The Randy Prize

6 June 2008



Here is a very good and lengthy article about the Randi million dollar prize and how it's a scam. Scientists don't take the prize seriously. Many people who have tried to apply for the prize have been ignored by Randi. Estimates for the cost of winning the prize (applicants must pay all expenses) exceed the million dollars in prize money, meaning you'll have to lose potentially millions to win Randi's million dollars. Even fellow magicians criticize his prize:



"According to paranormal investigator Loyd Auerbach (who, like Randi, is a member of the magic fraternity):
"The suggestion that ending the Challenge after 10 years supports any statement that psi does not exist or someone would have won the challenge, is absurd on many levels.
"The procedures for the Challenge included several hurdles in favor of, and multiple "outs" for Randi and the JREF that any discerning individual capable of any kind of extraordinary human performance would think twice about (and here I'm not just referring to psychics and the like)."



Randi lies like a Persian rug about everything and anything in regard to the challenge, for example Gary Schwartz recalls:



"James Randi has a history of engaging in the twisting of the truth...Randi's recommendation of Dr. Krippner was certainly acceptable to me. However, when I contacted Dr. Krippner directly to see if Mr. Randi’s statement about him serving on the panel was correct, Dr. Krippner was concerned. Dr. Krippner explained that he had previously emailed Mr. Randi stating that he would not agree to serve on such a committee. The truth is, Dr. Krippner was not willing to serve on the panel, and he made this clear to Mr. Randi."



Richard "Dick to the Dawk to the PhD" Dawkins warned the not so amazing Randi that there are a number of paranormal phenomena that may become recognized by science soon and this could jepordize his reputation as the gatekeeper of what is science and what is quackery (in The Amazing Meeting #3). Surprise, surprise Randi is discontinuing his challenge in 2010, perhaps on the eve of some psi phenomena like the Ganzfeld telepathy experiments being vindicated?



Why, even on the video "The Case of ESP" some skep-dick brought up the Randi prize as a weak retort to the video, which neither set out to make a positive statement about Randi, his prize, or Psi for that matter; the comment was promptly deleted. There's enough hate and filth on the internet already. In case you are curious, the video was intended only to point out that a particular skep-dick willfully lied when trying to debunk Charles Tart and his associates as SRI. If you watch the video you can notice where I point out first a conscious lie followed by a completely irrelevant comment designed to distract people from the real crux of the issues at hand.



-Dee

Hero

I'm reprinting some entries that were on the old Urban Mystic that got taken down. This one is from 21 February 2007.



A few days ago I finished reading a book, The Empty Land by Louis L'Amour. This book is amazing because it presents something that so few books today (or movies or television programs or anything else for that matter) even consider a possibility: a real hero. The main character, Matt Coburn, is a real hero. He's not some grey area, he's not out for revenge, he's not looking for some boon or reward. Matt Coburn fights for what's right because it's the right thing to do. He is an altruistic hero who seeks to help others and get nothing in return; in fact he knows in return he'll be asked to leave town after he helps free it from crime! Now that's a hero. There are people like Matt Coburn on earth. You hear about them in the news when that labourer pushed the man out of the way of a train or on 9/11 when people went back into the burning buildings to save others when they could have gotten themselves to safety. But books these days don't care about the real honest hero. They want "anti-heroes" or vigalantees seeking revenge. I for one enjoy reading about heroes, actual or fictional. Everyone should go out and read this book; it's good spiritual detox from the materialistic culture that bombards us every day.



-Dee

Life of Lincoln

William, a regular commenter at Michael Prescott's Blog provided three links for similarities between JFK and Abe Lincoln. By the end of reading the first link I was stunned off my gord. Some nay sayers will say that it is all coincidence, but when you have that many parallels there can be no denying that something other than coincidence is at work here. I'm not putting out any positive hypotheses, just stating that coincidence can't be behind the similarities between the two presidents lives, deaths, families, policies, and friends. Take for example:

• Both presidents were elected to the House of Representatives in ‘46.
• Both were runners-up for the party’s nomination for vice-president in ‘56.
• Both were elected to the presidency in ‘60.

Both had friends Adlai E. Stevenson, both were succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson who were former senators who choose not to run for reelection who had urethreal stones, both were born second children, were named after their grandfathers, married women age 24 while they themselves were in their mid-30s, both were boat captains, had served in the military, fought for the rights of blacks, studied law, were over six feet tall, etc., etc.



Here is another link.



-Dee

The Great Wall of Solomon

Remember from an earlier post that biblical verses were discovered on tenth century pottery, casting sharp doubt on the documentary hypothesis? Well this just in from AP, a section of wall was found running 70 meters just outside of Jerusalem's Old City along with a gate house. Dating from the tenth century as well, providing good evidence that there existed a strong, centralized government in Jerusalem at the time capable of such monumental construction. There are some nay-sayers who say this is no evidence at all, mostly because they either don't want the Bible to be true or because they don't want the Jewish presence in the holy land to be true to perpetuate the myth of a single ethnic group known as the Palestinians who lived in the area always. Both sides present their case in the AP article, which is very short and does not use any big words like hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Is this a remnant of the city built by Solomon? I'm excited to find out.



-Dee

War and Religion

I was asked to comment on the notion that war causes religion. Such a task is too great for any ordinary mortal and possibly even Evel Knievel, and so I decided to look at the first crusade and the war on terror, thinking that if I could show they were not caused by religion than the strongest case for the argument that religion causes war would be defeated. Here is ten minutes of musings on the relation of religion and warfare (cut down from twenty minutes).



-Dee

The Mullet Militia

I should use this as my profile picture because this guy looks sexier than I do.

Celebrating Freedom

Dr. King might not have made it to the promised land, but we're moving toward his dream. A time when we all love one another and treat eachother with respect regardless of any petty differences in these physical bodies is approaching. I can't say when, but we are getting there. Here is his "I Have A Dream" speech.