Spoon Bending
Offline So, I just finished reading 'NEXT', by Michael Crichton, and it was really awful. It did get me thinking about the rather questionable mental state of the author, though - and particularly, his claims regarding supernatural experiences he's claimed to have taken part in:
Michael Crichton is a spoon-bender.
Now, I don't know anything at all about spoon bendings or 'TK Parties', aside from the fact that they apparently exist, so I went to go look stuff up. I found this:
That appears interesting to me, because it's not the typical trick - and the bowl's shape does not lend it to being bent in half so easily. Does anyone know (...anyone intelligent. That disqualifies you, Luminon) how this trick was likely performed? Are there telltale signs of tool use I should note, or even perhaps a natural explanation of how the story might be true (...I don't find it likely. I tried, and there's no way I could bend one of my dinner spoon's bowls like that)
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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...Wait... I'm an idiot.
I made the assumption that the spoon was a standard stainless steel spoon. If it were made out of a soft metal, this trick would be quite easy to perform and dupe someone with, wouldn't it?
EDIT: Zeus point this out to me:
Looks like adrenaline's our culprit. It does explain more or less every claim (the metal feeling like putty, people being unable to bend the cutlery back into shape after / being unable to duplicate the effect at a different time, kids having an easier time bending than adults, etc)
I didn't realize the events were organized like that. The website I linked to made it sound like it was a more complacent affair.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
In the top picture, notice the lighting on the bent portion of the spoon. Compare that to the lighting on the handle. Notice how the handle's shine is uniform in shape and ends in the middle? The shine on the bent portion does not do that. At the bottom of that shine, there's a shadow running into it, meaning there's a depression in the metal, probably from some sort of tool.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
There is no spoon.
(Someone had to say it)
I haven't looked into it at all, but apparently the Australian Skeptic soceity knows the trick of spoon bending, has done it at conferences with the hotel's spoons and will teach full members how to do it. No special powers required.
Zen-atheist wielding Occam's katana.
Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." - Luke 12:51
I saw somebody do it once, but not with the um... spoon part of the spoon... just the handle. I was too far away to hope to see the trick, but I did notice that he did a lot of misdirection that immediately gives away illusion and sleight of hand.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
James Randi debunked Uri Gellar doing that way back in the '70s. Michael Crichton has gone a bit nuts - he wrote that book before saying global warming wasn't real and the idea was some kind of conspiracy.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
I would absolutely love it if TK were real, but spoon bending is useless. These motherfuckers have to show me more than that. That's why I'm introducing the Bend My Ride Challenge. Here's how it goes:
I'm going to need a new car relatively soon. Luckily, I have an elderly relative who's in a nice retirement community and set for the rest of her life. My inheritance from her will be substantial (in the neighborhood of 75K) and I could probably talk her into giving it to me now given that I'm in single branch of the family's that's always been helpful and never asked for anything. As far as my tastes go, that's easily enough money to get myself another car. Given proper notice, if a practicing TK artist can crush my current car using only his supposed powers, I'll give him like thirty thousand bucks. If he acts quickly, he can also win the Randi prize, but since I'm limiting my contest to TK's, it's more prestigious.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Quick, everyone with TK ability...raise my hand.
LC >;-}>
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.
I'll ask the same.
...That's not my hand.
What good is a fucking bent spoon going to do? Those corners look sharp, rendering it useless for its intended purpose and you're telling me it was made with soft metal in the first place, so it wasn't very good to begin with.
Basically someone with TK can turn crap into shit. At least alchemists can turn shit into gold!
Paul.
"'My dear,' Madame Delbene replied, 'the universe runs itself, and the eternal laws inherent in Nature suffice, without any first cause or prime mover, to produce all that is and all that we know; the perpetual movement of matter explains everything: why need we supply a motor to that which is ever in motion? The universe is an assemblage of unlike entities which act and react mutually and successively with and against each other; I discern no start, no finish, no fixed boundaries, this universe I see only as an incessant passing from one state into another, and within it only particular beings which forever change shape and form, but I acknowledge no universal cause behind and distinct from the universe and which gives it existence and which procures the modifications in the particular beings composing it... the absolute contrary holds... We need not fret if we find nothing to substitute for chimeras, and above all let us never accept as cause for what we do not comprehend something else we comprehend even less." - Marquis de Sade, Juliette, pg. 43.
Bent spoons are extraction tools with a very specific purpose - a certain Geller György (known as Uri to his mates, I hear) has been using them for years to extract large quantities of money from people's pockets.
These should not be confused with the other Geller tool - the denial that he is making bucks out of people's gullibility. This is also an extraction tool, but only for extracting the proverbial piss.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Oh, sorry.