Night of Mediumship & Clairvoyance

[SepticSkeptic]

I think the apologists for tricksters and con artists should spend some time with the only dog I like. Scooby Doo.

Every week a supernatural phenomena would be presented.
And each time the simplest investigation would uncover skullduggery.

[Columbus]

Mosy
You asked if all things can be explained or debunked. I feel I may talk myself into a rhetorical black hole if I answer that but I'd point out that certainly the last couple of centuries has shown that many "unexplainable things" are actually explainable.

In fact, just now I have personally had explained to me something "unexplainable" by googling "magnetic man" which gave me links debunking the spoon trick you raised including a nice one by James Randi using talcum powder.

[mosy]

Thanks Columbus for the Youtube suggestion. I watched a few of James Randi's miscellaneous debunks as well one expressing his total disbelief in mediums, disliking most especially the money paid. Some of the supposedly genuine readings were interesting whilst some others looked more like a beginners' lesson in how not to do cold readings.

In theory, one could form a better opinion after a personal reading, although it was said that sitters have selective memories - i.e. noticing/remembering the hits but forgetting how many misses there were hence some mediums (not all) disallow tape recording.

Hey ho.

[SepticSkeptic]

This is great

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... and-frauds

[biscuitman1978]

From the late Simon Hoggart's column in the Guardian:

[A] ventriloquist finds there's no market for his act any more, so he sets up as a spiritualist. A woman asks how much it would cost to contact her late husband.

"It would be £20 for you to speak to him, £40 for him to speak to you, and £60 for you to have a conversation while I drink a glass of water."

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/o ... on-hoggart

[Tim Lund]

Thanks SepticSkeptic. I watched that, and it was indeed riveting, and moving.

The bit which really got me was Uri Geller, towards the end, completely shameless, and justifying what he did on the basis that it was what people liked, and would pay for. It's getting late now, so I don't have time to track down when in the programme it was, and check the exact language, but it struck me at the time as the most egregious articulation of the libertarianism which takes mainstream market economics over a boundary into post modern quackery.

It's the sort of thing health policy makers are subjected to by lobbyists for the so called health food industry, who just love to make UKIPpish noises about evil Brussels bureaucrats getting in the way of honest entrepreneurs making a living, selling simple folks the pills and nostrums they want, because they (the evil bureaucrats) are all in they pay of the mainstream food industry, and a blinkered Englightenment, 'scientific' world view which misses the holistic and spiritual.

Yuk