Reader Karel de Pauw alerted us to this pious and heart-warming announcement made by the one-and-only (one is enough!) Uri Geller recently in The Independent newspaper in the UK. Ever eager to assure his fans that he's appropriately correct in a moral sense, Geller seized upon what he saw as an important omission in an article:

Michael McCarthy's excellent piece on Alfred Russel Wallace...did not mention one important facet of the scientist's work: his keen interest in Spiritualism and psychic abilities. His researches proved beyond doubt the reality of many extraordinary paranormal phenomena, demonstrated by marvellously gifted mediums such as Daniel Dunglas Home. Had Wallace and not Darwin established the evolutionary theory, the many ardent Darwinists who are arch-sceptics might today be believers in the power of God and the human mind, instead of atheists.

Yours, believing in a power greater than natural selection, Uri Geller.

No, I did not invent that closing phrase. It's interesting to see that Geller drags out Home as evidence for spiritualism, when that matter has long ago ceased to serve the cause. The "proved beyond doubt" claim is added nonsense, of course. But here Geller is both accepting Wallace's findings on natural selection, and denying them, too! Was Wallace right on his spook decisions, but wrong on his real scientific work?

As reader de Pauw properly observes, this is "A tale of natural selection — with only one survivor."

As you're no doubt now aware, the "Amazing Meeting" in January is being held at the brand-new Renaissance Plantation/Fort Lauderdale hotel. We've checked, and the proprietors don't seem to have any witchcraft systems in place, they would gladly suffer a 13th floor, and no garlands of garlic hang over doorways. We were driven to look into these aspects of their service, after learning that the Loews chain of hotels and resorts has opted to join the woo-woo afficionados by offering full-blown superstition as an option in their services. They have announced:

Loews Coronado Bay Resort has recently introduced an intriguing new dimension to its meeting services department: the practice of Feng Shui, an ancient Chinese system of creating new environmental balance. Come see how allowing us to use this system to arrange your meeting or special event can increase energy and create even greater success for your event.

What dunderhead at Loews decided to cater this way to ignorance and mythology? Surely not all patrons of Loews are idiots! Will amulets be offered at the registration desk? Can we expect that the chef will wave a pendulum over the groceries he prepares in his kitchen? Are mystical herbs sprinkled into the air-conditioning system to keep djinns away? Are clients protected from falling meteors by incantations at dawn? If, as advertised, the furniture is re-arranged to allow "qi" to circulate properly, these are legitimate questions!

This is a shameful surrender to popular delusion on the part of Loews. Can eye of newt and toe of frog be far behind? The illustration here shows a "Feng Shui Bear" from one of the websites devoted to this claptrap, apparently of the right proportions, color, and attitude to suit the young. Unbelievable.....

Reader Dale A. Wood of Atlanta, Georgia, is as annoyed as I am at the low level of grammar used by copy writers in the media. I suspect that they really don't know any better, which makes the situation all the more alarming. Dale comments:

I thought that you might be amused by my observations about a current TV commercial about home loans. What the announcer says is exactly correct, but in a rather peculiar way: "The likelihood of a mortgage rate increase is a very real possibility."

Yes, indeed, but this is highly redundant, perhaps using emphasis to get the message across. First of all, for practical purposes, "likelihood" and "possibility" are synonymous. Second, something is either real or unreal (just as something is either unique or not unique), and so the word "very" is an additional redundancy.

Thus, the expression "real possibility" would suffice! In ordinary discourse, something that isn't a "real possibility" is something with probability = 0; in other words, an impossibility. But then again, in mathematical language, all possibilities or probabilities are "real," and events with probability = 0 can happen and do happen all the time.

Dale, the likelihood of any improvement in advertising blurbs is, I believe, of very low probability. I'll let you assign a figure to it....

It's astonishing. Readers will ask me for a solution to the old "think of a card" trick that's been on the Internet for years now. I've just been notified that there's even a Chinese version of it now available! That turns out to be a rip-off on the David Copperfield edition....

If you're one who has been fooled by the trick, as found at http://www.mc.hik.se/~mid95wem/trams/magic/welcome.html, do some thinking. Then, if that doesn't work, try choosing two cards, and wonder why it works then, too....

For the last month, we featured a running account of Greek philosopher Lucian's encounters with a swindler of his day. This was well received by readers, I'm happy to note, and I promised more of the same kind of entries here to illustrate the fact that today's con artists aren't at all new, just re-treads of the same old variety of opportunists. This week, we'll go back only about a century, to show you another operator who used the same vague terms, exploited his fans' ignorance of science and reality, and appealed to their greed and need.

You will see here the same techniques used by those like Tom Bearden who is today selling the "MEG" device, Joseph Newman with his "free energy" whirlygig, and Dennis Lee, who flogs his imaginary machine to gullible elderly investors. No one gets real answers, the devices can't really be examined closely, everything depends on anecdotal claims, and The Establishment is accused of suppressing The Truth.

THE KEELY MOTOR HOAX

The "Hydro-pneumatic-pulsating-vacue-engine" was first offered to the public in November of 1874 by one John Worrell Keely, a former carpenter of Philadelphia. Keely was a clever mechanic and obviously a very clever talker, but not a highly educated man. What he revealed to a hungry group of willing investors, a small company of prominent Philadelphia citizens, was a highly complicated machine that twisted heavy ropes until they broke, snapped iron bars, and shot lead balls through planks. In his Philadelphia laboratory, which was connected to his house, he had constructed some one hundred different machines which he claimed could "disintegrate the etheric force that controls the atomic constitution of matter." These devices would spin and whir merrily away, powered by Keely's secret force, until spectators simply tired of seeing the show. At that point they often invested, too.

Keely claimed to have discovered a new "vibrational" force, and with his demonstrations he had succeeded in inducing a dozen engineers and capitalists to organize the Keely Motor Company in New York in 1872, and to subscribe ten thousand dollars to construct the first motor. He began to attract the attention of the general public in 1874 when he gave a demonstration of the motor on November 10th of that year.

To those who were unkind enough to suggest that perhaps an exterior source of energy was being used, Keely responded by simply lifting the machine and moving it to another part of the room, where it would continue to whirl away, for hours on end. To the skeptical viewer, the demonstration certainly appeared to be genuine, and a real example of perpetual motion, though Keely insisted that a few drops of water were required to initially set the thing going. That seemed inconsequential indeed, and the investors threw money at Keely with great enthusiasm.

Just who was this man? Born in Philadelphia in 1827, Keely had worked as a carpenter, a violinist, a magician who specialized in card tricks; and finally as a fur trapper. The magician angle seemed not to interest investors, though it would have attracted my immediate attention.... Humble origins, then as now, seemed to provide gullible victims with assurance that the claims of an inventor must be valid, since the trappings of science were absent, and basic principles of the inventor's secret could be conveyed by such terms as "vibration" — one of most potent — and "radiation," which covered anything left over. And, since Keely was not claiming to have a "perpetual motion machine," but only a device purporting to furnish motive power with a minimum expenditure of energy upon it, that also appeared more acceptable.

It was well known that the search for perpetual motion had been abandoned by true scientists, and the fallacy had become too generally recognized to make it a means of coaxing money from credulous investors, but a machine which required a constant moderate supply of power from an outside source, but would return this many times over, appeared more likely to the dupes.

This result, Keely claimed, was accomplished by means of special mechanical actions or reactions which were declared to be either wholly new discoveries, or else actions that were not commonly understood. Almost unlimited supplies of power could be produced at little cost, he claimed.

As a 1924 book on scientific fallacies noted,

Among the expedients resorted to in exploiting a scientific fraud, mystifying lingo is one of the commonest, and in this Mr. Keely was an adept. At this demonstration the machine, or so much of it as was then to be exhibited, was called a "vibratory-generator"; in a later demonstration it was a "hydro-pneumatic-pulsating-vacu-engine" and changes in nomenclature were being rung continually always vague, delightfully general, and suggesting unlimited possibilities.

Keely spouted bewildering technical terms. He rattled on about "molecular vibration," "sympathetic equilibrium," "oscillation of the atom," "etheric disintegration," "quadruple negative harmonics," and "atomic triplets," expressions that mirror those currently dropped freely by persons involved in selling similar ideas to the unwary. Dennis Lee is a master of this sort of verbal juggling.

Keely's luck ran out in 1888, and the stockholders had him sent to jail for ignoring a court order to reveal his secret. He was kept afloat by his completely deluded supporters, especially his most credulous one, the very wealthy widow Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, who financed him for the next ten years, to the end of his life. Even while in prison, he continued to hold the interest of the stockholders, and was kept on his feet financially. By 1890, however, the stockholders had become too weary to be put off by evasions or tricks.

From The Cosmopolitan for April 1899:

Mr. Keely declared he was now on the eve of success; he had arrived at that crucial stage, lacking just the one slight adjustment which, in all such cases, proves the insurmountable bar to final achievement. His "generator" had now become a "liberator" which would disintegrate air and release an etheric force of cyclonic strength. In the glory of his exuberance Keely now declared that with one quart of water, he would be able to send a train of cars from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and that to propel a steamship from New York to Liverpool and return would require just about one gallon of the same.

In an article titled, "The Persistence of the Keely Motor" in The Forum for June 1886, we see further evidence that the Keely imposture was clearly seen, though not by the eager investors and supporters of the con artist:

... a power-creating machine of no known form or mode of operation, when based on notions upset eighty years ago, is a wonderful thing. To the confusion of the skeptics, the Keely motor is here, that is, not here but to be here three weeks hence. It has been going to be here three weeks hence, for twelve years.

Exactly the same can be said today for Dennis Lee and his claims, always promising results very soon, but never delivering them. Are we doomed to always have a certain gullible element as part of the human population? I fear so.

Keely, as with today's equivalents, had a "theory" going, along with his outright cheating. He based his nutty analysis of nature to a fundamental "trinity." Every force and practically everything else, he said, was "triune." For him the sacred number was not seven but three. He said that his machine, by the resonance of atoms, effected a "vibrational recombination" that liberated an incalculable amount of energy. And all this was accepted by his victims, snowed and lulled by fancy language and charm.

After Keely's death in 1898, the fraud was thoroughly exposed. An examination of his laboratory after the motor had been removed, showed that the extraordinary performances of his complicated machinery were controlled from a cellar in which a source of motive power was operated. It was a huge metal sphere, into which air was compressed and stored by quite ordinary means. Tiny pipes ran up through the walls of the house and laboratory, ending in furniture and even in the patterned rug on the floor, so that a machine which was already humming away and had a flywheel powering it, could be moved from one source of compressed air to another, and would continue to whirl away.

For a period of more than twenty-five years Keely had not only kept his chicanery hidden but escaped the discovery that his pretensions really were impostures, and this in the face of not-unintelligent experts and others who witnessed demonstrations of his machine. In his book, "Wild Talents," author Charles Fort described the eventual exposure that took place only after Keely's death:

[A stockholder] found the evidences of rascality. The motor was not the isolated mechanism that, according to him, the stockholders of the Keely Motor Co. had been deceived into thinking it was: he had found an iron pipe and other tubes, and wires that led from the motor to the cellar. Here was a large, spherical, metallic object.

The motor had been run by a compressed air engine in the cellar. Anybody who has ever tried to keep a secret twenty-four hours, will marvel at this story of an impostor who, against all the forces of revelation, such as gas men, and coal men, and other persons who get into cellars — against inquisitive neighbors, and, if possible, even more inquisitive newspaper men — against disappointed stockholders and outraged conventionalists — kept secret, for twenty-four years, his engine in the cellar.

One might think that finding such blatant evidence of fraud might have enraged those who had been swindled. Not so. Never dismiss the Henriette Syndrome:

Stockholders said that they knew of the spherical object, or the alleged compressed air engine in the cellar, because Keely had made no secret of it. Nobody, they said, had demonstrated that by means of this object, the motor could be run. But beliefs can be run. . . .

For twenty-four years there were demonstrations, and though there was much of a stir-up of accusations, never was Keely caught helping out a little. There was no red light, nor semi-darkness. The motor stood in no cabinet. Keely's stockholders were of a superior intelligence, as stockholders go, inasmuch as many of them investigated, somewhat, before speculating. They saw this solemn, big contrivance go around and around. Sometimes they saw sensational stunts. . . .

Justifying himself, in the midst of promises that came to nothing, because he could say to himself something that Galileo should have said, but did not say, "Nevertheless it does move!"

I think that we can find, in the writings of Keely himself, ample evidence of just how pretentious and uninformed he was, and how he attempted to cover his ignorance and dazzle his victims with nonsense. I obtained these quotations from searching the Internet and finding a number of groups of happily gullible folks who to this day, support and admire John Worrell Keely, and will blithely ignore any and all evidence against his silly claims. They proudly proclaim two of this rascal's wonderful discoveries:

Keely's Law of Cycles: Coherent aggregates harmonically united constitute centers of vibration bearing relation to the fundamental pitch not multiples of the harmonic pitch, and the production of secondary unions between themselves generate pitches that are discords, either in their unisons, or overtones with the original pitch; from harmony is generated discord, the inevitable cause of perpetual transformation.

and

Keely's Law of Corporeal Vibrations: All coherent aggregates when isolated from like bodies, or when immersed or confined in media composed of matter in a different state, vibrate at a given ascertainable pitch.

How can such deep wisdom be denied....?

Thanks to all of you who inquired about my health. Well recovered now, thanks to massive antibiotics, inhalers, and acupuncture (just kidding!) That re-circulated air on long-haul jets is just a bit much, sometimes.

Here you see Jack Horkheimer and Jerry Andrus plotting their involvement at the Amazing Meeting in January. We sent out a massive mailing that should arrive at your door very soon. Get your reservations in, folks!

Be sure to refer to U.S. News & World Report this week for an interesting article on frauds, swindles, cons, etc. As of Sunday, go to www.usnews.com to see what's coming up. This article was carefully prepared, checked and double-checked by the reporter. Refreshing indeed.

Next week, another bit of popular mythology comes under our close examination.... Stay tuned!