David Bloomberg
Well, once again I find myself writing this column at the last minute. My life has gotten busier lately (the worst part is that I'm not really sure why), so you may notice a few less articles from me in upcoming issues than you've seen in the past. Personally, I think this is good -- not because it means I have less to write, but because it means more of you are writing articles for the newsletter! I'd like to see as many people getting involved and writing articles (or even short blurbs) as possible.
Speaking of getting involved, I was glad to see a pretty good turnout at our lunch meeting last month. In fact, that was the best turnout we've ever had at a meeting which also featured elections. I guess my disclaimer in the last flyer, about not volunteering anybody for anything, worked. As for the results of that election, well, you may notice on the inside front page that nobody changed positions. I'd like to thank all of the officers and Board members for continuing to serve REALL and its membership.
Even if you aren't an officer in REALL, we are always looking for more help. Like I said above, we want to see articles here by as many people as possible. In addition, if you have the time, we can always find something to do. As we printed a few issues back, we've been asked (along with all the local skeptics groups) by the Rocky Mountain Skeptics to look at Therapeutic Touch (TT), a pseudo-science medical "treatment" being taught to nurses around the country. With several large hospitals and a school of medicine locally, I'd like to see if anybody is using or teaching TT around here. If you'd like to volunteer for something like this, just let me know!
Another area in which we're looking for volunteers, as I mentioned in the previous two issues, is at the Illinois Science Teachers Association annual convention, which will be held here in Springfield this year. This convention occupied a large portion of our discussion at the lunch meeting, mostly pertaining to what we should feature and how we should do it. The consensus was to make sure to hit creationism hard, but also to emphasize other areas of science and critical thinking in general. We'd like to have some hand-outs for the teachers (for example, a generic horoscope they can take to their classes, copy off, and show how it applies to everybody, yet that everybody would think it applied specifically to them) and the like, but I need some help to get it all together. Calling all volunteers!
/s/ David Bloomberg
