UPDATE: Please see below, and the link to the SkeptiCamp Wiki for new details about this event.

SkeptiCamp New Hampshire is just over a month away! Please join us for the first such event in New England. Based off of the unconference model of BarCamp, SkeptiCamp is a dynamic event with lots of participation and interaction.

We will be holding SkeptiCamp at The Barley House in Concord, NH on Saturday, October 22nd from 11am-4pm. For those coming from Boston please look at Concord Coach Lines for the South Station <-> Concord bus line. It’s a easy alternative for those coming from the Boston area, especially if you don’t have a car.

Please note that due to the limited space, registration is required to attent. Registration can be done at our EventBright page. If you want to cancel your registration please let us know so that we can release the seat to others. Speaking slots are even more limited, so if you have a topic you’re interested in presenting please contact our event coordinator, Dale Roy.

This event is made possible by the co-sponsorship of the James Randi Education Foundation.

This month we welcome our first return speaker. Bart Center, writer of “The Atheist Camel Chronicles” is joining us to talk about his new book “The Atheist Camel Rants Again!”

Bart is also the operator of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, a website for post-rapture pet care.

So please join us, 7pm at The Shaskeen in Manchester on September 12th. More information can be found at the event facebook page. Please RSVP there or here in the comments.

Back in October, 2010. One of the founders (Andrew Cramb) sent me an email stating psychic John Edward would be performing at The Palace Theatre in June. I thought it would be a good idea to put something together, but till I had a good idea best to put it on the back burner. After all, there was plenty of time to do something.  However, what I did do in the mean time, was come up with a pamphlet called “Rational Guide to Psychics”.

Then, back in November, I was on a Skeptical Activism panel at TAM Australia and ideas were being kicked around about what people can do to become more active. When I brought up the John Edward protest idea, one of the Young Australian Skeptics (sorry, I can’t remember who) threw out the idea of the “Psychic Bingo Cards”. I thought this was a GREAT idea.

After arriving back to the states, I did some research on the bingo cards, and bookmarked a few sites.  I shared the ideas with a few people I could trust to keep my thoughts quiet till I was ready to implement a plan.

While coming up with a full plan, I tried first to get the show shut down. So I contacted The Palace and their president, Peter Ramsey.  I had no idea what Peter Ramsey thought of John Edward- did he believe in his abilities? Would I receive flack for trying to meddle and waste his time?- but he agreed to meet with me. When we met, Ramsey said due to the nonprofit status of the Palace and how they operate; Denial of use or closing down any show is not an option.  Anybody that pays for the cost of its use is welcome to hold a performance there. However, the real surprise not his support, but how much of his support he offered. Peter Ramsey was coming from the idea of free speech. He was giving me the same opportunity he would give anybody else to protest any performance or event going on at the theater.  Happy with the end result and confident with the knowledge that The Palace Theater, at least, wouldn’t force us away.

As it became closer to the date of John Edward’s show, I made sure to notify the Manchester Police Department of our intentions as well as City Hall.  (This is an important step, in case things should go wrong. Nothing was expected too, but covering your self is always a very good idea) I also had some trouble getting the bingo cards done. I didn’t need 800 completely different cards.  What I did want however, was enough cards that had some kind of random look to them. Thanks to Tim Farley, he pointed me to an online bingo card generating website, I was able to use 27 words and generate enough cards with the effect I wanted.  800 of the same card would not have the same positive affect… if any at all.

My original plan was always to get the stuff done a day or so before the show: stuff the envelopes with cards and pencils, then go protest.  Then as probability taken personally would have it, the Thursday before the event I ended up getting a staph infection in my hand (we think due to a spider bite) and spent the weekend dealing with it.  Monday -the day before the show- I spent half the day in the ER, while my wife was dealing with an important family matter.  I spent Tuesday morning in the ER again, as things were not looking better.  Thankfully, it didn’t take too long so I was able to drop off stuff to be copied for the protest. After everything that happened, I was feeling kind of down due to my hand, and I had no idea how I was going to stuff envelopes, 800 of them, before the show basically one handed.

At this point of the tale, all I can do is express how important it is to have a good V.P.  When the leader of the group is feeling sorry for themselves, the VP needs to motivate your sorry depressed ass.  It also, helps that my VP (Dale Roy) is also my wife. She knows how to motivate me and kick it into gear. I was ready to pack in the idea of putting the bingo cards into envelopes with golf pencils. However, after what we’ll call a “heated discussion” Dale convinced me that we needed to go through envelope stuffing process. Handing out the bingo cards alone would be a failure. So, while we were waiting for the printing to be done, she ran back to the store and got the envelopes and golf pencils. I wasn’t the fastest guy stuffing envelopes with pencils, but we got a lot done.

Next stop was Staples to get the printouts, then to the Manchester Library with our crew of 5 others to stuff envelops. We worked our butts off until 6pm, we had just over 500 stuffed. Short of the 800 we printed, but I really didn’t think we’d get them all handed out. When we arrived to The Palace, we met with the officer on duty, the general manager (Mike) of The Palace, and I had an email from Peter on my phone saying that if we had any issues with anybody to deal with the cops and a “good luck”.

So our original idea was to hand out the cards as people walked in, say they were for the show. If anybody asked questions we would tell them we’re not with the show, but that these were to help you keep track of what was said. After a short time, we were told we couldn’t say “for the show” because that makes people think we were with John Edward. We of course, apologized and changed that to “These are to help you remember what was said during the performance and just so you know, we’re not with the show, “.  With the exception of a couple people who gave them back to us and one forcefully handed it back crumpled up, people seemed to like them. Quite a few people came out and asked if they could have more for the people they were with.  We ended up giving out every single bingo card we had stuffed. People loved them!

During the time handing things out, because of my fun injury, I walked around to make sure things were going smoothly and talked to a reporter from the Nashua Telegraph who was conducting interviews. One of our members works for the Telegraph, but he wasn’t the one interviewing. He knew we were trying to be low key and not identify our selves as Granite State Skeptics till the end of John Edward’s performance and he respected that.

After we handed out all our cards we went to get dinner at the fabulous Penuche’s, where the waitress asked what we were doing and asked for a copy of the bingo card and the pamphlets. That was a surprise, but we all had a good chuckle about psychics and the show going on next door.

I will admit, we were worried about part two of the plan.. I don’t know what happened during the show, but with around 500 people, in a 800 seat theater having these bingo cards, Edward had to have noticed. If he addressed it or not, or just ignored it, or if anybody even asked about them, I have no idea. However, when people leave the show and see the same people handing out pamphlets that state “RATIONAL GUIDE TO PSYCHICS” and that it’s presented by the Granite State Skeptics on the cover, there was no hiding it anymore.  To ensure there were absolutely no problems, we were even more passive. We stood in the same places as before, but this time we were not actively passing out the pamphlets.  Rather we had them in our hands ready for people to take them if they wanted.  If they had any questions we would tell them to please read the pamphlet and they could email us if they wanted.

Surprisingly, very few people came out actively seeking us out due to anger. Instead, most just ignored us. A few people took the pamphlets and there were a few people actually came out looking for us wanting these things. Well, they didn’t know we had them, so I’m assuming they wanted to talk to us but they were excited to see the pamphlets and took them happily. Of course, those that were taken, a majority of them ended up in the trashcans along the street. I hope some people read them before trashing them.  However, even those few that took them because they actually wanted them, is considered by us as a win.

The only real issue that happened was when Dale got a “talking to” by a patron of the show.  A woman came up to her and said “Why are you protesting this? Go protest something that matters, like the abuse of animals…. You should go to a circus and protest them, they really abuse animals.  This is just a harmless show, YOU ARE SO STUPID!”

So all and all it was a great event and we had fun doing it. The response so far has been more amazing than I could have imagined. We were even added under the criticism section of the John Edward Wikipedia page, but due to a bit of a Wikipedia battle, we are no longer there.

I’d like to thank all those that helped, Andrew Cramb, the Young Australian Skeptics, http://skeptico.blogs.com/ (for the Bingo idea), of course the people at The Palace Theater and Peter Ramses, the Manchester Police, the people that handed stuff out, Darrik Fauvel, Lindsey Miller, Charles Windheim, and Anna Naglebush, Penuche’s for providing a great place to crash while we waited, The Nashua Telegraph, Mark Edward, Susan Gerbic, Rational Alchemy who interviewed us the night of the protest, and of course Dale, because of her motivation, this event was a huge success, the pencils and envelopes did make all the difference.

“Tom Lynch is an internationally known and well respected freelance Paranormal Investigator based in New England and travels across the country to help his clients uncover the truth about what they believe to be paranormal activity”

His promo video can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pztn8Cz5cmw

This of course generated tons of buzz around the world. It’s caused enough of an issue that the US Power Balance website posted this statement.

Power Balance products work. The existing reports out there are fundamentally incorrect. Power Balance did not make any claims that our product does not perform.

We are committed to bringing our performance technologies to every athlete in the world from professional to amateur to recreational. Our community of believers continues to grow each week. While our previous claims in marketing ads are not up to Australia’s ACCC standards – we stand behind our products. The belief of thousands of consumers and athletes who wear our products are not wrong.

A preliminary study recently conducted on the product’s performance variables was commissioned and the findings have determined that the product does in fact provide a “statistically significant” result on the wearer’s performance. We are committed to further evaluating the product’s performance parameters so that we can continue to provide products that enhance the wearer’s lifestyle.

Numerous actual consumer testimonies supporting the wristbands’ performance were provided to the ACCC by Power Balance. Despite that, they requested Power Balance remove marketing claims until it could provide them with their narrow criteria of randomized, double-blind scientific studies that supports the use of those marketing phrases.

Power Balance voluntarily agreed to stop using those phrases. Power Balance believes and wants users to believe that we will do whatever it takes to appropriately, and with honor and integrity make our products available to every consumer in every market in the world.

Hrm, a study? I ended up emailing the company asking them for more information about this study. The reply was filled with lots of marking talk and skating the law about what they can actually claim, but here’s the important bit in the email I got from Power Balance.

Currently the only scientific studies that have been done were measuring lead content and also measuring radiation to insure there are no harmful effects. One done by a Professor at Yale Testing for radiation and the other by a Texas based 3^rd party organization called Intertek. Both studies came back with no harmful effects.

So, the official website says they’ve done studies on the effectiveness, but when you email them about the studies, none exist. Only studies on safety have been done.

The first, and of course the most obvious is to get a feel for what’s going on and what the FDA seems to be cracking down on. It does seem to come in waves, recently there was a large amount of “detox” items getting letters, this week it seems to be chelation therapies.

Another thing is to see what can be reported. You can see who crossed the line and how. You can use this information to find other people in violation and report them to the FDA.

But the real power with this tool is awareness. Using the website you can sign up for email alerts and you will get 1-2 emails a week telling you that the list of offenders is updated. You can then send this information out to friends that may use the products or post them on a blog. What I do is post them on Google SideWiki. You don’t need to have Google toolbar to use this Google product, they also have a bookmarklet.

While Google Sidewiki is not in widespread use, it is helpful just to keep track. There have been more than a few cases where I’ve gone to put in a new FDA Warning to find out that they already had one or two. If they’re the same complaint I will usually shoot the FDA an email to remind them that they have already notified these people for the same offense.

In closing, the FDA Warning website is an easy tool to use and another to throw in your skeptical toolbox in order to combat pseudoscience on the web.

This event will be limited to the people that RSVP. To do so email me to let me know how many travis@granitestateskeptics.org

We will be at:

Wings Your Way
1181 Elm Street
Manchester, NH

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page or Meetup Page

Please sign up at our Facebook events page. If you don’t have Facebook, just RSVP here so I can get an idea of how many people will be coming.

Special thanks to Jeff Wagg and Liz Gaston for their help preparing and researching this event.

First a quick pic of our setup:

As you can see, it’s nothing fancy. I of course hope to replace the bucket with a more proper stand. So the laptop to the left of the bucket (in this pic it’s my wife’s MacBook Pro, for Tim Farley’s talk it was my work PC Laptop) runs the presentation. The video for that is jacked into the flat panel TV above. I’m able to control it via wifi using my iPod Touch with either Keynote Remote or Airmouse. The laptop on the bucket has the presenter, full screen, via Skype. They can see us and hear us, and the audio is plugged into the TV above.

Originally I was going to have a microphone, but due to technical problems the first night I couldn’t but Richard ended up being able to hear questions just fine and it gave him the ability to hear anything going on in the room and he even ended up talking to our waitress for a bit.

So if you have speakers a few states away or on the other side of the planet that you want to give a talk at your local SitP, but can’t afford to have them travel this is a good alternative. Nothing would replace having the speaker there live of course, but this is a workable alternative.