May 25, 2001

A Sorcerer's Apprentice, Harvard University's At It Again, The Hereafter Puzzle Solved, Spare the Ducks, Religion in Columbus, and Another Damn Cross......

The mail brought us a review copy of a fascinating 1998 book by Tahir Shah. This is a most interesting book, well-written and informative, but with a twist that I'm sure even the author did not expect. It exposes the tricks of such "god-men" as Sai Baba and the myriad of other gurus who are adored by millions, not only in India and neighboring countries, but internationally as well. It's titled, "Sorcerer's Apprentice."

The author, we're told, was born into Afghan nobility in 1966, and was educated in the UK. Fascinated as a child by the ages-old tricks of the jadoowallas (street-magicians) of India, he eventually set out to become an apprentice to one of the masters of the art, Hakim Feroze. In very colorful style, he recounts his adventures at the hands of this conjuror, and lets his readers in on the secrets of the tricks, as well. Later, examining in person the performances of several gurus of repute, he finds that they are using exactly the methods that he has mastered. He writes about such wonders as the production of the "holy ash" (vibhuti), dying and resurrecting oneself, immunity to boiling oil and melted lead, and other feats that the "god-men" have been living on for centuries. But along the way, while learning the secret skills, the author himself was hornswoggled by his teachers....

On page 10, early on in the book, Tahir Shah relates his performance of a trick wherein the guru wraps a light-bulb in a cloth, crushes it with his foot, and proceeds to munch up the shards of broken glass. Rather credulously, he tells us that he ate a banana before the glass-eating, and that "the tiny fragments of glass ... get embedded in the banana," and thus "pass easily through the body." He adds that he would "always use clear light-bulbs, as the opaque ones contain poisonous mercury oxide." Not so.

Eating a light-bulb - or at least a few bits of the bulb - is an old carnival stunt. As a youth, I twice ate a dime-sized piece of a broken bulb. The scrap must be very thoroughly ground up by the molars, after which the resultant powder is swallowed. The sound-effects are quite dramatic and effective, bringing on swooning in the sensitive spectators. No banana is necessary, since such material is easily handled by the continuous lining of mucous tissue that we all have, all the way down. But there's much more to this stunt. Wrapping the bulb in a cloth before breaking it, is not only logical, but serves an excellent auxiliary purpose. The magician can introduce into the cloth a few scraps of another material that will closely resemble glass, but can be more easily chomped up. One uses either rock candy (melted into flat scraps) or similarly-prepared clear resin: the first is for the wimps, the latter for the pros. That enjoinment of using frosted ("opaque") glass is merely to get around the different appearance of the ersatz glass. The "mercury" scare is just that, a scare. There's no mercury in light-bulbs.

Later on in the book, author Shah describes how he discovered by investigation how one god-man had caused a tin box to become so heavy that another man could not lift it; I find it difficult to believe that even a newcomer to this subject would not have already learned of the Robert-Houdin "Light-and-Heavy Truck" trick. Shah's description of how the god-man caused "holy ash" to be generated on a proffered coin, and the modus operandi behind the sealed-drawing-in-an-envelope are excellent, however, as are several other revelations he provides. (The envelope trick he describes is quite different from one recently described here, but equally effective. The only difference is that we have a better selection of liquids to use for this purpose. Read the book to know what I'm referring to.)

Yes, I recommend this book highly. In particular, you should read it just to understand the depth of belief in god-men and the supernatural that exists even today in India. You also may not choose to invest in a wig made from real human hair, after you learn of its probable source....

Author Shah provides us with this bit of Afghani philosophy:

Published by Time Warner Trade Publishing. Web site: www.arcadepub.com


Perhaps encouraged by the media attention brought to the institution by the strange claims of their tenured Professor John Mack, who insists that just about everyone has been abducted and probed by aliens from outer space, Harvard University, via their Medical School, is creating an institute for "nontraditional medicine." We're told that Americans last year made some 600 million office visits to practitioners of so-called "integrative" medicine, which merely means doctors who have opted to "go with the flow" and prescribe untested and unvalidated notions along with substances and systems that have been established as effective. The cost of those office visits came to about $30 billion last year, and that attracts the attention of Harvard even more than UFO abductions - which doesn't really pay off, except to the authors of books on the subject. Bob Park of the American Physical Society suggests that Harvard should also establish an institute for the study of astrology. That's another well-paying farce that can also help pay for a real education....

Reader Sam Thompson writes:

In your May 19th commentary section you speak of the pseudoscience of phrenology. Here's my suggestion for those who might still believe in that notion. An obvious extension of the phrenology theory would be to test it by "retrophrenology," which is to say, attempt to alter your character by changing the shape of the bumps on your head. Perhaps a set of hammers graduated in size would be useful. Just a thought. It couldn't hurt, for long.

Too late, Sam. Already been done. Several of the books in our new library additions on phrenology advocate just such a procedure. One suggests that if an "organ" - an area of the head assigned to a particular emotion or activity - is not large enough, a portion of the skull directly over that area can be "trepanned" - sawed out - to allow that "organ" to grow larger. Generally, it is believed by the phrenologists that the size and shape of the skull limits the development of certain areas and thus causes related deficiencies. Nowhere do I see Sam's "hammer method" mentioned, but it sounds equally likely of success.


At last. An applicant for the JREF million-dollar prize sends us this final proof of life-after-death. Can't beat it for succinctness, though perhaps it needs a tad more development....

Our brain has electricle [sic] impulses, when we die these impulses CAN NOT die or just fade away, the soul - you cant [sic] see the electricle [sic] impulses and you cant [sic] see spirits.


Our recent presentation here of the actual incredible mathematics behind homeopathic "dilutions" has led to some interesting correspondence. Concerning "Oscillococcinum," the homeopathic remedy sold in drug stores and elsewhere for 'flu, we're told that it's prepared from duck liver. Oscillococcinum is an extremely popular quack remedy, on sale in every drug store I've ever looked over for these preparations. Knowing that there is always a group out there that will raise an alarm about the possibility of the duck species becoming endangered, Bob Park of The American Physical Society has assured us that "the duck population is in no danger, however ..." To check that claim, reader John Stone did some arithmetic, to discover that in one average ducks liver there is sufficient material to make enough 10 ml. vials of this product to fill the entire known volume of the universe .... plus some. Seems more than we can use, in my opinion. Ducks, relax, take hope!


Reader Trisha Van Zandt, of the Psychology Department of Ohio State University, submits a piece which appeared in last week's "Other Paper," one of the Columbus, Ohio, area alternative papers. "Reverend" Bob Larson, an exorcist, visited there recently to scare the locals and scare up some money. Here's an excerpt.

The Rev. Bob Larson, a traveling exorcist, announced to his audience, "This is a safe place." That made the blood-curdling screams and the guy puking in the corner a lot easier to handle.

More than 300 people filled the Hyatt Regency's North Ballroom Friday evening to wage "spiritual warfare" on the demons inside them... . The banner behind the stage at the Regency Ballroom said, "Do What Jesus Did!" Jesus would apparently be selling books, recordings and videos denouncing such satanic tools as Harry Potter books, homosexuality, aliens, Pokemon, rock music, compulsive masturbation, and yoga.

... the dapper, bearded exorcist took the stage to thunderous applause... . After talking about two teenage girls he'd saved from Satan, including a "pretty little blonde cheerleader," he asked for money. Larson, who wants to build a National School for Exorcism in Phoenix, asked the crowd to fill the contribution buckets with $30,000. "I pray the devil to take his hands off you and your finances," said Larson. "Satan, you let these people go."

Larson paced the aisles with his microphone, alternating between whispers, shouts and growls. A Larson staffer with a video camera followed, projecting the exorcist's image onto the screen. It appeared we had our first good candidate for an exorcism when a woman wailed and burst into tears, but Larson shushed her. The ones who speak up first aren't always the ones truly in need, he said. Another Larson staffer furiously jotted notes on a legal pad, recording each person he touched: what they were wearing, where they were seated. A man on the other side of the ballroom was making guttural noises. He leaned over and puked, surrounded by men from Larson's prayer team. They restrained the man as he writhed and gibbered. Demons? Uh, Bob, might wanna look over there.

... At last, Larson found a subject worthy of his skills: a crying woman who told him she was raped at age 14. He led her up onstage as he curtly told the prayer team members to take the loud puking guy into another room. He turned back to the woman, holding onto her arm and barking into her face, "Look at me like I was one of those men." Three men from the prayer team held her arms. She flinched, and Larson told her she couldn't be saved while she still hated men. Then he growled at the demons in the woman's soul, sneaking a peek at his watch in mid-growl. The woman growled back in a demonic voice. Larson smacked her neck, head and back with a Bible. She curled up in a ball on the stage. After more growls and a climax of "I bind you, Satan!" Larson was satisfied. The two hugged to applause from the crowd.

It was 10 p.m. and we headed for the door, with the Rev. Bob Larson still going strong. In a side room, the guy who had puked was waiting hopefully for a turn.


There are two basic solutions to the rug-cutting problem of last week. See the illustration. But by far the most ingenious solution came from reader Jaime Arbona. He wrote:

Why not tell the rug-cutter to cut the worn section 1m x 9m instead of 1 x 8? Then it's easy to lop a 9m x 1m section (not worn) from the bottom or top edge (thereby cutting the remainder into two sections) and sewing that section into the middle 1 x 9 meters hole.

Though Jaime's solution requires three rug pieces rather that the two called for, I rather like this solution. And though we lose one square meter of perfectly good rug, that scrap could be used as a bath mat.....! Way to go, Jaime! (Well after Jaime offered this, several others also sent it in.)

Okay, try this one on for size: another damn cross! No semantics here! Divide it into just four duplicate/ equivalent/ indistinguishable/ identical/ congruent shapes. Divide only along the dotted lines. No overlap. No cheating, though ingenuity is always permitted, of course, and even encouraged! Solutions to: randi@randi.org And I can't acknowledge all of them.....