Word: randiness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...worked on enlarging his bag of tricks. He has learned hundreds of card stunts, math games and vanishing acts from his friend, Science Writer Martin Gardner, through whom he met other magicians willing to share their secrets. Among Kanfer's most prominent mentors is James ("The Amazing") Randi, who served as an informal consultant for the current story. "Steve has been a really good student," says Randi. "If he really applied himself, he'd be terrific. As a writer, he knows how human beings work, which is crucial for a magician. He's also a little crazy...
...lessons from experts and played the Emerald City to standees. Across the country, magic is enjoying unprecedented fortune. Says Dai Vernon, 80-year-old dean of American magic: "I've been conjuring for six decades; I don't know when the field has been so fertile." James Randi, a prestidigitator who tours with the Alice Cooper show, agrees: "Magic has had red-letter days. But this is a red-letter year." The prediction is no illusion...
...Theoretically, magicians have no place in serious science. But they are entertainers whose business it is to deceive; thus they feel that they are better qualified to spot chicanery than scientists, who can be woefully naive about the gimmicks and techniques that charlatans may use for mystical effects. James Randi, who appears on television as "the Amazing Randi," duplicates many of Uri Geller's achievements with a combination of sleight of hand, misdirected attention and patented paraphernalia, then calls them feats of clay...
...Scientists who fall for the paranormal go through the most devious reasoning," Randi says. "Fortunes are squandered annually in pursuit of mystical forces that are actually the result of clever deceits. The money would be better spent investigating the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. There is more evidence for their reality...
Another Russian lady, Rosa Kuleshova, can "read" with her fingertips while securely blindfolded. James Randi, analyzing photographs of Kuleshova, promptly announced that her act was "a fraud." To prove his point, he invited testers to blindfold him with pizza dough, a mask and a hood. Then he proceeded to drive a car in traffic. "I won't tell you how I did it," he says. "But it was not parapsychologically. It was pure deception, just as hers was." Such revelations have not deterred the parapsychologists in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere. They freely concede that many of their subjects do sometimes...