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From: brian@digi-g.UUCP (Merlyn Leroy)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.physics
Subject: Re: Comment about Uri Geller
Message-ID: <636@digi-g.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 11:36:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: digi-g.636
Posted: Mon Jun  3 11:36:15 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 04:12:25 EDT
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Summary: 

[I have remove net.nlang.india and net.religion from the newwgroups]

Dave Trissel writes (first quoting me):

>>Sure.  The same way Uri Geller (remember him?) used to bend spoons.
>>Fraudulently.  Any professional magicians present?
>
>Uri Geller has been known to fake things quite often.  However, I would love
>to see a professional magician do what some friends of mine have seem him do.
>   [spoon bending anecdote omitted]
>...that same evening Uri was caught putting a picture
>into an aquarium.  He was going to claim he had materialized it, I suppose.
>   [key bending anecdote omitted]
>...Uri has bent some metal in a lab and the bend-point was examined with an
>electron microscope revealing a fracture which cannot normally be created.
>Of course scientist can be as fooled as anyone else.  But a EM is a little
>harder to fool.
>
>Uri's a good showman and its easy to dismiss everything he does as fakery.
>But I think there is more to it than that.

First, if he really can do this stuff, why does he need to fake things?
Fakery would make ALL of his stunts suspect.  People remembering magic
acts almost always recall it slightly differently, saying "he never handled
the object" when, say, he picked it up after it fell on the floor, etc.
This is why people can't figure out how a trick is done afterwards.
His act is just like a magicians act, complete with misdirection, changing
a trick in midstream if the subject isn't cooperating, etc.  By the way,
James (The Amazing) Randi has bent spoons that electron microscopes can't
figure out, either.  But then, that's not what electron microscopes are for.

Merlyn Leroy
	who can bend his mind with a spoon, too