Saturday, Jul 5, 2008
Skeptic magazine should take a cue from its splashier, diametric opposite, Fate. Plus: Jerry Stahl on heroin -- again; yet another writer "discovers" eBay.
Aug 27, 1999 | While the '90s have been remarked upon by many as the Golden Age of Cynicism, I believe the Decade of Credulity is a far more apt characterization. Sure, we of the recently college-educated set can bring a (pick only one) feminist/gay/patriarchal/protozoan perspective to everything from a Pepsi commercial to a mid-century Eames chair, but we also spent the better half of our 20s watching the "X-Files." If our country's media intake is any indicator, Mulder's mantra "I want to believe" has far greater implications than any of us imagined.
Horoscopes, psychics and chat rooms dedicated to "irrefutable" evidence of alien life on planet Earth: These thrive while educational programming falters. Why? Well, people do want to believe. Call me a cynic, but it's also about packaging. It's a lesson easily illustrated by two polar opposite publications. The first is Skeptic Magazine, "Devoted to the Investigation of Extraordinary Claims & Revolutionary Ideas & the Promotion of Science & Critical Thinking." Then there's Fate, "True Reports of the Strange & Unknown."
| Skeptic, Vol 7 No. 1 | Fate, April 1999 | |
| Cover illustration | Two puffy-faced scientists with creepy facial expressions | Hot vampire chick with blood-stained lips |
| Overall look | Page after page of text printed on thick, matte paper. Articles followed by hard to read footnotes. A few grainy photos. | Big, crazy fonts. Glossy pages. Color photos of movie stars, people with fangs, gigantic bugs and charred blimps. |
| Cover story | Fraud and Science: Reflections on the Baltimore Case" | "ReVamped: Vampires are a hot topic today ... But what's life really like behind the media masquerade?" |
| Conspiracy scoop | PR firms creating faux nonprofits | Bar codes! Harmful disrupters of electromagnetic fields! |
| Bigfoot article | The "Patterson film" of Bigfoot finally exposed as a hoax | How to tell a real Bigfoot from "Anthropoid Pseudo-Sasquatch Entities" |
| Personality profile | Carol Tarvis, social scientist and feminist author: "I think the rise of spiritual movements today reflects not just a hunger for God, but for the kind of community connection that religion has traditionally provided." | Jing, psychic parrot: "I like to talk to other birds because they understand me as a bird. I also like to talk to cats." |
Let's face it, Skeptic is the quality rag of the two, despite a troubling number of copy-editing errors. And despite the bland design and overly academic headlines, it's an engrossing read. But which one is going to jump out at you from the patchwork of glossies at your local bookstore? Fate, of course. I am not suggesting they dress up Richard Dawkins in a boa and leather chaps for an eye-popping centerfold, but Gillian Anderson does play a skeptic on TV. Why not add a little star wattage to the editorial lineup? Some would argue such a move would cheapen Skeptic's high-falutin' purpose and standards. But if its contributors are truly as fed up with the "credulists" as they claim, then some "ReVamping" is in order.
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