Back in my youth, when I was an even colder hearted visciously skeptical atheist than I am today, I used to delight in James Randi and his anti-charlatan crusade. randi.org (or maybe it was jref.org back then) was one of the first websites I can remember visiting, clad in grey and square low resolution icons and defined by auto-generated directory indexes. I may have mellowed a teeny tiny bit (God I hope so), but Mr. Randi is still out there, doing his thing.

James used to be a performance magician. He figured it was a fair and honourable profession, making people happy. At some point in his career he developed a serious case of righteous indignation against the magicians, charlatans, prophets, spoon benders and assorted fakers who took it too far, pretending that they believed in their own powers, praying on people’s honest desire to believe, making a buck out of deception. Since then he has been a one man bulldozer for truth, a big bearded Buffy the Charlatan Slayer. He founded the James Randi Educational Foundation and dedicated it to casting the clean light of reason into the foggy corners of the ‘supernatural’. Among his greatest inventions is the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge: anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal, supernatural or occult power under conditions of reasonable observation gets a meellion bucks. No takers yet.

I happened across his weekly commentary. Apparently he’s still at it and going strong. One of the articles, titled “Sad News” is a collection of brief remembrances of of six of of his acquaintances, recently deceased. Those remembered aren’t just doubters, there are more mystics and apologists in the list than scientists.

Hard on that news came a further shock. Dr. Jacques Benveniste, the scientist I battled on the matter of water having a “memory” that enabled it to produce homeopathic effects, died suddenly at the beginning of this month. Jacques was a colorful showman who spoke of scientific witch-hunts and Galileo-style prosecutions by Nature Magazine and orthodox scientists who opposed his theories. He was a hero to those inclined to regard science as a form of modern-day Inquisition. He looked upon himself as a Newton challenging a petty-minded, mechanistic view of the universe.

This could be read as the well balanced compassion of a mature man. I suspect that is what it is. But it also hints at a cohort of professional skeptics and believers who have grown old together. The majority of the world isn’t all that much interested either in paranormal claims or rigorous attempts to penetrate them. Those on both sides of the occult fence however, have given a lot of attention and time to each other. Have some become, if not friends, intimates? Geeks mostly, on both sides, who believe the “truth” matters even if they define it differently. Old enemies, propping each other up with their fists. If I was inclined to write novels, I’d be tempted by this scenario somehow.