Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? (2012)

Do you think the number 19 has occult power? Have you or your loved ones recently been given a flying physical by hairless humanoids? Have you been feeling much better since you started drinking your own urine? Do you think the world began in 4000 b.c.? Are you ex-senator Claiborne Pell, Louis Farrakhan, a deconstructionist professor, an Internet nut? If so, there's a chapter in Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? about you. It's the fifth collection of the ''Notes From a Fringe Watcher'' column that Martin Gardner writes for The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and as usual the prolific science and math author zaps his targets with laserlike precision and wit as he reminds us that about half of us, according to polls, are as gullible as the average medieval peasant. B+