The US ABC-TV network, we're told, has just bought the rights to the British TV show, "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!" This is yet another of those dreary but somehow popular "survivor" series in which people are demeaned, embarrassed, assaulted, and voted out of the group one by one. Uri Geller, after agreeing not to use his formidable psychic powers to guide the group, promptly got them lost and as a result of this and his constant lecturing about "powers," was the first to be unanimously voted off. Yahoo News announced this ABC-TV item, adding:

While the British show featured extremely minor celebrities like spoonbender Uri Geller, it's hoped that ABC's version will be beefed up with a better slate of masochistic media whores.

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but watching people falling off cliffs, getting sunburned, eating bugs, screeching at one another, and generally not making their species proud, is not my idea of entertainment. I tried chewing up a bug, once, when I was two years old; my mother reported not only that I didn't enjoy the snack, but that she had not given birth to me so that I could be involved in such acts. Mom was a wise lady....

Good friend and former CSICOP executive Mark Plummer writes from Down Under:

It is hard to know how to present this and do it in good taste but none of Australia's psychics or clairvoyants publicly predicted the recent Balinese [bombing] events. If they did not foresee it then they are not much good at seeing the future. If they did foresee it then surely they had a responsibility to warn people. Also Bali is a Hindu Society with many astrologers, and the same goes for them.

Agreed, Mark. Just so you'll know, none of our highly-touted "psychics" here in the USA predicted the Bali massacre, or the current sniper attacks in the Washington, DC, area, either. But they did keep us informed on the latest Hollywood scandal forecasts! As reader Burton Radons comments on the Sylvia Browne predictions, published here last week for comments and evaluation:

What I want to know is, if Browne can make such "accurate" predictions about future events, why don't the spirits tell her about things that are important instead of shoving into other people's business? For example, there are many serial murderers operating now in the United States, and the dead folk she speaks to could tell her who they are and how to catch them. Are Brad Pitt's romantic future, and my investments, really more important than catching murderers via the afterlife? What about the thousands of missing children cases? Serial rapists?

She's a charlatan, but if she really had this capability of prediction, it'd be even more vile. At least the nutjobs who predict the world will end, are talking about something of consequence, and at least they want to warn people to help more survive the disaster.

The possibility that the public will wake up to the vapidity of these charlatans, seems far off. It's discouraging, that so much attention is lavished on the fakers just because they produce an attractive but useless product.

Incidentally, our readers have so far given scores of from 8 to 12 correct out of 51, to Sylvia. That's 16 to 24 percent....

One of those self-appointed "experts" on Feng Shui, the current Chinese notion-of-the-month, is a G. Gordon-Hall. In a rather facetious recent New Times newspaper interview, he explained what this is all about. Here's a small part of it:

G-H: It's about the placement of your home on its property, based on your birthday, your wife's birthday, and so on. It's about working with your environment, not against it.

NT: So where I put my table lamps has a direct impact on the size of my bank account.

G-H: And on your health and your relationships, too. It sounds crazy, but it's based in 8,000-year-old scientific principles. The Getty Museum is set up using these principles. Oprah uses feng shui.

NT: Well, there's an endorsement. So if I go home and move my sofa, what will happen to me tomorrow?

G-H: If you put it in your southeast corner, you'll start to notice that your finances take a dive. Because you're sitting on your money.

Mr. Gordon-Hall went on with other bits of profundity such as:

...in that corner of the living room, your brain activity goes up three points.

The worst is when you have a mirror in the bedroom, which you never want to do.... bad energy can get trapped in the mirror....

...lovemaking goes on in the bedroom.... if you get up in the middle of the night and use the toilet, you could flush all that yummy energy down the drain....

If the [kitchen] drain is in the southeast corner... it's sending all your good money energy down the drain....

And so on, ad nauseam. People actually pay to be told this drivel, and they believe it!

I note that the "Feng Shui Shop" that runs an ad on the Google page where this subject is available, assures us that "Nobody can't beat our prices." I'm sure nobody can't.....

And the Getty Museum not only isn't arranged by feng shui, they've never even heard of it. No wonder they're so near bankruptcy. As for Oprah, I'll bet she embraces it enthusiastically.

A reader, Don, recently got into e-mail correspondence with Uri Geller, who was unhappy to find my name and the JREF challenge mentioned in the exchange. The reader then asked me:

Uri suggests that you were found to be a liar in an American court. I am not prepared to believe or disbelieve this claim without the facts. Can you elaborate? I suspect, his take on things is slightly different than yours (and probably, the truth!)

Very perceptive of you, Don. Geller refers to the libel suit brought against me years ago by his buddy Eldon Byrd. I had made a statement about Byrd which I believed to be true, on the authority of a US postal inspector. I was misinformed. I withdrew the statement, yet Byrd sued me. In court, I freely admitted that I'd made a mis-statement, but believed at the time I made it, that it was true. That was backed up by a witness we called from the U.S. Post Office Investigators department. Byrd lost rather spectacularly: on each of four counts, the jury gave him zero, zero, zero, and zero dollars.

At one point in the trial, his lawyer asked me about a statement he said I'd made, and he triumphantly announced that had a recording of it, too! It was:

Good evening. My name is James Randi. I'm a liar, a cheat, a fake, and a charlatan. But I perform all this with a certain degree of panache, which may even evoke from you a spontaneous expression of delight and astonishment — in the form of applause. I trust this will be the case.

That was the beginning of my opening address to my magic audiences, recorded at one of my shows — obviously meant to be a gag, but Byrd (and Geller!) apparently have no sense of humor, and still flaunt this joke as evidence of my dishonesty. Hey, Robin Williams portrayed a killer in a recent film. That must mean he's a killer, right?

Don quoted Geller as writing that the JREF "million dollar challenge, whilst having good intentions, is destined to fail to disprove a single (claimed) psychic, clairvoyant, metal-bender etc..." Well, that is not, and never was, the intent. It is to challenge their claims, not to prove or disprove anything, one way or the other, though that's often the inevitable result. Geller of course knows this, but chooses to misrepresent the matter.

Don asked, "How can we REALLY prove that all these claims are fake?" I replied, "We can't. We can only show that the claimants who submit their claims, cannot support those claims." No news here for anyone who's read the web page and other discussions of the matter.

The following was originally published by Houston Press Oct 10, 2002, and is copyrighted, 2002, by New Times, Inc. Used here by permission.

Space Center & Me. Or, how I learned to stop caring and accept the dumb, by Dylan Otto Krider.

Every clique has an "out" group that insiders make fun of. For stoners, it's kickers; for kickers, it's hipsters. When I was a research assistant during my brief stint as an astrophysics major, our whipping boys of choice were the UFO believers and perpetuators of the theory that aliens built the [Egyptian] pyramids. Our views of these "pseudoscientists" varied from mild amusement to fear that their wackiness could bring about the end of civilization.

Ironically, the first story I ever wrote for the Houston Press turned out to be on the Roswell exhibit at Space Center Houston. I had expected the alien angle to be simply a way to lure people in, at which point they would discuss NASA's search for microbes on Mars. What I found instead was the center's CEO calling the few informational plaques on display "wall candy," used to justify his latex masks and spaceships. He had no problem peddling NASA conspiracy; it was the science he took issue with.

Randi comments: Please don't mistake the Houston Space Flight Center for Space Center Houston, though the names certainly do allow for confusion. Personally, I see a lot of compromise here, and the very strong possibility that visitors, despite displayed notices of the independence of the SCH, will go away with the notion that NASA espouses belief in the Roswell — and other — claims. I'm disturbed by this.

The argument for privatizing Space Center was that the organization could become more efficient without compromising its original mission. Every compromise that followed has been excused as "what the people want." There was "Extreme Sports," then a tribute to farts and burps called "Grossology" (the least offensive, since it passed on real information about biology). But none could equal the Roswell exhibit — until now.

It would not be possible to come up with an exhibit more at odds with everything a research institution like NASA stands for, than "Crop Circles." A TV documentary — which, scientists complained to The Dallas Morning News, creatively edited their "this is crap" answers to make them look like supporters of this kind of madness — plays in the background. The walls display official-looking newspaper clippings, which use fancy terminology like "plasma" and "magnetic fields." Exactly two of them express what most scientists believe, which is that those groups that admitted to pressing down the cornstalks with boards weren't lying. They are adjacent to an article that says "scientists" are angry that these "hoaxters" trivialize the idea of alien origins. (No, scientists fear that crop circles delegitimize honest scientific pursuits like SETI.)

Now, the paragraph that follows is important. The Space Center Houston treatment of the crop circle nonsense is showbusiness, not science. Is there a notice shown that identifies these clippings as fakes? No. Then what "take" are spectators supposed to make about this farce?

Where have these articles appeared in print? Nowhere. They were written by the exhibit curator, taken mostly from the book Vital Signs, by Andy Thomas.

Among the quotes used to push the idea of alien creation is Carl Sagan's "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." What Space Center fails to mention is that Sagan devoted much of his career to debunking claims of UFO visitation. This particular quote is from Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit"; it's given as an example of common logical fallacies pseudoscientists use to sell you a line of bullshit.

More than any other aspect of the fake exhibit, this use of Carl's name and reputation angers me most. I just hope that his estate will be galvanized into action by this blatant mis-use of his name. It's deplorable, but it rakes in the money.....

For Space Center, the mandate to "bring people in" has gone beyond movie tie-ins. They now feel obligated to trump up and sell ideas to which NASA scientists give absolutely zero credence. And they're getting more visitors as a result. But understand: Space Center Houston has nothing to do with science. It's about selling tickets, even if they have to sell out NASA to do it.

Hey, somebody, wake up and do something! Space Center Houston has the means, the location, and the affiliation, to perform a genuine service for the public; as it is, the Center sells quackery and mythology to visitors from all over the world, at $15.95 a pop. There are genuine, dramatic, fantastic facts about the Universe that can be turned into real entertainment, information, and delight. Above all, we should not be represented in the present fashion to foreign visitors - especially.

There's no place for a carnival at the Houston Space Flight Center.

Here's an interesting press release from Johns Hopkins University that was forwarded to me:

High rates of infant mortality. The plague. Crops and livestock wiped out overnight. How could a world created by a watchful, benevolent and engaged God be such a mess?

The answer, according to 15th century Christian theologians, was witches. Their belief in witches — and their ability to persuade society in general that witches existed — took God off the hook for all the bad things that happened to good people. Stories of alleged witches' gruesome acts comforted people whose faith in God was challenged by the evil in the world, according to Walter Stephens, the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at The Johns Hopkins University.

Currently in the news is the murder trial of Ira Einhorn, a formerly popular promoter of psychic power, CIA suppression of so-called "psychotronic" weapons in the USSR, and the presence of UFOs among us. Now we learn that Ira is planning to take the stand in his own defense, hoping to explain his groundbreaking work on psychic mind control, UFOs, quantum physics, psychic phenomena, spoon-bender Uri Geller and telepathic transmissions from Russia, and how the evil government agencies have now framed him for murder. You see, the remains of his "abducted" girlfriend were found in a trunk, mummified, in Ira's apartment. The poor guy didn't even know there was anything in the trunk, he says. The body was put there by someone, 25 years ago.....

Our buddy Bob Park, of the American Physical Society, has always insisted, as we have, that the polygraph — "lie detector" — is useless. Last week, noting some news on that subject, he commented that "The polygraph is . . . a highly reliable detector of orgasms. But does it detect lies? Only if you're lying about having an orgasm."

The New York Times columnist William Safire last week referred to "the form of torture that calls itself the lie detector." Much to his — and to my — satisfaction, the bells-and-whistles machine that measures perspiration, heart rate, respiration, and other signs of possible psychological tension, has now been officially discredited as the judge of truth-telling. But, mark my words, that will not stop government agencies from using it, and the lobby that adores weird bits of technology will pester Federal and State officials to approve and endorse it, vigorously.

I have always insisted that the polygraph is a form of technical witchcraft, an example of wishful thinking by the tech world. The results depend entirely upon the operator and the situation as it exists at the moment the test is administered. Twice now, I myself have undergone polygraph examination — as tests of my ability to defeat the device, I will quickly add! — and I won both times. I equipped examiners with specific questions, the truthful answers to which would be embarrassing and stress-inducing, so that the tests would take place under similar circumstances to those in effect when these examinations are usually done. A piece of cake, believe me.

Of course, as a magician, I am accustomed to "lying" professionally. I represent situations that are quite false, misleading, and deceptive — in order to achieve the illusionary effects I employ. That box on stage, casually shown to be empty, may not be empty; a person who walks on stage to assist me, might have been cleverly, subtly "prompted" beforehand, without even being aware of that fact. Given that situation, it's perhaps no wonder that I can defeat the polygraph. But criminals, spies, thieves, are also in the business of deception, though with less honorable intentions.

Experts convened by the National Research Council, an branch of the National Academy of Sciences, spent almost two years on an investigation of the polygraph, and concluded that "national security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument," adding that "no spy has ever been caught [by] using the polygraph."

Safire wrote, in The New York Times, that a U.S. attorney general once told him: "Look — we know it's often wrong, but watching that needle jump is scary, and it's our best way for police to get confessions." Okay, I can see that technique being used successfully, but how can we depend on law enforcement using it only that way, and what's to prevent its use in surreptitiously "proving" points to authorities who are empowered to grant broader permission for searches, seizures, or interrogations that otherwise would not be allowed?

I'm anything but soft on crime and criminals. But I signed on, as a naturalized citizen, to a system that I expect to toe the line in following the Constitution and the many freedoms — as well as responsibilities — that it requires. I expect that system to protect me and others, while I submit to its needs in administering justice and human rights.

Safire wrote:

The Supreme Court in 1998 held, 8 to 1, that only a jury can be the lie detector: "By its very nature, polygraph evidence may diminish the jury's role in making credibility determinations....the aura of infallibility attending polygraph evidence can lead jurors to abandon their duty to assess credibility and guilt."

Thus defeated by the high court in criminal trials, and with businesses restrained by Congress from using the intimidating device to screen employees, the "polygraph community," as the sweat-merchant lobby calls itself, made its last stand by claiming the ability of its testers to root out spies.

Safire then pointed out the frightening fact that major Federal agencies had embraced this pseudoscience, a fact of which, back in the 1960s, a group of us from CSICOP had tried to convince a select group from the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and other agencies. As I'd feared, they had arrived at that conference with their decisions already made, and the polygraph was dear to them as an example of modern technology, they thought, that would serve them well. Safire continued:

The C.I.A. had been the first to fall for it. By relying on widespread polygraph tests to "flutter" its employees, the agency believed it was invulnerable to "moles." But the Soviet penetrator Aldrich Ames breezed through two of those tests, causing our counterspies to lower their guard and ignore obvious clues to the source of espionage that cost the lives of ten U.S. agents in Russia.

Because professional spies are trained to defeat the device; because pathological liars do not cause its needles to spike; and because our counterspies relax when a potential suspect "passes" — the system breeds the opposite of security.

Safire went on to tell how in 1981 he had been told by William Casey, CIA chief, that a valium pill and certain simple physical tricks would easily enable him, Casey, to defeat the instrument. Safire recounted several examples in which the polygraph results were quite wrong and almost got innocent victims fired and/or convicted. He did not say how many were actually doomed by the system. Wrote Safire:

...polygraphing should be stopped not only at the Energy Department, which sponsored the Research Council study because it was losing scientists, but at the Defense Department, which subjects some 10,000 employees to the self-defeating display of distrust. If unfairness to truth-tellers doesn't move you, try the hard-liner's reason: Bureaucratic reliance on today's fault-ridden system lets well-trained spies and terrorists penetrate our defenses.

We'll see just how persuasive this revelation is.....