Questioninggeller Illuminator

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James Randi in The Toronto Star Aug 23, 1986



Quote: The Amazing Randi

by Patricia Orwen

Toronto Star

August 23, 1986, Saturday



NEW YORK - His last great escape was freeing himself from a straitjacket while hanging upside down from a helicopter over Japan two years ago.



"I can't do that stuff any more though," said James Randi, aka The Amazing Randi. "The audience sees this guy with white hair, a white beard and they say to themselves, 'Oh that poor old guy, he's going to have a heart attack or something'. . . that kind of takes away from the show."



So just when the Toronto native's life seemed destined to become more sedate, normal even - no more being frozen in a block of ice for 55 minutes or being sealed in a coffin under water for an hour and 44 minutes (Randi holds the Guinness record for these dangerous acts) - along comes the MacArthur Foundation to lay something called a "genius award" on him.

...

"We never knew quite what to expect from him," said his sister, Angela Easton of Toronto.

...

Now, with the $272,000 (U.S.) Randi will receive from the foundation over the next five years, he figures he can redouble his attacks upon such "flummery."

...

Time had a few paragraphs on him. The Johnny Carson show had already booked him: "I'm in very heavily with Carson," he said, recapping the exposing of spiritualist table-tipping and Uri Geller spoon-bending techniques he demonstrated on his most recent Tonight Show appearance. One person Randi is out very heavily with is Geller. He calls the Israeli psychic a fraud. But more on that later.

...

He admits with all of that, the small house in Leaside where he grew up seems far, far away. He was Randall Zwinge then, the eldest of three children of a Bell Canada executive and - as he recalls now - something of a "child prodigy . . . when I was nine, I invented a pop-up toaster."



His sister Angela, who is eight years younger, remembers him blowing out the floor of the breakfast room in the process of doing a chemistry experiment in the basement. Other times, when the family would be sitting around listening to a radio program, Randi would suddenly interrupt their reception and that of the whole neighborhood by fooling around on his short-wave radio. "The neighbors used to call and ask him to stop," she said.



Most vivid, however, are her memories of being woken up at 6 a.m. so Randi could try out yet another magic trick on her.



"He was unpredictable . . . you never knew quite what he was going to do," said Sophie Smith, who with her husband Harry ran the Arcade Magic and Novelty Store in the Yonge St. arcade which Randi frequented.



"He was always asking questions, always into things . . . we all liked him."

...

"It was hard for Randi," said Angela. "The family couldn't really understand him. At one point they took him to the Toronto General Hospital for psychological testing . . . all we learned was that he was really bright." His IQ, it turned out, was 168.

...

It was during one of these tours that Randi's career took a definitive turn. One night in Quebec city, he met two policemen who recognized him, showed him a pair of handcuffs and asked: "Can you get out of these?"



"I got in the squad car one side and came out the other with them off. The policemen were totally amazed. So they took me to the jail and I showed them that I could break out of a cell."



The jailbreak made headlines in the papers and Randi's career as an escape artist was launched. Over the years he has broken out of 28 jail cells in Canada and the United States. He had himself put underwater in a sealed casket for an hour and 44 minutes - breaking the late and famous Harry Houdini's record of one hour and 31 minutes set on Aug. 5, l926.



He also freed himself from a strait-jacket as he hung by his heels five storeys above Broadway. Somewhere along the way he had become The Amazing Randi because "nobody could pronounce or remember Zwinge."

...

The United States "offered me more opportunities than I could have had in Canada," he said.



As his feel for magic deepened, he became more and more interested in the way it can be used for deception.



"I have 45 file drawers filled with everything from dowsing to vampires to psychic surgery: "Did you know that Peter Sellers died because he went to the psychic surgeons in the Philippines rather than have a heart operation?" Randi asked. "These so-called surgeons are just charlatans, frauds, it's been proven that they claim to 'heal' people by extracting things like chicken livers, cigarette filters, even recording tape, out of their bodies . . . and people fall for it."

...

His meeting with Uri Geller in l972 provided added incentive to do more such investigation.



"I could see that Geller's techniques of misdirection were pretty crude," said Randi who wrote a book exposing Geller titled The Truth About Uri Geller.



"I thought this guy was going nowhere. I was absolutely wrong. I didn't realize the naivet of the scientific world. Their careers were going down the drain because of all this. One scientist, a metallurgist, wrote a paper backing Geller's claims that he could bend metal. The scientist shot himself after I showed him how the key bending trick was done."



Another of Geller's deceptions is the old change-the-time trick, continues Randi taking the watch off the wrist of a female producer seated at the restaurant.



He has each person at the table note that the watch reads 2:25 p.m., then he places it on her palm.



"Geller would say 'change' but I'll say brocolli or zucchini with hollondaise sauce," said Randi to the amusement of onlookers.



He then picked up the watch which, to everyone's amazement, read 1:25 p.m.



"How did you do that," someone asked.



"Very well, I thought," he replied.

...

Randi has been "healed" by some of the big names in the business, including Peter Popoff who broadcasts healing sessions continent-wide from Upland California. Popoff, whom Randi refers to as a "squeaky-voiced preacher," also solicits donations from the public to purchase and send bibles to the Soviet Union. His goal: $3 million. There's also W. V. Grant and Ernest Angley. Grant broadcases his show Dawn of New Day from His Eagle's Nest cathedral in Dallas and his show reaches viewers of 300 TV stations across the continent. Angley broadcasts the Ernest Angley Hour and the Ninety and Nine Club throughout the United States, in parts of Canada, the Philippines and Africa. His Grace Cathedral is in Akron, Ohio, where he also owns a TV station.



Why go after Popoff, Grant and Angley rather than the more widely known evangelists like Pat Robertson, Herbert Armstrong and Billy Graham? The former are more accessible and their claims of healing are more specific than any of the others, said Joseph Barnhart of North Texas State University, one of a group of investigators including Paul Kurtz, editor of Free Inquiry magazine, in Buffalo who has recently been working with Randi on the investigations.



So far, they've found lots of tricks, but no evidence of anyone having been healed.



The most blatant deception occurs at Popoff sessions where before mass healings, Popoff's wife circulates among the audience gathering information from various individuals. Then, when her husband is on stage, she relays the information to him via a mini-receiver and an earphone.

...

False witness

...

Some of the people who come to these meetings are just doing it for a social occasion, Randi said, "but it's the others. It's the parents you see crying at the elevator because they couldn't get their child anywhere near the healer that make me want to expose it.



"At one of Popoff's sessions there was this Oriental kid on crutches with his legs all twisted around. A filmmaker there asked him: 'Why are you here?'



"'To see Popoff, he can heal me', the boy replied.



"But the boy never made it anywhere near the front. At the end of the session the filmmaker saw him with tears streaming down his face."

...

Randi wants to change all that. He has written extensively on Popoff, Grant and Angley for the Buffalo-based

...

"Popoff announced that these were the work of the devil and that everyone should crumple them up and throw them in the aisles. But no one did . . . and his congregation has dropped off by one third in Chicago and Philadelphia, because of it. Randi, meanwhile, is writing it all down in a book.



None of this impresses the evangelists - Popoff calls him "a dried-up old magician," Grant refers to him as a "bald runt of a bearded magician who goes on late night talk shows." But the Chicago-based

...

"We know of his background and think his work will benefit society," said Ordonez.



"Randi has more insight into how people can deceive others and themselves than almost anyone else alive," said Ken Frazier, echoing her praise. Frazier is an editor who works on the



They can't even buy the evidence. For the last 22 years, Randi has carried with him a cheque for $10,000 to be given to anyone who can prove a paranormal occurrence. Even a healing would count. To date, 600 people have applied; 75 have submitted to Randi's scientific testing. Randi still has the cheque.



"The media," said Randi with disdain. "That's the reason people tend to believe in all this. The media haven't bothered to differentiate between fact and fiction; if a boat is lost in the Bermuda triangle and found six hours later because they never took off in the first place (the media) never bother to

report the finding because it's a non-story.



Religious teaching, however, is equally to blame, he said. "People have also been raised to have religious beliefs with no evidence whatsoever except it's in this book . . . why shouldn't people believe something else for which there is no evidence?"

...

Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, that "best" includes expanding his computer system, enlarging his office, writing more articles, giving talks: "I've got so many bookings, it's amazing."

by Patricia OrwenAugust 23, 1986, SaturdayNEW YORK - His last great escape was freeing himself from a straitjacket while hanging upside down from a helicopter over Japan two years ago."I can't do that stuff any more though," said James Randi, aka The Amazing Randi. "The audience sees this guy with white hair, a white beard and they say to themselves, 'Oh that poor old guy, he's going to have a heart attack or something'. . . that kind of takes away from the show."So just when the Toronto native's life seemed destined to become more sedate, normal even - no more being frozen in a block of ice for 55 minutes or being sealed in a coffin under water for an hour and 44 minutes (Randi holds the Guinness record for these dangerous acts) - along comes the MacArthur Foundation to lay something called a "genius award" on him...."We never knew quite what to expect from him," said his sister, Angela Easton of Toronto....Now, with the $272,000 (U.S.) Randi will receive from the foundation over the next five years, he figures he can redouble his attacks upon such "flummery."...Time had a few paragraphs on him. The Johnny Carson show had already booked him: "I'm in very heavily with Carson," he said, recapping the exposing of spiritualist table-tipping and Uri Geller spoon-bending techniques he demonstrated on his most recent Tonight Show appearance. One person Randi is out very heavily with is Geller. He calls the Israeli psychic a fraud. But more on that later....He admits with all of that, the small house in Leaside where he grew up seems far, far away. He was Randall Zwinge then, the eldest of three children of a Bell Canada executive and - as he recalls now - something of a "child prodigy . . . when I was nine, I invented a pop-up toaster."His sister Angela, who is eight years younger, remembers him blowing out the floor of the breakfast room in the process of doing a chemistry experiment in the basement. Other times, when the family would be sitting around listening to a radio program, Randi would suddenly interrupt their reception and that of the whole neighborhood by fooling around on his short-wave radio. "The neighbors used to call and ask him to stop," she said.Most vivid, however, are her memories of being woken up at 6 a.m. so Randi could try out yet another magic trick on her."He was unpredictable . . . you never knew quite what he was going to do," said Sophie Smith, who with her husband Harry ran the Arcade Magic and Novelty Store in the Yonge St. arcade which Randi frequented."He was always asking questions, always into things . . . we all liked him."..."It was hard for Randi," said Angela. "The family couldn't really understand him. At one point they took him to the Toronto General Hospital for psychological testing . . . all we learned was that he was really bright." His IQ, it turned out, was 168....It was during one of these tours that Randi's career took a definitive turn. One night in Quebec city, he met two policemen who recognized him, showed him a pair of handcuffs and asked: "Can you get out of these?""I got in the squad car one side and came out the other with them off. The policemen were totally amazed. So they took me to the jail and I showed them that I could break out of a cell."The jailbreak made headlines in the papers and Randi's career as an escape artist was launched. Over the years he has broken out of 28 jail cells in Canada and the United States. He had himself put underwater in a sealed casket for an hour and 44 minutes - breaking the late and famous Harry Houdini's record of one hour and 31 minutes set on Aug. 5, l926.He also freed himself from a strait-jacket as he hung by his heels five storeys above Broadway. Somewhere along the way he had become The Amazing Randi because "nobody could pronounce or remember Zwinge."...The United States "offered me more opportunities than I could have had in Canada," he said.As his feel for magic deepened, he became more and more interested in the way it can be used for deception."I have 45 file drawers filled with everything from dowsing to vampires to psychic surgery: "Did you know that Peter Sellers died because he went to the psychic surgeons in the Philippines rather than have a heart operation?" Randi asked. "These so-called surgeons are just charlatans, frauds, it's been proven that they claim to 'heal' people by extracting things like chicken livers, cigarette filters, even recording tape, out of their bodies . . . and people fall for it."...His meeting with Uri Geller in l972 provided added incentive to do more such investigation."I could see that Geller's techniques of misdirection were pretty crude," said Randi who wrote a book exposing Geller titled"I thought this guy was going nowhere. I was absolutely wrong. I didn't realize the naivet of the scientific world. Their careers were going down the drain because of all this. One scientist, a metallurgist, wrote a paper backing Geller's claims that he could bend metal. The scientist shot himself after I showed him how the key bending trick was done."Another of Geller's deceptions is the old change-the-time trick, continues Randi taking the watch off the wrist of a female producer seated at the restaurant.He has each person at the table note that the watch reads 2:25 p.m., then he places it on her palm."Geller would say 'change' but I'll say brocolli or zucchini with hollondaise sauce," said Randi to the amusement of onlookers.He then picked up the watch which, to everyone's amazement, read 1:25 p.m."How did you do that," someone asked."Very well, I thought," he replied....Randi has been "healed" by some of the big names in the business, including Peter Popoff who broadcasts healing sessions continent-wide from Upland California. Popoff, whom Randi refers to as a "squeaky-voiced preacher," also solicits donations from the public to purchase and send bibles to the Soviet Union. His goal: $3 million. There's also W. V. Grant and Ernest Angley. Grant broadcases his show Dawn of New Day from His Eagle's Nest cathedral in Dallas and his show reaches viewers of 300 TV stations across the continent. Angley broadcasts the Ernest Angley Hour and the Ninety and Nine Club throughout the United States, in parts of Canada, the Philippines and Africa. His Grace Cathedral is in Akron, Ohio, where he also owns a TV station.Why go after Popoff, Grant and Angley rather than the more widely known evangelists like Pat Robertson, Herbert Armstrong and Billy Graham? The former are more accessible and their claims of healing are more specific than any of the others, said Joseph Barnhart of North Texas State University, one of a group of investigators including Paul Kurtz, editor of Free Inquiry magazine, in Buffalo who has recently been working with Randi on the investigations.So far, they've found lots of tricks, but no evidence of anyone having been healed.The most blatant deception occurs at Popoff sessions where before mass healings, Popoff's wife circulates among the audience gathering information from various individuals. Then, when her husband is on stage, she relays the information to him via a mini-receiver and an earphone.......Some of the people who come to these meetings are just doing it for a social occasion, Randi said, "but it's the others. It's the parents you see crying at the elevator because they couldn't get their child anywhere near the healer that make me want to expose it."At one of Popoff's sessions there was this Oriental kid on crutches with his legs all twisted around. A filmmaker there asked him: 'Why are you here?'"'To see Popoff, he can heal me', the boy replied."But the boy never made it anywhere near the front. At the end of the session the filmmaker saw him with tears streaming down his face."...Randi wants to change all that. He has written extensively on Popoff, Grant and Angley for the Buffalo-based Free Inquiry magazine. He went on the Tonight Show with a videotape showing how Popoff works...."Popoff announced that these were the work of the devil and that everyone should crumple them up and throw them in the aisles. But no one did . . . and his congregation has dropped off by one third in Chicago and Philadelphia, because of it. Randi, meanwhile, is writing it all down in a book.None of this impresses the evangelists - Popoff calls him "a dried-up old magician," Grant refers to him as a "bald runt of a bearded magician who goes on late night talk shows." But the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation believes their money will be well used...."We know of his background and think his work will benefit society," said Ordonez."Randi has more insight into how people can deceive others and themselves than almost anyone else alive," said Ken Frazier, echoing her praise. Frazier is an editor who works on the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal , (CSICOP) which Randi helped found in 1976, This group sees no evidence that anything even vaguely paranormal really exists.They can't even buy the evidence. For the last 22 years, Randi has carried with him a cheque for $10,000 to be given to anyone who can prove a paranormal occurrence. Even a healing would count. To date, 600 people have applied; 75 have submitted to Randi's scientific testing. Randi still has the cheque."The media," said Randi with disdain. "That's the reason people tend to believe in all this. The media haven't bothered to differentiate between fact and fiction; if a boat is lost in the Bermuda triangle and found six hours later because they never took off in the first place (the media) never bother toreport the finding because it's a non-story.Religious teaching, however, is equally to blame, he said. "People have also been raised to have religious beliefs with no evidence whatsoever except it's in this book . . . why shouldn't people believe something else for which there is no evidence?"...Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, that "best" includes expanding his computer system, enlarging his office, writing more articles, giving talks: "I've got so many bookings, it's amazing." An old article from James Randi in The Toronto Star Aug 23, 1986. This might be of interest:This is only segments, the full article is http://zammoth-jamesrandi.blogspot.com/