My personal experience with Randi
Sorry to be so late to the discussion - I so rarely have time to spend on boards these days... sigh...
I've been running the website our good friend Umbrae mentioned for a long time, and then out of the blue, James Randi emailed me. He said he likes Aussies - he's apparently good mates with Dick Smith. And he said that he teaches people to bend forks/spoons the exact same way I do. We were in complete agreement - that there's probably a perfectly physical explanation for it, but that it just hasn't been explained by science yet (which you may have gathered, is why I don't consider the 'paranormal challenge' to be relevant, as by definition, surely as soon as you prove something, it ceases to be paranormal!). Our exchanges were quite friendly and he said he agreed completely with everything on my site.
Then, a few weeks later he must have been short of material for his weekly newsletter posted on his profitable website. He lampooned me as a freaky off-with-the-fairies quack. I was still using a pseudonym at the time (due to a serious stalker problem I had in the past) but the following week he brought the subject up again, with my real name, to say I'd overreacted. So then, he made out that I was not only a freaky quack, I was a neurotic one at that.
http://www.randi.org/jr/112301.html
http://www.randi.org/jr/113001.html
What I'd actually emailed him was to say that he was a low hypocrite, to tell me to my face he taught ppl to do what I do EXACTLY the same way (and also how he can break wine glasses somehow by running a finger around the rim, apparently) and then publicly, and for his own commercial reasons, he'd pretended that he disagreed with what I was doing.
The ultimate irony was that he accused me of bending forks for profit and said some crap about credit cards and $25 per fork. In fact, they were listed on eBay for starting price of $1 on direct request of site fans, which is even less than I can buy the unbent ones for. In disgust, I stopped selling them on eBay altogether.
I was tempted to post his emails on my website, but then the thought of his rabid, narrow-minded fans persecuting me and calling me a liar, just wasn't worth it. I just let it drop.
Now when people email me from the
http://fork-you.com site and say why don't I get Randi's million bucks if what I say is true? I tell them to email him directly and ask him outright - does he agree with everything I say on my site, or does he think I'm a fraud? I don't think he'd lie if you asked him directly, although I think he'd avoid admitting publicly that he bends spoons/forks exactly the same way I do, as it suits his commercial interests to keep up the Professional Skeptic persona.
Yep, he's a sad old has-been magician, but he sure has worked out a way to fleece people of their money. Irony always appeals to us Aussies, so I'm actually quite amused that he gets money out of people by pointing the finger at charlatans, when in fact, he's the master charlatan himself. He's still just selling Snake Oil, just repackaged with a new label.
Meaning-someone will past the test.And this is only the 1st part of the test.When you pass the test number one (nobody has achieved it yet),you'll undergo the test number two.I wonder what for and why.