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A very serious question

Southwind17 said:
Perhaps words along the lines of: "... who's opinion I [tend to/usually/am normally inclined to/etc.] trust ..." might, with hindsight, have been better, the inference being that you have some doubts on this particular occassion, as opposed to him probably being right because he's clearly trustworthy. A word or two can make such a difference, don't you think?
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In hindsight, yes. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to clarify.
 
If I may folks, and I’m only new so you might not care what I think, but isn’t the board and the information on it the important thing?​
 
Erin said:
If I may folks, and I’m only new so you might not care what I think, but isn’t the board and the information on it the important thing?​
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Ah. A radical, eh? Welcome.

Yes. It's the thoughts that count, but- do be careful not to confuse the board (forum / website/ whatever) with JREF (the organisation).
JREF is (essentially) Randi himself, with the handful of permanent staff listed above.
It's a tiny group of people in a small building in Florida.
The JREF board / forum / whatever is a discussion website owned and operated by the above organisation and comprising a herd of cats from all over the planet who are (to varying degrees) in sympathy with JR's views , but are happy to throw a pail of water over him when his brain overheats, as even the best brains do when faced with drivel on an unrelenting basis.
 
Soapy Sam,

Thanks for the welcome and for explaining that to me. Hope I didn't upset anyone but I'm new and have enough to do just taking in all the information on the board, I tend to avoid the polotics behind it. And besides it was 5am! Not at my best till I've had coffee. Lots of coffee! Thanks again for the welcome.
 
When I first started teaching, way back in 1991, I began the "Look who's talking" project. My wife and I would send out a stack of letters to various celebrities, asking for letters and pictures with words of encouragement for my students, that I could display in my classroom. About 90% were either unanswered or canned responses from fan clubs. About 5% were just autographed pictures. However, the other 5% were actual messages of note, which I display every year in my classroom.

I wrote to James Randi in 1994. Here's his response, which is probably the best I ever received:
http://www.wendingourway.com/celebs/randi.htm

Other submissions, along with some of my commentary can be found at this URL:

http://www.wendingourway.com/lookwhostalking.htm


I have to note that by a strange coincidence, I sent letters to both Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan the weeks that they died... Sucks that I didn't get off my ass and move faster.
 
genesplicer said:
When I first started teaching, way back in 1991, I began the "Look who's talking" project. My wife and I would send out a stack of letters to various celebrities, asking for letters and pictures with words of encouragement for my students, that I could display in my classroom. About 90% were either unanswered or canned responses from fan clubs. About 5% were just autographed pictures. However, the other 5% were actual messages of note, which I display every year in my classroom.

I wrote to James Randi in 1994. Here's his response, which is probably the best I ever received:
http://www.wendingourway.com/celebs/randi.htm

Other submissions, along with some of my commentary can be found at this URL:

http://www.wendingourway.com/lookwhostalking.htm


I have to note that by a strange coincidence, I sent letters to both Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan the weeks that they died... Sucks that I didn't get off my ass and move faster.
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A nice idea and some nice responses. Boy though, does Colin Powell look young! He must be much happier now in retirement.
 
Just a little add-on to Randi's famed style of response. I contacted him initially for some incredibly naive advice, and this before I had even looked attentively through this site (this was a few years ago - and at the time, it was a valid matter to me). He responded with what I can only describe as compassion and in no way did he make light of the situation nor did I feel he was curt or dismissing. This was no conversion "thing", by the way, so I would have understood a curt response in the line of "that's a dumb idea" - but he was really very nice.

Uh oh, I hope I haven't undone anything here...
 
I received only one e-mail from Randi and unless someone was making a definite attempt to mimmick his "style" then at least I got a reply from the genuine article.
 
I think I received two or three emails from James Randi, and in them he was surprisingly gracious (given that I was mistaken in my comment) and witty, given my position on "the other side". I found him a pleasure to correspond with on the matter in question, and from what I have seen of his commentary threads he answered personally - the style is unmistakable. As i have said many times, I think he is a delightful, wise and excellent chap.

cj x
 
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Ripley Twenty-Nine said:
No offense, but your good friend is no more skeptical than the furvent UFO believer who saw a weird light once and therefore accepts all extraterrestrial claims as fact.
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I respectfully disagree. If he were to truly buy into it then he would not have asked any questions of Arthwollipot, whom the friend knew was a member of the forum, about what he read in Gizmodo. He would have simply believed what he heard without questioning anyone at all. Also there are people in the world who don't have the knowledge of existence of public records, etc. nor how to do that research, which is why they don't think to look for them.

He just has to visit us more and hone the skills. :)
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
This the post that's bothering you? Old one. I know how I hate that feeling of "yeah, I should know that". Drives me crazy.
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No, it wasn't bothering me. But NOW it is. Why did you dig up this ancient post? And what does it mean? When did Randi say "Antwerp"? Why did he say it? And why did it make you recall this (fictional/misnamed?) organization? :confused:
 
When I'm done teasing a particular lurker I'll come back and explain. It's a reference to an obscure movie written by a farily well known author. And someone is going to just scream if I tell them before they figure it out for themselves. And if I stretch it out properly it will be a very loud scream.
 
Amsterdamned (1988)! (Oh no, that is the Netherlands.) Good luck with the screaming and all that. :)
 
OK. I'm done teasing my lurker friend so I'll explain just on the off chance anyone is losing sleep over this.

It's a reference to the movie Lathe of Heavan based on the book of the same name by Ursula K. Le Guin. My friend is a fan of hers so it was maddening to her when I explained the reference. It is an obscure reference though.


The movie and book are about a guy and his psychiatrist. The guy (George), has dreams that actually change reality and it's driving him crazy. He uses to drugs to suppress his dreams and his abuse of those drugs gets him assigned to a shrink. The shrink eventually realizes that George isn't crazy and his dreams really do change reality. The shrink starts suggesting dreams in an attempt to improve the world. It doesn't work out.

When the shrink realizes things aren't working well, he decides that he needs to improve himself so that can do a better job of improving the world. So he suggests a dream to George where the psychiatrist isn't the lowly psychiatrist treating only drug addicts, but rather is the head of the "William Haber Institute".

The codeword that the psychiatrist uses to trigger his dreams via hypnosis is "Antwerp".

So that's the reference.

It's a great book and movie. The movie has an interesting story to it. It was first broadcast in 1980 and was very popular. They intended to release to VHS but had trouble licensing parts of the content, in particular the song "With a Little Help from my Friends" from the Beatles. It took 20 years to work out the licensing and once they worked it out the master copy had been lost and they had to restore it from secondary copies.

So, very obscure reference, go back to sleep now.
 
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I've received responses to all but a couple of my e-mails to Randi, and it gave me a little thrill every time.

And I've been lucky enough to have been published on Swift several times.

I must say, I really miss the weekly Randi commentaries.
 
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