jewel July 8th, 2008
A Russian court just convicted Grigory Grabovoy of fraud for bilking people out of money by claiming he could raise the dead. Like our own Silvia Browne and John Edward, this creep made a living preying on the desperate and the grieving. People who are very vulnerable to snake oil salesmen. Well, now he’s doing hard labor in prison. When can we start convicting fraudsters like this in this country? Continue Reading »
jewel July 5th, 2008
Richard Wiseman has the video up of 800+ of us at TAM doing the soon bending trick! My husband and I are even visible in the video! In fact, that’s us in the still frame of it. I’m the redhead and my husband is sitting to my left. This was such a fun experience. Heh.
Edited to add: By the way, there is nothing magical or mystical about spoon bending. There is a technique to it, that was first demonstrated to us by Teller (of Penn & Teller) along with a very funny story. Anyone can do this if they know the technique.
See also : www.spoonscience.com
jewel June 24th, 2008
My husband and I just got back from Vegas where we attended our very first TAM! Wow. We’re both still processing all of it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what to write. Man o man, it was just amazing.
We got into Vegas on Wednesday night and got checked in and stuff and were even able to get a semi good night’s sleep. We were both awake at 5am because we were still on east coast time and that was great for us because we got to have a leisurely breakfast and wander around a bit and get our bearings.
I’m going to try to get to the real highlights of TAM 6. This is going to be hard, there were so many, but ok, here it goes, in no particular order: Continue Reading »
jewel September 30th, 2007
We just got back from the AAI convention in Arlington. It was really an amazing 2 days. The guest speakers included Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Julia Sweeney, Eugenie Scott, Matthew Chapman, Edward Tabash, Pastor Deacon Fred, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many others. The lineup was really quite spectacular.
Security was tight. There was a bomb sniffing dog and everyone that was able to get into the main ballroom was scanned by metal detectors. More on this later. Continue Reading »
jewel June 19th, 2007
I know people believe all sorts of nonsense, but it never fails to amaze me anyway when I read that people get taken in by such obvious scams as paying money (and lots of it!) to get rid of curses. No, this particular incident did not take place in some third world country, but right here in the US of A.
Grace Uwanawich was sentenced to 18 months in prison for scamming people out of tens of thousands of dollars because she convinced said people that they were cursed and they would stay cursed unless they paid her big bucks to get rid of the curses. I’m glad she was prosecuted (not for the first time, I might add) and I hope that her future would-be victims don’t get taken in by the likes of her.
It bewilders me that in this day and age many people still believe in curses and all kinds of other nonsense that should have been left in the dark ages. Self described psychics and fortunetellers prey on the misinformed and although some folk might call them harmless, I’m less inclined to agree. I think people like this are dangerous and manipulative. They are looking to make a buck and they are counting on people to buy their shill.
I do feel bad for the folks taken in by scam artists. I’m sure there are a number of reasons why they don’t recognize the scam. I hope that prosecutions of these fraudsters gets peoples attention and helps them to learn to recognize when they are being taken.
And since I’m blogging about this topic, here’s a worthy site to visit:
Title edited: I changed the title from “Repeat after me — “Fortune teller’s are scam artists”. ” to “Repeat after me — “Curses aren’t real”. ” after a fresh reading of my post today because although I fully believe that fortune tellers and the like are scammers, my main point is that curses aren’t real and it amazes me that here we are in the 21st century and otherwise (presumably) reasonable people still believe in curses. I just don’t get it.
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