James Randi’s talk at Google.

By Les, on 18 August, 2007

James Randi is always worth paying attention to:

Found over at The Friendly Atheist.

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Uncategorized   james randi, Skepticism, Video Clip  

3 comments to James Randi’s talk at Google.

• Bahamat

  19 August, 2007 at 8:07 AM

  Too long for casual visits, but I suppose it’s there for those with determination
  He looks like a gnome :LOL:

  
• decrepitoldfool

  19 August, 2007 at 10:09 PM

  He does seem to be slowing down a little with age and infirmity.

  I loved his description of demonstrating the ideomotor effect to a dowser, using a speaker magnet and a piece of cardboard.  My father used to tell a similar tale.

  Despite spending the war years fortunately driving a truck for the SeaBees in Trinidad, my old man was a crack shot and so was his buddy, an engineer for PG&E;.  In the late ‘40’s they went shooting a few times with a guy who was having trouble getting tight groups.

  “This gun isn’t sighted correctly!” he’d complain.  My dad or his friend would try it and bam, bam, bam, a tight group.  “You’re flinching,” they’d tell him, and this would start a long train of denials and explanations about how the load was wrong, or the wind blew the wrong way, or the gun wasn’t sighted correctly, or was kicking too darn hard to hold steady, etc.  But they were just normal target loads, not high-power loads.  And the wind apparently only blew when that guy picked up the rifle.

  One day my dad loaded a round with a spent primer and coffee grounds instead of powder.  It felt just like a regular round to the hand, but it was a dud.  He slipped the round into the guy’s ammo box.  It went into the first clip.

  When he got to the fake round, the barrel jumped at least an inch!  “You’re flinching,” said my dad’s friend.  But for some reason, the guy didn’t go shooting with them anymore.

  I don’t remember “ideomotor effect” being part of the way the story was told, however.

  
• inha

  24 August, 2007 at 9:15 AM

  what a pleasant way to start your friday.

  there are no sufficient words to perfectly describe the amount of my respect and admiration for mr.randi.