News: The U.S. Postal Service will honor magician/escape-artist Harry Houdini with a stamp to be issued officially on July 3rd next year on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society of American Magicians, at their annual convention in New York City. Houdini was a founder of that organization. This is the first time that a magician will appear on an American stamp. The Postal Service will set up special equipment at that event to issue special "First Day Covers." There will be an unveiling of the stamp in Las Vegas on October 29th, coinciding with National Magic Week and National Stamp Collecting month. Note that Houdini died on October 31, Hallowe'en, in 1926. The image on the stamp is from a 1911 Strobridge poster, and portrays the magician in a standing, formal, pose with his arms folded. It was one of his favorite posters.

Our good friend Norm Nielsen offers an array of reproduced magic posters for sale at www.nnmagic.com/Repros/magicrep1.htm if you've any interest in the subject.

Sit down for this next item.... You can read the excerpts ahead, then I strongly suggest that you go to http://psymag.tripod.com/issue_1/1_sabotage.htm - from which the excerpts are taken, to learn the depths to which I and the JREF will sink, just to make trouble for the world. On this, the website of "Psychic Magazine," you'll see the admonishment that if one wants to submit articles to them, they "accept only the best." So there. And, it proudly declares, "Every article in Psychic Magazine has been certified as true and correct." Oh. I see.

Well, read on and decide for yourselves just what standards of journalistic virtue these folks aspire to. Under the heading, "Sabotage of a Psychic Experiment," we find:

. . . we have incontrovertible evidence that this is what happened. . . . it was doomed to failure because an organized clique of skeptics, headed by James Randi, had already decided to thwart the test and render it useless. Their goal was to discredit Uri Geller after the "failed" experiment by pointing out how nobody bent the spoon and claimed the prize.

(That's the "experiment" that Mr. Geller set up in his home, offering a million dollars to anyone who could make a spoon bend just by looking at it on the Internet. Sounds flaky to me, but then I don't believe in The Tooth Fairy, either.)

. . . Randi sprang into action. Psychic Magazine has now received reports from insiders involved in Randi's operation. Our sources initially agreed with the goal of "exposing" Uri Geller, but have told us that when they eventually saw what was happening, they realized they were on a mission of manipulation, rather one of exposure, and grew disillusioned with the whole scheme. For obvious reasons, we cannot reveal our sources.

Oh, drat! I'll have to root out those "insiders." But those reasons are not at all "obvious" to me....

. . . when Geller set up the spoon bending experiment on the Internet, there was a real fear among Randi and his followers that the spoon definitely would be bent. The prospect of millions of people trying to use psychic powers in the experiment was too much for them, because they were sure that the spoon would be bent. . . . It is a well known scientific fact that when psychic powers absolutely must be thwarted, rather than just "explained away," there is only one effective method: negative energy. Fanatical skeptics are well known for this trick. They project enough negative energy with disbelief (and just plain "not wanting it to work") that often, enough force is applied against the use of psychic powers to cause complete failure. When that happens, the skeptics smugly assert that they knew it wouldn't work - when the fact is it is they who caused it not to work! . . . So Randi secretly assembled the largest collect of skeptics ever known. Secret e-mail and telephone calls were the order of the day. . . . Randi even mailed out thousands of street maps, pinpointing the location of Uri Geller's mansion, and even showed the exact room in which the spoon was suspected to be. . . . Randi's fanatics focused so much negative energy, night and day, for the whole year the experiment ran, that nobody was able to bend the spoon. The energy this cult directed to Geller's mansion was so great that it even broke the clock used to show the time on the web - something that some of Randi's cult followers have even bragged about openly!

I want you to know just how much time, labor, and money we invested just mailing out those thousands of street maps! Several trips to the post office, and then we had to grunt and groan day and night putting out those negative vibes! But wait! Although you may be rolling on the floor in hysterics by now, it gets even better! Read on....

As a side note, many scientists point out that focusing that much negative energy in one place is hazardous to anybody who might step into the target area. It is sheer luck that nobody was seriously injured or even killed by this recklessness.

Can you believe this? The hilarious piece concludes with:

What has mankind lost? Psychic research has been set back centuries with this scheme of Randi's. What would have been validated has been turned into a disaster for psychic research, all because one man decreed to his followers that they not allow a true experiment to take place. How much longer must mankind be denied the benefits of psychic powers because of a narrow-minded band of fanatics?

Oh, look over there! That's Geller himself rolling on the floor laughing. How he must giggle over such birdbrains. No, I insult birds. Even Dodos.

But please, go to the website to get the full dose of bellylaughs that this "magazine" evokes. This is an excellent example of the extent to which the uncritical believers will go to explain away the obvious.

On a different level altogether, I cannot recommend too highly a remarkable book, published in 1841, by one Charles Mackay, LL.D. It is titled, "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." This is one of my very favorite books, along with another by Sir Reginald Scot bearing the complete and ponderous title, "The Discovery of Witchcraft: Proving That the Compacts and Contracts of Witches with Devils and all Infernal Spirits or Familars, are but Erroneous Novelties and Imaginary Conceptions." The purpose of this book, announced on the title page, is ". . . for the undeceiving of Judges, Justices, and Jurors, before they pass Sentence upon Poor, Miserable and Ignorant People; who are frequently Arraigned, Condemned, and Executed for Witches and Wizzards." I'm happy to say that I own a very fine copy of this volume, dated 1665, an edition which has added to it "An excellent Discourse of the Nature and Substance of Devils and Spirits." Frankly, the added "Discourse" almost looks like an attempt to make the "Discovery" more salable, since it just about accepts the reality of devils and such - quite in line with religious teachings.....

Soon, on these pages, I will present you with further material from the Scot book and discussions thereon, but here and now I'll refer to the Mackay tome. Luckily for all of us, an excellent and complete reprint of this one is available today from Bonanza Books, through most bookstores. This edition contains a foreword by our good friend Andrew Tobias, with several excellent observations by him on the subject of manias in general. Reprints of the Scot book are available from dealer Richard Kaufman for US$40. Go to http://geniimagazine.com/kaufmanandco/booksandtapes.html for complete information.

Meanwhile, I'll use here the quotation from Macbeth that begins the chapter in Mackay that deals with "Haunted Houses":

Here's a knocking indeed! . . . Knock! Knock! Knock! . . . Who's there, i' the name o' Beelzebub? . . . Who's there, i' the devil's name? Knock! Knock! Knock! - Never at quiet?

In the book, Mackay covers, among many other subjects, the hoax of the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, the Magnetizers, and the Witch Mania. In this "Haunted Houses" chapter, he goes in great detail concerning several sequences that were causes célèbres in his time and in decades previous. The eventual solutions, when available, are given, and in closing the chapter, he celebrates the situation whereby these farcical notions are, in his opinion, pretty well over with. If only he could see where we are today, in that respect.....

He wrote:

These tales of haunted houses, especially those of the last and present century, however they may make us blush for popular folly, are yet gratifying in their results; for they shew that society had made a vast improvement. Had Parsons and his wife, and the other contrivers of the Cock Lane deception, lived two hundred years earlier, they would not perhaps have found a greater number of dupes, but they would have been hanged as witches, instead of being imprisoned as vagabonds. The ingenious Anne Robinson and the sly lasses of Baldarroch would doubtless have met a similar fate. Thus it is pleasant to reflect, that though there may be as much folly and credulity in the world as ever in one class of society, there is more wisdom and mercy in another than ever were known before. Lawgivers, by blotting from the statute-book the absurd or sanguinary enactments of their predecessors*, have made one step towards teaching the people. It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when lawgivers will teach the people by some more direct means, and prevent the recurrence of delusions like these, and many worse, which might be cited, by securing to every child born within their dominions an education in accordance with the advancing state of civilisation. If ghosts and witches are not yet altogether exploded, it is the fault, not so much of the ignorant people, as of the law and the government that have neglected to enlighten them.

I ask you to note that last observation. At the JREF, that's our bottom line.

* he refers to the repeal of the witchcraft statutes.

If you've not yet invested in a subscription to Michael Shermer's "SKEPTIC" Magazine, you should do so now. This is a drop-everything sort of publication that makes one devour it as soon as it arrives. Michael has made this into a super journal, largely due to the dedicated efforts of Pat Linse, who does design, artwork, and layout on SKEPTIC. Stephen Jay Gould, who can be very critical of poor journalism, dotes on this publication, and has contributed articles and advice. It's a delight, it's provocative, and it deserves your support. Subscribe.

Finally, I want to express my outrage at how a company known as "BestEarth" has taken advantage of the current panic over possible terrorist activities involving germ warfare. They actually sell "kits" containing homeopathic "antidotes" for radiation, anthrax, bubonic plague, and smallpox! This is a farce, a cruel hoax, a pack of lies, a fraud. To treat radiation exposure, they advertise a "Survival Kit II - Radiation emergency kit #2, for $60.00, containing [their terminology]: ANACARDIUM OR CAUSTICUM PHOSPHORUS RADIUM BROM URANIUM NIT X-RAY." No typos there. That's the way it appears. Their description:

Each kit contains remedies to help ward off the disease or used to alleviate the symptoms once the disease has been contracted.

Note that "help ward off" and "alleviate" are used to soften what first appears as "antidotes." Go to www.bestearth.com and click on the "Anthrax, Bubonic Plague, Small Pox Antiditotes [sic] Homeopathic" button.

Just WHERE is our protection against such flummery and lies?