Skeptics' Circle 44

I regret that I haven't posted very much this week, but some family medical issues have kept me preoccupied. Fortunately I prepared my entry for this week's Skeptics' Circle 44 well ahead of time. Hop on over to Salto Sobrius to read it and plenty of other skeptical goodness.

Pirate Drinks

Alrighty, then. I suppose I'll be makin' one more contribution to the festivities o' Talk Like a Pirate Day. As rum and drinkin' be prime elements o' the pirate life, I'll be contributin' these two suggestions to you lot o' scurvy dogs.

Captain Jack
1 part Gentleman Jack Daniels
2 parts Captain Morgan Tattoo

Pirate Port
1 shot o' Captain Morgan Tattoo in a wine glass of grape juice (red for ruby, white for tawny)

Alright then ye scurvy dogs! I've had enough o' pirate talk for the year. Off wit' ye!

Thar Be Tile On Ye Floors, Mateys!

Let that be the beginning and end of my contribution to "Talk Like a Pirate Day".

Over the weekend, we layed tile on approximately 25% of the downstairs of our house with the help of our Brother- and Sister-in-Law, two nieces, and a couple of other friends who wanted to learn the technique for when they do tile themselves (as well as just being helpful sorts). We squished grout between the tiles of about half that area. Hopefully we'll have all the essential components of the house back in their homes in the next day or so: the washer, dryer, hot water heater, and toilet are already back in service, but the refrigerator still needs to return to its place in the kitchen. My A&S projects are largely waiting for this endeavor to reach completion.

We do have some pictures, but they're not in our own camera, so embarassing pictures of me on the floor spreading mortar and laying tiles will have to wait.

An Example of a Blinded Test

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I found some interesting bottles of wine on the closeout rack of a wine store we frequent (to digress, closeout racks are great). We found bottles of Jewel Shiraz and Jewel Syrah at a very low price. I immediately found the labeling odd, since Shiraz and Syrah are actually the same species of grape under two different names. The grape is usually called Shiraz by Australian growers, while French growers use Syrah, but both of these wines were made from grapes grown in California. Consequently, they should be exactly the same (as they were also bottled the same year, 2002), so why give them different labels.

I asked a store clerk about the labeling, and she told me that the Syrah should actually taste a little softer and richer. That sounded nonsensical to me, but why not take this opportunity to conduct a little test, especially since these bottles were marked down to very manageable prices.

We therefore bought a bottle of Shiraz and a bottle of Syrah and took them with us to the apartment of some friends of ours -- Lord William and Lady Juliana. My job would be to devise a test to see if anyone else at the table could distinguish between the Shiraz and the Syrah.

The test would be a simple “Which of these things is not like the others?” I started with four identical wine glasses. I then tied some colored thread provided by Juliana around the stems to uniquely identify each glass: gold, light blue, white, and green. Rolling a die, I randomly assigned Syrah to one of the glasses and wrote its color on a piece of paper to stick in my pocket. I poured Syrah in that glass and poured Shiraz in the other three. I made sure they were all filled to the same height and then took them to the dinner table. I provided blank sheets of paper for my three testers. Their task was to write down the thread color of the glass that held different wine from the other three. Instructions given, I left the room. Juliana's parents came by a little later, and they got pulled into the test, too, so I had a sample size of five participants.

Just by random chance, I should reasonably expect one or two of the testers (roughly 25%) to get the right glass. Three or more correctly identifying the odd glass (the Syrah) would indicate that there probably was a detectable difference between the two wines, be it flavor, aroma, color, etc.

As it turned out, no one identified the glass of Syrah correctly, which conclusively proved to me that there was no difference between the Shiraz and the Syrah (except, perhaps, that the Syrah had a classier label).

There were some flaws in this test. Given time and resources, I would have liked to make the following changes:

• It would have been nice to have an intermediary between me and the testers so that I -- as the person pouring the wine -- would have no interaction with the people tasting it; that would make it a truly double-blind test (as it is, it's single-blind).
• It would be nice to have more people involved in the test for statistically better results.
• More test scenarios would be good: three glasses of Syrah and one of Shiraz, for instance.
• I also didn’t think to ban table-talk before the test, so the comments of Juliana -- the first tester -- may have prejudiced the next two somewhat; fortunately the Juliana's parents arrived later and didn’t hear the table-talk, and I was able to forbid discussion of wine opinions before they’d written their choices.

Make the Puppy Happy: Skeptic’s Circle 43

Every time someone believes an implausible claim or explanation without good reason, a puppy cries. Learn how to keep the puppy from crying at this week’s Skeptics’ Circle, brought to you by Ethics and Science.

Another Triumph in the Courts

I discovered an interesting bit of news today. It seems that a judge in Illinois has ruled that selling a piece of cheap jewelry -- like the Q-Ray Bracelet -- with a claim that it relieves pain is false advertising.

U.S. District Judge Morton Denlow ordered QT Inc. of Mount Prospect, Illinois, and its owner, Que Te Park, to refund more than 100,000 buyers of the bracelets -- priced up to $249.95 -- and forfeit profits of $22.6 million earned between 2000 and 2003.

That's right: even if a substantial percentage of customers claim that they actually experienced pain relief due to the placebo effect, advertising that your product actually provides some medical benefit without actual scientific evidence to support the claim is false advertising, and you can lose millions in court.

Now if people would just start suing the homeopaths and their ilk in the alternative medicine market...

The Coronation of Gunther and Kora

I had the pleasure of attending the coronation of His Royal Majesty Gunther and Kora over the weekend. This event included some additional auspicious awards, including the knighting of Sir Ulrich von Brandenburg (here's hoping I didn't mess the name up) and the entry of Lord Leon Jeronimo Suarez into the Order of the Meridien Blade.

Unlike some previous coronations, this one had a rather full schedule of activities to engage citizens who were not preoccupied with peer meetings and other coronation business. This included heavy fighting tournaments at which Their Royal Majesties each chose their armored combat champions. Her Royal Majesty has scheduled the selection of Her Rapier Champion to take place at Red Tower, I believe, and Their Majesties announced they would also be holding a tournament to select the Queen’s Yeoman at some future date.

There was a rapier tournament at this coronation, and I had the opportunity to fight a round against His Excellency, Earl Godwine. It is a pleasure to see that his attitude has changed from “I don’t fence, and I don’t like to watch fencing,” to “I fence, and I’m darn good at it, too!” His Excellency may not have perfected hand parries, yet, but he certainly isn’t lacking in accuracy, range judgement, and willingness to engage. His Excellency stabbed me in the leg and throat in rapid succession, and went on to the semi-final round of the tournament before being eliminated by the tournaments’ eventual winner, Lord Leon. As this was a double-elimination tournament, I continued to the quarter final round, where Lord Tormod dubh Gunn eliminated me (as has happened all too often in the past).

The evening’s festivities included the traditional White Rose Ball, which was held outdoors on the field used for the day’s armored fighting activities. The dancing went quite well, with no shortage of participants until the wee hours of the morning. I would like to thank Baroness Mariana for organizing the Ball as well as the musicians who performed for us and Lord Lorenzo Petrucci for teaching a couple of 15th-century Italian dances (Chirintana and Marchesana) after the scheduled dance list was complete. I will also say a special hello to Lady Vivian Vyvienne, since I always enjoy discovering a lovely new dance partner.

Alas, I will be out of the SCA loop for the next few weeks, as home repairs, family medical issues, and a planned vacation will be occupying my time.

Skeptic Material Direct to You

Sometimes a piece of good material for a skepticism post falls right into your inbox. That’s right, someone at the last place I worked sent me a chain letter! Let’s all enjoy picking this piece of modern creduloid literature apart. When I get “advice” like this, the first thing I usually do is search the Snopes.com database to see if it’s a known urban legend. This one was easy to find.

CELL PHONE INFORMATION / share with family & print for future use..!!!

Yes, it announces in the very first line that it’s probably bunk. The “share” advice and multiple exclamation points are major giveaways.

What to do when your cell phone gets lost...

Here is something worth knowing if you have a mobile phone ....Have you ever wondered why phone companies don't seem interested in trying to prevent the theft of mobile phones? If you have ever lost, or had one stolen, and if you are on a plan, you still have to pay the plan approximately up to 24 months, and you have to buy another handset and enter into another contract. This is more revenue for the phone company.

The conspiracy theory element is very popular in chain letters, and usually BS. Service providers won’t generally require you to sign a new service contract if your phone is stolen. In fact, if you’re still under a contract, your phone may be insured against theft. If you’re not under contract, they may offer you a discount on a new phone if you sign another contract, but they probably won’t require it.

There is a simple way of making lost or stolen mobiles useless to thieves and the phone companies know about it, but keep it quiet.

To check your mobile phone's serial number, key in the following on your phone: star-hash-zero-six-hash (* # 0 6 #) and a fifteen digit code will appear on the screen. This is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it safe.

The Snopes article shows this particular piece of the urban legend to be partially true:

Entering the sequence * # 0 6 # on your cell phone's keypad may produce a display showing a unique fifteen-digit International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) string. However, this only works with phones that use the Global System Mobile Communications (GSM) standard, as these phones contain a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card that holds users' subscription information and phonebook information. Not all cellular phone service carriers use GSM technology, so entering the * # 0 6 # sequence will not work with every cell phone.

Returning to the chain letter…

Should your mobile phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset, so even if the thief changes the sim card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either.

Having the IMEI string, if it exists for your particular phone, might make it possible to keep a thief from registering it with another provider, but you certainly don’t need it to contact your own service provider and notify them that your phone was stolen so they can terminate its service.

If everybody did this, there would be no point in stealing mobile phones. You may want to send this to as many people with mobiles as possible.

The thief probably won’t try to register the phone with another provider and won’t get much for selling the handset, since the value of a stolen phone is the calls that could potentially be made on it before the service gets cut off. Digging the IMEI string from your phone (if it exists) is going to a lot of trouble for very little effect; the hardware simply isn’t worth that much to the thief.

What you really need to do if your phone is stolen is contact your service provider as quickly as possible to cut off service before the thief can make any calls.

No charge for directory assistance. Phone companies are charging us $1.00 or more for 411 - information calls when they don't have to. When you need to use the 411/information option, simply dial 1-800-FREE-411 or 1-800-373-3411 without incurring a charge. This is information people don't mind receiving - Pass it on. Works on home phones and cell phones.

This is actually a separate claim, addressed in a separate Snopes article. It turns out that this part is true. The service is provided by a company called Jingle Networks. There’s an automatic voice recognition system that asks for the location, type of listing, and listing name for which you want a number and then reads back the corresponding entry from its database. The only catch is that you may have to listen to an advertisement before you get the number.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

The 42nd Skeptics' Circle is up at Immunoblogging. Go armed: there are zombies.

The Great Animal Planet Disappointment

I used to watch Animal Planet quite a bit when visiting my parents or in-laws or any other acquaintances who happen to have cable. I find that now that we have cable ourselves, I’m not particularly drawn to AP, though. I’m really interested in the natural world, what animals can do, how they live, and how they evolved. That’s why the intrusion of pseudoscience into AP has cost the channel its charm.

What prompted this rant was an episode of Animal Planet’s “The Most Extreme” that I happened to catch recently. This show runs down a list of ten animals that excel in some particular feature like strength, speed, toxicity, intelligence, or such. The particular episode was a “best of the best” show, listing the examples from the top ten highest rated shows, and “most extreme senses” was apparently one of those shows. Sharks, with their electromagnetic sense, were the winner of that category on their show, I suppose.

If you’re not familiar with the format, “The Most Extreme” always tries to give you come kind of human comparison for the extreme animal’s characteristic. For example, the rhino beetle is their strength champion, and they say that to have comparable strength for their size, a human would have to be able to lift a tank. (Side note: In reality, muscle strength doesn’t scale directly with size, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss.) Then they’ll go on to give examples of actual human extremes in the same field; showing record-setting Olympic weightlifters as actual examples of strength, for instance.

Getting back to the extreme senses of sharks, they mentioned that you’d need to be able to smell a hot dog stand from across town to have a comparable sense of smell, and you need to be able to detect a nine-volt battery from some ridiculous distance to have comparable sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. Then they made the grand mistake of calling the shark’s electromagnetic sense a “sixth sense” and brought out their human example: Sonya Fitzpatrick, the Pet Psychic.

For me, all of the show’s credibility abruptly dropped through the floor at that point. I watched as she went to visit an alligator farm, where the owner had supposedly called her because one of his favorite alligators wasn’t behaving normally: less socially, whatever that means for alligators. I watched as Sonya cold read the guy, saying the alligator was telling her that the man seemed unhappy (Duh! Why else would Mr. Credulous call in a psychic?); naturally he immediately volunteered that he’d recently gone through a divorce (and in a "post-reading" statement, gushed at how surprised he was that she knew about it).

As for the alligator’s less social behavior, she asked what the man had changed about the way he treated the alligator, and he helpfully informed her that he’d changed its diet to something less expensive. Acting as though it takes psychic ability to realize that a dietary change will often result in a behavioral change, she told him to change its diet back, and we got a glowing follow up of how her advice had brought the gator back to its old self and improved the man’s life.

I, on the other hand, felt a little ill after watching her shamelessly manipulate the guy. I know AP has a whole show dedicated to this woman’s supposed psychic abilities, but I hadn’t been confronted with it before. I realize that they’re a for-profit venture and that psychic shows bring in the bucks, but I don’t think it’s worth the sacrifice of their scientific integrity. I don’t watch AP anymore; they've gone from a serious science channel to a circus act..

More on His Royal Majesty, Godwine

In case you heard a rumor -- yes, it's true. His Royal Majesty Godwine is now an authorized fencer in the Kingdom of Meridies. I'm not sure how much of a change in attitude this actually reflects, of course. He may never have had the intense dislike for fencing that some people claimed he had. He may have just not liked it until he tried it, and someone persuaded him to give it a go. For all I know, he may still dislike it, but he became authorized so that he would at least have an informed opinion. Whatever the case may be, I am very glad to have learned of this development.

I am informed that His Majesty will be present on the fencing field at the coronation of his successor, His Royal Highness Gunther. I am looking forward to the opportunity to go a few rounds with him at the event, and I hope a lot of other Meridien fencers will be there, as well.

Another Free Energy Claim

This one came up in a forum that I frequent, but the original article was in Yahoo news. An Irish company called Steorn claims to have developed a free energy technology. Now, they’re challenging the world to prove they didn’t.

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irish company has thrown down the gauntlet to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.

The company, Steorn, says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy -- a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.

The rule in question, of course, is the thermodynamic principle of conservation of energy: no process produces more energy than it consumes. Steorn claims to have broken that rule, and such a big claim should come with equally big evidence. What evidence is Steorn providing?

Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland's Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that "all great truths begin as blasphemies".

Sean McCarthy, Steorn's chief executive officer, said they had issued the challenge for 12 physicists to rigorously test the technology so it can be developed.

"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.

"The energy isn't being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It's literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy," he told Ireland's RTE radio.

So far I’m unimpressed. For starters, a magnet doesn’t contain energy (other than the inherent “heat” energy that all matter contains if its temperature is higher than absolute zero). A magnetic field is much like a gravitational field; an object moving through it can exchange energy with the magnet, just as an object moving through Earth’s gravitational field can exchange energy with the Earth. Spinning a coil around a magnet is a standard method of generating electricity, but you have to have some other kind of energy to spin the coil. You’re just changing one kind of energy into another, and losing some in the process due to inefficiency. McCarthy’s description doesn’t sound any different, in principle.

I doubt if physicists will rush to Steorn to test the technology based on this “challenge”. It’s up to Steorn to publish their research in some reputable scientific journals if they want scientific credibility. If they just want to make money, they should keep their discovery to themselves until it’s marketable. Instead of either of the sensible approaches, they’ve come out with a publicity stunt, which never bodes well.

Chocolate Mary

Color me slack: I didn’t get an article together in time for this week’s Skeptics’ Circle. Something turned up this morning, though, so here’s my late entry.

Yet another example of pareidolia in the news this week, this time a lump of waste chocolate that triggered someones religious sensibilities.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. - As a chocolatier to the rich and famous, Martucci Angiano has posed with many celebrities — but on Thursday she held in her hand a figure that dazzles her more than any Hollywood star.

Workers at Angiano's gourmet chocolate company, Bodega Chocolates, discovered under a vat a 2-inch-tall column of chocolate drippings that they believe bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary.
-- Article

Actually, it looks like a perched hawk to me. Naturally, religious employees at the chocolate company are idolizing the little lump of hardened goo. At least it looks like the Angianos plan to keep this blob instead of selling it on Ebay like most of the folks who “discover” such things do.

Scenes from Beggar's Rebellion

Rhys was good enough to bring his video camera to Beggar's Rebellion to get some shots of the activities. We had grand plans for taping drills and tourneys and a great variety of fencing action, but unfortunately their battery wasn't up to the task. It faded before we even finished warming up. Thus, we are left with just this video of Hawk and I warming up with swords and canes.

I don't think it quite lives up to the music Rhys chose. We need to do dramatic death scenes if we're going to go all Hollywood with the soundtrack.

Victory!

Fjorleif and I went to Beggar's Rebellion this weekend, and there were a couple of fencing tournaments during the day. My good lady wife and I walked away with both of the prizes. I can claim to have had a combination of skill and luck that enabled me to win the bright, shiny new buckler with which I shall be blinding my foes and blocking their attacks, but Fjorleif freely admits that her victory was pure guile.

The tournament that she won was a "battle for the pig". Feodor placed a large plastic pig in the field, and the object of the tournament was to make off with it, either by eliminating the competition or by running fifteen feet with it without being intercepted. Fjorleif got hold of the pig and ran with it in the second round, not bothering to engage anyone in actual combat.

The other winners of the initial three rounds were Hawk and Mattheus, and the three of them squared (or, rather, triangled) off for a final free-for-all deathmatch. Both of the guys took two swords, while Fjorleif took my sword and dagger. My good lady wife again avoided combat until Hawk was good enough to kill Mattheus for her. She then played a retreating game until Hawk got impatient and rushed her. She was able to tangle up both his swords during the charge and jab him with the dagger, winning the tournament.

Let that be a lesson to you. Cleverness and treachery can easily outperform skill and talent.

Distillations of Defense

Distillations of Defense is the title I put on my first effort to extract the most useful information from an abridged version of Joseph Swetnam's 1617 book, The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence. I've since obtained scanned versions of the whole thing, and I'm working on transcribing it before I actually go back to pulling out the good stuff. I've gotten through much of the introductory material, where I came upon this comment from Swetnam...

"I have made this of brick and stones, as Augustus said of Rome at the first, but now Rome is built with marble: even so I would wish that some expert and learned person or other would pull down this rude begin work of mine and build it up with marble."

Well, maybe I -- a professional technical writer -- am the expert he sought. I have only a fraction of the fencing experience of Swetnam, but from grinding through his prose I can say that I know a hell of a lot more about writing than he did. In my transcribing effort so far, he has tried and failed something like five times to conclude his "Epistle to the common Reader"; he just can't seem to stop diving off into tangents. His spelling is inconsistent; his grammar is horrendous; and he has absolutely no concept of how to use punctuation. In his defense, I doubt these are unusual failings of Jacobean writers.

But I shall persevere, and hopefully I'll have a concise, coherent manual of Swetnam's fencing style by the time I finish. Excerpts will likely show up here from time-to-time as I progress.

In the meantime, please try not to write like Joseph Swetnam.

The Cure for Allergies?

I heard an interesting folk remedy while listening to talk radio recently. Callers to the show claimed that consuming raw local honey would reduce or eliminate allergy symptoms. The reasoning behind the claim is that honey contains a lot of pollen from local flowers that might be causing allergy symptoms, and exposure to this pollen through the honey allows the allergy sufferer to develop resistance to the pollen.

This sounded dubious to me. I figured that exposing someone to allergens in honey would just cause them to have symptoms. Allergy symptoms are just an out-of-control immune reaction; I know of no way to reduce allergic reactions through greater exposure to the allergens.

Nonetheless a quick search the internet found this claim being promoted on a lot of sites. About.com wasn't enthusiastic, but didn’t rule out the possibility either.

My husband and I decided to give the local honey a try. My husband after just a few days noticed a significant difference in the way he felt. After one day of taking a teaspoon of local honey, my allergy symptoms got worse. I even tried a second day, but I continued to feel rotten so I discontiued using the honey.

On the other hand ReallyRawHoney.com is a big promoter of the idea:

An Oklahoma allergist told a meeting of 150 beekeepers that raw honey is an effective treatment for 90 per cent of all allergies. Dr. William G. Peterson, an allergist from Ada in the 1950's, said he now has 22,000 patients across the nation who are using raw honey along with more customary medications to relieve allergy symptoms.

"It must be raw honey because raw honey contains all the pollen, dust and molds that cause 90 per cent of all allergies," he told a meeting of the Oklahoma Beekeepers Association. "What happens is that the patient builds up an immunity to pollen, dust or mold that is causing his trouble in the first place. The raw honey must "not be strained, not even through a cloth." he added. "I know the customer wants good, clear strained honey, and that's fine, but for health reasons, raw honey is what we need."

If only Dr. Peterson’s statements constituted real evidence. Unfortunately, he has only provided a wealth of anecdotes. He has lots of patients using raw honey, but they’re also taking conventional allergy medications. What’s really needed is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to determine whether honey actually reduces allergy symptoms. Conveniently, a summary of such a study is available from PubMed.

Department of Pathology, UConn Health Center, Farmington 06030-3105, USA.

BACKGROUND: Allergic rhinoconjunctivitis is a common disorder, affecting >20% of people of all socioeconomic strata. Despite this high prevalence, relatively few sufferers seek professional medical help, presumably because of a widespread reliance on complementary remedies.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the widely held belief among allergy-sufferers that regular ingestion of honey ameliorates the symptoms of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis.

METHODS: The study was conducted at the University of Connecticut Health Center's Lowell P. Weicker General Clinical Research Center. Thirty-six participants who complained of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis were recruited. All recruits were scratch-tested at entry for common aeroallergens. The cohort was randomly assigned to one of three groups, with one receiving locally collected, unpasteurized, unfiltered honey, the second nationally collected, filtered, and pasteurized honey, and the third, corn syrup with synthetic honey flavoring. They were asked to consume one tablespoonful a day of the honey or substitute and to follow their usual standard care for the management of their symptoms. All participants were instructed to maintain a diary tracking 10 subjective allergy symptoms, and noting the days on which their symptoms were severe enough to require their usual antiallergy medication.

RESULTS: Neither honey group experienced relief from their symptoms in excess of that seen in the placebo group.

CONCLUSIONS: This study does not confirm the widely held belief that honey relieves the symptoms of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis.

Emphasis mine.

This was a pretty small study, of course, having only 36 participants, so it’s just a preliminary result. Nonetheless, it’s a preliminary result that seems to refute claims that eating raw honey will reduce allergy symptoms. Furthermore, a number of the websites discussing the subject noted that some people actually had worse symptoms after taking raw honey (which is what I would expect if the honey actually contains something to which the person might react).

Pending further study, I’d say its reasonable to assume that eating lots of raw honey does not reduce allergy symptoms, and eating honey containing your specific allergens might actually cause an attack. Be smart: take your medication and get your honey filtered.

Free Plug: Ask the Vet

One of my high school classmates became a veterinarian, and she now has a radio talk show called Ask the Vet in Knoxville, TN, on WNOX on Sunday mornings starting at 10am Eastern time. The funny thing is that she told me she was tired of the veterinary practice because she'd grown weary of having to explain for the millionth time why pet owners needed to get heartworm medication. So now she answers questions for two hours straight every week, and I know from listening to talk radio that they won't all be really smart questions. Well, maybe if you get the answer to enough people at a time, the question doesn't have to be asked as often.

Anyway, if you happen to dwell in the Knoxville area or expect to be passing through on a Sunday morning, tune to 100.3 FM to pick up Tracy's show. You can also download previous shows from the archived show page.

Reunification

I went to my high school class reunion over the weekend. Those who know me can figure out which; those who can’t figure it out don’t need to know.

I had a good time talking with some old friends and shamelessly flirting with ladies that I was too shy to approach way back then. Some silliness you just have to grow out of, I guess.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that a few of my old classmates actually live near me now. I’ve already taken steps to get in touch with them and lure them down the dark path to the SCA. We’ll see how well that works.

Yes, we did take pictures. I have not looked through them to decide which are fit for public display here at the Saga. Time will tell...

Final Video Installment

Last of the batch of videos from last practice...

We're looking at making a lot more videos of various SCA activities, demonstrating practical things like drills and such. Look for new stuff next week.