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The Amaz!ng
Meeting
Karen Stollznow - B@D
LANGUAGE
And God said, Let there be neon light…
and there was Vegas.
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The Amaz!ng
Randi…
Looking suitably
formidable
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From all over the world,
hundreds of the faithless made the pilgrimage to Las
Vegas to attend The Amaz!ng
Meeting 3: From Eve to Newton, the Apple of
Knowledge. A veritable ark of 562 skeptics congregated inside the
Stardust Resort and Casino along The Strip, ready to venerate such
skeptical icons as Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer and of course, our
skeptical God, the Amazing Randi.
What follows is a privileged
account of the proceedings of this year’s meeting. A breach of
confidentiality, as we all know that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
The 2005 meeting was held in
conjunction with the Skeptics Society and promised a most illustrious
line-up. It was with much delight that I seized the opportunity to
represent the Australian Skeptics, by sheer grace of my geographical
proximity. N.b. people will look at you very
strangely when you announce that you’re going to Vegas…for a
conference!
Despite a lingering cold
(strangely, the homeopathic pills weren’t working), after having a
Bourbon and Lemonade spilled on me in the airplane and spending five
minutes in a smoke-filled casino I already smelled of Vegas and was ready
to take on Sin City! Why, this was my second trip here and this time, I was
legal!
Alas, I was only one of four
true blue Australians in attendance but not the only Aussies in town.
Enormous billboards promoted the sun-kissed visit of ‘Australia’s
Thunder from Down under’ men and their counterparts, the ‘Aussie Angels - The Wonders From Down
Under’. I had hoped they would boost the Aussie contingent at TAM3
but they must have misplaced their tickets during their act.
The meeting was held over the
Martin Luther King Junior holiday and the ‘bright light city’
was bustling with life. While the punters flocked to ‘Lost
Wages’, this gambling capital of the world, TAM3 was an ironic shrine
to skepticism amidst the lucky charms and petitioning of Lady Luck. As one
R. E. Shay once said, “Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will,
but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.”
I arrived just in time for
the reception, a lavish banquet for the attendees. With a plate of nibbles,
I gravitated towards a lone gentleman of Barry Williams-like stature. I had
happened upon Jerry Mertens, Professor of
Psychology at Minnesota’s St Cloud State University,
elder of the Minnesota Skeptics and coordinator of the St. Kloud ESP Teaching Investigation Committee (SKEPTIC).
Jerry has assisted in challenges and investigations with James Randi
himself, notably testing (one of) the world’s first perpetual motion
machine(s)! Fortuitously, Jerry turned out to be a connection to the
skeptical inner sanctum. Within an hour, I was acquainted with several
skeptical high rollers, including Michael Shermer and Joe Nickell. I then
hit the jackpot with a personal introduction to Guru Randi. “Randi,
this young lady would like to touch your robe!” Randi graciously
consented to the request but I settled for a hug and a kiss. Presented with
a photo opportunity I had to crouch down, proving that although
‘Amazing’ is an apt and literal epithet, Randi is larger-than-life
in a purely figurative sense only.
After a lavish power dinner,
we retired to the conference hall to be treated to a complete performance
of Julia Sweeney’s (www.juliasweeney.com)
introspective Letting Go of God.
This was a story about losing religion, the inverse of the standard saga;
non-believer finds God. This is The Road from Damascus.
Sweeney’s monologue traced her pilgrimage from faithful Catholic to
disillusioned believer to critical thinker and atheist, delicately labelling herself a
‘naturalist’. Sweeney’s doubts are raised by her profound
assessment of an unwittingly deep question asked of her by visiting
Mormons, “Do you believe that God loves you with all his
heart?” Sweeney was astonished at their absurd rationalisation
for their faith, before reasoning that, to the outsider, Catholicism is
equally incongruous, “I’m just used to the Catholic stories”. This quest for enlightenment
saw her dabble in Buddhism and the spiritual medley that is the New Age,
eventually leading her to science. This play is a turbulent ride for the
emotions. At times hilarious and outrageous, her story is unfailingly
insightful and honest yet never condescending. Sweeney’s outstanding
performance and poignant tale earned her a standing ovation, rousing even
the most notorious curmudgeons in the audience.
During registration, I had
met a few members of the online JREF forum, (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin)
where the men are skepdudes and
the women are skepchicks. On this
first night of the conference, the JREF skepchicks held a pyjama party. No boys allowed. I’m afraid, the
Vegas confidentiality pact must be honoured at
his point and any accompanying photographs would thrust this journal into
another category altogether!
On the second day of TAM3
creation, Randi gave us Phil Plait. The Bad Astronomer was not bad as MC
for the day. Opening the day’s proceedings, Plait spoke of his
encounters enroute to the conference. The people
having a stiff breath of oxygen at an ‘oxygen bar’ in the Las Vegas airport. A
chiropractic practice boasting “1000 hours of manipulation” and
the “terror researchers” who claim to have predicted the
December 26th earthquakes and tsunami.
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Skeptic pin-up boy,
Michael Shermer
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First up was Michael Shermer
who introduced his latest book; Science
Friction: where the known meets the unknown. While we’ve all seen
the images of the reputed Jesus Christ on a tortilla and the latest
comestible deity, the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Shermer treated
us to a slide show of other popular pareidolia; the reputed ‘Face on
Mars’, Jesus in a gas nebula, the Jesus tooth filling and a
two-storey high apparition of the Virgin Mary on a building façade in Florida.
As for the crusty Virgin, Shermer concluded that the flirty, out-looking cupie doll image doesn’t correspond with the
standard representation of Mary, usually depicted as demurely casting her
gaze downwards.
Shermer continued with
popular lore, explaining the incidence of confirmation bias. He cited
several Beatles myths, namely the “Paul is dead” rumour and the backmasking
stories of hidden messages revealed by playing a record backwards. As our
friend David Oates will attest, backwards music or speech can often reveal
word-like sounds (Although Oates would maintain this is deliberate rather
than interpretation. I was once delighted to discover that, played in
reverse on a four-track, the fade-out of the Beach Boy’s innocent Wouldn’t it be Nice? sounds like “Beelzebub”!) Shermer relayed
the contents of a letter from comic book writer and illustrator John Byrne
to further demonstrate cognitive bias. Known as the “Byrne
Curse”, Byrne joked that his works ‘foretold’ a Japanese
earthquake, a New York
blackout and the Challenger tragedy. Most ironically, a Wonder Woman comic
was published, bearing the title “princess Diana dies” (Diana
was Wonder Woman’s real name). As Byrne states, “that issue
went on sale on a Thursday. The following Saturday…I don’t have
to tell you, do I?” Byrne finishes with: “My ability as a
prognosticator would seem assured—provided, of course, we reference
only the above, and skip over the hundreds of other comic books I have
produced which featured all manner of catastrophes, large and small, which
didn’t come to pass.” Shermer classified such claims as
“predictions after the event” and a phrase with which most of
us are familiar, to “remember the hits and forget the
misses”.
Magician and mentalist Rick Maue owns and operates Deceptions Unlimited (www.deceptionsunlimited.com),
a trading name that causes no end of trouble at the bank. Maue jokes to the tellers that his company is “a
division of Enron”. Professing to “lie for a living”, Maue has been designing and performing theatrical
séances since 1976. Maue cited a tabloid
headline, “Husband’s dead wife leaves message on his answering
machine”. Musing that this is obvious proof that it is possible to
communicate from the other side, Maue wondered
that the deceased didn’t have the good sense to call her husband when
he was home! Maue notes that there are three
categories of séances. 1. A séance where all the participants know the
sitting is false. 2. A séance where only the medium knows the sitting is
false and 3. A séance where all the participants believe in the
proceedings. Maue concluded with the astute
observation that Hollywood-style séances are created with the purpose to
scare. Conversely, Edward et al., today’s TV equivalent of séances,
are “safe, happy places for spirits”.
Margaret Downey founded the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia and
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The Friggatriskaidekaphobia
Nurse (aka
Margaret Downey)
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the
Anti-Discrimination Support Network but is better known as the Friggatriskaidekaphobia Nurse. In this incarnation, Nurse ministers to the
superstitious and there’s good news – it’s a curable
disease! Employing skeptical cognitive behavioural
therapy, Nurse challenges the credulous to confront their superstitions and
immerse themselves in the irrational. Her patients are treated by learning
to limbo under ladders, open umbrellas indoors, to stab voodoo dolls and
smash mirrors! Of course, this operation is a non-prophet organisation.
Interestingly, Downey
has had the most media success in her ventures by defining superstitions as
discriminatory, e.g., labelling black cats as bad
luck is negative stereotyping.
Magician and author, Andrew Mayne, offered a practical guide to communicating
skeptical thinking. Mayne explained that skeptics
should “go with what we know” when disseminating critical
thinking, citing Scientology survivor Dan Garvin, now an activist against
cults. Mayne advocates that we communicate
skepticism with honesty, integrity and simplicity. He states that relevance
is important, for example, discussing alternative medicine with seniors. As
skeptics, we should firstly decide, who needs the message? Then, how can we
reach these people?
Acclaimed magician and
prominent skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss noted the
parallels between magicians and charlatans, classifying himself
as “honestly dishonest. Because we need sneaky guys to catch sneaky
guys”. Swiss is skilled in replicating ‘paranormal’
abilities, defining a ‘psychic’ as “a performance artist
with an illegitimate purpose. Is a psychic cheating or should we throw out
everything we’ve known since Galileo?” Swiss questioned why
‘spoon bending’ should even be interpreted as evidence of the
paranormal. The magician proceeded with a brilliant display of mentalism and misdirection, explaining that we are
easily fooled because we are “naturally magical thinkers”.
Using only ‘mental powers’, Swiss slid a ring along the length
of a pencil. He placed a dice and coin in a sealed box, shook it with
ferocity, then ‘read’ the facing number and coin side, through
the solid wooden lid! For his grand finale, Swiss tossed out romance novels
to the audience, chosen because “there isn’t the remotest
chance that anyone’s read them!” A few audience members were
directed to select a page and single word. Swiss proceeded to accurately
‘read’ this back to the astonished audience! I observed that,
like psychics, Swiss and other magicians constantly offer the disclaimer,
“I won’t always be accurate”. Unlike the psychics, the
magicians usually are!
Off on a slight tangent, the
coin-reading trick reminds me of a prank a visually impaired friend likes
to play on people. He constantly refutes the misconception that the
remaining senses of a visually impaired person are heightened, compensating
for the lacking sense. People often ask him foolish questions such as,
“how can you shower?” or the most common, “how can you
tell what money you have?” So he devised an answer. Unlike our
beautiful Aussie notes, US notes are of equal dimension but are they of
equal weight? “Being blind, my sense of touch is acute, extremely
sensitive and I’ve trained myself to differentiate between notes,
based on their weight. The larger the denomination, the heavier the
bill.” Impressive stuff…and the inquirer walks
away in amazement! The reality is much more mundane, yet still clever. When
he goes to the bank, this fellow asks the teller to bundle the notes
according to their value. To distinguish each bundle, he has a formula for
folding each set of notes. He then relies on the honesty of cashiers so
that he can continue to organise his notes into
bundles based on value.
Penn & Teller bounced
onto the stage to present their unique blend of magic,
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Teller speaks!
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skepticism
and violence. Randi became their victim as they performed a trick upon him,
leaving him in handcuffs and chained to an anvil. A Q&A session
followed, mostly focused on the duo’s television series Bullshit!
Penn & Teller bemoaned the lack of skepticism on television and
revealed that a certain media source demands ‘balance’
(according to their biased standards), therefore TV psychics should be
represented as “accurate at least 20% of the time”
(I inwardly mused that,
without this help, psychics would be right 0% of the time). Penn told us of
his realised prediction, that John Edward would
try to capitalise on the 9/11 tragedy by
‘contacting’ the victims. Thankfully, this show never went
ahead in the end. There was a hush when Teller spoke, quietly and articulately.
He also confirmed that, yes, that’s his voice in the episode of The Simpsons!
Penn gave us some inside info
on Bullshit! He quipped that the show is “fair and biased”.
Despite the countless insults hurled at them, the interviewees are never
taken out of context! “We’re disgusted and ridicule them but
we’re not distorting them” explained Penn. When asked about the
public’s response to the show, Penn relayed that they receive as much
hate mail as fan mail. He then shared an anecdote. Following the airing of
the Alternative Medicine episode, a chiropractic organisation vowed to
boycott both Penn & Teller and Showtime. Amusingly, the group sent 30
ticket holders to a Las Vegas P&T show to tell them this! Another time,
a group of creationists threatened to sue the show, with the ironic
complaint: “you have exposed our point of view for being
wrong.” Enough said! In closing, Penn revealed some of the topics in
the upcoming third series of Bullshit! The episodes investigate
circumcision, politically correct speech on university campuses, hair loss,
the moon landings, freedom, figures such as Ghandi
and Mother Theresa and “debunking ‘mother’s
advice’, where we get kids to eat heaps of stuff then go for a swim.
Then we get them to eat food off the ground”.
Journalist, author and
political critic Christopher Hitchens is probably
as
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Christopher Hitchens
Sloppy, yet suave.
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infamous
for his demeanour as his views. Imagine him
sitting at an illustrious panel consisting of Randi, Shermer, Penn &
Teller, Swiss and Sweeney, coolly chain-smoking while his co-panelists
voiced silent protest only with their watering, blinking eyes. This seminar
was a verbal opinion piece and at times Hitchens
wavered perilously close between skeptic and cynic. Among his anecdotes was
a tale detailed in his essay ‘The Devil and Mother Theresa’. At the request of the Vatican,
Hitchens testified against Mother Teresa at
the hearings on her beatification. “The present Pope has
abolished the office of ‘Devil’s Advocate’, so I was invited
to represent Satan pro bono.”
During the panel, Hitchens best summarised the
collective sentiments of the room with the quips “this is not
God’s work, nor Galileo’s” and “we have no bishops,
we have no martyrs”. He also advocated a “pre-emptive strike
against pseudoscience and the paranormal”. Penn admitted he
“defers to Christopher’s judgement on
all matters”. Then, throughout the panel, Hitchens
comically endorsed Penn’s statements. There were many pearls of
wisdom. Sweeney revealed that her experience with religion is actually a
common one to which many can relate. She urged us not to shy away from but
to engage in skeptical discussions, “they’re not as
confrontational as we might think”. Penn argued a point that I made
in the August 2004 Australasian Science magazine, that, of
skeptics, there are more of us than you might think and from various
sections of society. As Penn puts it, “they just don’t wanna
hang out with you!”
Another point was
discussed which I have previously made, that even those who profess to be
skeptical, have ‘soft spots’ for some paranormal concepts. I
illustrated this with the Neuro-linguistic
programmer who claimed to be “a skeptic” while the panel cited
various examples; Randi told us of the patron who scoffs at UFOs but believes
the “Bermuda Triangle is scientifically proven”. Sweeney told
us of an audience member at her show who sneered at the notion of heaven
but vehemently believes in reincarnation! Lastly, the panel spoke of those
who promise to petition God on behalf of us heathens; “you’ll
be in my prayers”, “we’ll pray for you to reach
Christ” and “you may not be interested in Jesus but he’s
interested in you!” Randi concluded the session with an anecdote of a
violent letter he once received, replete with threats, hellfire and
brimstone, the author signing off with, “yours in Christ”.
Magician and inventor
of optical illusions Jerry Andrus deserves a special mention at this point.
Throughout the conference, Andrus tirelessly attended to a display of his
astonishing exhibits in the hotel foyer, demonstrating his many tricks to a
continual crowd that flocked to him. Andrus proves that we can be deceived
by our perceptions. Visit Andrus’ website at http://www.jerryandrus.org/.
That evening, the
JREF Forum members retired to a suite at the Stardust for the
intriguing-sounding “Chocolate Challenge”. This turned out to
be an unempirical ‘test’ of various international choccies
while the bulk of us were left as salivating witnesses to the proceedings.
Something foul was afoot as suspiciously, the ‘winning’
chocolates disappeared! With so many magicians present, there were many
suspects. I posit that gluttony and not sleight of hand was at play. With
the crooked Phil Plait as a tester, my money is on him!
On Saturday, as I
trudged blearily through to the conference breakfast at
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Joe Nickell…looking
rather
hungry…
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7.30am, the punters were already at their pokie stations. Joe Nickell commenced the days proceedings with an exciting seminar detailing some
of his exploits as CSICOP’s Chief
Investigator. Nickell is a prolific writer on claims of the paranormal,
having produced the definitive work Inquest on the Shroud of Turin,
various books of his investigations, including Real Life X-Files,
several children’s books and, of course, his numerous articles for The
Skeptical Inquirer.
Nickell claims to be
the world’s only full-time, paid paranormal investigator and has
conducted countless high-profile explorations of the paranormal, including Oak Island’s Money Pit, the
Peruvian Nasca lines,
the Amityville Horror, Benny Hinn and the James Ossuary (touted as the mortuary box of
Jesus’ brother). He has engaged in
many fascinating activities, including a covert investigation of the
notorious spiritualist institution Camp Chesterfield.
He made a reproduction of the Turin Shroud using an image of Bing Crosby,
known as the ‘Shroud of Bing’, and has produced an ‘alien
time line’, an iconography of depictions of aliens over time. Nickell
revealed a gun, purportedly once the property of Daniel Boon, to be a fake
and examined the ‘Jack the Ripper diaries’ in Chicago, where the “ink was barely
dry”. A highlight of his successful career was exposing John Edward
red-handed in the act of a hot reading! Professional and knowledgeable,
Nickell always employs scientific rationale and conducts his work with
honesty and fairness.
Fancying myself as
somewhat of an Aussie Nickell, I approached him and held several enjoyable conversations
over the course of the convention. He praised my use of the term
‘investigate’ to describe our undertakings, rather than the
negative ‘debunk’. Nickell was fondly reminiscent of his 2000
visit to Australia,
which allowed him a glimpse into Antipodean legend; the
‘haunted’ Hyde Park Barracks, an unsuccessful
‘yowie’ search in the Blue Mountains
and Campbelltown’s Tom Fisher’s ghost. In the footsteps of
Houdini, Nickell made a memorable pilgrimage with magicians Peter Rogers
and Kent Blackmore to attend to the neglected Rookwood grave of
spiritualist William Davenport. Nickell has a great deal of respect and
admiration for our organisation and asked to be made an honorary Aussie
skeptic! The general consensus of everyone I spoke with was that the
Australian Skeptics have an enviable and cohesive organisation –
unlike the dramas of the many US groups!
There was an
unexpected visitor to TAM3. Appropriately, during lunch, we had a visit
from the Virgin Mary Cheese Toast, on loan from its owner, online casino
GoldenPalace.com whom paid US $28 000 for the ‘icon’. The
former owner has since sold the “Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwich Official
Holy Pan”, a frypan, for a further US
$6000.
Richard Dawkins was
an elusive, Salinger-like figure at TAM3. The feature
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TV Evangelist
Richard Dawkins
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speaker
of the meeting, he appeared onstage, presented a seminar and was
interviewed by Randi before making a silent exit, enroute
as he was to the Galapagos Islands for a
research sabbatical. The conference hall was packed out for his
presentation. This was the session that everyone eagerly awaited. Erudite,
witty and intelligent, Dawkins swiftly charmed the room.
Dawkins proposed the concept
of the “perinormal” as opposed to the
paranormal. His claim of coining the term was proven when an attendee
‘googled’ perinormal
and found it only existed as a typo. Dawkins defined the paranormal as
“something that lies beyond the realm of science” and gave the
perpetual motion machine as an archetypal example. The perinormal,
peri- meaning ‘around’, are those
concepts that lay “beyond existing science in an area surrounding
‘normal’ as presently understood”. Dawkins cited as an
example, the idea of modern technology as it would have appeared to past
centuries, mentioning Kelvin, Lord William Thomson and
his 1895 statement that “heavier-than-air flying machines are
impossible”. Dawkins reminded us that X-rays were once thought to be
a hoax. He spoke of future technologies as perinormal,
the potential mobile phones of tomorrow and Quantum Computing.
Dawkins discussed a range of
related topics, commenting that “SETI (Scientific Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence) is a respectable enterprise. We might receive contact via
radio but there’s a low probability of face-to-face contact”.
He discussed the theological implications of such contact, “we might
regard them as Gods”. Dawkins notes that “magicians, i.e.
conjurors, are neither paranormal nor perinormal”
and their acts “not outside science” although “some shake
our confidence with their cleverness. It can be tempting to think,
‘this looks paranormal’. Some are fraudulent, pretending to be
other than conjurors”. Astrology is “conceivably perinormal” but we have “no positive reason
to think this anything other than nonsense and fraud. Faith healing,
“the laying on of hands, is neither paranormal nor perinormal, it has a well-documented psychosomatic and
placebo effect”.
But where does
religion fit in? Dawkins claims religion is both paranormal and perinormal. Paranormal facets include “the
turning of water into wine. Creationism and Intelligent Design, which is
Creationism in a cheap tuxedo. Prayer and intervention and the notion of
life after death”. The perinormal is
“Einsteinian religion”, although
Dawkins explains that this is mainly metaphorical and labelled
it as “sexed-up atheism”.
At one point,
Dawkins’ powerpoint displayed Darwin’s image
on the British ten pound note. He explained that he isn’t
“usually given over to patriotism but this is better than what’s on your currency”, the room
laughing/cringing in agreement at the thought of the greenback’s
contrasting “In God We Trust” motto.
And religion was on the
agenda. Dawkins opined that religion has the characteristics of a
paranormal concept and should therefore be tackled by skeptics. He
explained that some skeptical organisations
choose not to examine religion as it is a subject that is guaranteed to
“offend”. Dawkins emphasised the
importance of the search for fact and urged that skeptics rethink this
stance. He quoted Douglas Adams’ 1998 Cambridge speech; “If
somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re
free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument
but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or
down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if
somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a
Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. The odd thing
is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew
here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’
but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from
the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to
this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other
points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But,
the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s
(I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs,
then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say
‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief
but no, we respect it’.”
Dawkins closed by showing a
photograph of a group of four-year-olds, each labelled
according to the religion of their family. He spoke of the ridiculousness
of imposing roles on children who are far too young to have developed
personal religious beliefs, “we wouldn’t label a four-year-old
as an atheist, would we?”
Brenton
ver Ploeg is an
attorney who serves as corporate counsel for the JREF and is a well-known
lecturer and author on insurance bad faith claims. Ploeg
amused everyone with details of the Randi-Geller trials and
‘finger-reader’ trial. He relayed an anecdote where a San
Franciscan psychic charged a client $500 for designing a love spell. This
involved intertwining several pairs of underpants and placing them under
her pillow as she slept at night. Surprisingly, this spell had no effect
and the client sued for a refund of the psychic’s fee. The defense
consulted another psychic who insisted that her colleague “had to
charge $500 or the client wouldn’t believe she could find a partner”.
Banacheck,
billed as “the only mentalist ever to fool scientists into believing
that
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Banacheck…
send him all of your cash…
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he possessed
psychic powers”, explains that his act employs “verbal
communication, psychology and perceptual manipulation”. People ask Banacheck, “do your talents run in your
family?” To which he responds, “My uncle knew when he would die
but that’s nothing special. The judge told him!” Banacheck reeled off jokes at lightening speed as he
performed. Asking the audience to write down their full name and a secret,
significant fact about their lives, Banacheck put
John Edward to shame by detecting some obscure information; an audience
member’s name and the cat they had with an insurance policy and a
woman whose school friend had endured a great tragedy. Banacheck
predicted a local telephone number selected by an audience member from a
book of hundreds of thousands of numbers. Wearing a secure blindfold, he
deduced three, peculiar objects held above his head, one being a toy
wombat! “Where do people in hell tell each other to go?” he
mused, as he bent forks and used ‘mental telepathy’ to ‘intuit’
an audience member’s dream.
Psychologist and magician Dr
Richard Wiseman was up next. “Who is Wiseman?” asked a woman
seated nearby. “He’s one of the guys who turned up to see
Jesus!” riposted a passer-by, proving that all skeptics think they
are comedians. Wiseman conducts scientific research in unusual areas of
psychology, including the psychology of luck, lying, magic and the
psychology behind the belief in ghosts and hauntings.
This lead to his work as an experimental parapsychologist, testing mediums
and psychics. In 1999, Wiseman created ‘Séance’, an off
West-end show in which audiences experienced a reconstruction of a
Victorian séance.
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Twin brothers, reunited.
Phil Plait and Richard Wiseman. Which is which is anyone’s guess…
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Wiseman gave an energetic and
hilarious performance, tricking us all with a series of optical illusions
as he spoke of ‘luck and rationality’. Wiseman has conducted
tests with people who report extraordinary good luck, those who
consistently win lotteries, etc. and those who purport to be exceptionally
unlucky. One subject claimed to have a “jinxed car” that was
involved in eight accidents over a fifty mile journey! Was the paranormal
afoot here? Apparently not. However, Wiseman found that there was a
“massive difference in their psychology”. Those who saw
themselves as ‘lucky’ happened to consistently avail themselves
of opportunities while the habitually ‘unlucky’ consistently
failed to identify opportunities. Wiseman then screened a short clip of an
interview he did with Dateline’s Dennis Murphy, where he discussed
this very phenomenon. To illustrate
this phenomenon at work, a poster was pinned to a board behind the pair,
stating: ‘DENNIS! SPOT THIS TO WIN $1000!’ Despite Wiseman’s
exaggerated hints, poor Dennis overlooked this opportunity, thereby proving
himself to be one of the unlucky ones!
The penultimate day ended
with a Randi Q&A session, where he spoke at length about his standoff
with psychic Sylvia Browne and his vision for the future of the JREF,
“I hope I die at my desk. Then, I want someone to clean out my
office, put a different name on the door and continue!”
On Saturday night I attended
a Theatrical Séance, hosted and performed by Rick Maue
and Francis Menotti. This was a cleverly-crafted, scripted performance and
I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the proceedings! Treated
to an evening of skillful magic and acting, were we not candidly informed
that it was drama, some would have left in belief.
Sunday, the final day of
TAM3, featured an informative series of scholarly papers on a range of
subjects, including teaching critical thinking, skeptical psychology and
faith healing and child abuse. I came to the conclusion that, at TAM3,
every presenter is of plenary speaker quality. Statistics after the event
revealed that women comprised 30% of attendees. This is up on the first
conference where over 90% were male (Damn! Why didn’t I attend
then?).
On Sunday night I caught the
live Penn & Teller performance at the Rio.
Randi was in attendance as a special guest. This is the ultimate magic show
for the skeptic or the sadist. The duo performed tricks involving animal
traps, fire eating, the infamous ‘magic
bullet’ trick and ‘burning’ the US flag. Penn smashed some
glass bottles then juggled the jagged bottles by their necks. All was
performed to the soundtrack of Penn’s boisterous appeals for critical
thinking. If not a skeptical magician, Penn would have been a splendid and
convincing television evangelist! Then there was the gentle artistry of
Teller’s graceful conjuring, as he produced goldfish from coins and
pruned a single red rose by making incisions upon the shadow it cast.
TAM should be an important
date on every skeptic’s calendar. I urge every reader to make the
trip. As I left the meeting, I said goodbye to Randi and told him
“I’ll be back next year”. He laughed and replied,
“So will I!”
TAM is held every year. For more info check www.randi.org.
With thanks to
Dean Baird for some of the photographs.
Stollznow, Karen. 2005. The Amaz!ng
Meeting 3. The Skeptic. Vol. 25,
No. 2. pp., 6-13.
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#$%@!
and Welcome to Bad Language
I'm Karen Stollznow
...(Cunning) Linguist,
Author, Skeptic and Investigator of the
paranormal and
pseudo-scientific.
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