Ray Hyman, Spoon Bender Extraordinaire

Today's guest speaker in Imagination class was Ray Hyman, professor emeritus in our department and a professional magician and skeptic, best known for his expertise in debunking parapsychological claims. During his lecture he did several magic tricks and demonstrated spoon-bending.

He also told us the story of the time back in 1972 when the colonel who headed DARPA called him and asked him to come down to Stanford the very next day, because they thought they may have finally found a real psychic! This turned out to be Uri Geller, the charismatic Israeli who was on TV all the time back in the 70s, demonstrating his talent, which was primarily the aforementioned spoon-bending. Barbara Walters had a display-case "shrine" set up in her house to honor him and his bent spoons, and gushed about how he had "changed her life." Ray quipped that he was as good at spoon-bending as Geller, but since he didn't have as much sex appeal, he never even got invited to Walters' house to see the shrine.

YouTube: Ray Hyman on PBS
YouTube: Uri Geller Outwitted by Johnny Carson
An xkcd Comic to Mark the Occasion, found by fractal9091, who says to hover your mouse over it for the full effect