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italy_posterNext Wednesday, May 16, James Randi’s presentation in Milan, Italy will be broadcast live to all 35 locations of The Space theater chain throughout Italy. The live broadcast event is part of the theater’s cultural programing that also includes similar broadcasts of music, dance, opera, and other performances.

From The Space website (English Translation):

James Randi: A Life Among the Mysteries

Exclusively for The Space Cinemas, Massimo Polidoro presents an evening of mystery with a unique character: James Randi, the most famous paranormal investigator in the world. Former famous magician, exposer of charlatans and champion of rationality, Randi is finally back in Italy after 10 years to tell stories of his most sensational life with amazing performances for the exclusive audience of The Space Cinemas.

This event is being organized in collaboration with CICAP, the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and the popular Italian science magazine, Focus.

"It will be a particularly spectacular," says Massimo Polidoro, considered one of the leading experts in the field of psychology of the unusual, the paranormal and mysteries in general. "We will talk about paranormal phenomena and Randi may bend some spoons on stage. He will reveal the tricks of the Filipino psychic healers and holy men of certain dangerous charismatic beliefs. Randi will also reveal some tricks of which he used to repeat on live TV, a few paranormal miracles performed in impossible conditions: for example, how could he could know a drawing made in secret by the American journalist Barbara Walters. We will see the videos of those performances and then look at the crucial moments in which lies the trick. But there is also much more: the case of water with memory, crop circles, the "Carlos hoax," his career as a magician (since when did he hang upside down on the falls of Niagara to escape from a straitjacket, when was he on tour with Alice Cooper and cut his head every night, and when did he play as himself in an episode of "Happy Days"). And of course he will also evoke his past as an escape artist like Houdini, repeating from stage a spectacular escape from the tied ropes. Finally, there will be no surprises when Randi will try to engage with some "magic distance" even with those who find themselves in rooms across Italy connected via satellite." 

More information can be found here »

Broadcast live at the following The Space Cinema locations.

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James Randi’s and D.J. Grothe‘s whirlwind European tour over the coming ten days includes major events in Spain, Italy, and Germany. They began the week at Neuromagic 2012, the second magic and neuroscience conference on San Simon Island (what is referred to as "The Island of Thought") in Vigo, Spain. 

They are joined by Sleights of Mind authors, the neuroscientists Susana Martínez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, Scientific American’s Mariette Di Christina, as well as other magicians, including Apollo Robbins and his talented wife Ava Do, Spain’s Miguel Angel Gea and Kiko Pasteur, along with several other leading neuroscientists, including Beatrice de Gelder (Tilberg University and Harvard Medical School), Flip Phillips (Skidmore), Jed Elison (Cal Tech), magician-neuroscientist Amir Raz (McGill University), and Luis Martinez, among other presenters. 

Randi gave a talk titled “Secrets from Inside My Feverish Brain,” while Grothe presented on the question “Does neuroscience really have anything to teach magicians?"  Randi also participated in a large public lecture and performance focused on the intersection of brain science and legerdemain, and why people should think critically about how easily the brain allows us to be deceived by cognitive illusions. Neuromagic 2012 is sponsored by the government of Galicia, Spain, through the Foundation of San Simon and its Island of Thought program.

Beginning later this week, Randi and Grothe will be making stops in several cities in Europe for lectures and meetings with local and national skeptics groups and university audiences, culminating in their appearances at the the 6th World Skeptics Congress in Berlin, Germany May 18th-20th, where Randi will present the keynote address.

We are particularly excited that Randi’s May 16th lecture in Milan will be broadcast live via satellite to thirty five other theater locations throughout the country of Italy.

This will be Randi’s fourth international speaking tour in just over a year and a half. Last fall he did a nine city tour of Canada, and last spring he did a four city tour of Norway. Before that, he did a multi-city speaking tour of Scandinavia and the Baltics, the Netherlands and Iceland. Randi loves reaching out to the worldwide skeptical community like this, connecting both with enthusiastic local skeptics and with the general public about the mission of the James Randi Educational Foundation. 
This tour’s dates are below.

This tour’s dates are below. Make sure to keep an eye on Randi.org and the JREF's Facebook and Twitter pages (along with Randi’s Facebook page) for updates during the tour, including photos, blog posts, and videos.

 

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The JREF is proud to announce a new series on randi.org featuring articles by skeptical teachers exploring critical thinking in the classroom, using the investigation of the paranormal, fringe science, and pseudoscience to teach methods of science and reason. We welcome feedback, discussion, and further suggestions from educators and parents for related assignments in the comments section. If you would like to be involved in this project, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact is a potentially powerful but currently undervalued contribution to both skepticism and education. It is the story of Eleanor Arroway, a radio astronomer of high caliber who has a longstanding professional interest in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. When the radio telescope she manages detects a powerful signal from a relatively nearby star, Vega, the discovery electrifies humanity, spurring social change on a global scale. The Message, as it comes to be called, is instructions for building a machine of great complexity and unknown purpose. But it has chairs. An international team of five scientists, which includes Arroway, is selected to sit in those chairs when the Machine is turned on. When it is, the team finds itself hurtling though a transdimensional transit system to the center of the galaxy, where they are told by the intelligences who sent the Message that humanity has a lot of promise.

Contact is a highly readable novel, appropriate, I think, for students at the high school level and above. Sagan is not overly concerned with novelistic elements like character development; he makes it agonizingly clear that Arroway needs a father figure, and the romance is almost physically painful to behold. Sagan’s treatment of characters reminds me a little of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whose characters discuss every possible argument for and against slavery, a valuable contemporary catalog of the slavery debate. In Contact, Sagan has assembled a compendium of arguments about the place of science and reason in society.

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I am not going to lie to you; I am freaked out about climate change. At least politicians today can say something to the effect of “it’s something that the next generation must face down,” seemingly abdicating their own responsibility. But I am a part of that next generation. Climate change is something that I am going to have to deal with, and I’m not sure if my generation and I can.

What strikes me is this: why aren’t more people taking note of the serious risks from climate change? Why has this issue not galvanized the people into immediate action? One answer, and a very legitimate one, is that there was (and still is) a very organized anti-AGW (anthropogenic global warming) campaign that has called into question even whether or not it is a real phenomenon. But what I want to talk about here is more subtle. I think what we are seeing is a fundamental misunderstanding of risk.

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tam-2012Large conferences like TAM are very expensive to produce, and as a result registration fees may be unaffordable for some, especially students. While JREF offers a discounted registration to students and JREF members (below JREF's actual costs, in some cases), some people may still not be able to afford to attend.

We are happy to announce that due to several generous individuals who have partnered with the JREF to organize various grant programs to help those who need financial assistance to attend The Amaz!ng Meeting 2012, dozens of people will be able to come to TAM this year who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend. These grants apply directly to the TAM registration fee in order to cover full registration. The grants do not cover airfare, hotel, or other expenses, inlcuding additional add-on events at TAM.

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