h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm going! Or at least I think I am...

TAM ("The Amazing Meeting") is the brainchild of James Randi, a magician who has spent his life debunking psychics, UFOlogists, quacks and all sort of random frauds and charlatans. He is one of the main drivers of the modern skeptics movement, and an all round good guy.

I first came across him, wow, years ago, when the world was still in black and white and when a row of houses cost thruppence haypenny. Well, about 1995 to be more exact . Randi is pretty outspoken when it comes to people who make money by pretending that they have real psychic powers. Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne are some of his more high profile targets. He has even put up a prize of 1 million dollars to anyone who can prove a supernational occurrence (ESP, clairvoyance, dowsing etc, etc) in a controlled scientific test. Needless to say, the prize has never been claimed.

TAM is THE event for skeptics and to date it has only been held in the US. No more. In October it comes to London. Attending it will be Richard Dawkins, Simon Singh, Adam Savage and Phil Plait, the author of the Bad Astronomy blog. It's fantastic!

Access to the website yesterday was a bit of a joke. First of all, the order told me that the fee was 175 pounds, but shipping and handling would be 999.99 pounds. Oops. Then when that issue was fixed it wouldn't allow me to enter my order because I live outside the UK. My sister's address was promptly used and eventually my order went through. I still haven't seen a confirmation coming through as yet though. Nevertheless the demand was extreme. The whole event sold out in an hour or so, much to the amazement of the organisers. I'm lucky I persevered, I think.

If anybody is going to it from H2G2, I'd love to know.

Ooops - should be supernatural...

That sounds really interesting! I look forward to hearing about it afterward.

As for the bizarre order processing issues, I've experienced those, too. It's annoying when you're trying to submit an order for something you know is going to sell out quickly, tickets or other stuff. Glad it finally went through while tickets were still available for you.

So you're going to be in London in October?I just came home from there!

Yes, it's looking good that I have my ticket, even though I don't have any confirmation. I wouldn't wonder that there are more H2G2'ers going.

You might do better to ask that question at "Askh2g2" rather than in your journal

Though as we can see already, all the best people are subscribed to Woodpigeon's journal.

yea!

WhyIthankyou..

I've a feeling no-one would remember me if I posted on Ask...

Somebody posted youtube links to James Randi shows not too long ago. I was quite fascinated by the clips I watched. So there may well be other hootooers going. I'm with GB, ask on 'Ask'.

Oh you want someone you *know* as opposed to just another hootooer? Good plan to post in your journal then

Well I remember you...but I'm not going.

Bel

Double Edward I'm outta here, this journal's w-a-y too busy for me to keep up

(That looks like a flock of carrier pigeons caught in anti-aircraft fire. )

Ohmigawd, that hurt my eyes.

I've just been caught out by The Curse of the Woodpigeon. I just tried to place a print-your-own t-shirt order. Amongst others of the *many* problems I experienced with the site, I eventually ended up with two t-shitrs in my basket. There was no way to delete one, other than to change it's quantity to 0. But it still wanted £1.15 tax for a purely notional garment.

Judging by the comments I am seeing, the whole registration process was a complete crapfest. They were completely unprepared for the demand. There are still a number of tickets available, but the servers are closed for the time being. Chances are that these tickets will be like gold-dust.

Ouch! What's with those new simpost smilies?

Report on a Randi test of a professional medium:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/12/psychic-claims-james-randi-paranormal

It's interesting that many people tested genuinely believe that they have psychic abilities. In the end it may come down to the fact that they are empathic people who have stumbled across the technique of cold reading quite by accident.

I had my "star sign" read out to me last night. An interesting experience. While a lot of the messages seemed to gel quite well superficially, I realised that they would equally (or even more-so) apply to a guy in my office who is completely unlike me and whose star-sign is not mine at all.

How many astrological true believers actually disagree with their profiles? I would expect not many - therefore most astrological profiles must be applicable at some level to everyone.