{"id":2526,"date":"2016-10-19T01:35:40","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T01:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2526"},"modified":"2016-10-19T01:36:57","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T01:36:57","slug":"book-log-42-flim-flam-psychics-esp-unicorns-and-other-delusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2526","title":{"rendered":"Book Log #42 &#8211; Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions<\/em> by James Randi and Isaac Asimov<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the staples of the skeptic community, and I&#8217;d had it on my wishlist for quite a while.  Originally published in 1980, much of the perpetrators of the flim-flam have faded into obscurity, having long been debunked.<\/p>\n<p>This book describes a lot of the trials people went through trying to win Randi&#8217;s (then) $10,000 prize for proof of the paranormal.  Mental metal benders, psychics, water diviners&#8230; all failed spectacularly.<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t hear so much anymore about lots of these things having fallen out of fad, but I did note Randi&#8217;s one error in prediction: he estimated that the Scientologists movement would fizzle out after not too long.  Boy&#8230; he was off.<\/p>\n<p>Randi&#8217;s prize is now at $1,000,000, and no one has yet met the challenge of the double-blind experiment.<\/p>\n<p>Books Read: 42<br \/>\nWeek Number: 42<br \/>\nBooks\/Weeks: 1:1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi and Isaac Asimov This is one of the staples of the skeptic community, and I&#8217;d had it on my wishlist for quite a while. Originally published in 1980, much of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=2526\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[512,481,513,510],"tags":[509],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-book-log","category-books","category-kindle","tag-book-log-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2530,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions\/2530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}