Kopimism, a "religion" for people who like to steal copyrighted material, is already a hit in Sweden. Now it's coming to the USA!
Here's an interesting account of one bereaved mom's visit to the Afterlife Communication Conference in Phoenix. She came away moved by some of the events and amused by some of the offbeat people she encountered.
Psi research is often criticized for lack of reproducibility. But even mainstream science suffers from difficulty in replicating its findings. One study in the field of cancer science found that peer-reviewed experimental results could not be reproduced in 47 out of 53 cases. (!) From the article:
Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies.
"We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure," said Begley. "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."
Sounds like a file-drawer effect to me. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen in "real" science.
I'm enjoying Sabrina Feldman's book The Apocryphal William Shakespeare, which explores a collection of obscure plays that were credited to Shakespeare (or to "W.S.") during the 16th and 17th centuries, but which are generally dismissed today. The book advances a new authorship theory, but its scholarly treatment of this neglected body of work should also appeal to Shakespeare buffs with no particular interest in the authorship controversy. It's available in both print and Kindle editions.
My friend and fellow author J. Carson Black's Darkness on the Edge of Town has been optioned by Winkler Films as a possible TV series. The Kindle edition of Darkness is currently selling for only 99 cents. It's a great read, and at that price it's such a steal that even a Kopimist might pay for it.