Indigo Nights's electrons arrived as:

>Are these chimera real?  Hmmm, I don't know.  I'm more
>inclined to believe that they MIGHT and that, like the
>mysteries of the galaxies, we have yet to develop the
>technology to be able to determine how to access and
>more positively connect with such energies.
>
>Is there a market for this?  Oh, you bet there is!  I
>take it none of you has watched Crossing Over, which I
>first caught on Sci-Fi and then watched it move to
>mainstream TV.  I suppose those of you who believe
>such things are impossible also don't believe that
>many a police department engages psychics to help with
>some of their hardest-to- crack cases.

The fact that science sometimes discovers startling new truths is often
used by believers in the supernatural to imply that only someone
close-minded would dismiss the possiblities they conjure out of the
unknown.  Quite to the contrary, however, the belief systems they hold
are ancient and dogmatic and it is the notion that such beliefs are not
now nor never were based in any truth that requires the risk and courage
of an open mind.

Television shows such as "Crossing Over" prey unashamedly on the gullible
through an old mentalist's trick called "cold reading" in which a
talented, albeit self-deceptive or unscrupulous, con-man throws out only
an "R" and gets poor bereaved Aunt Tilda to credit him with having
contacted the spirit of her beloved spouse "Robert."  John Edward is
stuffing his pockets with profits by using a shameful scam in which, one
would hope, legitimate historical museums would not allow themselves to
participate.  Presenting the folklore of "haunted" spaces in the context
of a region's mythology is fine, but promoting nonsense for which there
is absolutely no credible evidence is quite another.

And, by the way, while there have been documented cases of desperate or
misguided law enforcement wasting money by employing the services of
psychics, there is no evidence to suggest that someone calling himself a
psychic is any better at guessing a missing person's whereabouts or a
murderer's identity than anyone else.  The million-dollar prize magician
James Randi has offered to anyone able to demonstrate a single
supernatural ability goes unclaimed for years (http://www.randi.org/).
If abilities such as those feigned on "Crossing Over" were really to
exist, they would as universally self-evident and unclouded by mystery as
the services of a local hospital's on-call surgeon -- a person whose
abilities on the day your appendix bursts had better be real and give you
a considerably better chance than being operated on by the hospital's
plumber.

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