Reader David Glück  referred me to this site, which prompted me to respond. Perhaps you’ll go there, read the essay, and return to see my response, below…

I read this unsigned essay with great interest. Therein, I found a few canards of which I’d not previously heard. For example, I assure the author that I, as a devoted skeptic but not a cynic, personally have no fear nor worry whatsoever that claimed psi phenomena might turn out to be real, as he thought might be the case with some. In fact, upon being presented with firm evidence establishing this wonderful circumstance, I would delight in trying to solve the modi operandi that might bring about telepathy, precognition, or other such phenomena.

I got into a discussion with my long-time friend Michael Hutchinson, in the UK, via Skype – if you don’t know Skype, you’ve missed the boat – and we exchanged strange pronunciations of words. You might know that the place name Leicester is pronounced – by the English – as “Lester,” and Worcester becomes Wooster” when spoken. Michael provided these:

Family names:

Cholmondley – "Chumley"

Featherstonehaulgh – "Fanshaw"

Colquhoon – "Cahoon"

Beauchamp – "Beecham"

Please, so that you can get some idea of just how miserably-managed the government health services are in the UK, go to http://dcscience.net/?p=454 and read Prof. David Colquhoun’s account. His “Improbable Science” entries have been railing against stupidity in medical science for years now, and you will see just how ignorant, inept, and recalcitrant these “quangos” are.

Margaret Downey sends us to this link to learn of a disaster brought about by superstition and stupidity – in other words, religion. How many generations will it take for us to outgrow this infection?