The eccentric revealing his tricks above is Joseph Dunninger. He was the “Master Mind of Mental Radio”, “The Mastermind of Modern Mystery”, and simply “The Amazing Dunninger”. A  man who credited his acts to neither magic nor the supernatural, Dunninger none the less became a wealthy man. His friends and employers were populated by celebrity; Babe Ruth, the Duke of Windsor, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, and freaking Thomas Edison too.

Harry Houdini was one of these popular friends. Houdini had a fight to pick with the spiritualists. These were men claiming they could talk to the dead, faith heal, or do anything by a higher power. He took every chance he could to show his audience that this was not so. Dunninger admired this trait and became another magic man who played the friendly skeptic. Revealing tricks and calling himself a “mentalist”, he joined Houdini in a class of new magicians. Men who claimed no higher power. Men who openly admitted it’s all a trick. Denninger questioned on the nature of his powers, replied:

“I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a thought-reader. If a man comes up to me and hits me in the eye, I don’t have to be a mind-reader to know his thoughts; he dislikes me.”

-From James Randi Educational Foundation An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

Now, both of them are dead. Not surprisingly, spiritualists don’t hear them say anything. But, if they did, it would probably be something like, “Hey. This is pretty ironic, don’t you think?“. To which the spiritualist would most likely shrug, and disregard it as the side-effect of constantly wearing a bejeweled turban.

However, their voices are still not dead to one man.  “The Amazing Kreskin” has a creed carbon copied from those now corpsed conjurers. He is a mentalist, a disbeliever, and quite wealthy. His original name was George Joseph Kresge Jr., but legally changed it to “The Amazing Kreskin” in order to better suit his career. He has made some predictions for 2011. And a Target commercial.  Never mind the advert, watch the predictions (would embed it, but AOL html is pure hatred to wordpress).

I‘m most provoked by his last comment regarding the internet.

“There’s an excitement in learning new things. And I’m worried, cus I can foresee that we’re going to become indulged by something Einstein worried about. That, some day, man would have infinite information instantly by pressing a button. What a nightmare! Because you know what it tends to do? Stifle the most important tool that we have: the imagination.”

-The Amazing Kreskin

Hm. There’s a big idea. I think he might be right. Assuming by information, Einstein is including ShoopDaWoop, ROFLcopter, and keyboard cat. Not that I don’t enjoy them…

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Tune in tomorrow for my 2011 prophecy. Tune in next week for my response to this Patton Oswalt article that is upsetting the nerd lords (and is also kind of related to the Einstein paraphrase Kreskin thing).


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