The Amazing Randi

Awesome video Jim. I must admit, I know far too little about James Randi. I will have to check out his website some more. Thanks for the tip.

As for the subject matter of the video, I love it. I am too young to remember the Uri Geller fellow, but I have seen similar con men get exposed. Every supernatural phenomena I have ever heard of is a trick of one type or another. Humans must be predisposed to illusion. There must be some type of genetic gullibility built into our DNA. There seems to be no end to the number of silly and ridiculous ideas we believe in. Psychics, UFO's and ghosts are very entertaining, but why do people take these things so seriously? Is it any surprise so many people believe in a god they can't see, hear or touch?

They die from lack of attention.

I have loved science fiction and the thought of extra human capabilities ever since I was a teen...and am still enamored with it. In that vein I came across 2 interesting articles in Science Daily today:

1) Infants who read minds
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070803110811.htm

and

2) Levitation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070806091137.htm

Enjoy.

Note: This is in response to a post below.

And awesome mental powers which enable you to misspell 'psychic'. 'mentally', and 'genetically' all in one short post and which keep you from going near a dictionary? Or is that perhaps a sign of the aforementioned retardation?

This post brings back memories, Jim. Heh, heh! Thanks.

My mother used to subscribe to Fate Magazine lo, these many years ago. I was about twelve, eldest of four. I was the first to pick up that magical micro-tome of woo. I read not only of guys getting rides on alien ships but of people who could photograph ghosts. After a few issues arrived and showed up around the house (Ma's ability to read while doing housework resulted in a wide variety of information appearing suddenly), us kids would wait to hijack the latest copy and read it aloud to ourselves in secret!

There is no way to describe the effect of ghosts and dead people talking and aliens and strange powers and more true stories of Actual True Events upon our young minds except to mention, casually, that not one of us really found any practical use for such stuff. With the exception of making up a game for fun.

Imagine, four kids, twelve, nine, seven and four, opening the box that arrived at our house from an Advertiser In Fate Magazine. Inside we knew there existed a marvel of inscrutable power, a powerful talisman of extraordinary ability far beyond the understanding of mere humans and subscribers to periodicals. No, not your book of dream interpretations, your list of conjunctions. No, nothing less than the all knowing, all telling, all perfectly correct, Mystic Eye!

Cleverly distinguished from the dated Wee-Gee (sp?), this wonder consisted of a fold out board, like a game board, marked out with the same symbols as the Eujgia. Once laid upon a level and firm surface the difference manifests! Instead of the moving pointer upon which fingers are rested, savants of the Mystic Eye suspend the pointer below their fingers by means of a cord of certain properties.

The way was to simply hold, singly or with fellow "sillynaughts', the amazingly cheap pendulum by the string, carefully centering and steadying it over the really neat eyeball glued to the middle of the board. Now! Ask any question and watch as the pendulum swings repeatedly over the True Answer! Awe and wonder and a suspicion that somebody has been had!

This method was apparent to myself and my litter-mates as being demonstrably superior due to its ability to introduce multiple interpretations of the same answers that, having been given by the Ouigea, would have only a very narrow margin of error (of interpretation. This being due to the slight difference in parallax from one savant to another as they observe the position of the dangling nail, close to the board). In the case of the Mystic Eye, this difference was accentuated, stretched and folded into another dimension by the simple device of introducing 3D: by lifting the point of contact high (six, eight inches; maybe nine) the points of view of the savants, or savant, as, by oneself, unintended, one might have moved something between asking and getting answered, constitute specific POVs that possess both similarities to and differences from any other POV not the same but hilarious to us kids.

We played with it for a couple hours straight the first day. Ignored it for a day or so, played lackadaisically during a lull, then put it up. It came down again, on occasions when one of us kids wanted to hack around with it. But not together anymore. Any joke, no matter how funny, gets stale with repetition. The Mystic Eye , like all the other mystic stuff and all the unseen eyes are just like a joke heard long ago, or a story from True Magazine (anyone remember?) of a gruesome picture from the old Philadelphia Enquirer-it was really something then, but anymore it's background noise. Children grow up but never completely out of childhood.

It's a good idea to retain a sense of the numinous, the mystery of life. It is a constant. As much as is laughing at old jokes that aren't funny anymore because you remember how good you felt when it was funny.

Please pardon the awkward sentence structure. This was all rather stream of conscience, dealing with decades-old moments. The presence of all those commas and parentheses has no genesis save that it was fun while I was laughing along with children from long ago while I was writing this.

Sciences has proven that the average person only uses 10% of their brain. Think of what could happen if you used the rest.

sucks to be you.

I think that any one who isn't a psychic is either mentaly retarded of geneticaly inferior.