the tiniest shreds of evidence, or they think...
Across the Great Divide: The Minefield between Paranormal Belief and Religion
We’ve covered how to blend spiritual work into paranormal investigations in one of the earliest series for this column; and how the psychology of perception shapes our paranormal experiences; as well as a plethora of discussions on how scientific principles and methods apply to paranormal research. Through it all,...
Across the Great Divide: Packing Up and Moving a Haunted House
What happens when a haunted house moves? No, not just the people or objects- but the whole house! A rigging crew in Monroe, Iowa spent February 19, 2013 slowly moving a 100-ton house; and that has local ghost hunters anxiously waiting to see if any paranormal activity follows the...
Banned Books Awareness: Freedom to Read Week 2013
Americans tend to arrogantly think that censorship is something that only happened in Stalinist Russia or, currently, the Middle East; America, of course, is proclaimed to be the land of the free. That stuff doesn’t happen here. Many other countries think that censorship only happens within the borders of...
Across the Great Divide: What does science have to fear from parapsychology?
Last month we discussed some interesting points about science and the unanswered questions raised by parapsychology; a noted professor even attempted to explain some of the principles studied by researchers through the application of mathematical reasoning. However, the underlying question remains: just why, more than 100 years later, does...
Google, Inc. can kiss my ass!
Well, folks, it has been brought to my personal attention that Google, Inc. has, as a company, a philosophy that is misogynist and offended by any talk of women’s reproductive issues. Their conservative philosophy is such that they have resorted to an authoritarian level of censorship on any websites...
Banned Books Awareness: Sex manual banned for 200 years goes under the hammer
Aristotle’s Compleat Master-Piece had been banned in the United Kingdom for 200 years and it’s about to go under the hammer yet again- the auction hammer, that is. An edition printed circa 1766 is expected to draw more than $645 at the Edinburgh auction house Lyon and Turnbull on January...