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Show me the examples of him being a quack, or even a specific from the letter outside of "anti-gmo". You know, facts and evidence. The things you are supposed to have when leveling charges attempting to damage people. I see lots of ad hominem, and quite a bit from you as well. Pretty handy how you use several appeals to emotion so that anyone disagreeing with your opinion is either "HURRR DURRR" conspiracy theory or smearmonger.

If you want to claim a MD is a quack, you need to address specifics.

I have only seen his show a couple times and didn't see anything "harmful" or different than my doctor might. If he did something no other MD would do, lets see the evidence.

Sadly there are plenty of assholes that claim people are guilty because they have an opinion. Happens all the time here. Take a good whiff and make sure it's not you that smells. Facts and evidence are pretty important things to have, and I have seen nothing from you or the people who wrote the letter that resemble facts.

"The Media Pigasus Award goes to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has done such a disservice to his TV viewers by promoting quack medical practices that he is now the first person to win a Pigasus two years in a row. Dr. Oz is a Harvard-educated cardiac physician who, through his syndicated TV show, has promoted faith healing, "energy medicine," and other quack theories that have no scientific basis. Oz has appeared on ABC News to give legitimacy to the claims of Brazilian faith healer “John of God,” who uses old carnival tricks to take money from the seriously ill. He's hosted Ayurvedic guru Yogi Cameron on his show to promote nonsense "tongue examination" as a way of diagnosing health problems. This year, he really went off the deep end. In March 2011, Dr. Oz endorsed "psychic" huckster and past Pigasus winner John Edward, who pretends to talk to dead people. Oz even suggested that bereaved families should visit psychic mediums to receive (faked) messages from their dead relatives as a form of grief counseling."

http://archive.randi.org/site/...

If you're promoting "energy medicine" and seances, you are pretty much the definition of a quack.

To be fair, probiotics and alternative medicine people have said all kinds of ridiculous things for decades as well. I remember all too well the "ruby infused sun water" that was said to be a sure cure for my ear infections as a kid. That's just one of many similarly silly claims, as by recent protests against scam medical practices by actual doctors purposely trying to "overdose" on homeopathics...

The value isn't in having the "right answer" - it's in knowing which answers are are, in fact, right. "Alternative medicine" types tend to babble incoherently, a practice which does, occasional, manage to burble a right answer.

Apparently, among his other talents, he douses water. Instead, I'm going to pull an "ad hominem" out of my hat and suggest that we should be skeptical of a journal edited in part by a water-douser.

I didn't mention that - true enough. There are so many red flags on this stuff that it becomes difficult to defend it with a straight face.

If the deniers are going to make any real headway, they are going to have to stop relying on oil company employees and people who might otherwise end up on reality shows right after people who make duck calls or people who cut down trees in swamps. Or have a stock answer of "Ancient Aliens".

As someone who might be sort of in the middle, I would love for the AGW ideas to be disproved. I certainly am not for mountaintopping or running roughshod over th environment, but responsible drilling and mining are okay if they are not making a mess.

I even support Natural gas as a bridge to real sustainable energy. I demand responsible extraction though.

But I'm not political. I've seen enough political dissembling to let me know that I have to be skeptical about everything they say. And I am really, really skeptical about people whose science can be bought.

Apparently, the journal publishes more than just climate articles.

I was going to point out that I didn't think much of your conclusion that a geophysicist working for a school that specializes in teaching how to drill for oil should necessarily be viewed as acting in strictly political interests. I also thought that you were being disingenuous in not pointing out that there are two geophysicists, the other from Stockholm, who are co-editors.

That was until I realized that I recognized the name of the editor you don't mention: Nils-Axel Morner. Apparently, among his other talents, he douses water. Instead, I'm going to pull an "ad hominem" out of my hat and suggest that we should be skeptical of a journal edited in part by a water-douser.

I wonder how many grams of NANO-THERMITE were sent away from investigators and "recycled" along with the rest of the WTC rubble-steel (both molten and cold)....

Almost certainly none.

Does "nano-thermite" actually exist?

Oh, look. It was. They apologized for it. And cited papers that don't exist.

I think you can become rich while proving to the world that it works, assuming that it works.

Realistically, though, it is probably a case of confirmation bias.

Of course it would. How very convenient.

So why aren't you out there getting rich and famous with this ability of yours? You could make $1,000,000 if you demonstrated your powers to this guy.

My guess is you won't make $1,000,000.

What are you waiting for? go collect your million dollar!

It definitely needs more study. Who knows maybe you'll be the first to properly document it?

Why don't you and get a million dollars?

For some people nothing says "appeal to emotion" like FBI arrest reports I guess.

Here are some great resources for anyone confused by information at "911truth.org" and would like more information.

'Debunking 9/11 Myths': Nano-thermite dust found near Ground Zero (Photos)
Debunking 9/11 Myths: conspiracy plots are sheer fantasy

NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Resources for debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Debunking 9/11 Bomb Theories

The Truthers Are Out There

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

Decades ago I worked during the summer for the water department. One of our jobs was to find and mark water lines. We actually did use divining rods. No stick with a fork, though. Ours were two pieces of wire, each bent to form an 'L'. You loosely hold the shorter side, keeping the longer sides parallel to the ground and initially to each other. As you pass over the water main the wires cross. It worked quite reliably as long as the water main wasn't too deep. I always assumed it had something to do with magnetism.

I know someone who would pay quite handsomely for your services. As long as you can do this reliably, that is.

He isn't trying to impact those con artists and loons. He is trying, and succeeding, in impacting the general population and spreading the values of critical thinking.

" JREF doesn't seem to do anything related to education or outreach."
well, you are wrong. A simple visit to the website would have shown you that.

I see, you are ignorant of the work, so clearly they don't do work.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/1066-education.html

Haters got to hate, huh?

What work?

Hard to believe that the US military in Iraq was trying to detect IDE's with dowsing sticks, but it happened and Randi was instrumental in exposing the scam.

I also credit the man with teaching me the difference between science and woo by explaining the proper role of skepticism in science. You see, I was a teenage fan (18-20) of Uri Geller back in the late seventies, he "fixed" my broken watch by starting at the TV, pretty strong proof, huh. Thing is, Randi's book did in one night what years of HS science could not, taught me the meaning of scientific skepticism and it's role in assessing ANY claim. For this I am eternally grateful to the man and a great admirer of his lifetime of work that not only exposes dangerous scams, but has also given countless people a basic "bullshit detection kit" that can dramatically alter the course of people lives.

No one has ever taken the formal test. Not one person.

How many have taken the preliminary test? JREF doesn't know -- they're that badly organized.

There have been a few cases reported where JREF has killed applications by requesting changes to the protocol that effectively changing the nature of the claim made by the challenger. That makes for some great posts on the JREF forum, but otherwise hurts the reputation of the challenge itself.

In short: Randi is a fraud. He does a disservice to the skeptical community.

Wow. I suggest you begin by educating yourself at: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html And don't take my (or Randi's site) word for it. All of the information there is independently verifiable, if you do a little work. Somehow, I don't think you're eager to.

Nobody has even passed the preliminary selection for this challenge, which makes you wonder if it is real after all.

Why yes, it does make you wonder if any of these alleged abilities are... Oh, wait, you meant the challenge itself.

Lots of people have been accepted as "applicants", and then tested. None have succeeded in demonstrating their ability under controlled conditions, and thus failed to pass the preliminary test and become "claimants".

That you see this as evidence that the challenge itself is fake, when it's exactly what you would expect if 1) the tests were conducted properly and 2) psychics, dousers, etc were not real, is telling.

The criteria for selection are not public.

Yes they are. In that forum you can see all applicants, the protocols that are agreed upon, including what would qualify as a significant result sufficient to pass the preliminary test.

There is, as far as I can tell, nothing scientific behind this challenge. It looks more like propaganda.

It's amazing what things look like to people who haven't actually looked.

If you go to www.randi.org and do a search for acupuncture, you will find that Randi's thoughts on acupuncture and chi are the same as for faith healing, dowsing, psychics and all other supposed paranormal matters: they're bunk. There is no evidence to show acupuncture has any health benefit beyond the placebo effect.

Here, have a look at the numerous articles on the site.

As to tai chi and chi kung, since those are exercises, they would obviously have some health benefits and would not be considered in the realm of paranormal or woo.

You are right about Stallman's extreme Leftist views

I try to avoid the irrational left-vs-right "wing" terminology. It originated as a schism within the socialist movement, with those seated on the "right" of some historical deliberative body being "nationalist socialists", and those on the "left" being "internationalist socialists". I reject them both.

One possible exception may be when I'm highlighting the distinction between copyLEFT and copyFREE with upper casing, just as a reading aid (unless I forget). The former is an application of copyright that stands for a particular political special-interest group, while the latter stands for freedom.

and being familiar w/ your link,

By this do you mean the the thread on the Free State Project forum?

I'm not sure why you say that he attacks bad people.

I think you've misunderstood me. I was saying that Stallman is often attacked by other people for all the wrong reasons - and not for the right reasons to be severely critical of him.

Personal attacks against Stallman are often focused on his lifestyle choices, and I think those attacks are often irrational. Hippies are a-OK, as long as they don't initiate aggression (i.e. socialist politics) against others. Even voluntary communists are OK (even though their philosophy is so dysfunctional it is almost never practiced voluntarily). I can respect lispy emacs users, even though I reject GNU Emacs and its license. I can agree with some of Stallman's software design ideas, while disagreeing with others.

What is irreconcilable between me and Stallman is that he believes in using government-veiled violence to get his way, and I refuse to recognize that violence as legitimate.

In the Mid East, w/o saying so in so many words, he backs Jihad terror groups against Israel.

I am rather critical of Israel myself (although I do recognize its accomplishments as warranted). Israel could have been established without violating the Property Rights of the Palestinians... But that's a whole nother debate...

And his views on pedophilia and necrophilia - how on earth can anyone consider that mainstream?

Actually those are some of the issues where Stallman is mostly right (except he'd probably fail to fully recognize Parents' Rights in regard to the former). Pedophilia is clearly an illness, and its indulgence is clearly unethical, but it doesn't constitute rape in every single case. The hysteria over "kiddy porn" is probably the #1 threat to Internet freedom that exists today!

The choice of whether to program in C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, C#, Java or whatever should be a decision of individual programmers, since the FSF is not a company. [...]

A group doesn't need to be "a company" (presumably you mean like with salaried employees) in order to have working standards. There's great usefulness to organizations that set policies for the projects that they accept under their umbrella, as long as people are free to fork off on their own if they so choose. We can have the best of both worlds - rational order as well as freedom. There's nothing wrong with having large "cathedrals", as long as there's a "bazaar" of competition between them.

I myself firmly believe that having every component written in a different language is horrendously ugly! I'm a big fan of all UNIX systems programming taking place in C, and brand new future-oriented "post-POSIX" OS projects starti

Right up until the vagaries of random chance give some individual/group a little bit more power than anyone else, which they use to get even more power and then you end up with these groups running things.

Once achieved, the equilibrium of NAP should be very stable. Reemergence of government in a post-government world is akin to educated people returning to the belief in a flat world that rests on the backs of four giant elephants! How do you get 7+ billion self-interested individuals to stand by while some upstart wannabe enslaves them? In adsense of the "divine right of governments" delusion, this much concentration of power in the private sector is simply absurd.

Free Market Capitalism won't prevent this because it can't, in order to prevent this you need people with perfect knowledge so they react against these vagaries, but people don't have perfect knowledge especially not the hyper individualists you postulate here, since they'll inherently be adverse to sharing knowledge *they* have.

First of all, describing current governments as having "perfect knowledge" of anything is just simply funny. Secondly, this is a case of comparing a closed centralized system with an open polycentric one, like Microsoft vs FLOSS (except Microsoft is less incompetent than the government and is not in a position of being corrupted by total power).

Your claim that individuals will refuse to share knowledge, even when it is in their self-interest to share it, is totally baseless - what will happen is the very opposite. We're already seeing this effect take place in every aspect of the Internet, and it will continue to expand. People post reviews of local restaurants because it makes them feel important, they post their little shell scripts or photos of their cats online to attract attention to their site, they edit Wikipedia to add in missing pieces whose absence bugs them, etc, etc, etc - the same will apply to methods of polycentric surveillance as well. In some cases sharing outdoor security camera feeds and other knowledge will be essential for their safety - and they'll know it.

In a postmodern society you'll inevitably have high-tech eyeballs: like billions of live-streaming cameras everywhere, satellite sensors, buffers in everyone's augmented-reality glasses, hovering / underground / floating pollution tracking bots, etc, etc, etc. For example, guns would likely have built-in cameras (strongly encouraged by neighborhood regulations, liability insurance plans, etc) to document self-defense. Imagine Google Earth, but with everything integrated into it, live and with time-shifting, all coordinated by AI - you can track anyone almost everywhere and anytime. Privacy will become a feature, not an expectation - blind-spots (ex. private residences) will obviously exist, but you'll know who entered them and when. In order to constitute objective evidence (as video/etc from a closed feed can be faked), those data sources would have to be streamed live and be "open source" - one camera is watching another. Polycentric jurisprudence would require property records and some types of contracts to become open public record. Think of it like trying to falsify well-exposed HTTP content history, but with video - you may be able to somehow hack the original site and even Google Cache, but what about Archive.org and Bing and Yahoo and a hundred other scrapers who've observed the content prior to your tampering? Non-contradiction among multiple third-party-owned live-streaming witness devices makes for objective proof.

Technology will eventually make secrets very difficult, and crime as we know it pretty much obsolete. It would be next to impossible to get away with failing to clean up after your dog in a shared neighborhood park, much less build an army! Game Theory 101 - "everybody wants to rule the world

The underlining concepts of the Internet are very anarchic and resilient against censorship. What weaknesses do exist are generally the result of government intervention. Regulations (including the DNS root zone) have created centralization - a single point of failure, which potentially is also a single point of censorship. Government-granted monopolies in things like phone and cable have led to the stifling of competition, reduction of consumer choices, and underinvestment in decentralized technologies like: wireless broadband, satellite Internet, local ownership of wired "last mile" infrastructure, local cache proxies, etc. There are ongoing efforts to introduce ever-more destructive regulations (ex. "Net Neutrality"), which need to be opposed at all cost.

Of course part of the blame rests on the consumers themselves, who choose sites like YouTube over P2P protocols, or Facebook over a mesh of smaller less government-entangled sites. It initially makes some sense to do so, since mega-sites can afford far more computer and bandwidth resources, but, as technology progresses and becomes more affordable, their advantages decline. What we need is a more prepper-like Internet user culture - people who mirror all their favorite sites (as well as the sites that are most likely to be censored) in case those sites (or their own global connectivity) disappear! Back in the 80s and early 90s, pretty much every town had a few local dial-up BBS'es, with the most important files of the day available for download. Information was copied, organized, stored, and shared thousands of times - BitTorrent users do the same thing today, but bit-for-bit there's a lot less data-hoarding vigilance than in the olden days... Today most content just sits on a single Web server - and if someone's search engine or Web browser caches it to disk then it does little reliable good without some special effort. (Search engine cache is difficult to scrape and disappears rather quickly, and, even with limitless storage, browser cache is personal, not organized, and incomplete.) Some BBS'es had cost tens of thousands of dollars to operate, and most didn't really make money (many were free, or had limited free accounts) - people did it for the love of technology and access to information. Given one such "prepper" SysOP in a neighborhood with today's technology (a powerful wifi device on his roof wired to some epic storage servers in his basement), and the whole neighborhood would have access to the most vital and the most endangered information even if the government pulls the switch on the Internet at large - which, given this deterrent, would be a lot less likely to happen!

And a part of the blame also goes to Web browser developers, the standards-issuing authorities, and certain Web archiving orgs for not emphasizing resilience and not making decentralization easier. For example, to help prevent link rot, why doesn't every browser support metalink / multi-mirror links as an alternative to a single HREF? Given that there is a great copyfree BT library, why isn't there Web browser support for links inside torrents (and even inside compressed multifile archives)? Why is there no standard for "download this site" - easy bandwidth-efficient mirroring and preemptive local cache? Why doesn't

At last count there were 1,226 billionaires in the world, and I don't know any of them to be psychopaths or capable of doing much harm even if they wanted to. National leaders, on the other hand...

Your hateful fixation on successful businesspeople is probably a result of envy and other irrational and highly destructive emotions. You need to remember that, with the exception of government, all human beings are equal in their negative Rights. A billionaire can't print money (that everyone is automatically forced to accept as "legal tender"), raise much of an army (think of the liability costs!), or throw you in prison for injecting a substance that s\he doesn't like! A billionaire can't steal a penny from a beggar without being called a thief!

There's more to "capital" than just "material capital"; "capital" is your individual Right over all aspects of your life. Some people have more material assets, some may have more free time, some may be better basketball players, some may have a better reputation, some more children, some more inbound links to their Web-site, some may have better health, some may have a more satisfying sex life, etc. Whether it is better to be Bill Gates or Grigori Perelman or Alex Libman is a personal value judgment.

The benefits that corporations receive from governments are just a tiny tax rebate compared to what governments steal from corporations. Getting BP to pay liability insurance (which would require more risk-averse behavior) and getting Microsoft to provide SaaS without implicit EULA's is a smaller change than you think. What needs to be "reigned in" is the state.

--libman

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html

I don't often come across someone on Slashdot who I think is mad, but I think you are.

Rational people outline all points of a disagreement and debate constructively. (Or avoid the discussion altogether.) Irrational people call their opponents "mad" (a trained psychologist would not make such a long-distance diagnosis) and retreat in smug contentment.

You will find that my alleged "madness", in its entirely, constitutes of my desire to live very far from you and be free of your aggression. Why not just leave me alone in my "madness"? You can have your way, and I can have mine. I recognize your freedom to subscribe to whatever form of governance you choose, even one that makes North Korea seem like a bazaar in comparison. Why can't you recognize my right to opt out?

I have a solid scientific basis to believe that jurisdictions with your kind of rulesets, being less economically free, will be at a competitive disadvantage compared to jurisdictions with my kind of rulesets. Government monopolies have little intensive to be efficient, and every intensive to be dishonest and brutal. Power corrupts... But you of course are free to disagree, and to conduct whatever voluntary social experiments you choose.

Incidentally, assume I am very rich. The first thing I would do when private defence forces come in is take all your land and make you work as a slave on my plantation, because you annoy me and are - as you admit yourself - sufficiently unpopular that few will come to your defence.

This is debunked elsewhere. You are not richer than the billions of people who wouldn't want to be your slaves. And you would need to be orders of magnitude richer than your victims to enslave them -- become their "government" -- while avoiding overwhelming odds that you will die trying. See, today's govs maintain their power through ideology, not force of arms alone, and you will be very unlikely to come up with a convincing ideology to justify your power in a world that has evolved beyond the ideologies of the modern "benevolent" nation-states.

Ultimately, in a sufficient rational society, tyranny simply doesn't pay, and an equilibrium of non-aggression naturally emerges. Of course we don't yet live in a "sufficient rational society", which is why we still have some degree of government - which needs to be phased out slowly, with all of its power vacuum filled with the power of individual rights and polycentric means of defending them.

Go go free market definition of personhood!

You are not following the conversation...

"Corporate personhood" is government's nomenclature and has nothing to do with the free market. A rational theory of rights leads to recognition of rights in individuals, which are then free to form whatever agreements they choose. (And we were just talking about the government's monopoly on contract enforcement, which is a completely different subject entirely.)

My predictions about "child porn" prohibitionism turning the Digital Age into a Gulag are gradually coming true... I wrote about billions of children over generations having ever-increasing access to digital equipment and producing ever-more "thought-crime" content to potentially put anyone in prison for decades if not for life!

"Did you really think we want those laws observed? [...] We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt." -- quoth Dr Ferris, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Rape should most obviously be illegal, but it should be up to the victim and/or his/her parents/guardians, not power-hungry government thugs, to determine what constitutes rape. The punishment of victimless crimes, including "thought-crimes", always constitutes tyranny! One needs to separate thought/speech from action, and there should be absolutely no limits to free speech!

Having CP is not a crime - raping a child (or anyone else) is. Likewise, reading Karl Marx and dreaming about raping and pillaging like the drunken sailors of the Russian Revolution is not a crime - but actively supporting a revolutionary communist movement should be.

(Signed: Alex Libman's sockpuppet.)

Didn't fakegate prove once and for all that there's no real money being paid out by Heartland?

The rest of your post consists mostly of ad hominems and other logical fallacies, but when it comes to consensus it simply has no place in science. No scientist bases their work on consensus, they base it upon hypotheses that has withstood falsifications over time.

http://randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1506-skeptic-history-a-tale-of-two-scientists.html

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Wegener/printall.php

The intelligent response is to be skeptical of anyone who comes out with some flashy bit of research claiming to have overturned the consensus. The moment you claim an entire field of natural science is suppressing some obvious insight, you are a conspiracy theorist.

A scientist should always be skeptical, sure. That includes being skeptical of "consensus".

http://randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1506-skeptic-history-a-tale-of-two-scientists.html

Studies have repeatedly shown that prayer helps in hospital situations. Why? Maybe people just feel comforted or a sense that somebody cares about them and wants them to make it. What's the scientific explanation? I haven't seen a good one. But more people recover and have less complications.

Show me a double blind experiment which shows prayers work? Properly conducted double blind experiments has shown that prayer does not work. The experiments which do show a result, the patient knows that they are being prayed for and/or are doing the praying themselves. Sure it may help these people but this is due to the ritual causing the person to self heal. No super power is involved at all.

If you disagree and think prayer does work in the double blind, go and speak to http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html and he will give you $1million when you succeed.

you win by teaching people to follow a rational method of analysis and allowing them to be open-minded.

Which is exactly why Randi won me over more than thirty years ago. Not for religion, I've been an atheist for all my 50 odd years, but in the 70's I was a naive young man and a big believer in woo-woo physics, I had stacks of books and magazine written in a literary style that I now know is called false document . A single Randi book debunking Uri Geller taught me more about bullshit detection than a decade or so of formal schooling. It made me realised I had been conned but I could have just as easily have joined you in shooting the messenger. I'm embarrassed to say it now, but I at one time I believed that someone (a blind guy in France) could turn a tennis ball inside out with their mind. This old fart is very grateful to Randi for teaching him how to fish. Of course I could have learnt to fish from a myriad of other admirable teacher's, such as Sagan, Bronowski, Hitchen's, Asimov, etc It was just happen-stance that Randi led me to them.

What Randi and Dawkins and all his followers have wrong...

The mistake you are making when trying to be "oh so cleverly" skeptical of skeptics is that you are so open minded your brains have fallen out. It's clearly a mistake in rational thinking to automatically give equal credence and motivations to both sides. For example; Randi's motivation for exposing charlatans can be traced to his early teens when his father died prematurely due to taking the advise of an 'alternative medicine' charlatan who convinced him to avoid real doctors. I disagree with your premise that Randi, or Dawkins for that matter, are "frothing at the mouth" about anything*, but in Randi's case he certainly has a valid reason to do so.

* - I will concede my concept of "assertively delivered blunt truth" maybe equivalent to your concept of "frothing at the mouth". And maybe this is why I got so much from Randi et-al's teachings, whereas you clearly don't even recognise his entire organisation was set up to promote and implement the same educational strategy that you espoused in the "you win" quote above.

Remote viewers included. It is trivial enough to test someone's ability to remote view or "astral project" by getting them to draw a picture of something or some object which they cannot see but which is unambiguously identifiable. Funnily enough this doesn't happen either.

All that has been demonstrated here is if that if you get together 6 credulous idiots in a room they will riff off each others delusions and concoct a story which is not disprovable. What is not so obvious is why this story got approved for Slashdot.

There's an easy million for you to make, and world-reknown. If your ability is real please demonstrate it. I for one would be amazed and excited. JREF million dollar challenge

Looks like a valid claim for the JREF's million dollar challenge.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Get your ability tested under a proper scientific experimental protocol and you could win a cool million dollars. Who knows, if you're right we may discover wonderful things about the human brain. If you're wrong, well, you're wrong, and it's ok not to have a special power.

btw, here's a link to the prize: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Here is the link to the Pigasus award video: McCarthy begins at 5:45

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/39-james-randi-speaks/506-randi-speaks-the-2008-pigasus-awards-.html

Oh, absolutely, but the rules state:

Webster’s Online Dictionary defines “paranormal” as “not scientifically explainable; supernatural.”

Within the Challenge, this means that at the time your application is submitted and approved, your claim will be considered paranormal for the duration. If, after testing, it is decided that your ability is either scientifically explainable or will be someday, you needn’t worry. If the JREF has agreed to test you, then your claim is paranormal.

I'm sure that if a bunch of scientists came along and said "we have statistically significant evidence of precognition, and not a damn clue how it works", the Randi foundation would jump at the chance to test them.

I don't believe for a second that these people actually do have any legit evidence, but on the off chance that they are for real then this will be a massive breakthrough. Of course, it will be explainable by science in time, and perhaps "supernatural" is a poor choice of word, but if you read through the entire FAQ you'll see that the foundation sound entirely reasonable, and I don't doubt that they would be willing to test something on the basis that it runs quite counter to currently accepted theory.

Their aim (and one that I applaud) seems to be to either disprove paranormal claims, or to prove them in a scientific manner. Sure, doing so will, by definition, destroy their 'paranormal' status, but it could also revolutionise scientific thinking. As I said though, it's probably a moot point, since I see no reason to believe this paper any more than the thousands that came before it.

I haven't yet had a chance to read the paper fully (it's 50 or so pages), but if they are actually that confident in their evidence that precognition has been found, the James Randi Foundation has a million dollars waiting for them.

Here's a proposal where we can cut in the "science" spending: All the pseudoscience projects rooted in some kind of religious bull.

If they have something worth funding at all, the James Randi Educational Foundation has a million dollars waiting for them.

Not to take anything away from the graphene story, but the floating frog story is really interesting.

It posits that there is a magnetic field surrounding all matter. The positive and negative particles produce a tiny force that can be measured with even crude instruments like a compass. Strangely, these fields become stronger and weaker depending on many variables, including emotional state, vitality, and stress levels.

I'm not saying this is what psychics "see" when they "read someone's aura", but there seems to be more to their woo-woo than many skeptics are willing to accept. If there is a measurable energy field around all things, then there might be something to things like Reiki and other eastern traditional medicines.

Actually, sorry, the ultimate test for that is that Randi still has a 1 million dollars prize for whoever can demonstrate any paranormal abilities in a controlled setting. Aura reading does explicitly qualify, and has been tested ad nauseam before, only to turn out bunk every time.

So if you think a psychic can read such things at all, just send them here: Challenge Application

Hey, you could be doing them a favour. Humanity too. Think of how many people they could treat or how many other psychics they could train with that money.

But until one actually does win the prize, I hope you'll understand why I'm less than impressed if yet another gullible mark handwaves some vague "we don't know" as a reason to believe in bullshit woowoo. Not knowing something is false is not a reason to believe there's something to it. What you illustrate there is just the mainstream form of the . The question isn't what skeptics are willing to accept, but what can be supported by evidence. That's all.

Observed Sea level rise, Morner is not an expert at anything except woo-woo physics.

Thanks for supporting my point that they are self absorbed cry babies that will ignore a mathematical proof because you did not follow their procedures.

I suppose you think James Randi is a self-absorbed cry-baby because in order to participate in his $1 million challenge you need to follow his procedures?

Or maybe the owners of Slashdot are self-absorbed cry-babies because they expect you to follow a specific set of procedures in order to sign up for an account and post a reply to an article? Perhaps you're just a self-absorbed cry-baby because the world doesn't work the way you think it ought to?

"Amazing" Randi helped him find out.

You know when the dowsing rods are wrong, all that happens is someone wastes money digging a dry well.

Or people die.

This is not medicine. I'm a huge proponent of embryonic stem cell research - that is not what these places are. Even in the linked pages, they don't call themselves real medicine - more like 1950's utopian therapy centers, complete with watercolor art and messages of "the promise of eternal life." I've seen cryonics center websites that are far, far more ethical and honest about the product they provide. The second website even puts its own title in quotes ('"the clinic"') to avoid being as actionable about their claims.

These sites are all about offering dubiously vague claims about what folks are saying about stem cells, then offering even more dubious treatments while standing behind the mystique of being a persecuted 'forbidden' super-technique. That would be fine if they were specific about what they were attempting, and if they could point to legitimate and active partners they were involved with in order to advance the science - but they're just namedropping the science to get the flim-flam magic appeal.

There's an endless series of variants of this style of bullshit. Take a look at these sites for just the tip of the iceburg in terms of keeping an eye on it:

Science Based Medicine

The JREF Website ($1 million verifiable reward for any evidence of the paranormal.)

Ryan Fenton

... who verified that humans can, in fact, engage in photosynthesis.

Gods or Jesus or whatever *NEVER* ever seem to heal amputee. It is always things which can't be really checked or can regress on their own. But amputee are always left amputee. Are you pretending amputee can never find gods's pity or forgiveness ? Are you pretending they pray less loudler than others ? Are you pretending gods are not omnipotent and can't regenerate overnight or over time an organ ? Or is not the simplier explanation that gods never ever healed anybody , it is alone the human body all along, and youa re jsut painting your belief onto a natural phenomenon ?


As for STROBEL he has been deconstructed and debunked so often it is a real shame you cite him. I won't bother to bring all the argument here to place buzt if you wish to debate it register on forums.randi.org and go there Evidence we knew the writer of the new testament knew the truth there is another one with evidence for god existence. Search for strobel there and you will see why that book isn't really a good argument.

This is a scam just like the many stratosphere airship scam companies that have been around in the last decade or so. They have no working product. They have no customers. It's all just a scam.

previous scam links

Here are some links (provided to you via Arts and Letters Daily):

The Associated Press
Sci Am
Discover
James Randy
Roger Kimball

The Man's last essay. It's titeled Oprah Winfrey: Bright (but Gullible) Billionaire.

Good for you. If you need to fund some research into the phenomenon or pay for your meds, then I bet that million bucks sure would come in handy:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Being able to sense electromagnetic fields, using no devices or other assistance, in a double blind trial, would definitely be worthy of the $1,000,000 from JREF.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Anybody who claims to be sensitive to this sort of thing and who has not won the million bucks is basically a flat-out liar.

Have you ever considered RTFM'ing up on an issue before asking the obvious questions that every introductory text (or audio-book) on Anarcho-Capitalism would clearly answer? Here's one example of an endless debate on this issue... I'm not asking for anyone's approval and blessing, just my own liberation and all the consequences it would bring!

Anarcho-Capitalists like me clearly believe that the greatest tyranny in a society comes from a monopoly on violence (aka government), and that decentralization would lead to an emergence of "checks and balances" that keep private power from ever approaching the level of tyranny governments exercise today. You of course are free to disagree - I respect your right to subscribe to a government if you so choose. So why not respect my right to opt out - especially if it's on my own privately owned land, seastead, or space-station (someday)?

No one wants to "force people to be free"! We just want the freedom to put our money where our mouth is and experiment, and we believe that our ideas would lead to better economic growth, attract top brains and investment capital, and pretty soon the more socialist governments will simply run out of competent people to tax. If we are wrong, then what do you have to lose?

(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)

Microsoft may not be all puppies and kittens, but there's no comparison between them and the COS. Even on a bad day they're not even close. When you see MS doing stuff like this, then maybe your argument that it's hypocritical to give their mockings unequal attention will hold water.