Entry 290: How Had I Never Heard of This Guy Before?

I have gotten really into watching James Randi videos on YouTube lately.  Somebody posted one on Facebook a few weeks ago (actually I linked to it in my last entry), and I liked it, so I started watching others.  Then I started researching James Randi (a.k.a., The Amazing Randi) online and found that he's a really interesting dude; I can't believe I had never heard of him before.  He's a magician who's now in his late 80s, who has made it his life goal to investigate (and usually debunk) claims of supernatural power.  His foundation has an open offer of $1 million to anybody who can prove they have ESP by passing a series of scientifically-controlled test.  (Unsurprisingly, nobody has ever claimed the prize -- although some of the attempts are pretty funny.)  He's appeared quite a few on various media to debunk famous so-called psychics.  He was particularly critical of Uri Geller back in the day (so much so that Geller unsuccessfully tried to sue him) and more recently Sylvia Browne (before she passed a few years ago) and John Edward.

[This is probably my favorite clip.  In the comments they say how Randi replicated Walters' drawing.  It's pretty cool to go back and watch him do it, once you know -- very slick.  I don't think I ever would have figured it out on my own, but I wish I had tried.]

This type of thing is right up my alley.  I love seeing charlatans get exposed -- perhaps too much so.  As I said in one of my previous entries:

I loathe charlatans, and hearing about one getting her comeuppance (kinda) is a total guilty pleasure of mine -- so much so, that I literally felt guilty about it.

But the thing that really stuck out to me in watching all these huckster do their things is how many people actually believe it.  The top psychics are extremely wealthy from selling books, hosting TV shows, and doing very expensive private readings.  Who's believing this crap?  The worst is "cold reading," which is where a person asks a bunch of questions to another person or a group of people until he or she gets a few hits and then claims it's a psychic power.  There isn't even an illusion involved.  (Here's a nice clip of James Van Praagh, showing off his "uncanny" powers.)  The only thing about cold reading that's remotely interesting is that it's possible to hone in on a truth in fewer questions than people might imagine, if you ask the right questions.  But it's not psychic power; it's math.  It's the power of exponential growth (or this case its inverse, logarithmic decay).  For example, suppose somebody is thinking of a number between 1 and 16 million, I could get the number every time if you gave me just 25 yes-no questions; I could do between 1 and 549 trillion with just 40 questions.  Being that cold readers can fire off 40-plus questions a minute and a reading lasts several minutes, being able to tell somebody that they have a relative named Mike whose death was painful for the family is simply not at all impressive.  And yet Sylvia Browne could charge $700 for a 20 minute reading.  Remarkable.

Although, perhaps not really that remarkable considering that as I type this, I can look out my window and see three churches without leaving my house.  If you think about it, believing in psychic power is not any more ridiculous than believing the stories behind any of the major religions, and many people I know and love and respect believe these stories, so ... I don't really know what to think.  Or maybe they don't believe them literally, maybe they just believe them allegorically (but then they're not true believers, right?).  Or maybe they believe the general idea, but not the specific canons.  Or maybe they don't believe them at all, but they just go with the flow because that's how they were raised, and it's easier to go along with it than it is to push back.  Or maybe they really like the cultural/social aspect of their religion, but not the actual "religion" part.  I don't know.  I've come to the conclusion that I just don't get religion and probably never will.  I'm fine with it.  I mean, yeah, spending eternity in hell will suck, but at least I can sleep in on Sunday morning while I'm alive.

Anyway ... Time is of the essence this weekend, as it often is these days, so let's hit some bullet points.

• Religion and its validity is a very apropos topic for me today, as S and I went to see The Book of Mormon last night (date night, whoo!).  I thought it was really good.  Some of the humor is pretty juvenile, but it's from the people who do South Park, so that's do be expected.  (Plus I like juvenile humor, if it's cleverly done, which it usually is by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.)  One thing I realized is that, in general, I don't love musicals.  I found myself watching the show and wanting more dialog.  Overall, the show didn't quite live up to the hype for me.  But it made me laugh a lot, so what more should I want?  Plus, it's cool to go to an event at The Kennedy Center.  It feels so sophisticated... and expensive.  I won't say how much S and I dropped all together on the tickets, the taxis, and the babysitter, because I don't know, and I don't want to find out.
• I just had to restart my computer, as I have to do from time to time because my computer bogs down the Internet (regardless of the browser) to the point of uselessness.  (I know it's the computer and not the WiFi because it works fine on every other device.)  I'm convinced that it's Windows 8.  It sucks.  Few things are more annoying than buying the newest version of something and having it work worse than the older version.  And this seems to happen frequently with Microsoft products (remember the Vista disaster).  Why can't they get it right?  Do they rush out their releases?  Also, this isn't really specific to Microsoft, but I think the tablet/laptop in-one is a failed concept.  I have one, and in two years, I literally have never disconnected my screen and used it like a tablet.  I much prefer having a laptop be a laptop and a tablet be a tablet.  But maybe I'm just getting old and stuck in my ways, and in a few years the laptop as a singular device will be obsolete.
• Speaking of technology, I was contacted through LinkedIn by a rep for major tech firm.  (I won't say which one, but you've heard of them -- they're a hot new company.)  He liked some of my research and wanted to talk to me about opportunities with his company.  By no means am I looking for a new job, but it's always good to keep your options open, and I was flattered by the outreach, so I agreed to talk to him.  The conversation went well, but it was very vague.  There was no talk about a specific position or an explicit offer or anything like that.  It was more a here's-what-we -do, here's-what-I-do type of conversation -- a feel-out-the-situation type of thing.  Afterwards he asked if he could set me up to speak with somebody else at his company, and I said sure (again, it doesn't hurt to listen).  So he sends an email to both me and the woman he wants me to talk to, but he phrases the email in a way that makes it complete ambiguous about who is suppose to contact whom.  So I wait a few days and don't hear anything.  Then it's like -- do I send them an email?  I don't even really know what this is all about.  If this guy is trying to recruit me or at least interested in me, why didn't he ask the person in his company explicitly to contact me?  Isn't that the logical progression?  It's like I'm now supposed to take the lead on this whole thing, but I don't know what or whom I'm supposed to lead.  Anyway, I ended up sending an email saying I'd be willing to talking more.  That seems reasonable.  But still, the whole thing feels a bit strange to me.
• In sadder news, as I'm sure you know, another mass shooting went down a few days ago.  A young white supremacist went into a black church. and, after sitting in on a prayer session, shot and killed a bunch of its participants.  We will never know what caused him to do this, but we can certainly rule out two things: racism and lax gun laws.  After all, everybody knows that racism is a thing of the past (except for reverse racism -- that shit is real!) and lax gun laws actually prevent more deaths than they cause.  I mean, it's true that you never actually hear of a "good gun with a gun" saving the day, but that's only because the media is biased -- they hate stories of amazing heroics that everybody would follow and would make them tons of money.
• I'm sure you've already seen it, but I'm putting a link to this Jon Stewart clip anyway.
• On a lighter note, this weekend the US Open is being played at Chambers Bay golf course in my hometown -- my actual hometown, where I was actually born and raised, not my fake hometowns, Tacoma and Seattle, which I often claim for simplicity -- University Place, Washington (although back when I was growing up it was an unincorporated area of Pierce County, not an official city).  I watched a little bit of the tournament on TV, said to myself "yep, that's it alright," and then turned it off and haven't watched since.  I'm not a big golf guy.  If it's close, I might watch the last few holes tomorrow.
• I read this interesting article about screen time, and how it probably isn't the boogeyman we parents make it out to be.  This was my favorite quote in it: 

 To judge what impact TV has on children, we have to think about tradeoffs — what would kids be doing with their time if they weren’t watching television? There are 24 hours in a day. If your kid watches one less hour of TV, she does one hour more of something else. The AAP guidelines imply that this alternative activity is something more enriching: reading books with dad, running on the track, discussing current events with grandma, etc. 

 But a lot of kids and families may not use an additional hour in these ways. An hour of TV may be replaced by an hour of sitting around doing nothing, whining about being bored. Or, worse, being yelled at by an overtired parent who is trying to get dinner ready on a tight time frame. If letting your kids watch an hour of TV means you are better able to have a relaxed conversation at the dinner table, this could mean TV isn’t that bad for cognitive development.

•  Well, if we are giving Lil' S too much screen time, it certainly isn't hurting his dexterity.  He got to the top of the bars (and back down) without me coming within five feet of him.  He's not even three yet. If only his potty training was as good as his climbing.

Until next time ...