Word: blood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...face up on a table, behind which stands a short, balding man with a fringe of white hair, a bushy beard and piercing green eyes. He kneads the exposed abdomen with both hands, presses one thumb down and draws it across the skin. A trickle, then a stream of blood appears. The audience gasps. Now his hand thrusts into the abdomen and, accompanied by a sickening squishing sound, pulls up a clump of bloody tissue. Host Johnny Carson grimaces. A groan of revulsion sweeps the crowded studio; one woman faints...
...bearded man stares at momentarily. "Oh, no! That doesn't come out," he apologizes, his eyes suddenly twinkling, and pushes it back into the body. The spell is broken and the audience roars, then titters nervously as he proceeds to remove additional gore. Finally he wipes away the blood, revealing an expanse of unbroken, unscarred skin...
What millions of people have just seen is a demonstration of "psychic surgery." The blood had been donated by a volunteer before the show; the "diseased tissue" consisted of shreds of lamb heart, hidden in a tray behind the table and manipulated by the facile hands of a master magician: James ("the Amazing") Randi, 59, conjurer, showman, crusader and America's most implacable foe of flummery. The props and the techniques are those used by the so-called psychic surgeons of the Philippines, who promise miraculous, painless, lifesaving surgery to lure desperately ill people to their clinics. But what...
...filled the entire world with hatred against our country" and led Iran to the "verge of bankruptcy." In the unkindest cut, the missive laid the blame for recent setbacks in the eight-year-old war with Iraq at Khomeini's feet and begged him to "stop trafficking in the blood of our martyrs...
...mingle with the crowds on the field. You feel the blood coming back into your feet. Your feet feel like dancing. Penguins would grow stiff in this cold. But you are as warm as Florida beach. This is the way it should...