Spiritualists’ National Union Kills ‘Psychic News’

Okay, I simply couldn’t resist passing along this little bit of humor.  Apparently, one of the longest running paranormal periodicals, the “Psychic News”, is going to come to an end soon, much to the lamentation of many of its readers…

Tragedy: SNU kills ‘Psychic News’

Tomorrow – Saturday, 17 July – the Spiritualists’ National Union will announce at its annual general meeting in Blackpool that it has decided to kill off the weekly newspaper Psychic News.

The editor and staff have received notice that the next issue, dated 24 July 2010, will be the last that will be published.

In making that decision, the SNU has allowed the guillotine to fall unceremoniously and with little warning on a publication that has been the global voice of Spiritualism, its phenomena and philosophy for the past 78 years.

I discussed this possible outcome on 10 July, but at that time I was hopeful that, behind the scenes, the supporters of Psychic News within the SNU would win the day, or at least buy enough time to allow others in the Spiritualist movement to offer support and come up with a solution.

That has not happened. For whatever reasons, those who have made this decision have viewed the dire financial situation that has faced Psychic News as a problem for the SNU only. They have, therefore, decided to cut their losses.

What is not understandable is why these dedicated Spiritualists have not taken account of the importance of Psychic News as an independent voice of Spiritualism, and sought help from other organisations within the movement to ensure that it continues to publish. …

So this begs the obvious question: Why is this a suprise at all?  Why didn’t they see this coming? 🙂

Lessons from TAM7: Magic, Deception, and Promoting Skepticism

Well, I got back from The Amazing Meeting 7 in Las Vegas a couple of days ago, and now that I’m back to some semblance of normalcy I can get back into a routine.  Which includes keeping up to date with this blog.  I wanted to take a few minutes to summarize some of what I learned at TAM7 in the two workshops I attended…

1. The first was with magicians Jamy Ian Swiss and D.J. Grothe – their workshop was on the relationship between magic, skepticism, and science.  The basic premise of Jamy and D.J.’s workshop was that because scientists are used to dealing with nature (which doesn’t lie) then they are just as easily fooled by charlatans & pseudoscientists as the rest of us.  On the other hand, magicians are professional deceivers, so they have an intimate knowledge of how people can be deceived and (perhaps more importantly) how people can deceive themselves.

In the process of their talk, Jamy and D.J. went through a history of magic & deception, touching upon the Reginald Scot, French magician Robert Houdin, founders of the Spiritualist movement (such as the Fox Sisters & Davenport Brothers),  Houdini, Joseph Dunninger, Milbourne Christopher, and Uri Geller.