+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 20 of 20

Thread: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

  1. Link to Post #1
    United States Avalon Member mojo's Avatar
    Join Date
    6th February 2011
    Posts
    5,993
    Thanks
    33,949
    Thanked 39,405 times in 5,642 posts

    Default Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Is it some trick or something more, also I will never complain about having a bad hair day again!...




    Hey Seth spend 10 bucks of your mill and trim some of those wild tufts...lol
    double edit: Maybe it's those wild hairs that gives Seth his power?..

    Quote At the MIT Media Lab in April 2008, Hi-Tech Magician Seth Raphael (http://magicseth.com/) challenged James Randi (http://randi.org/), claiming his computer can read minds. Randi accepted the challenge and then watched as Seth's computer succeeded in passing all of his tests. Witness Randi handing Seth the first good faith check for $10,000. Seth performs all of these miracles in live shows for companies across the world.
    Last edited by mojo; 17th May 2017 at 00:09.

  2. The Following 9 Users Say Thank You to mojo For This Post:

    DNA (17th May 2017), Fellow Aspirant (17th May 2017), Ivanhoe (16th May 2017), Lifebringer (17th May 2017), Matthew (17th May 2017), Noelle (17th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017), TargeT (17th May 2017), toppy (17th May 2017)

  3. Link to Post #2
    United States Avalon Member mojo's Avatar
    Join Date
    6th February 2011
    Posts
    5,993
    Thanks
    33,949
    Thanked 39,405 times in 5,642 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    James Randi was such an interesting character in the above video thought you would like to hear/see more of him...

  4. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to mojo For This Post:

    Slant84 (17th May 2017), toppy (17th May 2017)

  5. Link to Post #3
    Canada Avalon Member Justplain's Avatar
    Join Date
    8th April 2016
    Posts
    1,483
    Thanks
    4,787
    Thanked 9,259 times in 1,414 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Hey, Mojo, so the vid in the OP is just an april fools joke. This guy Randi is a debunker probably on an alphabet agency payroll. I think stan friedman uncovered a prof at harvard, i think, who was the biggest ufo debunker of the fifties/sixties, who was actually on the cia payroll and possibly a member of majestic 12.

    A guy like randi just adds fuel to atheists and transhumanists who want us all to think we are just mortal, over-ripened monkeys. Well, they wont give up, will they.
    Last edited by Justplain; 17th May 2017 at 00:03.

  6. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Justplain For This Post:

    Kryztian (18th May 2017), mojo (16th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017), TargeT (17th May 2017), toppy (17th May 2017)

  7. Link to Post #4
    Hong Kong Avalon Member syrwong's Avatar
    Join Date
    5th January 2011
    Age
    68
    Posts
    794
    Thanks
    1,946
    Thanked 4,564 times in 711 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Considering the vid is half an hour long, it is not ethical to post it. I, for one, watched intensely with great interest, but found I had wasted the time.

  8. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to syrwong For This Post:

    Justplain (17th May 2017), Kryztian (18th May 2017), mojo (17th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  9. Link to Post #5
    United States Avalon Member mojo's Avatar
    Join Date
    6th February 2011
    Posts
    5,993
    Thanks
    33,949
    Thanked 39,405 times in 5,642 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Why is it unethical? I watched it and dont think an April fools joke...

  10. The Following User Says Thank You to mojo For This Post:

    Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  11. Link to Post #6
    United States On Sabbatical
    Join Date
    30th December 2016
    Location
    Central Florida
    Posts
    1,660
    Thanks
    19,941
    Thanked 11,320 times in 1,632 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    I think it was a joke too.

  12. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Noelle For This Post:

    Kryztian (18th May 2017), mojo (17th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017), TargeT (17th May 2017)

  13. Link to Post #7
    Hong Kong Avalon Member syrwong's Avatar
    Join Date
    5th January 2011
    Age
    68
    Posts
    794
    Thanks
    1,946
    Thanked 4,564 times in 711 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Quote Posted by mojo (here)
    Why is it unethical? I watched it and dont think an April fools joke...
    Most people watching this think its a genuine. They do not enjoy it because
    1. A significant amount of time is wasted.
    2. Feeling of being fooled, angry at themselves and may be at you. This negativity is bad for both. An action is ethical if it brings joy and positivity, and unethical is it brings guilt and negativity.

  14. The Following User Says Thank You to syrwong For This Post:

    Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  15. Link to Post #8
    United States On Sabbatical
    Join Date
    30th December 2016
    Location
    Central Florida
    Posts
    1,660
    Thanks
    19,941
    Thanked 11,320 times in 1,632 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Maybe the mods can post a note in the subject line saying the video is most likely a joke so people have the option. Some may watch the video before reading members' responses to it.

  16. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Noelle For This Post:

    Justplain (18th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  17. Link to Post #9
    Finland Avalon Member Ultima Thule's Avatar
    Join Date
    30th January 2011
    Age
    47
    Posts
    875
    Thanks
    2,744
    Thanked 3,265 times in 683 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Quote Posted by syrwong (here)
    Quote Posted by mojo (here)
    Why is it unethical? I watched it and dont think an April fools joke...
    Most people watching this think its a genuine. They do not enjoy it because
    1. A significant amount of time is wasted.
    2. Feeling of being fooled, angry at themselves and may be at you. This negativity is bad for both. An action is ethical if it brings joy and positivity, and unethical is it brings guilt and negativity.
    It depends completely on your point of view, doesn't it? - i think that a significant part of population would find this not negative at all, but instead positive and time well spent.

    UT

  18. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Ultima Thule For This Post:

    mojo (17th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  19. Link to Post #10
    Hong Kong Avalon Member syrwong's Avatar
    Join Date
    5th January 2011
    Age
    68
    Posts
    794
    Thanks
    1,946
    Thanked 4,564 times in 711 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Ethics is formed from agreement among the majority of a population. For sure it is subjective. In a culture where everyone finds joy in fooling one another, fooling is ethical. But in this world, few people find joy in being fooled.

  20. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to syrwong For This Post:

    Noelle (17th May 2017), Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  21. Link to Post #11
    Hong Kong Avalon Member syrwong's Avatar
    Join Date
    5th January 2011
    Age
    68
    Posts
    794
    Thanks
    1,946
    Thanked 4,564 times in 711 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Quote Posted by Joe (here)
    Quote Posted by syrwong (here)
    Quote Posted by mojo (here)
    Why is it unethical? I watched it and dont think an April fools joke...
    Most people watching this think its a genuine. They do not enjoy it because
    1. A significant amount of time is wasted.
    2. Feeling of being fooled, angry at themselves and may be at you. This negativity is bad for both. An action is ethical if it brings joy and positivity, and unethical is it brings guilt and negativity.
    It would, therefore, be unethical to tell someone you ran over their cat.
    The origin is the unethical action of running over the cat. It brings guilt to you. It is exactly for this guilt that you tell the owner what you did, so that you feel less guilty. Telling the truth releases you of the guilt to some extent, and it brings joy. So it is ethical to admit your wrongdoing.

  22. The Following User Says Thank You to syrwong For This Post:

    Slant84 (17th May 2017)

  23. Link to Post #12
    United States Avalon Member Slant84's Avatar
    Join Date
    19th January 2017
    Age
    49
    Posts
    42
    Thanks
    342
    Thanked 289 times in 40 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Lol. Everyone beat me to it. This is a pretty well known stunt preplanned by Randi et al. It had me fooled too the first time I saw it. I was amazed someone had "finally" got the $! But indeed, at the end, they all take a bow and exclaim "April Fools!".
    "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - Orwell

  24. The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Slant84 For This Post:

    Matthew (17th May 2017), mojo (17th May 2017), TargeT (17th May 2017)

  25. Link to Post #13
    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
    Join Date
    25th January 2011
    Location
    Toronto
    Age
    66
    Posts
    5,659
    Thanks
    26,233
    Thanked 36,592 times in 5,379 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    It had the feel of nastiness. I thought immediately that Mojo was pissed for watching the whole video and wanted to share the experience. All I know is I did not appreciate the wasted time. It is not April fools now...and it will be a while before I read another thread by Mojo because of it.
    Nasty

  26. The Following User Says Thank You to Ernie Nemeth For This Post:

    mojo (17th May 2017)

  27. Link to Post #14
    United States Avalon Member mojo's Avatar
    Join Date
    6th February 2011
    Posts
    5,993
    Thanks
    33,949
    Thanked 39,405 times in 5,642 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Wow sorry to make anyone feel nasty or a waste of time. I sure try not to fool people with hoaxes, and shared my thought of trick or not in the opening post. Also to share that it was my impression Randi the debunker came to show the magician validation or not...

  28. The Following User Says Thank You to mojo For This Post:

    EFO (17th May 2017)

  29. Link to Post #15
    Canada Avalon Member Ernie Nemeth's Avatar
    Join Date
    25th January 2011
    Location
    Toronto
    Age
    66
    Posts
    5,659
    Thanks
    26,233
    Thanked 36,592 times in 5,379 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Just that I had 1 hour of free time and half of it was spent making connections inferred by that video, only to have to spend the next half hour unconnecting the connections. It was ridiculous from the start and I could not understand how that could have convinced Randi. Except unless certain loose assumptions were actually confirmed and factual. There was no way a computer could even be considered psychic unless computers were already accepted as sentient. The whole circumstance caused disbelief and yet I had to accept it as fact - because I trust members to offer truth at least as they see it, and respect my time and attention.

    On any other forum I would have immediately refuted any tenant as ludicrous as that. It`s the trust issue that gets me.

    Then again I often miss what others catch on to

    I guess what`s done is done

  30. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Ernie Nemeth For This Post:

    mojo (18th May 2017), syrwong (18th May 2017)

  31. Link to Post #16
    UK Avalon Member Matthew's Avatar
    Join Date
    24th July 2015
    Location
    South East England
    Language
    English
    Age
    51
    Posts
    4,127
    Thanks
    25,578
    Thanked 36,102 times in 4,060 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    Great trick! From what little I know James Randi has worked hard to teach people how not to get tricked and he does it to a fault... to extremes... he would never believe in the supernatural like I do. I like to gloss over this because I think he cares deeply about people, and them getting wise to being lied to. His trick here is case in point.

    So yes it is a trick and what does it mean? I think James Randi meant to fool to prove a point. Be sceptical. He does it to extremes but all the same it's a good lesson for the right season.

    James Randi transformed from a stage magician to this sceptic after exposing a fake healer caught using wireless transmitters and an accomplice to pretend to have divine powers*1.


    *1.
    James Randi Debunks Peter Popoff Faith Healer
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y
    Last edited by Matthew; 18th May 2017 at 00:31. Reason: added conclusion paragraph

  32. The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Matthew For This Post:

    Atlas (18th May 2017), mojo (18th May 2017)

  33. Link to Post #17
    Avalon Member Kryztian's Avatar
    Join Date
    16th September 2012
    Posts
    3,476
    Thanks
    23,664
    Thanked 29,327 times in 3,414 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    This is an April Fool's Day Prank from 2008. You might want to spend 5 minutes online to research some of these things before you post them here in Avalon. Here are two sources I found in about the topic.

    Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

    Quote As an April Fool's prank on April 1, 2008, at the MIT Media Lab, Randi pretended to award the prize to magician Seth Raphael after participating in a test of Raphael's "psychic abilities".[6]
    James Randi created the “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.” No one ever claimed the prize

    https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/12/30/james-randi-created-the-one-million-dollar-paranormal-challenge-no-one-ever-claimed-the-prize/


    Quote On April 1st, 2008, Randi claimed to have given the prize to the magician Seth Raphael after extensive testing at the MIT Media Lab, but it was later revealed that Randi only pulled an elaborate April Fools prank.

  34. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Kryztian For This Post:

    Atlas (18th May 2017), Hervé (18th May 2017), Jantje (18th May 2017), mojo (18th May 2017)

  35. Link to Post #18
    Hong Kong Avalon Member syrwong's Avatar
    Join Date
    5th January 2011
    Age
    68
    Posts
    794
    Thanks
    1,946
    Thanked 4,564 times in 711 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    This thread may need more attention. Firstly no one who knows a bit of science can deny psychic abilities exist. The evidence is overwhelming. That it is not in main stream and education is the result of deliberate suppress of human knowledge by TPTB, an attempt to dumb down people and make them think they are useless and helpless. Viewing this way, any organisation set up for the purpose of debunking psychic ability is working for the controllers. I would think the old man is just one of the lackeys. The one million dollar prize is just a trick, since the rules can be set arbitrarily harsh so that a proof is unattainable (such as 100% success rate).

    What was the video targeted at? The open minded people, those who are most likely to oppose the present paradigm. Like us members. This makes the video more sinister. It has the smell of the biggest enemy of humanity humiliating us. When the video is posted on an ordinary day long after its release and with an attrative title, much precious time will be wasted. Say 1000 views at the video, 1000*0.5=500 hours are needlessly wasted.

    I now notice the change in the title. Very important.
    Last edited by syrwong; 18th May 2017 at 17:10.

  36. The Following User Says Thank You to syrwong For This Post:

    Ernie Nemeth (18th May 2017)

  37. Link to Post #19
    On Sabbatical
    Join Date
    10th July 2013
    Location
    Project Avalon
    Posts
    3,649
    Thanks
    19,216
    Thanked 16,228 times in 3,216 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    James Randi and Ghosts

  38. The Following User Says Thank You to Atlas For This Post:

    mojo (18th May 2017)

  39. Link to Post #20
    Avalon Member Kryztian's Avatar
    Join Date
    16th September 2012
    Posts
    3,476
    Thanks
    23,664
    Thanked 29,327 times in 3,414 posts

    Default Re: Winning James Randi's million dollar challenge! [April's fool prank, 2008]

    James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims, Dies at 92
    Known professionally as the Amazing Randi, he dedicated his life to exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.
    [/url]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/obituaries/james-randi-dead.html[/url]
    By Margalit Fox
    Oct. 21, 2020



    James Randi, known professionally as the Amazing Randi, in 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival.
    A documentary about his life, “An Honest Liar,” was screened.Credit...Larry Busacca/Getty
    Images for the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

    James Randi, a MacArthur award-winning magician who turned his formidable savvy to investigating claims of spoon bending, mind reading, fortunetelling, ghost whispering, water dowsing, faith healing, U.F.O. spotting and sundry varieties of bamboozlement, bunco, chicanery, flimflam, flummery, humbuggery, mountebankery, pettifoggery and out-and-out quacksalvery, as he quite often saw fit to call them, died on Tuesday at his home in Plantation, Fla. He was 92.

    His death was announced by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

    At once elfin and Mephistophelian, with a bushy white beard and piercing eyes, Mr. Randi — known professionally as the Amazing Randi — was a father of the modern skeptical movement. Much as the biologist and author Thomas Henry Huxley had done in the late 19th century (though with markedly more pizazz), he made it his mission to bring the world of scientific rationalism to laypeople.

    What roiled his blood, and was the driving impetus of his existence, Mr. Randi often said, was pseudoscience, in all its immoral irrationality.

    “People who are stealing money from the public, cheating them and misinforming them — that’s the kind of thing that I’ve been fighting all my life,” he said in the 2014 documentary “An Honest Liar,” directed by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein. “Magicians are the most honest people in the world: They tell you they’re going to fool you, and then they do it.”


    Mr. Randi began his career as an illusionist and escape artist. In 1955, he escaped in two
    and a half minutes from a straitjacket after being hoisted six stories into the air at West 65th
    Street and Broadway in Manhattan.Credit...Marty Lederhandle
    r/Associated Press

    Mr. Randi began his career in the late 1940s as an illusionist and escape artist. On one occasion he extricated himself from a straitjacket while dangling upside down over Niagara Falls; on another, after almost an hour, from within a vast block of ice (“a cinch,” he later said); and on a third from still another straitjacket, this one suspended over Broadway, where he hung, as The New York Herald Tribune reported, like “a great dead tuna.”

    “I wanted to break his records,” Mr. Randi said in the film, invoking the master, Houdini. “I wanted to stay in a sealed metal coffin longer than he did, get out of a straitjacket faster than he did, under chains, out of leg irons, out of handcuffs.”

    But in later years, Mr. Randi was not so much an illusionist as a disillusionist. Using a singular combination of reason, showmanship, constitutional cantankerousness and a profound knowledge of the weapons in the modern magician’s arsenal, he traveled the country exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.

    Their methods, he often said, were available to any halfway adept student of conjuring — and ought to have been transparent to earlier investigators, who were sometimes taken in.

    “These things used to be on the back of cornflakes boxes,” Mr. Randi, his voice italic with derision, once told the television interviewer Larry King. “But apparently some scientists either don’t eat cornflakes, or they don’t read the back of the box.”

    The recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1986, Mr. Randi lectured worldwide and appeared often on television; he was a particular favorite of Johnny Carson and, more recently, Penn and Teller.

    He wrote many books, among them “Flim Flam! The Truth About Unicorns, Parapsychology, and Other Delusions” (1980); “The Faith Healers” (1987); and “An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural” (1995).


    Mr. Randi with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” in 1987. He was a particular favorite
    of Mr. Carson’s.Credit...Wendy Perl/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

    In 1976, with the astronomer Carl Sagan, the writer Isaac Asimov and others, Mr. Randi founded what is now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Based in Amherst, N.Y., the organization promotes the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal and publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer.

    Though he was often called a debunker, Mr. Randi preferred the terms “skeptic” or “investigator.”

    “I never want to be referred to as a debunker,” he told The Orlando Sentinel in 1991, “because that implies someone who says, ‘This isn’t so, and I’m going to prove it.’ I don’t go in with that attitude. I’m an investigator. I only expect to show that something is not likely.”

    In the course of his career, he investigated more than 100 people, including, memorably, Peter Popoff, a well-heeled self-described faith healer whom he exposed on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Randi was also known for his decades-long sparring match with Uri Geller, the professed mentalist known for his serial abuse of flatware.

    Through the James Randi Educational Foundation, Mr. Randi sponsored the Million Dollar Challenge, a contest offering $1 million to the person who, following rigorous scientific protocols, could demonstrate evidence of a paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomenon. Though the challenge attracted more than a thousand aspirants, the prize remained unclaimed on Mr. Randi’s retirement from the foundation in 2015.

    Mr. Randi was all but born skeptical. He entered an irrational world, in Toronto, as Randall James Zwinge on Aug. 7, 1928, one of three children of Marie (Paradis) and George Zwinge.


    In 1960 in New York, Mr. Randi spent almost an hour encased in a coffinlike structure
    of blocks of ice.Credit...Robert Wands/Associated Press

    Attending Sunday school as a boy, he was moved often to inquiry.

    “They started to read to me from the Bible,” Mr. Randi recalled in 2016. “And I interrupted and said: ‘Excuse me, how do you know that’s true? It sounds strange.’”

    In his regular classes, he proved such a gifted student that the local school system soon threw up its hands and let him attend only to take exams. He had the run of the city, and by the time he was 12, after seeing a performance there by the great American stage magician Harry Blackstone Sr., he had found his calling.

    At 15, young Randall got his first taste of debunking and its discontents. Hearing of a local preacher who professed to read minds, he attended a service. He saw immediately that the preacher was using a time-honored mentalists’ trick, called the “one ahead,” in which a performer appears to divine the contents of sealed envelopes that he has previously opened and read.

    When Randall stood up and exposed the fraud, congregants called the police; he spent several hours in jail before his father came to collect him. It would be the last time a jail cell could hold him, and the first time he became attuned to people’s astonishing willingness to be deceived.

    At 17, bored, he dropped out of school altogether. He joined a traveling carnival as a mentalist but soon became an escape artist. After he sprang himself from a Quebec jail cell, a local newspaper christened him “L’Étonnant Randi” — the Amazing Randi. The name stuck.

    For a time in the early 1970s, Mr. Randi toured with the rock star Alice Cooper, decapitating him nightly with a trick guillotine.

    He continued his escape acts until he was well into his 50s. But one day, as he rehearsed a television show for which he had been sealed and shackled in an outsize milk can, something went awry.

    The lid of the can jammed, trapping Mr. Randi inside. There was little air. Shifting within his scant confines, he heard two of his vertebrae snap.

    “I was in deep trouble,” he recalled in the documentary. “I knew that if I panicked, I would be dead — that’s all there is to it.”

    At long last, he heard the locks on the can being undone and the lid pried open. He decided it was time to forsake escapism.

    “There comes a point,” Mr. Randi said, “where you just don’t want to see a little old guy getting out of a can.”

    At 60, he retired from stage magic entirely. By then he had built a parallel career investigating claims of the paranormal, much as Houdini had done.


    Mr. Randi wanted to break Houdini’s records for quick escapes. At the West Ham Municipal
    Baths in London, he escaped from a sealed coffin that was lowered under water,
    Credit...Ron Burton/Getty Images

    One of Mr. Randi’s most celebrated investigations was that of Mr. Popoff. A California preacher who professed to heal the sick, Mr. Popoff had a wide following on television and radio. He drew large crowds at revival meetings around the country, at which he called upon audience members by name and correctly identified their afflictions. In 1986, The Los Angeles Times reported, his average gross income was $550,000 a month.

    That year, Mr. Randi planted an accomplice with a radio scanner and a tape recorder at one of Mr. Popoff’s public meetings. The scanner picked up Mr. Popoff’s wife relaying information previously gleaned about audience members into a small receiver hidden in his ear.

    “Popoff says God tells him these things,” Mr. Randi told U.S. News & World Report in 2002. “Maybe he does. But I didn’t realize God used a frequency of 39.17 megahertz and had a voice exactly like Elizabeth Popoff’s.”

    Footage of Mr. Popoff’s service, with the audio of Ms. Popoff’s voice superimposed, was broadcast on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Popoff ceased operations in 1987, though he later resumed them.

    Though his pursuit of Mr. Popoff was a consuming passion, Mr. Randi’s white whale was indisputably Mr. Geller, who had been famed since the 1970s for feats like bending keys and spoons, which he said he accomplished by telepathy.

    Not so, said Mr. Randi, who explained that these were ordinary amusements, done by covertly bending the objects in advance.

    In 1973, Mr. Geller made a disastrous appearance on “The Tonight Show” in which he was unable to summon his accustomed powers: On Mr. Randi’s advice, the show’s producers had supplied their own props and made sure Mr. Geller had no access to them beforehand.

    Mr. Geller’s popularity continued undimmed, however, prompting Mr. Randi to write an exposé, “The Magic of Uri Geller” (1975), republished in 1982 as “The Truth About Uri Geller.”

    “Randi is my best unpaid publicist,” Mr. Geller told New Times Broward-Palm Beach, an alternative weekly newspaper, in 2009.

    Over the years, Mr. Randi managed to antagonize many, and not merely the targets of his investigations. He cast a wide condemnatory net, speaking out against alternative medicine, chiropractic and religion itself, which he called “the biggest scam of them all.”

    His investigative methods were sometimes called deceptive. In one highly publicized stunt intended to show the gullibility of the news media, he had a young associate — his life partner, then known as José Alvarez — pose as a spirit medium named Carlos.

    On a tour of Australia in 1988, “Carlos” drew hordes of worshipful followers, and the uncritical attention of many journalists, as he pretended to channel long-dead spirits. When Mr. Randi revealed the ruse, it drew those journalists’ ire.

    Mr. Alvarez made headlines again in 2011 when he was arrested by federal authorities at the couple’s home in Plantation and charged with passport fraud and identity theft. Mr. Alvarez, an artist whose original name was Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga, said that he had fled his native Venezuela as a young man to escape antigay death threats.

    He had reached the United States on a student visa. After it expired, Mr. Peña assumed the identity of a Puerto Rican man whom he erroneously believed to be dead.


    Mr. Randi and his spouse, the artist Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga, at a special screening of
    "An Honest Liar" in Los Angeles in 2015.Credit...Kevin Winter/Getty Images

    For observers of Mr. Randi’s career, the inevitable question was whether the great deflator of deception had himself been deceived.

    “I know who he is, and I know what he is as well,” Mr. Randi said in the 2014 documentary. “He’s my partner, and he’s very, very important to me.”

    Mr. Peña, who spent six weeks in jail and faced deportation, later pleaded guilty to a single count of passport fraud.

    Over the years, Mr. Randi was the subject of a string of defamation suits, including several by Mr. Geller. Though a Japanese court once ordered him to pay Mr. Geller about $2,000, Mr. Randi said he had never paid a cent to anyone who sued him.

    In scientific circles, he remained a revered figure to the end. Among his many honors, he had a minor planet named for him, Asteroid 3163 Randi, discovered in 1981.

    Mr. Randi resided for many years in Rumson, N.J., in a house equipped with secret staircases, a talking door knocker and clocks that ran backward. He had lived in Florida since the 1980s.

    His survivors include Mr. Peña, whom he married in 2013, as well as a sister, Angela Easton, and a brother, Paul Zwinge, Mr. Peña said.

    Though he remained a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist to the last, Mr. Randi did have a contingency plan for the hereafter, as he told New Times in 2009. “I want to be cremated,” he said. “And I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.”

  40. The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to Kryztian For This Post:

    Bill Ryan (23rd October 2020), Chris Gilbert (24th October 2020), Strat (23rd October 2020), Sue (Ayt) (23rd October 2020), Wind (23rd October 2020)

+ Reply to Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts