[Vision2020] George Bush's mystery bulge

[Donovan Arnold]

Deliberate deception:
Magician targets psychic frauds

SYLVAIN COMEAU | The performer shows an audience member a newspaper article 
and asks him to choose a word from it. He then instructs the audience member 
to read the contents of an envelope under his seat, which reveals the chosen 
word!
Was it psychic powers? ESP? Don't even say such a thing to James "The 
Amazing" Randi, magician, author, sceptic and tireless debunker of 
supernatural and mystical claims. The demonstration of this feat, part of 
Randi's lecture at the Fieldhouse Auditorium last Thursday, had nothing to 
do with paranormal or otherworldly abilities.

"What I've shown you is a magic trick," said Randi. "I do these things in 
order to show that we magicians do better tricks than all the so-called 
psychics."

Such tricks are the stock-in-trade of mentalists -- magicians who specialize 
in guessing things which they apparently have no way of knowing. Randi is an 
admirer of mentalist Steve Shaw, "an excellent performer who always closes 
his shows by saying, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I use my five senses to create 
the illusion of a sixth.'"

But Randi has a much lower opinion of those who use tricks to make people 
believe that they possess supernatural powers. Following in the footsteps of 
Harry Houdini, another famous magician who worked for years to expose 
charlatans, the Toronto native has appeared on countless TV shows and 
documentaries, and written 11 books, all hammering home his message: Don't 
believe the hocus pocus.

"Today it's politically correct to know nothing and believe everything. 
Think about that -- that's pretty scary. I travel all over the world telling 
people things they should already know. I do some of these demonstrations 
because I want you to realize that you can be deceived. And that doesn't 
just apply to stupid, ignorant, unschooled people. You and I can be 
deceived.

"I am a magician by trade, which means I go through my life deceiving 
people, but for the purposes of entertainment. As a magician, I know how 
people are fooled and, more importantly, how they fool themselves."

The deception inherent in magic -- whether for entertainment or for 
exploiting people's gullibility -- is based on audience assumptions.

"Magicians need to understand how people's minds work. They need to know 
what they will assume, and what they will accept easily. Usually, these 
assumptions won't cost you anything, but they can cost you your health and 
emotional stability."

For example, Randi has exposed several "faith healers," including U.S. 
evangelist Peter Popov, who would receive information on audience members 
through a hearing aid which was actually a radio receiver. Popov went 
bankrupt some time after Randi revealed the trick years ago on the Tonight 
Show with Johnny Carson. But at 70, Randi is still in business because faith 
healers and their ilk are still in business -- including Popov, who recently 
resurfaced and has appeared in Toronto and Montreal.

"One family I talked to thanked me for exposing Popov. So they liquidated 
all their assets and gave it to another faith healer! Some people are 
determined to be fools, and they will be fools."

Randi says that miraculous cure claims fall under three categories -- people 
who were never sick in the first place, people who recovered with the help 
of a doctor's care, and people who died.

"In one case, we went to the home of a gentleman we had interviewed two days 
before. As we reached the door, they brought out a gurney with a body bag. 
The man had died of the disease he said he had been healed of. The family 
had given everything they had to Popov, who did nothing for them.

"Unfortunately, you can't stop these people. They deal with gullible people 
all the time. My book (The Faith Healers) was my last attempt."

Another favorite Randi target is the work of French astrologer Nostradamus, 
who wrote rhyming prophecies in the 1500s and who still enjoys renown as a 
seer. Randi says that followers of the so-called prophet have for years 
rewritten his predictions in order to ensure their historical accuracy -- 
after the "predicted" events occurred, of course. But what about 
Nostradamus's famous Hitler prophecy?

"Nostradamus wrote that 'the Hister will overflow its banks,' and the 
believers out there say that this means that the Nazi hordes will overrun 
Europe. But 'Hister' is the Latin name for the Danube. He lived on the 
Danube. And every six or eight years, it overflowed its banks. That was a 
prediction that had to work; and he was talking about the damned river!"

Randi's book The Mask of Nostradamus systematically demolishes the claims 
about his "prophecies," but the Frenchman's apparently bulletproof 
reputation remains intact among true believers.

Despite his avowed scepticism, Randi generously offers psychics and mystics 
a chance to prove themselves and sting him financially in the bargain. Early 
in his career, he offered $10,000 to anyone who could demonstrate 
para-normal feats under "controlled observed conditions." The James Randi 
Educational Foundation (JREF), which Randi created to promote critical 
thinking and research into supernatural claims, currently offers $1.1 
million, which is still unclaimed.

"We're offering over a million dollars for them to do what they claim they 
do all day long. I sit in the JREF offices all day, and no one's knocking on 
the door."

But there has been the occasional rather dubious claim.

"One guy walked in and said, 'I can make the person on TV say anything I 
want.' We turned on the Oprah show, and he said that Oprah would say my 
name. After about a minute, he said, 'There, did you hear it?' Of course, 
none of us heard it, so we offered to tape it. He said, 'It won't show up on 
tape.'"

It looks like the money is safe.




>From: Tbertruss at aol.com
>To: auntiestablishment at hotmail.com, vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] George Bush's mystery bulge
>Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 02:27:40 EDT
>
>
>Aunite et. al.
>
>The possibility of Bush being fed wireless audio during the debate reminded
>me of The Amazing Randi, famous magician and exposer of psychic and 
>spiritual
>fraud, who once intercepted the wireless feed being sent to an evangelistic
>healer who was working an audience of seekers, being told by assistants 
>"off
>stage" via his hidden ear piece, the info he needed about the audience 
>members,
>about whom research had already been gathered, so he appeared suitably 
>possessed
>of supernatural healing abilities.
>
>http://ww2.mcgill.ca/uro/Rep/r3013/randi.html
>
>This is Randi's web site, but it was not accessible tonight.  Maybe this is
>only temporary?
>
>http://www.randi.org
>
>Ted Moffett
>
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