How to predict the future

Magicians are always claiming to read minds but (I know this will come as a shock) some of us are cheating, some of the time. Not always, of course. Most of us are magic.

Personally, I am magic, but I’m still impressed by the idea of Remote Viewing. Could it be the real deal? If you’ve seen or read Jon Ronson’s “The Men Who Stare At Goats” you’ll be familiar with the stories about secret military units who use psychics for spying. Ronson found soldiers are being trained to walk through walls and kill goats just by staring at them! The Stanford training unit was closed down in 1995, but research into this stuff is still going on.

The Farsight Institute, for example, get lots of interesting results.  They’re doing a psychic climate-change study at the moment, and they do seem to have detected a LOT of disasters before June next year. Luckily there are several different timelines, so we might be OK.

Check out Project Stargate, and these pictures of sketches people have created while remote viewing. Even if you think all this is nonsense, you have to admit some of the predictions are pretty amazing…

Prove you’re psychic, win $1M

Uri Gellar’s powers didn’t stand a chance against James Randi

Have you heard about James Randi’s paranormal challenge? Randi used to be a magician, “The Amazing Randi”, but since the 60s, he has been offering more and more money to anyone who can provide proof of the paranormal under controlled conditions. Right now the prize stands at $1,000,000, and although 1,000 applicants have taken up the challenge so far, none have even passed the first round. If you fancy your chances, you can apply here.

One person who was exposed by Randi back in the 80s was James Hydrick, a self-described psychic who claimed to have telekinetic powers. He admitted he was a fraud after this episode of That’s My Line. It’s long but bear in mind this was an hour and a half of a man staring at a book, edited down! Watch the whole thing if you can, I promise it’s worth it.