OT: I attended a psychic reading today.

[Your Old Dog]

I went along these lines.

All present hold hands.
Medium: "Is there anyone you would like to speak to?"
Client: "Yes, my Dad."
Medium: "What your Dad's name?"
Client: "Tommy"
Medium (eyes rolling up into his head): "Tommy if you're here make me aware of your presence."
Medium slumps forward on to table, then suddenly raises his head, his eyes focused on the middle distance.
Medium: "I'm in contact with Tommy. He says that he is happy where he is and wants to know whether there is anything that you'd like to ask him."
Client: "Can I address him?"
Medium: "Yes, I will be your conduit. What do you want to ask him?"
Client: "Dad - stick the pan on, I'm walking out of this **** and should be home in about half an hour!"

[Toolguy]

Psychic

Yep - the best way to get a happy medium is to cross her palm with silver.

[sasquatch]

I'm always amazed at people that go to these things,, like what are they looking for,,searching for something, a deep down obscure problem, and these scammers just taking advantage of them.

A very "Low Down" business in my opinion!

[Alistair Hosie]

I know there are quacks out there but some like i believe are for real John Edward fopr example if he's not he's a pretty good mindreader.I am amazed by his ability and he has been double blind tested at two universities and they said he was not faking but couln't explain it. Bronwen and I have also personally had some really interesting experiences privately no mind readers etc but fascinating just the same. Alistair

[TGTool]

"I went to see the woman, down at that gypsy place,
Well she read my mind, and then she slapped my face."


Nothing like reading someone's mind and finding you've stepped into a blue movie.

[Carld]

My relatives claimed my great grandmother Molly could read the future but she seldom would do it and only when they had badgered her into it. They said she was mostly right. Being a skeptic I wish I could have talked to and tested her. It's not that I don't think it's possible, but I would like to know if she really saw the future or composed a prediction from things she knew of them and what they said.

[Doc Nickel]

I know there are quacks out there but some like i believe are for real John Edward fopr example if he's not he's a pretty good mindreader.

-Nope. But he is an excellent cold reader.

I am amazed by his ability and he has been double blind tested at two universities and they said he was not faking but couln't explain it.

-No, he hasn't. Like Sylvia Browne, he says things like "I've been tested by X number of university scientists" or whatever, during his schpiel, but curiously, when he's asked directly about which university, or the names of the scientists, or for copies of the tests, he waffles and evades, then changes the subject.

Put it this way; if some actual testing proved the existence of the ability to read minds, or to contact ghosts of dead relatives, or anything like that, it would literally change the entire face of science as we know it. We'd have researchers getting massive federal grants to find out what part of the brain sends or receives a signal that can be read, and we'd have huge companies paying piles of money to research departments trying to utilize the technology to contact anyone from murder victims ("Who killed you?") to historical figures ("Hey Ms. Airheart, sorry to bother you, but where'd you land?")

Besides, of course, the entire idea that a person's mind or consciousness somehow survives the death and dissolution of the brain, a discovery that, if found to be true- or even possible- would change the entire face of theology, as well as most branches of science.

No scientist in the world would test a psychic, come up with a plausible positive result, and then just say "gosh, that was interesting" and go back to running some mice through a maze.

Doc.

[nitsuj]

James Randi has had a standing offer of a large sum of money for anyone claiming to be able to see the future, or talk to the dead, or bend spoons with their minds, whatever. So far, it's gone unclaimed. It's been years, the money is just sitting.

[SGW]

Even if John Edwards has been tested by universities it doesn't have any particular credibility. The magicians James Randi and Jamie Ian Swiss both say that scientists are easy to fool because they don't know what to look for and because they believe they are too smart to be fooled.

Jamie Ian Swiss does a show which he starts by saying something along the lines of, "psychic researchers believe they have established the existence of four types of psychic phenomenon --telepathy, precognition,psychokinesis, and <something> -- in the hundred or so years that psychic activity has been studied as an alleged science. I don't believe any of these phenomena actually exist, but I am going to demonstrate them all to you in the next hour."

[Clevelander]

How can they call them medium.....

Clearly they're no good at all.

[sasquatch]

It's all a quite large steaming pile of horse excretement.

[1-800miner]

My grandfather knew the exact day and time he would die.
The judge told him.

[BigBoy1]

Best Ad

The best ad I saw in the newspaper for a phone-in site was, "Psychic Hotline has been shut down for unforeseen circumstances."

[dalesvp]

PEAR Proposition

After 28 years of intensive research Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (Princeton University) proved consciousness has an effect on matter:

"Nearly three decades of intense experimentation leave little doubt that the anomalous physical phenomena appearing in the PEAR studies are valid, and are significantly correlated with such subjective variables as intention, meaning, resonance, and uncertainty." http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html

The Experiments
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/experiments.html

Further reading
http://pondscienceinstitute.on-rev.c...R.+Proposition

[nitsuj]

The PEAR program at Princeton was shut down a few years ago. They proved nothing and it's considered in the scientific community as an embarrassment to Princeton. When they say they found a slight link between consciousness and the physical world, they mean 2-3 times out of 10,000 chance was affected by human intention. Not only is this impossible to prove, those numbers are statistically irrelevant. PEAR was a laughing stock, and a huge waste of resources.