The scary-looking gent above is another entry in our roster of "People I've Always Admired and Heard From Because of This Website." He's James Randi, and he's probably only scary if you claim to have psychic powers or to be able to heal sick people by pulling evil spirits out of them. Once upon a time, he was a top magician and escape artist but he has long since transformed himself into the world's greatest debunker of hokey claims of impossible powers. I am, obviously, a skeptic about such assertions; ergo, I cheer the work he does via the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Its website, which you can access by clicking here, is a wonderful oasis of sanity. (Would that the Internet offered even a tenth as much sanity as pornography.) Randi is a feisty exposer of frauds, charlatans and folks who would have you believe they possess paranormal abilities. He offers a million-buck reward for anyone who can demonstrate the genuine article and his cash looks pretty darn safe.
Randi is also a gentleman. I remember seeing him one time on a TV show, exposing a nugget of Uri Geller's chicanery. In the circumstance, the easiest thing for him to have done was to reveal the secret of the magic trick involved, but he did not. It was a trick sometimes employed by legit magicians (i.e., those who do not pretend to any superhuman abilities) and exposure might have robbed one of them of a chunk of livelihood. Instead, Randi replicated the feat, admitted it was achieved via a gimmick and effectively debunked without ruining anyone's act — except, of course, for Geller's. It's obvious that if Randi ever went over to the dark side, claiming powers of E.S.P. or telekinesis, he could wrest millions out of those who are keen to believe. (It is a lesson, not just about fraudulent psychics but for life in general, that human eagerness is at the root of most scams. The putative medium can usually not pretend to read your mind unless you are hoping for them to succeed and unconsciously helping them along.)
Mr. Randi wrote me recently because he wanted to get in touch with my partner-in-comics, Sergio Aragonés, to replenish an old friendship. He also said he'd enjoyed my article here on Peter Hurkos, and I've given him permission to re-post it on his site. And what's amazing is that I predicted this would happen. You see, a couple weeks ago while I was bending spoons with my brainwaves, I had a premonition…