The girl with X-ray eyes
QUESTION Has James Randi ever come close to paying out his million-dollar challenge to prove the existence of the paranormal? In 1964, the magician James Randi offered a prize of $1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate a paranormal ability under strict scientific observation.
The prize money increased over time and, eventually, in 1996, he set up the James Randi Education Foundation offering the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
A host of mediums, dowsers, levitators, clairvoyants and spoon- benders have tried, and failed, the challenge.
Perhaps the closest Randi has come to paying out the top prize was to natasha Demkina, ‘the girl with X-ray eyes’.
The young Russian was supposedly able to diagnose cancer, brain tumours and heart conditions by apparently staring into the bodies of patients.
In March 2004, she was tested by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), who presented her with seven subjects with various medical conditions. She needed to identify at least five correctly to pass the test.
After more than four hours of testing, natasha managed to identify four subjects correctly — not a bad result.
Sceptics point to the fact she failed to notice a large metal plate covering a missing section of the skull in a man who’d had a large brain tumour removed.
They concluded she was using a coldreading technique relying on feedback from patients.
The one case that startled Randi was that of Dr Arthur Lintgen. He was able to identify a piece of classical music just by staring at a vinyl record.
In 1982, Lintgen appeared on the ABC TV series That’s Incredible and, to the astonishment of Stimson Carrow, the professor of music theory at Temple University in Philadelphia, he was able to correctly identify 20 unlabelled records.
In 1982, Randi selected a number of recordings, covered the labels, placed each in identical packaging and shuffled them. Lintgen, who was very shortsighted, took the first recording off the pile, removed his glasses with thick lenses, placed his eye at the edge of the recording and slowly rotated it.
He eventually correctly identified the recording as Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and further managed to identify an additional overture on the LP, the Prometheus Overture.
Randi later recounted his shock in the Skeptical Inquirer, saying: ‘Certainly, Arthur Lintgen comes as close to (a real magician) as I ever hope so see!’
But Lintgen was not in line for the prize — he had an extraordinary talent rather than psychic abilities. He could use the quality of the pressing, and the length and depth of the grooves to identify classical music.
Derek Smith, Doncaster, S. Yorks. QUESTION Why don’t modern composers produce music like Beethoven and Mozart? Is it a lost art? In THE words of J. B. Priestley: ‘Demand brings supply. If the English changed from football to chamber music, we’d soon have a few masterpieces.’
Richard Morris, Southsea. TODAy’S composers seem to be incapable of producing music of the standard and genius of Beethoven and Mozart.
This is possibly because composers of the past conceived their works through inspiration, while their modern counterparts construct theirs by a kind of artificial contrivance, which has the effect of rendering them — though often ingenious — stark, strident and somewhat inharmonious.
R. N. Parkin, Nottingham. THOUgH I disagree when you consider the fine pieces composed by John Williams, the question highlights an example of Price’s Law.
Derek de Solla Price discovered that there were a handful of people who dominated the publications within a subject.
In its basic form, the law says that the square root of the total number of contributors do 50 per cent of the work, and this applies to all creative production.
Classical music spans hundreds of years with thousands of composers yet only a dozen or so, such as Beethoven and Mozart, have achieved wide, long-lasting recognition.
When we look at the amount of music composed (Beethoven 120 hours and Mozart 200 hours), it is only a small number of pieces that are heard in adverts, films or on the radio.
Graham Spence, Flimby, Cumbria. QUESTION Which was the last country in the world to ban slavery? TRAgICALLy, more than 30 million people are still enslaved worldwide. Sexual, labour- based and human trafficking are common forms of exploitation because, while many countries have laws to protect vulnerable people, they differ in how rigorously they are enforced.
Legally speaking, the last country to abolish traditional slavery (when people are considered legal property) was Mauritania, on the western fringe of Africa’s Sahara Desert, in 1981.
After increasing international pressure, politicians passed a law in 2007 to prosecute slave owners. But convictions are rare and the practice is arguably still more common and readily accepted there than anywhere else on Earth.
Mauritania’s government has long refused to undertake nationwide studies that would provide data to estimate the scale of the problem.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.