詹姆斯·兰迪

詹姆士·兰迪（英语：James Randi，出生时全名为Randall James Hamilton Zwinge，1928年8月7日—2020年10月20日），美国籍加拿大裔舞台魔术师、科学怀疑论者，而且是其同名基金会，詹姆士· 兰迪教育基金会的创始人。

由于1970年代的美国有不少自称有超能力的人在表演超能力，于是兰迪参与许多揭秘超能力的节目，在节目中表演魔术展示（伪）超能力者是如何表演这些魔术的。例如他曾经在加拿大的警察局表演监狱逃脱术，展示用意念移动火柴盒，空手点亮灯泡。

1964年，兰迪宣布会用他自己的1000美金付给第一个可以展出超自然客观的证据。后来他以他创立的詹姆士·兰迪教育基金会（James Randi Educational Foundation, JREF）提出将100万美金给任何能够证明一个超自然能力的人，但证明方式必须是以科学实验为标准。此奖金与约翰·内文·马斯基林和霍迪尼的超自然挑战相似。

2010年，受电影《米尔克》影响，82岁高龄的兰迪在部落格对外承认自己是同性恋。

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.

Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi said he disliked the term's connotations and preferred to describe himself as an "investigator". He wrote about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Popoff, and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Before Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of $1 million to applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

Early life

Randi was born on August 7, 1928, in Toronto, Canada. He was the son of Marie Alice (née Paradis; 1906–1987) and George Randall Zwinge (1903–1967), an executive at Bell Telephone Company. He was of French, Danish and Austrian descent. He had a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone Sr. and reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors, who expected he would never walk again. He often skipped classes, and at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practiced as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press. As a teenager, he stumbled upon a church where the pastor claimed to read minds. When Randi interrupted the performance and showed the parishioners how the trick worked, the pastor's wife called the police and Randi spent four hours in a jail cell. This inspired his career as a scientific skeptic.

In his 20s, Randi posed as an astrologer, and to establish that they merely were doing simple tricks, he briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid Midnight under the name "Zo-ran" by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column. In his 30s, Randi worked in the UK, Europe, Philippine nightclubs, and Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural. One of his earliest reported experiences was that of seeing an evangelist using a version of the "one-ahead" technique to convince churchgoers of his divine powers.

Career

Magician

Although defining himself as a conjuror, Randi began a career as a professional stage magician and escapologist in 1946. He initially presented himself under his real name, Randall Zwinge, which he later dropped in favor of "The Amazing Randi". Early in his career, he performed numerous escape acts from jail cells and safes around the world. On February 7, 1956, he appeared live on NBC's Today show, where he remained for 104 minutes in a sealed metal coffin that had been submerged in a hotel swimming pool, breaking what was said to be Harry Houdini's record of 93 minutes, though Randi called attention to the fact that he was much younger than Houdini had been when he established the original record in 1926.