The Amazing Randi debunked sweaty "magnetic" people

Wow. I didn’t realize the government has been forcing talcum powder companies to include antimagnetic particles in their talc for that long. How deep does this conspiracy go?

25 Likes

Hillary did it. Talc… assassin’s.

2 Likes

Would this be the same James Randi that was the subject of the article below, published on Boing Boing within days of his death?

12 Likes

I was hoping we would have moved past that blisteringly hot take, but alas.

11 Likes

Different authors, different opinions.

10 Likes

No dude, just no.

6 Likes

14 Likes

Never forget!!!

I was unaware of Randi (or Horowitz) before that article and had no context for the vitriol. There’s a natural push/pull amongst BB readership and authors that I feel is very healthy, but that one really unleashed a lot of passions. It sure was informative!

8 Likes

The Amazing Randi debunked sweaty “magnetic” people

Desiccated, really.

7 Likes

Skin deep?

9 Likes

30 posts were split to a new topic: James Randi and the queer community

Axe deodorant, now in pine tree sap format.

4 Likes

Mostly ditto. I was only passingly aware of Randi. And since I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to contributors to whom Boing Boing gives a platform, I started reading Horowitz’s article with an open mind thinking maybe Randi was a fraud. Less than halfway through I realized Horowitz’s problem with Randi is that he didn’t suffer charlatans and was therefore in his eyes somehow responsible for less academic and government funding for men to stare at goats. :roll_eyes:

13 Likes

It’s a shame BoingBoing is still featuring that hack job of an obituary.

6 Likes

There’s something poetic about a hardcore skeptic like Randi still being able to educate people on this stuff from beyond the grave.

5 Likes

‘These new vaccine mutants are extremely disappointing,’ by Magneto
Opinion by Alexandra Petri

7 Likes

Randi is great of course but in my opinion the vaccines-make-magnetic argument falls flat immediately on a very simple fact: Measuring magnetic field is EASY!

A piece if paper and some ironfilnigs will do it, a pendulum with a magnetic weight of metal is fine (spot the irony :smiley: ), using any cheap compass is obvious. If two people disagree on a substantial magnetic field being present it should not take more than 15m minutes to settle it.

Now I am a lab-tech by training and maybe my braining is wired differently but still… this is high school science fair stuff, right? And nobody in the anti-vaccine crowd managed to step up to that level. Go figure.

2 Likes

The author has doubled down on that post. In his book The Miracle Month: 30 Days to a Revolution in Your Life he cites himself as an example of virtuous self-sacrifice for writing the meretricious attack on Randi days after his death. He uses it as a model for others to follow:

Today I want you to identify what you are willing to make a sacrifice for…

Reciprocity sometimes requires speaking out against injustice as I perceive it…

…The piece met with a good deal of support – as well as a chorus of vituperative and, in some cases, coordinated attacks, a Randian tactic that I expected.

Horowitz has managed to imagine that people coming to the same conclusion that his article was a self-interested vile smear of Randi must not only have been a “coordinated attack” attack but also one effectively led from the grave by Randi. That conclusion has as much basis in fact as his original article.

BBS rules do not allow me to express my full feelings of Horowitz holding up his screed as an exemplar of virtue, but I can say with immense understatement that they are not positive.

6 Likes

Scummy, but just what you’d expect from a charlatan who needs to tart up tired and trite self-help advice to make it seem edgy and new. Jordaddy seasoned his with hate-mongering, Horowitz does it with woo and smearing someone who contributes more societal value posthumously than he ever will alive.

4 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.