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The Brocken Railway (German: Brockenbahn) is one of three tourist metre gauge railways which together with the Harz Railway and Selke Valley Railway form the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways railway network in the Harz mountain range of Germany.
As early as 1869 there was a design for the construction of a railway to the Brocken, but it was turned down. A resubmission in 1895 succeeded, however, and, on 30 May 1896, the construction permit was issued once Prince Otto of Stolberg-Wernigerode had allocated the requisite land. The first section of the Brocken Railway, from Drei Annen Hohne to Schierke, was opened on 20 June 1898 and construction work for the remaining section up to the Brocken was begun on 4 October 1898. Initially services to the Brocken only ran between 30 April to 15 October; during the winter trains terminated at Schierke station. At the end of the Second World War significant damage occurred to the track, mainly through bombs and grenades, in the course of fighting in the Harz, which had been declared a fortress. The section to the Brocken was only reopened, therefore, in 1949.
The operator of the Brocken Railway until 5 August 1948 was the Nordhausen-Wernigerode Railway Company (NWE), after which it belonged from the Association of Publicly-Owned Companies (VVB), part of Saxony-Anhalt's transport services, and, from 11 April 1949 to the Deutsche Reichsbahn in East Germany. Only after the German winter sports championships in 1950, which took place in Schierke, did winter trains run up to the Brocken summit. A railway station at Eckerloch was also built for the championships which was closed again after they had ended. The location of the former sidings at Eckerloch station can still be easily seen.
Goods trains continued to work the Brocken Railway right up to 1987, although since the construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 the Brocken and its station had been part of the out-of-bounds area and thus not accessible to the public. Up to that time the trains transported coal, oil and building materials up the mountain for the East German Border Troops and Soviet soldiers who were stationed there.
Passengers services on the Brocken Railway continued to run from Drei Annen Hohne to Schierke; usually only two pairs of passenger train pairs ran each day;[1] however they could only be used with a special pass, because Schierke lay in the border zone with West Germany.
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Stop being so lazy Darth - just pick it up!
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Project 366:
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47345 Scimitar at Newton Abbot on 23rd August 1992. This was another of the Tinsley MDWT restricted use class 47s that were set to flogging up and down between Exeter and Waterloo. The service is the 1O37 1105 Plymouth - Waterloo, which 345 worked as far as Exeter. (t190-13f)
Used in Our Daily Challenge: No Words Photogame www.flickr.com/groups/ourdailychallenge/discuss/721576236...
Using a Leica somehow lets you see more photo oppotunities and you are less consumed with camera options / setttings.
Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Used products:
Poppystamps - Brevilla Houses
Circle Die
Distress Oxides
Efco - German Sentiment
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Using the wind or falling water has been used in industry for many years.
The earliest evidence of a water-driven wheel is probably the Perachora wheel (3rd c. BC), in Greece. The earliest written reference is in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium. Wikipedia.
This water mill uses the water flowing from the moat running around two sides of Dunham Massey Hall.
The wheel here is an overshot wheel. The overshot wheel was a later innovation in waterwheels and was around two and a half times more efficient than the undershot.
SENDRA cowboy boots
Special edition made for »Boots by Boots«, Stuttgart, Germany
103 MA I 2764 8
Rot, Weiß, Schwarz
... converted with Adobe 5.0 ... Redfield's Fractalius, using the glow 100 settings. A duplicate was made of the original photograph and converted to an abstract image using settings from Redfield's Fractalius' Glow 200, with the original pasted over and reduced to 30% opacity.
Here's a link to Hmood's original ...
www.flickr.com/photos/33724967@N04/4287527797/
This from Saudi Tourism ...
The Hisma Mountains provide some of the most exceptional canyon landscape in the country. Here you'll find isolated examples of plants and animals which have been preserved by the ruggedness of the country.
The Red Sea is the western border of the province. It's a four hour drive west of Tabuk, and provides some of the most beautiful diving in the world.
Tabuk is a wishing-bone shaped province that includes part of the the Hisma, Hejaz and Shammar mountain ranges, as well 400km of the Red Sea coastline and the Gulf of Aqaba.
Tabuk is also the name of the capital of the province. It's an ancient town dating back 3,500 years. Situated in the north of the Kingdom, on the pilgrimage and trade routes, it was the scene of Prophet Mohammad’s (pbuh) most dangerous battle 9H (630).
It’s now home to the King Abdul Aziz Military City, King Faisal Air Base, and home of the Royal Saudi Land Forces, as well as military academies and infra-structure to support the personnel.
The Hisma mountain range near the Gulf of Aqaba provides a superb landscape for camping and hiking. On Jebel Lawz and in Al Bad in Wadi Ifal there are half a dozen well-preserved and unadorned Nabataean tombs cut into the hillside.
Weather is moderate and humid in summer, but pleasant most of the year. There are nicely managed sandy beaches and some major fishing towns such as Duba, where arrangements can be made for boat hire and fishing expeditions.
The city of Tayma is 264 km to the southeast of Tabuk on the western edge of the Great Nafud Desert. It is an old oasis which contains a variety of archaeological sites dating from the prehistoric age to the Islamic period.
Surrounded by agricultural fields with numerous water wells and gardens, the city has developed around its great well, called Haddaj. Attractions include the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography and Cemeteries.
I used an orange gel ( Roscoe 15, I think), put it over the lens of my camera and did a custom white balance off a sheet of paper. When I did a test shot after taking away the gel and setting the white balance to custom, everything turned blue. Then I took that same gel and put it over the beauty dish. This has the effect of keeping the subject normal color, but throwing everything else blue. This is sort of like setting the W/B to tungsten and mixing daylight with a CTO covered strobe, but the effect is more intense. To warm up the subject a little more, I added a 1/8 CTO gel on top of the Roscoe 15 on the beauty dish.
Setup shot on my blog:
mizomi.blogspot.com
Canon 5D iso 400 70-200mm L @ 200mm 1/200 @ f8
Used in bridged mode, you have a very capable 300W + 300W mono block setup. No longer in my collection
using cameraleather.com (cameraleather.com/)'s Claret Composite Leather (cameraleather.com/colors/claret.htm).
Breeding behaviour
Where possible, the birds excavate a nesting burrow into the soil. Sometimes they will make use of Manx shearwater or rabbit burrows. Where burrowing is not possible, the birds nest under boulders or in cracks and cavities in cliffs.
The birds defend the nesting site and its immediate surround, and use it in subsequent years. Puffins lay only a single egg, in late April or early May. Both parents incubate it for 36-45 days, and they share the feeding duties until the chick is ready to fledge.
The fledging period is very variable, ranging from 34 to 60 days, depending on the area and year.
Adult birds desert their young shortly before they are ready to leave the nest. The timing of the breeding in puffin colonies is highly synchronised, and so the departure of all adults takes place within a few days.
The young birds leave their nest burrow and make their way to the sea, normally under cover of darkness to avoid predators. In some colonies, for instance in Iceland, nearby bright lights confuse the young birds, which then fly into the light and end up on city streets.
Puffins usually reach breeding age at 5-6 years old, and often live for 20 years.
Fanny Bonnington stood in the dock of the Blenheim Supreme Court on 21 October 1884 charged with the murder of her baby daughter.
Fanny was a 16-year-old domestic servant to Blenheim brewer and scion of the community Henry Dodson. Returning from a business trip to Wellington, Dodson found a trail of blood to the outdoor toilet. It was soon discovered that Fanny had dropped the body of her new born female child into it and covered her with soil. Knife wounds were found on the body and Fanny was duly charged with murder. She was found not guilty on grounds of insanity and served several months in the Wellington Asylum before Dodson arranged to collect her and return her to her family in the Wairau Valley.
Shown here is the knife which Fanny used to stab her baby. In highly unusual circumstances the knife has been retained as part of her criminal trial file
ABYB 23218/4 26
collections.archives.govt.nz/web/arena/search#/?q=R22888860
More information can be found here:
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MT18841023.2.24?phra...
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GRA18841022.2.7.14?i...
www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/122798742/old-murder-weapo...
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Material supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Used some canon fit yongnuo triggers with my Nikon sb900. Sent straight to the iPhone and uploaded here.
Reflective umbrella on axis slight camera left, reflector below. SB900 M 1/4
Use of this image on websites, blogs or other media is prohibited unless you have my specific and written permission. ©2010 Dawn Grace
Mehndi style tattoo by Dawn Grace.
These pictures are here to represent my work as a professional tattoo artist, and most of these designs were drawn specifically for each client. That said, i cannot email you pictures of my clients' custom work so that you can take it to another artist to have it done.
It's not fair to the people who pay to get tattooed by me. Tattooing is a personal decision, and should you decide to get tattooed, put thought into what you want and find an artist who is willing and able to draw and tattoo exactly what you desire.
Do not leave comments about my clients' bodies or choice of subject matter. Such comments are annoying and will be deleted immediately.
This used to be the route of such trains as the Lake Cities, the Midlander and the Erie Limited. Those Erie Railroad trains are long gone now and occasional freight service by the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway is all that remains. The view is looking eastward on the stretch of track between Kent and Brady Lake, Ohio. The path to the left is the Portage Hike and Bike Trail.
A Chinese ceramic lotus shaped insence burner with a Montblanc. wrist watch.
THE HISTORY OF INCENSE:
The word "perfume" comes from Old Provincial French perfumar - per "through" and fumar "to smoke". This explains the art of perfumery, believed to have begun in the Middle East with the burning of incense. The use of incense dates back to biblical times and may have originated in Egypt, where aromatic trees were imported from Arabia to be used in religious ceremonies.
Ganjin, a Buddhist priest from Tang China, reached Japan in 754 AD. This venerable priest, well known for introducing Buddhist precepts into Japan, should also be remembered for his accomplishment in the history of incense. through medical incense and the skill of nerikoh (blended incense balls), Ganjin introduced a thriving incense culture from Tang dynasty China into Japan.
Takimono, a kind of nerikoh, is made of powdered incense for medical use, together with binding substances such as nectar and treacle. there was no fragrance incense before nerikoh in Japan, and people used to burn medical incense to generate fragrances. As nerikoh is a mixture of ingredients, different mixtures created subtly different fragrances. As a result, people made their own favorite fragrances from original concoctions. In this context, incense was no longer used as a religious offering, but as a tasteful pleasure called soradakimono designed for the enjoyment of graceful aromas. This was the start of the esthetic and artistic world of graceful incense-burning in Japan.
Court nobles in the Heian period (8th to 12th centuries) concocted original takimono in search of graceful and sophisticated fragrances for personal use. Different blends were used for different times, occasions or seasons, according to the mood of the moment. To impregnate their clothes or suffuse their rooms for guests, court people burnt their favorite blend of incense. “Takimonoawase”, an incense game where participants competed to produce better fragrances, also started in this period. Not quite satisfied with the simple fragrances of flowers and fruits in nature, court nobles created fragrances for their pleasure, thus establishing the foundation of a peculiar incense culture that was firmly attached to a keen awareness of the seasons. This is how the essential quality of Koh-Do (“the Way of Incense”) was formed.
Incense is aromatic biotic material that releases fragrant smoke when burned. The term refers to the material itself, rather than to the aroma that it produces. Incense is used for aesthetic reasons, and in therapy, meditation, and ceremony. It may also be used as a simple deodorant or insectifuge.
Incense is composed of aromatic plant materials, often combined with essential oils. The forms taken by incense differ with the underlying culture, and have changed with advances in technology and increasing number of uses.
Incense can generally be separated into two main types: "indirect-burning" and "direct-burning". Indirect-burning incense (or "non-combustible incense") is not capable of burning on its own, and requires a separate heat source. Direct-burning incense (or "combustible incense") is lit directly by a flame and then fanned or blown out, leaving a glowing ember that smoulders and releases a smoky fragrance. Direct-burning incense is either a paste formed around a bamboo stick, or a paste that is extruded into a stick or cone shape.
HISTORY:
The word incense comes from Latin incendere meaning "to burn".
Combustible bouquets were used by the ancient Egyptians, who employed incense in both pragmatic and mystical capacities. Incense was burnt to counteract or obscure malodorous products of human habitation, but was widely perceived to also deter malevolent demons and appease the gods with its pleasant aroma. Resin balls were found in many prehistoric Egyptian tombs in El Mahasna, giving evidence for the prominence of incense and related compounds in Egyptian antiquity. One of the oldest extant incense burners originates from the 5th dynasty. The Temple of Deir-el-Bahari in Egypt contains a series of carvings that depict an expedition for incense.
The Babylonians used incense while offering prayers to divining oracles. Incense spread from there to Greece and Rome.
Incense burners have been found in the Indus Civilization (3300–1300 BCE). Evidence suggests oils were used mainly for their aroma. India also adopted techniques from East Asia, adapting the formulation to encompass aromatic roots and other indigenous flora. This was the first usage of subterranean plant parts in incense. New herbs like Sarsaparilla seeds, frankincense, and cypress were used by Indians.
At around 2000 BCE, Ancient China began the use of incense in the religious sense, namely for worship. Incense was used by Chinese cultures from Neolithic times and became more widespread in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The earliest documented use of incense comes from the ancient Chinese, who employed incense composed of herbs and plant products (such as cassia, cinnamon, styrax, and sandalwood) as a component of numerous formalized ceremonial rites. Incense usage reached its peak during the Song dynasty with numerous buildings erected specifically for incense ceremonies.
Brought to Japan in the 6th century by Korean Buddhist monks, who used the mystical aromas in their purification rites, the delicate scents of Koh (high-quality Japanese incense) became a source of amusement and entertainment with nobles in the Imperial Court during the Heian Era 200 years later. During the 14th-century Ashikaga shogunate, a samurai warrior might perfume his helmet and armor with incense to achieve an aura of invincibility (as well as to make a noble gesture to whoever might take his head in battle). It wasn't until the Muromachi period during the 15th and 16th century that incense appreciation (kōdō) spread to the upper and middle classes of Japanese society.
COMPOSITION:
A variety of materials have been used in making incense. Historically there has been a preference for using locally available ingredients. For example, sage and cedar were used by the indigenous peoples of North America. Trading in incense materials comprised a major part of commerce along the Silk Road and other trade routes, one notably called the Incense Route.
Local knowledge and tools were extremely influential on the style, but methods were also influenced by migrations of foreigners, such as clergy and physicians.
COMBUSTIBLE BASE:
The combustible base of a direct burning incense mixture not only binds the fragrant material together but also allows the produced incense to burn with a self-sustained ember, which propagates slowly and evenly through an entire piece of incense with such regularity that it can be used to mark time. The base is chosen such that it does not produce a perceptible smell. Commercially, two types of incense base predominate:
Fuel and oxidizer mixtures: Charcoal or wood powder provides the fuel for combustion while an oxidizer such as sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate sustains the burning of the incense. Fragrant materials are added to the base prior to shaping, as in the case of powdered incense materials, or after, as in the case of essential oils. The formula for charcoal-based incense is superficially similar to black powder, though it lacks the sulfur.
Natural plant-based binders: Gums such as Gum Arabic or Gum Tragacanth are used to bind the mixture together. Mucilaginous material, which can be derived from many botanical sources, is mixed with fragrant materials and water. The mucilage from the wet binding powder holds the fragrant material together while the cellulose in the powder combusts to form a stable ember when lit. The dry binding powder usually comprises about 10% of the dry weight in the finished incense. These include:
Makko (incense powder) made from the bark of various trees in the genus Persea (such as Persea thunbergii)
Xiangnan pi (made from the bark of trees of genus Phoebe such as Phoebe nanmu or Persea zuihoensis.
Jigit: a resin based binder used in India
Laha or Dar: bark based powders used in Nepal, Tibet, and other East Asian countries.
Typical compositions burn at a temperature between 220 °C and 260 °C.
TYPES:
Incense is available in various forms and degrees of processing. They can generally be separated into "direct-burning" and "indirect-burning" types. Preference for one form or another varies with culture, tradition, and personal taste. The two differ in their composition due to the former's requirement for even, stable, and sustained burning.
INDIRECT-BURNING:
Indirect-burning incense, also called "non-combustible incense", is an aromatic material or combination of materials, such as resins, that does not contain combustible material and so requires a separate heat source. Finer forms tend to burn more rapidly, while coarsely ground or whole chunks may be consumed very gradually, having less surface area. Heat is traditionally provided by charcoal or glowing embers. In the West, the best known incense materials of this type are the resins frankincense and myrrh, likely due to their numerous mentions in the Bible. Frankincense means "pure incense", though in common usage refers specifically to the resin of the boswellia tree.
Whole: The incense material is burned directly in raw form on top of coal embers.
Powdered or granulated: Incense broken into smaller pieces burns quickly and provides brief but intense odor.
Paste: Powdered or granulated incense material is mixed with a sticky incombustible binder, such as dried fruit, honey, or a soft resin and then formed to balls or small pastilles. These may then be allowed to mature in a controlled environment where the fragrances can commingle and unite. Much Arabian incense, also called "Bukhoor" or "Bakhoor", is of this type, and Japan has a history of kneaded incense, called nerikō or awasekō, made using this method. Within the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, raw frankincense is ground into a fine powder and then mixed with various sweet-smelling essential oils.
DIRECT-BURNING:
Direct-burning incense, also called "combustible incense", is lit directly by a flame. The glowing ember on the incense will continue to smoulder and burn the rest of the incense without further application of external heat or flame. Direct-burning incense is either extruded, pressed into forms, or coated onto a supporting material. This class of incense is made from a moldable substrate of fragrant finely ground (or liquid) incense materials and odourless binder. The composition must be adjusted to provide fragrance in the proper concentration and to ensure even burning. The following types are commonly encountered, though direct-burning incense can take nearly any form, whether for expedience or whimsy.
Coil: Extruded and shaped into a coil without a core, coil incense can burn for an extended period, from hours to days, and is commonly produced and used in Chinese cultures.
Cone: Incense in this form burns relatively quickly. Incense cones were invented in Japan in the 1800s.
Cored stick: A supporting core of bamboo is coated with a thick layer of incense material that burns away with the core. Higher-quality variations have fragrant sandalwood cores. This type of incense is commonly produced in India and China. When used in Chinese folk religion, these are sometimes known as "joss sticks".
Dhoop or solid stick: With no bamboo core, dhoop incense is easily broken for portion control. This is the most commonly produced form of incense in Japan and Tibet.
Powder: The loose incense powder used for making indirect burning incense is sometimes burned without further processing. Powder incense is typically packed into long trails on top of wood ash using a stencil and burned in special censers or incense clocks.
Paper: Paper infused with incense, folded accordion style, is lit and blown out. Examples include Carta d'Armenia and Papier d'Arménie.
Rope: The incense powder is rolled into paper sheets, which are then rolled into ropes, twisted tightly, then doubled over and twisted again, yielding a two-strand rope. The larger end is the bight, and may be stood vertically, in a shallow dish of sand or pebbles. The smaller (pointed) end is lit. This type of incense is easily transported and stays fresh for extremely long periods. It has been used for centuries in Tibet and Nepal.
Moxa tablets, which are disks of powdered mugwort used in Traditional Chinese medicine for moxibustion, are not incenses; the treatment is by heat rather than fragrance.
Incense sticks may be termed joss sticks, especially in parts of East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Among ethnic Chinese and Chinese-influenced communities these are traditionally burned at temples, before the threshold of a home or business, before an image of a religious divinity or local spirit, or in shrines, large and small, found at the main entrance of every village. Here the earth god is propitiated in the hope of bringing wealth and health to the village. They can also be burned in front of a door or open window as an offering to heaven, or the devas. The word "joss" is derived from the Latin deus (god) via the Portuguese deos through the Javanese dejos, through Chinese pidgin English.
PRODUCTION:
The raw materials are powdered and then mixed together with a binder to form a paste, which, for direct burning incense, is then cut and dried into pellets. Incense of the Athonite Orthodox Christian tradition is made by powdering frankincense or fir resin, mixing it with essential oils. Floral fragrances are the most common, but citrus such as lemon is not uncommon. The incense mixture is then rolled out into a slab approximately 1 cm thick and left until the slab has firmed. It is then cut into small cubes, coated with clay powder to prevent adhesion, and allowed to fully harden and dry. In Greece this rolled incense resin is called 'Moskolibano', and generally comes in either a pink or green colour denoting the fragrance, with pink being rose and green being jasmine.
Certain proportions are necessary for direct-burning incense:
Oil content: an excess of oils may prevent incense from smoldering effectively. Resinous materials such as myrrh and frankincense are typically balanced with "dry" materials such as wood, bark and leaf powders.
Oxidizer quantity: Too little oxidizer in gum-bound incense may prevent the incense from igniting, while too much will cause the incense to burn too quickly, without producing fragrant smoke.
Binder: Water-soluble binders such as "makko" ensure that the incense mixture does not crumble when dry, dilute the mixture.
Mixture density: Incense mixtures made with natural binders must not be combined with too much water in mixing, or over-compressed while being formed, which would result in either uneven air distribution or undesirable density in the mixture, causing the incense to burn unevenly, too slowly, or too quickly.
Particulate size: The incense mixture has to be well pulverized with similarly sized particulates. Uneven and large particulates result in uneven burning and inconsistent aroma production when burned.
"Dipped" or "hand-dipped" direct-burning incense is created by dipping "incense blanks" made of unscented combustible dust into any suitable kind of essential or fragrance oil. These are often sold in the United States by flea-market and sidewalk vendors who have developed their own styles. This form of incense requires the least skill and equipment to manufacture, since the blanks are pre-formed in China or South East Asia.
Incense mixtures can be extruded or pressed into shapes. Small quantities of water are combined with the fragrance and incense base mixture and kneaded into a hard dough. The incense dough is then pressed into shaped forms to create cone and smaller coiled incense, or forced through a hydraulic press for solid stick incense. The formed incense is then trimmed and slowly dried. Incense produced in this fashion has a tendency to warp or become misshapen when improperly dried, and as such must be placed in climate-controlled rooms and rotated several times through the drying process.
Traditionally, the bamboo core of cored stick incense is prepared by hand from Phyllostachys heterocycla cv. pubescens since this species produces thick wood and easily burns to ashes in the incense stick. In a process known as "splitting the foot of the incense stick", the bamboo is trimmed to length, soaked, peeled, and split in halves until the thin sticks of bamboo have square cross sections of less than 3mm. This process has been largely replaced by machines in modern incense production.
In the case of cored incensed sticks, several methods are employed to coat the sticks cores with incense mixture:
Paste rolling: A wet, malleable paste of incense mixture is first rolled into a long, thin coil, using a paddle. Then, a thin stick is put next to the coil and the stick and paste are rolled together until the stick is centered in the mixture and the desired thickness is achieved. The stick is then cut to the desired length and dried.
Powder-coating: Powder-coating is used mainly to produce cored incense of either larger coil (up to 1 meter in diameter) or cored stick forms. A bundle of the supporting material (typically thin bamboo or sandalwood slivers) is soaked in water or a thin water/glue mixture for a short time. The thin sticks are evenly separated, then dipped into a tray of incense powder consisting of fragrance materials and occasionally a plant-based binder. The dry incense powder is then tossed and piled over the sticks while they are spread apart. The sticks are then gently rolled and packed to maintain roundness while more incense powder is repeatedly tossed onto the sticks. Three to four layers of powder are coated onto the sticks, forming a 2 mm thick layer of incense material on the stick. The coated incense is then allowed to dry in open air. Additional coatings of incense mixture can be applied after each period of successive drying. Incense sticks produced in this fashion and burned in temples of Chinese folk religion can have a thickness between 2 and 4 millimeters.
Compression: A damp powder is mechanically formed around a cored stick by compression, similar to the way uncored sticks are formed. This form is becoming more common due to the higher labor cost of producing powder-coated or paste-rolled sticks.
BURNING INCENSE:
Indirect-burning incense burned directly on top of a heat source or on a hot metal plate in a censer or thurible.
In Japan a similar censer called a egōro (柄香炉) is used by several Buddhist sects. The egōro is usually made of brass, with a long handle and no chain. Instead of charcoal, makkō powder is poured into a depression made in a bed of ash. The makkō is lit and the incense mixture is burned on top. This method is known as sonae-kō (religious burning).
For direct-burning incense, the tip or end of the incense is ignited with a flame or other heat source until the incense begins to turn into ash at the burning end. The flame is then fanned or blown out, leaving the incense to smolder.
CULTURAL VARIATIONS:
ARABIAN:
In most Arab countries, incense is burned in the form of scented chips or blocks called bakhoor (Arabic: بخور [bɑˈxuːɾ, bʊ-]. Incense is used on special occasions like weddings or on Fridays or generally to perfume the house. The bakhoor is usually burned in a mabkhara, a traditional incense burner (censer) similar to the Somali Dabqaad. It is customary in many Arab countries to pass bakhoor among the guests in the majlis ('congregation'). This is done as a gesture of hospitality.
CHINESE:
For over two thousand years, the Chinese have used incense in religious ceremonies, ancestor veneration, Traditional Chinese medicine, and daily life. Agarwood (chénxiāng) and sandalwood (tánxiāng) are the two most important ingredients in Chinese incense.
Along with the introduction of Buddhism in China came calibrated incense sticks and incense clocks. The first known record is by poet Yu Jianwu (487-551): "By burning incense we know the o'clock of the night, With graduated candles we confirm the tally of the watches." The use of these incense timekeeping devices spread from Buddhist monasteries into Chinese secular society.
Incense-stick burning is an everyday practice in traditional Chinese religion. There are many different types of stick used for different purposes or on different festive days. Many of them are long and thin. Sticks are mostly coloured yellow, red, or more rarely, black. Thick sticks are used for special ceremonies, such as funerals. Spiral incense, with exceedingly long burn times, is often hung from temple ceilings. In some states, such as Taiwan,
Singapore, or Malaysia, where they celebrate the Ghost Festival, large, pillar-like dragon incense sticks are sometimes used. These generate so much smoke and heat that they are only burned outside.
Chinese incense sticks for use in popular religion are generally odorless or only use the slightest trace of jasmine or rose, since it is the smoke, not the scent, which is important in conveying the prayers of the faithful to heaven. They are composed of the dried powdered bark of a non-scented species of cinnamon native to Cambodia, Cinnamomum cambodianum. Inexpensive packs of 300 are often found for sale in Chinese supermarkets. Though they contain no sandalwood, they often include the Chinese character for sandalwood on the label, as a generic term for incense.
Highly scented Chinese incense sticks are used by some Buddhists. These are often quite expensive due to the use of large amounts of sandalwood, agarwood, or floral scents used. The sandalwood used in Chinese incenses does not come from India, its native home, but rather from groves planted within Chinese territory. Sites belonging to Tzu Chi, Chung Tai Shan, Dharma Drum Mountain, Xingtian Temple, or City of Ten Thousand Buddhas do not use incense.
INDIAN:
Incense sticks, also known as agarbathi (or agarbatti) and joss sticks, in which an incense paste is rolled or moulded around a bamboo stick, are the main forms of incense in India. The bamboo method originated in India, and is distinct from the Nepali/Tibetan and Japanese methods of stick making without bamboo cores. Though the method is also used in the west, it is strongly associated with India.
The basic ingredients are the bamboo stick, the paste (generally made of charcoal dust and joss/jiggit/gum/tabu powder – an adhesive made from the bark of litsea glutinosa and other trees), and the perfume ingredients - which would be a masala (spice mix) powder of ground ingredients into which the stick would be rolled, or a perfume liquid sometimes consisting of synthetic ingredients into which the stick would be dipped. Perfume is sometimes sprayed on the coated sticks. Stick machines are sometimes used, which coat the stick with paste and perfume, though the bulk of production is done by hand rolling at home. There are about 5,000 incense companies in India that take raw unperfumed sticks hand-rolled by approximately 200,000 women working part-time at home, and then apply their own brand of perfume, and package the sticks for sale. An experienced home-worker can produce 4,000 raw sticks a day. There are about 50 large companies that together account for up to 30% of the market, and around 500 of the companies, including a significant number of the main ones, including Moksh Agarbatti and Cycle Pure, are based in Mysore.
JEWISH TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM:
KETORET:
Ketoret was the incense offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and is stated in the Book of Exodus to be a mixture of stacte, onycha, galbanum and frankincense.
TIBETAN:
Tibetan incense refers to a common style of incense found in Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. These incenses have a characteristic "earthy" scent to them. Ingredients vary from cinnamon, clove, and juniper, to kusum flower, ashvagandha, and sahi jeera.
Many Tibetan incenses are thought to have medicinal properties. Their recipes come from ancient Vedic texts that are based on even older Ayurvedic medical texts. The recipes have remained unchanged for centuries.
JAPANESE:
In Japan incense appreciation folklore includes art, culture, history, and ceremony. It can be compared to and has some of the same qualities as music, art, or literature. Incense burning may occasionally take place within the tea ceremony, just like calligraphy, ikebana, and scroll arrangement. The art of incense appreciation, or koh-do, is generally practiced as a separate art form from the tea ceremony, and usually within a tea room of traditional Zen design.
Agarwood (沈香 Jinkō) and sandalwood (白檀 byakudan) are the two most important ingredients in Japanese incense. Agarwood is known as "jinkō" in Japan, which translates as "incense that sinks in water", due to the weight of the resin in the wood. Sandalwood is one of the most calming incense ingredients and lends itself well to meditation. It is also used in the Japanese tea ceremony. The most valued Sandalwood comes from Mysore in the state of Karnataka in India.
Another important ingredient in Japanese incense is kyara (伽羅). Kyara is one kind of agarwood (Japanese incense companies divide agarwood into 6 categories depending on the region obtained and properties of the agarwood). Kyara is currently worth more than its weight in gold.
Some terms used in Japanese incense culture include:
Incense arts: [香道, kodo]
Agarwood: [ 沈香 ] – from heartwood from Aquilaria trees, unique, the incense wood most used in incense ceremony, other names are: lignum aloes or aloeswood, gaharu, jinko, or oud.
Censer/Incense burner: [香爐] – usually small and used for heating incense not burning, or larger and used for burning
Charcoal: [木炭] – only the odorless kind is used.
Incense woods: [ 香木 ] – a naturally fragrant resinous wood.
USAGE:
PRACTICAL:
Incense fragrances can be of such great strength that they obscure other less desirable odours. This utility led to the use of incense in funerary ceremonies because the incense could smother the scent of decay. An example, as well as of religious use, is the giant Botafumeiro thurible that swings from the ceiling of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It is used in part to mask the scent of the many tired, unwashed pilgrims huddled together in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
A similar utilitarian use of incense can be found in the post-Reformation Church of England. Although the ceremonial use of incense was abandoned until the Oxford Movement, it was common to have incense (typically frankincense) burned before grand occasions, when the church would be crowded. The frankincense was carried about by a member of the vestry before the service in a vessel called a 'perfuming pan'. In iconography of the day, this vessel is shown to be elongated and flat, with a single long handle on one side. The perfuming pan was used instead of the thurible, as the latter would have likely offended the Protestant sensibilities of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The regular burning of direct-burning incense has been used for chronological measurement in incense clocks. These devices can range from a simple trail of incense material calibrated to burn in a specific time period, to elaborate and ornate instruments with bells or gongs, designed to involve multiple senses.
Incense made from materials such as citronella can repel mosquitoes and other irritating, distracting, or pestilential insects. This use has been deployed in concert with religious uses by Zen Buddhists who claim that the incense that is part of their meditative practice is designed to keep bothersome insects from distracting the practitioner. Currently, more effective pyrethroid-based mosquito repellent incense is widely available in Asia.
Papier d'Arménie was originally sold as a disinfectant as well as for the fragrance.
Incense is also used often by people who smoke indoors and do not want the smell to linger.
AESTHETIC:
Many people burn incense to appreciate its smell, without assigning any other specific significance to it, in the same way that the foregoing items can be produced or consumed solely for the contemplation or enjoyment of the aroma. An example is the kōdō (香道), where (frequently costly) raw incense materials such as agarwood are appreciated in a formal setting.
RELIGIOUS:
Religious use of incense is prevalent in many cultures and may have roots in the practical and aesthetic uses, considering that many of these religions have little else in common. One common motif is incense as a form of sacrificial offering to a deity. Such use was common in Judaic worship and remains in use for example in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches, Taoist and Buddhist Chinese jingxiang (敬香 "offer incense), etc.
Aphrodisiac Incense has been used as an aphrodisiac in some cultures. Both ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian mythology suggest the usage of incense by goddesses and nymphs. Incense is thought to heighten sexual desires and sexual attraction.
Time-keeper Incense clocks are used to time social, medical and religious practices in parts of eastern Asia. They are primarily used in Buddhism as a timer of mediation and prayer. Different types of incense burn at different rates; therefore, different incense are used for different practices. The duration of burning ranges from minutes to months.
Healing stone cleanser Incense is claimed to cleanse and restore energy in healing stones. The technique used is called “smudging” and is done by holding a healing stone over the smoke of burning incense for 20 to 30 seconds. Some people believe that this process not only restores energy but eliminates negative energy.
HEALTH RISK FROM INCENSE SMOKE:
Incense smoke contains various contaminants including gaseous pollutants, such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and adsorbed toxic pollutants (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and toxic metals). The solid particles range between ~10 and 500 nm. In a comparison, Indian sandalwood was found to have the highest emission rate, followed by Japanese aloeswood, then Taiwanese aloeswood, while Chinese smokeless sandalwood had the least.
Research carried out in Taiwan in 2001 linked the burning of incense sticks to the slow accumulation of potential carcinogens in a poorly ventilated environment by measuring the levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (including benzopyrene) within Buddhist temples. The study found gaseous aliphatic aldehydes, which are carcinogenic and mutagenic, in incense smoke.
A survey of risk factors for lung cancer, also conducted in Taiwan, noted an inverse association between incense burning and adenocarcinoma of the lung, though the finding was not deemed significant.
In contrast, epidemiologists at the Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society, Aichi Cancer Center in Nagoya, and several other centers found: "No association was found between exposure to incense burning and respiratory symptoms like chronic cough, chronic sputum, chronic bronchitis, runny nose, wheezing, asthma, allergic rhinitis, or pneumonia among the three populations studied: i.e. primary school children, their non-smoking mothers, or a group of older non-smoking female controls. Incense burning did not affect lung cancer risk among non-smokers, but it significantly reduced risk among smokers, even after adjusting for lifetime smoking amount." However, the researchers qualified their findings by noting that incense burning in the studied population was associated with certain low-cancer-risk dietary habits, and concluded that "diet can be a significant confounder of epidemiological studies on air pollution and respiratory health."
Although several studies have not shown a link between incense and lung cancer, many other types of cancer have been directly linked to burning incense. A study published in 2008 in the medical journal Cancer found that incense use is associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract, with the exception of nasopharyngeal cancer. Those who used incense heavily also were 80% more likely to develop squamous-cell carcinomas. The link between incense use and increased cancer risk held when the researchers weighed other factors, including cigarette smoking, diet and drinking habits. The research team noted that "This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke, and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications."
In 2015, the South China University of Technology found toxicity of incense to Chinese hamsters' ovarian cells to be even higher than cigarettes.
Incensole acetate, a component of Frankincense, has been shown to have anxiolytic-like and antidepressive-like effects in mice, mediated by activation of poorly-understood TRPV3 ion channels in the brain.
The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Croydon, Surrey using a 1d. stamp on Tuesday the 7th. August 1928 to:
Mr. & Mrs. Osborne,
c/o 'Burleigh',
Queen Street,
Dawlish,
S. Devon.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"This is just to let you
know that C. & I are
here quite safely.
Hope you had a good
journey.
My word it did rain when
we left home on Saturday,
but Sunday and today
have been just lovely.
I did not hear any news!
Don't forget to have a
real good time.
Syd.
c/o 28, Pitlake,
W. Croydon,
Surrey."
The Whitgift Foundation
The Whitgift Foundation is a charity based in Croydon, South London. The purpose of the charity is to provide education for the young, and care for the elderly.
The main activities of the charity are the operation of three independent schools, providing sheltered accommodation and nursing care through three care homes, and running the Carer's Information Service.
In addition, the charity provides bursaries and scholarships in excess of £5million a year.
The foundation is governed by a Court of Governors, including the Bishop of Croydon, the Vicar of Croydon, and nominees of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Croydon Council.
History of the Whitgift Foundation
Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift's liking for Croydon, and his fondness for the elderly and indigent, prompted him to ask Queen Elizabeth I for permission to build a Hospital for elderly people and a school.
Permission was granted, and the Whitgift Foundation was established in 1596 by John Whitgift. His aims were to provide care for the elderly and education for the young.
Originally three separate buildings were built, The Hospital of Holy Trinity (shown in the photograph), The School House and Schoolmaster’s House. The latter two were demolished in 1897, leaving the Almshouses as the only remaining original building.
The accommodation in The Almshouses included two rooms for the Archbishop himself. From 1599, when the first residents moved in, until his death in 1604, John Whitgift was a frequent visitor. He would dine with his ‘brothers and sisters’ in the Common Hall, and he came to look upon them as members of his own family.
The Whitgift Centre, a large shopping mall, now stands where the later Victorian school and surrounding buildings and sports fields were. These buildings were occupied firstly by Whitgift School prior to its move to Haling Park in south Croydon in 1931. Haling Park was originally the home of Lord Howard of Effingham.
The school buildings in North End, Croydon were then occupied by the Trinity School of John Whitgift, prior to its move to Shirley Park which was formerly the country seat of Lord Eldon.
Whitgift Schools
The Whitgift Foundation runs three independent day schools:
-- Whitgift School, for boys aged 10–19 years
-- Trinity School of John Whitgift, for boys aged 10–19 years, with a co-educational sixth form
-- Old Palace of John Whitgift School incorporating Old Palace Nursery, a co-educational Day Nursery for both boys and girls up to 4 years, and Old Palace of John Whitgift School for girls aged 4 to 19 years.
Grimsby
The John Whitgift Academy in Grimsby in Lincolnshire is named after John Whitgift, who was born in the town, but is not part of the Whitgift Foundation.
Italy's Emigration Laws
So what else happened on the day that Syd posted the card?
Well, on the 7th. August 1928, Italy tightened its emigration laws, making it harder for Italians to reunite with relatives living abroad.
Wives and sons could still join emigrated husbands and fathers, but only if they were dependent on them. Sisters had to be unmarried in order to join their brothers.
James Randi
Also on that day, James Randi was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge) 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, which he collectively called "woo-woo".
Randi retired from practising magic at the age of 60, and from his foundation at the age of 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 one million US dollars to eligible applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.
In 2015, the James Randi Educational Foundation said they will no longer accept applications directly from people claiming to have a paranormal power, but will offer the challenge to anyone who has passed a preliminary test that meets with their approval.
James Randi - The Early Years
Randi was the son of Marie Alice (née Paradis; 1906-1987) and George Randall Zwinge (1903-1967), an executive at Bell Telephone Company. James was of French, Danish and Austrian descent. He had a younger brother and sister.
James took up magic after reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors, who predicted that he would never walk again.
Randi scored 168 on an IQ test. However he often skipped classes, and at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practised as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition, as well as writing for Montreal's tabloid press.
As a teenager, James stumbled upon a church where the pastor claimed to read minds. After he re-enacted the trick before the parishioners, the pastor's wife called the police and he spent four hours in a jail cell. This event inspired his career as a scientific skeptic.
In his 20's, Randi posed as an astrologer, and to establish that astrologers were merely doing simple tricks, he briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid Midnight under the name "Zo-ran." James simply shuffled up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasted them randomly into his column.
In his 30's, Randi worked in the UK, Europe, Philippines 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.
James Randi's Career
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 the 7th. February 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.
James Randi was a frequent guest on the Long John Nebel program on New York City radio station WOR, and did character voices for commercials. After Nebel left WOR in 1962, Randi was given his time slot, where he hosted The Amazing Randi Show from 1967 to 1968.
James's show often had guests who defended paranormal claims, among them Randi's then-friend James W. Moseley. Randi stated that he quit WOR over complaints from the archbishop of New York that Randi had said on-air that "Jesus Christ was a religious nut," a claim that Randi disputed.
Randi also hosted numerous television specials, and went on several world tours. As "The Amazing Randi" he appeared regularly on the New York-based children's television series Wonderama from 1959 to 1967.
In 1970, he auditioned for a revival of the 1950s children's show The Magic Clown, which showed briefly in Detroit and in Kenya, but was never picked up.
In the 2nd. February 1974 issue of the British conjuring magazine Abracadabra, Randi, in defining the community of magicians, stated:
"I know of no calling which depends
so much upon mutual trust and faith
as does ours."
The December 2003 issue of The Linking Ring, the monthly publication of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, stated:
"Perhaps Randi's ethics are what make
him Amazing. The Amazing Randi not
only talks the talk, he walks the walk."
During Alice Cooper's 1973–1974 Billion Dollar Babies tour, Randi performed on stage both as a mad dentist and as Cooper's executioner. He also built several of the stage props, including the guillotine.
In a 1976 performance for the Canadian TV Special World of Wizards, Randi escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over Niagara Falls.
Randi has been accused of actually using "psychic powers" to perform acts such as spoon bending. At a meeting where Randi was duplicating the performances of Uri Geller, a professor from the University at Buffalo shouted out that Randi was a fraud. Randi replied:
"Yes, indeed, I'm a trickster, I'm a
cheat, I'm a charlatan, that's what
I do for a living. Everything I've
done here was by trickery."
The professor shouted back:
"That's not what I mean. You're a
fraud because you're pretending
to do these things through trickery,
but you're actually using psychic
powers and misleading us by not
admitting it."
A similar event involved Senator Claiborne Pell, a confirmed believer in psychic phenomena. When Randi personally demonstrated to Pell that he could reveal—by simple trickery—a concealed drawing that had been secretly made by the senator, Pell refused to believe that it was a trick, saying:
"I think Randi may be a psychic
and doesn't realize it."
Randi consistently denied having any paranormal powers or abilities.
James Randi the Author
Randi wrote 10 books, among them Conjuring (1992), a biographical history of prominent magicians. The book is subtitled Being a Definitive History of the Venerable Arts of Sorcery, Prestidigitation, Wizardry, Deception, & Chicanery and of the Mountebanks & Scoundrels Who have Perpetrated these Subterfuges on a Bewildered Public, in short, MAGIC!
The book's cover indicates it is by:
"James Randi, Esq., A Contrite Rascal
Once Dedicated to these Wicked
Practices but Now Almost Totally
Reformed".
The book features the most influential magicians and tells some of their history, often in the context of strange deaths and careers on the road. This work expanded on Randi's book, Houdini, His Life and Art. This illustrated work was published in 1976 and was co-authored with Bert Sugar.
Randi's book, The Magic World of the Amazing Randi (1989), was intended as a children's introduction to magic tricks.
In addition to his magic books, he wrote several educational works about paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. These include biographies of Uri Geller and Nostradamus, as well as reference material on other major paranormal figures.
In 2011, he was working on A Magician in the Laboratory, which recounted his application of skepticism to science.
James was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his friend Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.
Other books by Randi include Flim-Flam! (1982), The Faith Healers (1987), James Randi, Psychic Investigator (1991), Test Your ESP Potential (1982) and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (1995).
James Randi the Skeptic
Randi was a regular contributor to Skeptic magazine, writing the "'Twas Brillig ..." column, and he also served on its editorial board. He was a frequent contributor to Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, of which he was also a fellow.
Randi gained the international spotlight in 1972 when he publicly challenged the claims of Uri Geller. He accused Geller of being nothing more than a charlatan and a fraud who used standard magic tricks to accomplish his allegedly paranormal feats, and he presented his claims in the book The Truth About Uri Geller (1982).
Believing that it was important to get columnists and TV personalities to challenge Geller and others like him, Randi reached out in an attempt to educate them. During this effort, Randi made contact with Johnny Carson, and discovered that:
"He was very much on our side.
He wasn't only a comedian ...
he was a great thinker."
According to Randi, when he was on The Tonight Show, Carson broke his usual protocol of not talking with guests before their entrance on stage, but instead would ask what Randi wanted to be emphasized in the interview:
"He wanted to be aware
of how he could help me."
In 1973, Geller appeared on The Tonight Show, and this appearance is recounted in the Nova documentary "Secrets of the Psychics":
"In the documentary, Randi says that Carson "had
been a magician himself and was skeptical" of
Geller's claimed paranormal powers, so before the
date of recording, Randi was asked "to help prevent
any trickery".
Per Randi's advice, the show prepared its own props
without informing Geller, and did not let Geller or his
staff "anywhere near them".
When Geller joined Carson on stage, he appeared
surprised that he was not going to be interviewed,
but instead was expected to display his abilities
using the provided articles.
Geller said "This scares me. I'm surprised because
before this program your producer came and he
read me at least 40 questions you were going to
ask me."
Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities,
saying "I don't feel strong" and expressing his
displeasure at feeling like he was being "pressed" to
perform by Carson."
According to Adam Higginbotham's 7th. November 2014 article in The New York Times:
"The result was a legendary immolation, in which
Geller offered up flustered excuses to his host as
his abilities failed him again and again. Geller told
me when I spoke to him in September:
"I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated. I went back
to my hotel, devastated. I was about to pack up the
next day and go back to Tel Aviv.
I thought, That's it—I'm destroyed."
However, this appearance on The Tonight Show, which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller's claimed abilities, backfired. According to Higginbotham:
"To Geller's astonishment, he was immediately
booked on The Merv Griffin Show. He was on
his way to becoming a paranormal superstar.
"That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller,"
Geller said.
To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure
only made his gifts seem more real: if he were
performing magic tricks, they would surely work
every time."
According to Higginbotham, this result caused Randi to realize that much more must be done to stop Geller and those like him. So in 1976, Randi approached Ray Hyman, a psychologist who had observed the tests of Geller's ability at Stanford and thought them slipshod, and suggested they create an organization dedicated to combating pseudoscience.
Later that same year, together with Martin Gardner, a Scientific American columnist whose writing had helped hone Hyman's and Randi's skepticism, they formed the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Using donations and sales of their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, they and secular humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz took seats on the executive board, with Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan joining as founding members. Randi travelled the world on behalf of CSICOP, becoming its public face, and according to Hyman, the face of the skeptical movement.
Geller sued Randi and CSICOP for $15 million in 1991 and lost. Geller's suit against CSICOP was thrown out in 1995, and he was ordered to pay $120,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit. The legal costs Randi incurred used almost all of a $272,000 MacArthur Foundation grant awarded to Randi in 1986 for his work.
Randi also dismissed Geller's claims that he was capable of the kind of psychic photography associated with the case of Ted Serios. It is a matter, Randi argued, of trick photography using a simple hand-held optical device.
During the period of Geller's legal dispute, CSICOP's leadership, wanting to avoid becoming a target of Geller's litigation, demanded that Randi refrain from commenting on Geller.
Randi refused and resigned, though he maintained a respectful relationship with the group, which in 2006 changed its name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). In 2010, Randi was one of 16 new CSI fellows elected by its board.
Randi went on to write many articles criticizing beliefs and claims regarding the paranormal. He also demonstrated flaws in studies suggesting the existence of paranormal phenomena; in his Project Alpha hoax, Randi successfully planted two fake psychics in a privately funded psychic research experiment.
Randi appeared on numerous TV shows, sometimes to directly debunk the claimed abilities of fellow guests. In a 1981 appearance on That's My Line, Randi appeared opposite claimed psychic James Hydrick, who said that he could move objects with his mind, and appeared to demonstrate this claim on live television by turning a page in a telephone book without touching it.
Randi, having determined that Hydrick was surreptitiously blowing on the book, arranged foam packaging peanuts on the table in front of the telephone book for the demonstration. This prevented Hydrick from demonstrating his abilities, which would have been exposed when the blowing moved the packaging. Randi writes that, eventually, Hydrick "confessed everything".
Randi first exposed Peter Popoff on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in February 1986. Carson invited Randi onto his show without seeing the evidence he was going to reveal.
Carson appeared stunned after Randi showed a brief video segment from one of Popoff's broadcasts showing him calling out a woman in the audience; he then revealed personal information about her that he claimed came from God, and then performed a laying-on-of-hands healing to drive the devil from her body.
Randi then replayed the video, but with some of the sound dubbed in that he and his investigating team captured during the event using a radio scanner and recorder. Their scanner had detected the radio frequency Popoff's wife Elizabeth was using backstage to broadcast directions and information to a miniature radio receiver hidden in Popoff's left ear.
That information had been gathered by Popoff's assistants, who had handed out "prayer cards" to the audience before the show, instructing them to write down all the information Popoff would need to pray for them.
The news coverage generated by Randi's exposé on The Tonight Show led to many TV stations dropping Popoff's show, eventually forcing him into bankruptcy in September 1987. However, the televangelist returned soon after with faith-healing infomercials that reportedly attracted more than $23 million in 2005 from viewers sending in money for promised healing and prosperity.
In February 1988, Randi tested the gullibility of the media by perpetrating a hoax of his own. By teaming up with Australia's 60 Minutes program and by releasing a fake press package, he built up publicity for a "Spirit Channeler" named Carlos, who was actually artist José Alvarez, Randi's partner.
While performing as Carlos, Alvarez was prompted by Randi using sophisticated radio equipment. According to the 60 Minutes program on the Carlos hoax:
"It was claimed that Alvarez would not have had
the audience he did at the Opera House (and the
resulting potential sales therefrom) had the media
coverage been more aggressive (and factual)".
Though an analysis by The Skeptic's Tim Mendham concluded that, while the media coverage of Alvarez's appearances was not credulous, the hoax at least showed that they could benefit by being a touch more sceptical.
The hoax was exposed on 60 Minutes Australia; "Carlos" and Randi explained how they had pulled it off.
In his book The Faith Healers, Randi wrote that his anger and relentlessness arose from compassion for the victims of fraud. Randi was also critical of João de Deus, a.k.a. "John of God", a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who had received international attention. Randi observed, referring to psychic surgery:
"To any experienced conjurer, the
methods by which these seeming
miracles are produced are very
obvious."
In 1982, Randi verified the abilities of Arthur Lintgen, a Philadelphia doctor, who was able to identify the classical music recorded on a vinyl LP solely by examining the grooves on the record.
However, Lintgen did not claim to have any paranormal ability, merely knowledge of the way that the groove forms patterns on particular recordings.
In 1988, John Maddox, editor of the prominent science journal Nature, asked Randi to join the supervision and observation of the homeopathy experiments conducted by Jacques Benveniste's team. Once Randi's stricter protocol for the experiment was in place, the positive results could not be reproduced.
Randi stated that Daniel Dunglas Home, who could allegedly play an accordion that was locked in a cage without touching it, was caught cheating on a few occasions, but the incidents were never made public.
He also stated that the actual instrument in use was a one-octave mouth organ concealed under Home's large mustache and that other one-octave mouth organs were found in Home's belongings after his death.
The fraudulent medium Henry Slade also played an accordion while held with one hand under a table. Slade and Home played the same pieces, and they had at one time lived near each other in the U.S. The magician Chung Ling Soo exposed how Slade had performed the trick.
Randi distinguished between pseudoscience and "crackpot science". He regarded most of parapsychology as pseudoscience because of the way in which it is approached and conducted, but nonetheless saw it as a legitimate subject that "should be pursued", and from which real scientific discoveries may develop. Randi regarded crackpot science as "equally wrong" as pseudoscience, but with no scientific pretensions.
Despite multiple debunkings, Randi did not like to be called a "debunker", preferring to call himself a "skeptic" or an "investigator":
"If you into a situation calling yourself a
debunker, then it is as if you have prejudged
the topic. It's not neutral or scientific, and it
can turn people against you."
Skeptics and magicians Penn & Teller credit Randi and his career as a skeptic for their own careers. During an interview, Penn stated that Flim-Flam! was an early influence on him, and said:
"If not for Randi there would not be
Penn & Teller as we are today.
Outside of my family, no one is more
important in my life. Randi is everything
to me."
At The Amaz!ng Meeting in 2011, the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) organized a tribute to Randi. The group gathered, put on fake white beards, and posed for a large group photo with Randi. At the CSICon in 2017, in the absence of Randi, the IIG organized another group photo with leftover beards from the 2011 photo. After Randi was sent the photo, he replied:
"I'm always very touched by any such expression.
This is certainly no exception. You have my sincere
gratitude. I suspect, however that a couple of those
beards were fake. But I'm in a forgiving mood at the
moment. I'm frankly very touched. I'll see you at the
next CSICon. Thank you all."
In a 2019 Skeptical Inquirer magazine article, Harriet Hall, a friend of Randi, compares him to the fictional Albus Dumbledore. Hall describes their long white beards, flamboyant clothing, associated with a bird (Dumbledore with a phoenix and Randi with Pegasus). They both are caring and have "immense brainpower" and both "can perform impressive feats of magic". She states that Randi is one of "major inspirations for the skeptical work I do ... He's way better than Dumbledore!"
Exploring Psychic Powers ... Live was a two-hour television special aired live on the 7th. June 1989, wherein Randi examined several people claiming psychic powers.
Hosted by actor Bill Bixby, the program offered $100,000 (Randi's $10,000 prize plus $90,000 put up by the show's syndicator, LBS Communications, Inc.) to anyone who could demonstrate genuine psychic powers.
An astrologer, Joseph Meriwether, claimed that he was able to ascertain a person's astrological sign after talking with them for a few minutes. He was presented with twelve people, one at a time, each with a different astrological sign. They could not tell Meriwether their astrological sign or birth date, nor could they wear anything that would indicate it.
After Meriwether talked to them, he had them go and sit in front of the astrological sign that he thought was theirs. By agreement, Meriwether needed to get ten of the 12 correct, to win. He got none correct.
The next psychic, Barbara Martin, claimed to be able to read auras around people, claiming that auras were visible at least five inches above each person. She selected ten people from a group of volunteers whom she said had clearly visible auras.
On stage were erected ten screens, numbered 1 through 10, just tall enough to hide the volunteer while not hiding their aura. Unseen by Martin, some of the volunteers positioned themselves behind different screens, then she was invited to predict which screens hid volunteers by seeing their aura above. She stated that she saw an aura over all ten screens, but people were behind only four of the screens.
A dowser, Forrest Bayes, claimed that he could detect water in a bottle inside a sealed cardboard box. He was shown twenty boxes and asked to indicate which boxes contained a water bottle.
He selected eight of the boxes, which he said contained water, but it turned out that only five of the twenty contained water. Of the eight selected boxes, only one was revealed to contain water, and one contained sand.
A psychometric psychic, Sharon McLaren-Straz, claimed to be able to receive personal information about the owner of an object by handling the object itself. In order to avoid ambiguous statements, the psychic agreed to be presented with both a watch and a key from each of twelve different people. She was to match keys and watches to their owners.
According to prior agreement, she had to match at least nine out of the twelve sets, but she succeeded in only two.
Professional crystal healer Valerie Swan attempted to use ESP to identify 250 Zener cards, guessing which of the five symbols was on each one. Random guessing should have resulted in about fifty correct guesses, so it was agreed in advance that Swan had to be right on at least eighty-two cards in order to demonstrate an ability greater than chance. However, she was able to get only fifty predictions correct, which is no better than random guessing.
The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)
In 1996, Randi established the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi and his colleagues publish in JREF's blog, Swift. Topics have included the interesting mathematics of the one-seventh area triangle, a classic geometric puzzle. In his weekly commentary, Randi often gave examples of what he considered the 'nonsense' that he dealt with every day.
Beginning in 2003, the JREF annually hosted The Amaz!ng Meeting, a gathering of scientists, skeptics, and atheists. The last meeting was in 2015, coinciding with Randi's retirement from the JREF.
James Randi - The Later Years
Randi began a series of conferences known as "The Amazing Meeting" (TAM) which quickly became the largest gathering of skeptics in the world, drawing audiences from Asia, Europe, South America, and the UK. It also attracted a large percentage of younger attendees.
Randi was regularly featured on many podcasts, including The Skeptics Society's official podcast Skepticality and the Center for Inquiry's official podcast Point of Inquiry.
From September 2006 onwards, James contributed to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast with a column called "Randi Speaks". In addition, The Amazing Show was a podcast in which Randi shared various anecdotes in an interview format.
In 2014, Part2Filmworks released An Honest Liar, a feature film documentary. The film focuses on Randi's life, his investigations, and his relationship with longtime partner José Alvarez to whom he was married in 2013. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, and at the June 2014 AFI Docs Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature. It also received positive reviews from critics.
In December 2014, Randi flew to Australia to take part in “An Evening with James Randi” tour, organized by Think Inc. This tour included a screening of An Honest Liar followed by a "fireside chat" with Randi on stage.
In 2017, Randi appeared in animated form on the website Holy Koolaid, in which he discussed the challenge of finding the balance between connecting sincerely with his audience and at the same time tricking/fooling them with an artful ruse, and indicated that this is a balance with which many magicians struggle.
The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge
The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to anyone able to demonstrate a supernatural ability under scientific testing criteria agreed to by both sides.
Based on the paranormal challenges of John Nevil Maskelyne and Houdini, the foundation began in 1996, when Randi put up $1,000 of his own money payable to anyone who could provide objective proof of the paranormal.
The prize money grew to $1,000,000, and had formal published rules. No one progressed past the preliminary test, which was set up with parameters agreed to by both Randi and the applicant. He refused to accept any challengers who might suffer serious injury or death as a result of the testing.
On the 1st. April 2007, it was ruled that only persons with an established, nationally recognized media profile and the backing of a reputable academic were allowed to apply for the challenge, in order to avoid wasting JREF resources on frivolous claimants.
On Larry King Live, on the 6th. March 2001, Larry King asked claimed medium Sylvia Browne if she would take the challenge, and she agreed. Randi appeared with Browne on Larry King Live six months later, and she again appeared to accept his challenge.
However, according to Randi, she ultimately refused to be tested, and the Randi Foundation kept a clock on its website recording the number of weeks since Browne allegedly accepted the challenge without following through, until Browne's death in November 2013.
During a subsequent appearance on Larry King Live on the 5th. June 2001, Randi challenged Rosemary Altea, another claimed medium, to undergo testing for the million dollars, but Altea refused to address the question. Instead Altea replied:
"I agree with what he says, that there are many,
many people who claim to be spiritual mediums,
they claim to talk to the dead. There are many
people, we all know this. There are cheats and
charlatans everywhere."
On the 26th. January 2007, Altea and Randi again appeared on the show, and Altea again refused to answer whether or not she would take the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
In October 2007, claimed psychic John Edward appeared on Headline Prime, hosted by Glenn Beck. When asked if he would take "the Amazing Randi's" challenge, Edward responded:
"It's funny. I was on Larry King Live once, and they
asked me the same question. And I made a joke
then, and I'll say the same thing here: why would I
allow myself to be tested by somebody who's got
an adjective as a surname?"
Randi asked British businessman Jim McCormick, the inventor of the bogus ADE 651 bomb detector, to take the challenge in October 2008. Randi called the ADE 651:
"A useless quack device which cannot perform
any other function than separating naive persons
from their money. It's a fake, a scam, a swindle,
and a blatant fraud. Prove me wrong and take the
million dollars."
There was no response from McCormick. According to Iraqi investigators, the ADE 651, which was corruptly sold to the Baghdad bomb squad, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians who died as a result of terrorist bombs which were not detected at checkpoints.
On the 23rd. April 2013, McCormick was convicted of three counts of fraud at the Old Bailey in London; he was subsequently sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for his part in the ADE 651 scandal, which Randi was the first to expose.
Legal Disputes
Randi was involved in a variety of legal disputes, but said that:
"I have never paid even one dollar
or even one cent to anyone who
ever sued me."
However, he said, he had paid out large sums to defend himself in these suits.
Uri Geller
Randi met magician Uri Geller in the early 1970's, and found Geller to be:
"Very charming. Likable, beautiful,
affectionate, genuine, forward-going,
handsome—everything!"
However Randi viewed Geller as a con-man, and began a long effort to expose him as a fraud. According to Randi, Geller tried to sue him several times, accusing him of libel.
In May 1991, Geller sued Randi and CSICOP for $15 million on a charge of slander, after Randi told the International Herald Tribune that Geller had "tricked even reputable scientists" with stunts that "are the kind that used to be on the back of cereal boxes", referring to the old spoon-bending trick.
The court dismissed the case, and Geller had to settle at a cost to him of $120,000, after Randi produced a cereal box which bore instructions on how to do the spoon-bending trick.
Geller's lawyer Don Katz was disbarred mid-way into this action, and Geller ended up suing him. After failing to pay by the deadline imposed by the court, Geller was sanctioned an additional $20,000. Geller sued both Randi and CSICOP in the 1980's.
CSICOP argued that the organization was not responsible for Randi's statements. The court agreed that including CSICOP was frivolous, and dropped them from the action, leaving Randi to face the action alone, along with the legal costs. Geller was ordered to pay substantial damages, but only to CSICOP.
Geller never won against Randi, save for a ruling in a Japanese court that ordered Randi to pay Geller one-third of one per cent of what Geller had requested.
This ruling was cancelled, and the matter dropped, when Geller decided to concentrate on another legal matter.
Other Legal Cases
In 1993, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore found Randi liable for defaming Eldon Byrd for calling him a child molester in a magazine story, and a "shopping market molester" in a 1988 speech.
However, the jury found that Byrd was not entitled to any monetary damages after hearing testimony that he had sexually molested and later married his sister-in-law.
Late in 1996, Randi launched a libel suit against a Toronto-area psychic named Earl Gordon Curley. Curley had made multiple objectionable comments about Randi on Usenet.
Despite suggesting to Randi on Usenet that Randi should sue - Curley's comments implying that if Randi did not sue, then his allegations must be true - Curley seemed entirely surprised when Randi actually retained Toronto's largest law firm and initiated legal proceedings.
The suit was eventually dropped in 1998 when Earl Curley died at the age of 51 of "alcohol toxicity."
Allison DuBois, on whose life the television series Medium was based, threatened Randi with legal action for using a photo of her from her website in his 17th. December 2004 commentary without her permission.
Randi removed the photo, and subsequently used a caricature of DuBois when mentioning her on his site, beginning with his 23rd. December 2005 commentary.
Sniffex, producer of a dowsing bomb detection device, sued Randi and the JREF in 2007 and lost. Sniffex sued Randi for his comments regarding a government test in which the Sniffex device failed. The company was later investigated and charged with fraud.
Randi's Political Views
Randi was a registered Democrat. In April 2009, he released a statement endorsing the legalization of most illegal drugs.
Randi was a believer in Social Darwinist theories, although he denounced the ideologies and movements that formed around the theories in 2013.
In 2003, he was one of the signatories of the Humanist Manifesto.
Randi's Views on Religion
Randi's parents were members of the Anglican Church, but rarely attended services. He attended Sunday school at St. Cuthbert's Church in Toronto a few times as a child, but he independently decided to stop going after receiving no answer to his request for proof of the teachings of the Church.
Randi identified himself as an atheist. In his essay "Why I Deny Religion, How Silly and Fantastic It Is, and Why I'm a Dedicated and Vociferous Bright", Randi opined that many accounts in religious texts, including the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus Christ, and the parting of the Red Sea by Moses, are not believable.
Randi refers to the Virgin Mary as:
"Impregnated by a ghost of some sort, and as a
result produced a son who could walk on water,
raise the dead, turn water into wine, and multiply
loaves of bread and fishes."
He also questions:
"How could Adam and Eve have two sons, one of
whom killed the other, and yet managed to populate
the Earth without committing incest".
He wrote that, compared to the Bible:
"The Wizard of Oz is more
believable. And much more fun."
Clarifying his view of atheism, Randi wrote:
"I've said it before: there are two sorts of atheists.
One sort claims that there is no deity, the other
claims that there is no evidence that proves the
existence of a deity.
I belong to the latter group, because if I were to
claim that no god exists, I would have to produce
evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot.
Religious persons have by far the easier position;
they say they believe in a deity because that's their
preference, and they've read it in a book.
That's their right."
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (1995), Randi examines various spiritual practices skeptically. Of the meditation techniques of Guru Maharaj Ji, he writes:
"Only the very naive were convinced
that they had been let in on some sort
of celestial secret."
In a discussion with Kendrick Frazier at CSIC on 2016, Randi stated:
"I think that a belief in a deity is an unprovable
claim ... and a rather ridiculous claim.
It is an easy way out to explain things to which
we have no answer."
He then summarized his current concern with religious belief as follows:
"A belief in a god is one of the most damaging
things that infests humanity at this particular
moment in history."
Randi's Personal Life
When Randi hosted his own radio show in the 1960's, he lived in a small house in Rumson, New Jersey, that featured a sign on the premises that read: "Randi - Charlatan".
In 1987, Randi became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He said that one reason he became an American citizen was an incident while he was on tour with Alice Cooper, during which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the band's lockers during a performance, completely ransacking the room, but finding nothing illegal.
In February 2006, Randi underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. The weekly commentary updates to his Web site were made by guests while he was hospitalized. Randi recovered after his surgery and was able to help organize and attend The Amaz!ng Meeting (T.A.M.) in 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada, his annual convention of scientists, magicians, skeptics, atheists and freethinkers.
Randi was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in June 2009. He had a series of small tumors removed from his intestines during laparoscopic surgery. He announced the diagnosis a week later at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, as well as the fact that he was scheduled to begin chemotherapy in the following weeks. He also said at the conference:
"One day, I'm gonna die. That's all there is to it.
Hey, it's too bad, but I've got to make room. I'm
using a lot of oxygen and such - I think it's good
use of oxygen myself, but of course, I'm a little
prejudiced on the matter."
Randi underwent his final chemotherapy session in December 2009, later saying that his chemotherapy experience was not as unpleasant as he had imagined it might be. In a video posted in April 2010, Randi stated that he had been given a clean bill of health.
In a 2010 blog entry, Randi came out as gay, a move he said was inspired by seeing the 2008 biographical drama film Milk.
Randi married Venezuelan artist José Alvarez on the 2nd. July 2013 in Washington. Randi, who had recently moved to Florida, met Alvarez in 1986, in a Fort Lauderdale public library. He had left his native country for fear of his life, as he was homosexual. Jose Alvarez was a pseudonym which duplicated the name of an actual person in the United States.
The identity confusion caused the real Alvarez some legal and financial difficulties. José was arrested for identity theft and faced deportation. They resided in Plantation, Florida.
In the 1993 documentary Secrets of the Psychics, Randi stated:
"I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind;
I don't smoke; I don't drink, because that can easily
just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges
of my reasoning powers, and I want to be as aware
as I possibly can.
That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be
comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that
up in order to live in an actually real world, as close
as I can get to it".
In a video released in October 2017, Randi revealed that he had recently suffered a minor stroke, and that he was under medical advice not to travel during his recovery, so would be unable to attend CSICon 2017 in Las Vegas later that month.
The Death of James Randi
Randi died at his home in Plantation, Florida on the 20th. October 2020, at the age of 92. The James Randi Educational Foundation attributed his death to "age-related causes".
The Center for Inquiry said that:
"Randi was the public face of skeptical inquiry,
bringing a sense of fun and mischievousness
to a serious mission."
Kendrick Frazier said, as part of the statement:
"Despite his ferocity in challenging all forms of
nonsense, in person he was a kind and gentle
man."