A conspiracy so immense...

I mentioned two reasons for this blog. As the blog title indicates, I am somewhat fascinating by the tendency of people to believe there are great conspiracies everywhere and that, rather than advancing any proof themselves, they feel it is the job of the skeptic to prove they are wrong. This recently came to mind when viewing "The Amazing Buck Howard" a movie which in a slightly fictionalized way depicts the career of the magician The Amazing Kreskin. This movie in turn led me to read "The Psychology of the Psychic." This book should be mandatory reading for all high school students. It takes some of the more commonly held 'proofs' of ESP's existence and debunks them. One I found particularly fascinating, and it involved Uri Geller, a great fraud who has millions believing that he could bend spoons and telepathically re-start old watches. It turns out that 60% of the time, any old style watch (with internal movements rather than batteries) will restart when held for a few minutes in anyone's hand - because the warmth thins down the oil that has thickened from disuse and stopped the movement from operating. If you happen to have a fever, you could probably beat out Uri Geller. The 'take-away' from this; just because you don't have a rational explanation at hand, it does not mean that there isn't one.