Where, one wonders, are the psychics and various x-omancers who saw
this one coming?
Too busy adjusting their astrological charts to take
Comet McNaught C/2006 P1's effect into account, I'll wager. The world has become a little less safe for the Linda Shaws, the William Smiths, the Petra du Preezes, etc., and that can't be all bad.
But allow me to make a prediction: the list of excuses for not taking up Randi's Challenge will become significantly longer with ever more inventive fictions being concocted for the sole purpose of squirming out of the "put up, or shut up" dilemma. The irony, of course, is that the bigmouths of these scam industries won't be able to predict just when Randi's about to pounce on them.
In time, that list of excuses may even acquire an unanticipated value as a cultural artefact or curio - a testament of sorts to mankind's capacity for folly -, and be included in Randi's test agreement as a separate multiple-choice questionnaire with the heading, "I Decline Scientific Testing Because...," plus an instruction that reads, "Please tick the applicable items. Do not add any new ones. There aren't any. They're all listed. We know this, having heard them all before."
'Luthon64
