John Walker's Electronic House

Thank goodness for James Randi.

Yesterday’s brief foray into the world of Uri Geller has set me off again in my tireless campaign to stare in shock at his continued nonsense. Perhaps laughing is unfair, and if his current obsessions get worse, the laughter may become more sympathetic. But meanwhile…

Geller is proof that a desperate public will cling to anything, no matter how ridiculous, in the hope of self-aggrandising fulfilment. (I’m keenly aware that since I’m a Christian, eyebrows will be raised at me for such comments, and perhaps with good reason. Being a Christian skeptic is often awkward, but I maintain that it’s essential. While I believe Christianity to be quite true, I do not therefore necessarily believe the actions and statements made by Christians to be true. I have been present at occasions where Christians have used cold reading techniques, or otherwise flat-out manipulated people to believe things that are clearly untrue, and it upsets me far more than I’m willing to write about today – the torrent of angry, tear-filled swearing and vitriol would melt the screens of monitors. However, to my understanding, Christianity has the opposite effect of being self-aggrandising). Um, yes, Geller. Is it profitable? It’s probably true then.

But that is to forget the extraordinary amount of work he does for charity. Yes, every time Uri puts some loose change in a plastic box, you can be sure you’ll get to hear about it. An interesting thing about his charity page: click on the links to find information about the charities he donates to, and you find yourself on another page of his site telling you about how much money he’s given, rather than about the charity itself. A little odd. But this is very rude of me. He is giving lots of money to charities, and despite the vulgarity of needing to shout about it in every conceivable way, this is to be celebrated. Bravo.

So instead, let’s look at another interest: raising money for himself.

As I’ve linked in the post below, his latest venture is the wonderful Uribike. “Bend it, bag it, bike”. “Bend it”, see? Because after all, Uri Geller is famous for one thing, and one thing alone. His pathetic and unambiguous failures to support various lower league football clubs with his mindpowers go forgotten. The endless failed live experiments on television are not mentioned. The times he’s been caught cheating, perhaps most importantly the time he was caught in Israel with his fraudulent stage show, are blips in history. If Uri can do anything, it’s render cutlery useless. He likes to pretend he’s sick of this label, that it’s the tiresome milstone around his neck. But read any press release he produces and you can be sure to read “spoon bender Uri Geller”. And to give him his credit, he does bend spoons. A lot. You know, by bending them. Have a go – they bend really easily. A quick tip though, it’s best to distract people when you do it, or it looks a bit rubbish. So when your bike bends, who better to promote it than Uri “Is my name on it?” Geller?! Yours for a mere 300UKP.

But forget the bike – another recent venture is far more worth your attention. It’s his project Uri Geller Design. You could have your company’s website designed by his team of creative experts, and have a site that looks as incredible as this.

Web technology pushed to the limits.

Such legends as Roger Moore and Tony Curtis have received the logo-spinning excellence of his creative vision.

But the deal is better than that. No, it is. “We truly believe our customers receive a unique service, because additional to our competitively priced expertise, we will also produce a positive impact on your customers, with the free bonus of associating your company with an established successful name like Geller Design.” That’s right! After paying his company to design your website, you will receive, absolutely free, the bonus of your site having been designed by his company! There can be no doubt about his claim – his customers will receive a truly unique service.

Finally, in this celebration of all things Geller, we come to the number 11.

It’s been a bit of a thing for him for a while now. You see, he kept being drawn to look at clocks when they read “11:11”. I fully assume that he was scientific about this, and was noting down all the times he looked at clocks and they read times other than “11:11” before concluding any significance about this phenomenon. And then, rather unfortunately, when the terrorist attack on the US occurred on the 11th of a month, the proof became impossible to ignore.

This is the result.

It’s kind of freaky, really. Remember the policeman in Dark City, drawing spirals on the walls of his room? But, you know, not right about what’s going on. Highlights of this astonishing presence of the number 11 include (and these are all geniune):

With regard to the horrific bombings in Madrid, did you notice that the date was the 11th? Also if you add the date 1+1+0+3+2+0+0+4 add up to 11! Another interesting thing is that the was 182 days between the landmark date of sept 11 and march 11th, and if you add these together it makes 11

11=3, in binary arithmetic. 3 is the cornerstone of the trinity and also Hinduism.

HELLHEAVEN sounds like eleven phonetically

*World war one = 11 letters,
*World war two = 11 letters
*World war III = 11 letters

Uri Geller born 20, Dec.1946. 1+9+4+6+2+0=22.11+11=22.

Derren Brown = 11 letters

Harry Potter [11 letters]

Encarta World Atlas says that New York City and the World Trade Centre fall exactly on 74 degrees west, 7+4 = 11

I’11 leave it to you to draw your own conc1us1ons, but I think you’11 have to agree that he’s onto something here. The number 11 does appear to occur in existence. Rea11y incredible.

Back to my original comment – James Randi. If you want to learn more about Mr Ge11er, I strongly recommend the book, The Truth About Uri Geller, written by Randi. And his website continues to stand as a beacon of rationale amidst increasing streams of complete nonsense. While it’s relatively unimportant that people are so willing to believe in the extraordinary that they’11 interpret simple card tricks as mental manipulation, it’s far more worrying when certain individuals give people the impression that they can be healed by magic, or even more commonly, spend all their money on it. Also, Randi has found this fantastic website that contains homeopathetic cures for all known ailments. Including this result I generated:

The homeopathic remedy which best matches your symptoms is Psorinum Of your symptoms, it applies to these:

* mind; delusions, imaginations, hallucinations, illusions; devils; that everyone is possessed by a devil;
* mind; desires, wants; beat children;

Enjoy entering your favourite elevens into that. In the meaneleven, I’ll eleven eleven, if it’s eleven eleven eleven.

Eleven eleven, eleven.