James Van Praagh has made himself rich by claiming he talks to the dead on daytime TV and at pricey ticketed seances—but he wouldn’t talk at all when ‘the dead’ actually turned up at his $100-a-head seminar to ask why he won’t prove his psychic powers.
A video released today by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) shows a small horde of costumed ‘zombies,’ carrying signs reading “Van Praaaaaaagh” and “talk to us, we won’t bite,” shambling up to the building where Van Praagh’s “Spirit Circle” was set to begin, and asking to speak with him. Led by JREF President D.J. Grothe, the groups asks why Van Praagh is dodging questions about whether he’ll accept the Foundation’s million-dollar challenge to prove his claimed psychic medium abilities.
It's disgusting that these bloodsuckers pray on the grieving when they're the most vulnerable. Penn and Teller's Bull#### show needs to pay the guy a visit to expose him for the fraud that he is.
So it is with an open mind that I plan to watch the upcoming season of one of the Animal Planet network's new series about the world's most popular cryptid. Next Sunday night, Season 2 of Finding Bigfoot opens with a special two-hour broadcast, an episode entitled Birth of a Legend. It will feature extensive analysis of the most famous film clip in cryptozoological history, the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, in which a large, hairy creature strolls down a northern California riverbank.
I'm looking forward more to a subsequent episode in the series, as yet unscheduled, which will feature a Calgary man named Todd Standing, who claims to have seen and filmed the creatures on numerous occasions.
Moreover, he says they exist in the Rocky Mountains, not far from here.
Standing says he has released some, though not all, of his film and video evidence. But he's holding back critical information, namely, the specific location of his British Columbia research. His reasoning is that until the alleged creature is given government-sanctioned species protection, it would be a huge mistake to reveal its whereabouts.
[How convenient]
Critics, of course - outside and even within the fractious Bigfoot research community - say Standing's altruism is really just a cheap ploy to gain credibility and sell DVDs.
I read Dara O'Briain's book, 'Tickling the English' where he wrote of being at the Belfast Odyssey Arena the night before he had a gig there.
There was a show by some female 'medium' Her show didn't go too well after some guy in the audience asked for a message from his father, and she started off on some BS. Midway through the guy interrupted her saying not to bother, he'll ask himself as he saw his Dad coming back from the can. The house erupted.
John Edwards: Welcome to "Crossing Over". Before we begin, I must stress again the importance of remembering the details that come from these sessions. Specifically, the things that don't seem to make sense at first. It's imperative that you remember everything I say. Okay. I think I'm ready. And.. I'm going over here.. in this direction.. right here. And someone over here, I'm getting a J. A J.. a woman with a J connection. Who's got a woman with a J? [ no response ] Maybe K? K or J? A woman with a K or J. [ no response ] Or.. R? K, J, R.. or F.
Fran's Friend: [ raises hand ] Oh! I know an F!
John Edwards: Okay. Okay, what's the name?
Fran's Friend: Fran.
John Edwards: And she passed recently?
No, she's sitting right here.
John Edwards: Okay.. maybe it was Fran I was getting. Fran, did you have someone pass recently?
Fran: Yes, I did.
John Edwards: Okay. And did their name begin with a J or a K?
Fran: No.
John Edwards: [ pause ] Or a P? Or a B?
Fran: No.
John Edwards: T, L, Z or D?
Fran: No.
John Edwards: Or.. S.. or W? A taller person.. name begins with a B.. or an H. [ no response ] B or a G?
The White House has issued an official answer in response to two online petitions (with more than 17,000 signatures) that requested the government "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race" and "immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings."
Phil Larson, who works in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race." The official White House response also states that "there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye."
Multivitamin supplementation has been getting a rough ride in the literature, as evidence emerges that routine supplementation for most is, at best, unnecessary. Some individual vitamins are earning their own unattractive risk/benefit profiles: Products like folic acid, calcium, and beta-carotene all seem inadvisable for routine supplementation in the absence of deficiency or medical indication. Vitamin E, already on the watch list, looks increasingly problematic, with data recently published confirming the suspected association of supplementation with an elevated risk of prostate cancer.
Reading through the vitamin posts here at SBM, one issue comes through repeatedly: The danger of assuming therapeutic benefits in the absence of confirmatory evidence. Vitamin supplement have the patina of safety and of health, a feature that’s reinforced when you purchase them: You don’t need a prescription, you don’t get counseled on their use, and there isn’t a long list of frightening potential side effects to accompany the product. You can pull a bottle off the shelf, and take any dose you want. After all, how harmful can vitamins be when you can buy 5 pounds of vitamin C at a time, or vitamin E capsules in a 1000-pack? But the research signals seem to be getting stronger, and most are pointing in the same direction: what we though we knew about antioxidants was based on simplistic hypotheses about nutrition and health. And while we thought we were doing ourselves good with antioxidant supplements, we may have been doing harm.
In light of what we know about antioxidants and exercise, the trend in the data is strongly suggestive of zero benefit, at best, with the real possibility that there may be negative consequences to supplementation. Overlay the epidemiologic evidence that looks at mortality, cancer, and other outcomes, and the attractiveness of antioxidant supplements drops even further. The best advice for those that exercise seems to be to focus on consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and leaving the antioxidant bottles on the shelf. There appears to be little that is complementary about them.
Ongoing Skeptic Thread
