Has the Million Euro Challenge been reduced?

[wardenclyffe]

Last year there was much hoopla (some created by me here) about the Belgian Skeptics (http://skepp.be/nl/sisyphus-prijs-1000000-euro) offering a Million Euro Prize that was even bigger than the MDC. James Randi's most recent SWIFT (http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/2304-its-not-a-contest.html) article was about a 10,000 Euro prize offered by skeptics in the Czech Republic.

I think, "Great, that's another prize that I can add to the list of prizes that I trot out here when people show up with paranormal claims." So I go to update that list and the Czech group is already there as part of the consortium of European skeptic groups that can pre-test for the Belgian prize.

Then I checked the Belgian site (link above) and find that on their own website, the Belgians are not claiming to offer a million euros anymore, but only ten thousand.

Anyone know what happened?

Ward

P.S. I think Randi's quibble about it not being a contest is really just a problem with translation. I suspect that if you took the words "challenge" and "challenger" and translated them from English to Czech and then back to English again, you might come up with the words "contest" and "contestant."

 

[Fishstick]

SKEPP's prize had always been 10 000 eur, but it was raised to 1 Million in September 2012 for a period of 1 year. Since that period has passed, it's now back to 10 000 eur.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Thanks for the info. I vaguely remember the one year limit. I guess when I first read it I assumed that it would become permanent. I should not assume.

Thanks,
Ward

 

[rjh01]

<snip>

P.S. I think Randi's quibble about it not being a contest is really just a problem with translation. I suspect that if you took the words "challenge" and "challenger" and translated them from English to Czech and then back to English again, you might come up with the words "contest" and "contestant."

I performed your experiment with your paragraph and Google translate came back with

I think Randi quibble that the competition is not really a problem with the translation. I believe that if the words "call" and "challenger" and is translated from English into Czech and then back to English again, you come up with the words "competition" and "competitor".