Learning stored procedures...why doesn't it work right?

Question

this SP makes a new table actypes from distinct
value from a column in table log_book
the "distinct" is not working ...it is getting too many values
create or replace
procedure doactypes as
CURSOR ac_type IS
select distinct actype from log_book;
v_actype varchar2(32);
begin
open ac_type ;
dbms_output.put_line('...aircraft type = '||v_actype);
loop
FETCH ac_type INTO v_actype;
EXIT WHEN ac_type%NOTFOUND OR ac_type%NOTFOUND IS NULL;
insert into actypes values ( actype_id.NEXTVAL,v_actype);
END LOOP;
COMMIT;
dbms_output.put_line('done');
CLOSE ac_type;
exception
when NO_DATA_FOUND then
dbms_output.put_line('error');
end doactypes;

Answer 1

if I do
select * distinct actype from log_book;
I get no non-distinct values.Really? I get this:
SQL> SELECT * DISTINCT dummy FROM dual;
SELECT * DISTINCT dummy FROM dual
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00923: FROM keyword not found where expectedNote that <tt>DISTINCT</tt> is not a function. It applies to the whole SELECT list.