I have an issue of the Twilight Zone magazine with an article about Randi. It’s titled Truth’s Bodyguard. I attended a lecture he gave at the Franklin Institute* a few years back. He was a good man.
I second this emotion. Not to hijack, but I feel the same way about Daniel Ellsberg and Henry Kissinger.
Roderick Femme made an excellent point in a recent thread about the use of certain terms around oral sex as being inappropriate. I think his comment applies to the title of this thread as well. I can’t find it to link to it.
It is reminiscent of George Carlin’s riff on “fucking is nice; we should say, ‘Don’t fuck you! Ever again!’” Or words to that effect.
I was lucky enough to go to The Magic Castle twice as an adult. Luckily, because I was an adult. It was a lot of fun, but it was mostly hokey old-timey magic. It was the nostalgia that made it fun. I think I got more pleasure from the dinner at Yamashiro’s.
Yes, that was another aspect of it - the ones who finally did get it together enough to conduct an actual test would always have an excuse for why they failed. There were a few cases where “Randi isn’t allowed to be in the room” was a condition of the test. At least once, someone claimed that Randi himself was psychic, and used his powers to affect the test.
I was always under the impression that the idea of the million dollar prize was that those who refused to even try were obviously charlatans.
on another Johnny Carson show, Randi gave some simple advice that caused Geller to fail totally, and make a fool of himself
The challenge was to have Geller look at 20 identical sealed metal containers, and using his psychic powers to identify which one was filled with water. (the containers were the little metal cylinders in which camera film was sold)
Randi’s method to disprove Geller’ was simple: he told Carson to glue the containers to the table top. Randi knew that Geller’s method was to subtly kick the table and see which container moved.
Geller totally freaked out, squirmed in his chair like a little child, totally embarrassed, and refused to “use his powers”.
Back in the 90’s when I was working for AT&T and Lucent during the Bell system’s last gasp, they invited Randi to come in and give a lecture at our facility in New Jersey. It was a great lecture, I was glad to see him in person.
Seems like that would spoil the reveal. After Geller fails to pick the container with water in it, wouldn’t Carson be expected to open the container and pour the water out, to prove that there was one? Can’t do that if they’re glued down.
Was that the old Bell Labs facility? I read a book about that and it sounds like an amazing place in its heyday.
Actually it was the old facility in Whippany. Not Bell Labs, but a pretty cool place to work anyway.
Until the collapse of course, but that’s a subject for one of the workplace rant threads.
That isn’t what happened. Here is a video of that appearance.
You can see them pick up the metal cylinders as he eliminates them.
I’m not sure what was done to foil him, but it wasn’t gluing. Possibly just the simple fact that Carson’s prop folks provided everything, and not someone working for Geller who was a co-conspirator.
that’s interesting
Here’s an article
.Bending Spoons and Bending Minds | Office for Science and Society - McGill University
which describes the same Carson show, and says:
I just re-watched the video, and I’m making a guess about the gluing.: The one time that they do pick up a canister, it is not Geller who touches it…it’s the other person sitting next to Geller. So it may be that the glue was strong enough to hold the canister in place without wobbling, but weak enough that giving a good twist and firm pull would detach it from the table.
If the other person is in on the trick and acts like any good performer , with confidence, then nobody would notice.
That was Dick Cavett. I have trouble believing that he conspired to bring down Yuri Geller.
The more likely answer is the author of that article got it wrong. In 1995 or thereabouts when that article was originally written, they couldn’t just watch it on YouTube and misremembered the event, or just repeated an unverified legend from the time.
This seems as good a time as ever to supply this little comedy gem from Fry and Laurie.
Stephen Fry has been a long time and outspoken sceptic and fan of James Randi.
What has always slayed me about these scammers is this. If you could PROVE paranormal abilities, you’d be the richest human who ever lived in a span of six months. The $1 million prize would be an appetizer for the barrels of money that would soon be yours. You could be elected head of state.
The scammers themselves are already making more money than they should, so that’s not really on the scammers, is it? That’s on the rubes who fall for the scams - the ones who don’t realize that simple fact. The scammers themselves know they’re faking it, they don’t need to advertise it.
It’s not dissimilar to people who think some brokers have near-magical stock picking abilities or can do it themselves. If those brokers were really so magically good at picking stocks or if it were so easy to do in general, they’d be making that money for themselves instead of earning commissions selling financial products.
Some people just don’t like to admit they’ve been fooled.
There are threads in the SDMB that I sometimes go back to and read for fun. This thread is one of them.
The fun starts on post 39, in which a long time member recalls a magic trick he observed at a party. Several people that know their stuff try to tell him how the trick was performed, even going as far to associate a particular word used in the trick with a prop (a book) that is commonly used in magic acts. And the person that posted about the trick consistently refuses to believe them……because he doesn’t think he would fall for the misdirections he fell for, I guess. It was very amusing.
Ricardo Montalban, actually. Johnny thanks him by (first) name near the end of the clip.
Could the containers have been fixed to the table by magnets on the bottom? Though I think they said they were aluminum, so that wouldn’t work too well.
I tend to agree it’s probably a case of misremembering.
I guess I misremembered that the other cans were weighted (maybe with sand?) so that they wouldn’t move any more than the water-filled can would. Maybe because that is the way I would have done it.
