Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Skeptic's encyclopedia

The James Randi Educational Foundation has put Randi's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural up on the Web. It gives definitions, explanations and sarcasm about everything from Abaris ("Abaris is said to have lived without eating or drinking. This, coupled with the fact that his pupil Pythagoras is supposed to have stolen his golden arrow, must have resulted in a certain dissatisfaction with his life.") to zombie ("The fact that the idea of real zombies has been taken seriously in Haiti can be seen in their old penal code, where it is stated that “the use of substances whereby a person is not killed but reduced to a state of lethargy, more or less prolonged,” falls under the category of “intention to kill by poisoning.” ").
I find the site to be a bit slow loading, but seems plenty useful nonetheless. (Link seen earlier at Beatrice and BoingBoing.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi!
Note that the Encyclopedia was slightly redesigned. The pages (one per entry) should load faster now.