http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDvu6wz9qF4
James Randi (the Amaz!ng Randi) is a family friend, and well known critical thinker and skeptic. He leads not only a very interesting life, but also is a most incredible storyteller about that life.
I am sharing here a very poorly made video from a JREF cruise to Alaska where Randi spoke about his friendship with Richard Feynman the physicist. The wonderful thing about Randi is that he doesn’t brag when he talks about the famous people he has knows and been or is friends with. They are simply his friends.
The ever entertaining James Randi
When I attended a recent birthday party for Randi, I was in a room filled with the stars of the Skeptic world. However, not everyone was a well known writer or performer. Many were just “regular” people like myself. We were just Randi’s friends, there to celebrate his birthday. Randi likes people for who they are, and while he may admire what they do, his friendship is given because he simply likes a person. You can certainly tell from this video that Randi and Feynman had a wonderful friendship.
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Categories: Friends, James Randi Educational Foundatioin - JREF, Skeptic, Uncategorized
Two Different Girls 
Trying to write a few sentences about this video for the Richard Feynman Wikipedia page. I’m having trouble with the wording. It needs to sum up their friendship and be relevant enough to be included on Feynman’s page. The current WP page is very well written and if I’m not careful with these sentences it will be removed. But I feel that Feynman’s page does not reflect his skepticism and we need to get that into the article. This interview will link him to Randi.
Here is what I started to write but it isn’t quite right. I’m leaving it here in hopes that someone will rewrite it and I’ll place it in the WP page.
Magician and skeptic [[James Randi]] commented on his long friendship with Feynman and his ability to solve lateral thinking problems. “He would always solve every last one… sometimes it would take him a few weeks… he was a genius of the first order”. (citation here)
It’s going to go at the very end of the “personal” section right before the “death” section. Right after the reference to Feynman using the strip club as an office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
BTW The Richard Feynman WP page received 91K views last month. This video is at 80,958 views already. Would be very interesting to watch the view count of the video to see if there is a major hit increase once the edit is made.
I await the re-write.
Susan, Kitty took this film herself, so she will still have it on you-tube. You can send her an email and perhaps she can help you.
I didn’t read all the way to the end.Give me a bit to ponder and I’ll email you later this evening
🙂
Glad you enjoy it. Feel free to link to our blog.
N
I live in the UK and had never heard of Sally Morgan until now. I would have thought that it could easliy be proven that she is a fraud simply by describing cold reading techniques to someone before having them demonstrated at one of her shows.Specifically. Guesses framed as questions; statements that are true about almost everybody; fishing with vague questions in a large audience; bold statements about anything that no-one can possibly know and therefore no-one can refute; claiming as a hit anything that comes within a couple of million miles of the truth; moving on quickly when a blatant miss occurs knowing that the true believers ignore the misses anyway.Of course threatening litigation rather than picking up a million dollar reward kind of seals it too.
I have heard a lot about Randi’s ‘down-to-earth’ demeanor from a friend of mine who was lucky to meet him recently. I love his talks discussing the various efforts taken to upend superstition and mystical beliefs. It is a parasite that needs to be eradicated by free inquiry and skeptical discourse.
Very cool