Psychic trickery is for kids.

See how the cat makes itself look bigger.... TRICKERY! TRICKERY!

[/Larson]

Uri Geller surrenders.

In other news:

Unemployment in San Francisco up to 85%

funny. not one of them predicted the dotcom holocaust there.

Willie Brown will have to find another re-election tactic.

I never thought I'd ever say this, but...

Blame the guillible idiots who fall for these charlatans.

*moves to the right*

Although I'm glad that somebody is coming down on this nonsense. Comes under the ban on stupidity.

Hmm...could religion be next?

If people want to spend their money on a pyschic, so be it. You can't outlaw stupidity, so why create useless laws?

You can have my magic Eight ball when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!

They should have seen this coming.....

All in favour of telekinesis, raise my hand.

I say these psychics should go three rounds in a debate with a scientist and try to defend the various folk tales and new-age rubbish they believe.

Seventeen thousand dollars. A woman gave a fortune teller seventeen thousand dollars. I don't care what happens, she deserves whatever she gets for that crap.

Somebody needs to be the next contestant on "Who wants to win a darwin award."

Never trust a psychic thathas to ask your name.

A lot of what these people are doing is just con games. And we put con artists in jail. Why should it be any different just because they've got an ad in the Yellow Pages?

It'll never stick. I can think of at least 2 or 3 different ways you can get around this.

#1 - disclaimers. If Microsoft can put a clause in their contracts which says that they cannot be held responsible even if installing XP SP2 causes your computer to burst into flames, then it would be simplicity for a psychic to put a clause in there absolving them of any actual need for authenticity. And they've got quantum physics on their side. :-)

#2 - religion. As much as Bush & Co would like to make it go away, Wicca and other magic-related practices are recognized and protected religions. All it would take is a prospective con man to declare himself Wiccan, and he's safe. Imagine what would happen if there was a law claiming that a Christian faith healers had to be licensed and could be regulated under malpractice laws. Right. (yes, I know it's not quite the same thing, but close enough)

And #3 - simply, let the buyer beware. The people who get REALLY bilked (as opposed to plunking down $20 at a ren faire for grins) probably deserve it.

Now then, I should mention for the record that I do believe in at least limited prognostication, and read Tarot cards myself. However, I've never once charged someone for a reading, and have no plans to ever do so.

This law unfairly treats all honest psychics as criminals. I am shocked and outraged.

Maybe they should pass a law with minimal punishment for, but allowing corporal punishment of offenders.

But that would be striking a happy medium.

Anyone who believes in psychics or astrology should be committed to a stupid asylum. We don't have those yet, but we need to build them. Here's a clue. The future is a book that isn't written yet. You can't skip ahead to the end. Can a new dark age be far off?

Hmmm, so does this mean that only psychic trickery will be banned, but the real thing will still be legal??

Hey don't give me any shiat, we're talking San Francisco here!


/doesn't read Drudge articles

That's like telling a Frenchman not to stink.

that sounds like bull...where is the unlikely tag?

oh yeah, and if they tried to do that in New Orleans, half of the Jackson Square folks would be out of business...

WizardX, did you know Tarot is a game from renaissance Italy, and is still played there? Using the cards for fortune telling was invented in France much later. The con artist who first devised how to do it said that the more colorful and interesting deck of 77 tarot cards would be more convincing than Ace, King, Queen, Jack, etc. for scamming the suckers. Here is a link about playing the game.

MacDaddy - I know plenty about the history of Tarot, thank you very much. But as I obviously need to be committed to a stupid asylum, there's really no point to trying to argue, is there?

I read the headline as "San Francisco may ban psychic turkey".

You can imagine my disapointment upon further reading.

Scrotar
"This law unfairly treats all honest psychics as criminals. I am shocked and outraged."

I really, really hope you are being sarcastic. Nobody and nothing can predict the future. ALL "psychics" are either con artists or well-meaning fools--but neither have any of the skills they profess. A man named James Randi has been ready to fork out 1 million dollars to anyone who can prove their super-duper claims. Nobody ever gets even close.

I'm sorry everyone, but we humans are alone. Daddy isn't coming home to clean up our messes, and there isn't some magic shortcut to knowing things. Psychics are frauds.

I think this is a wonderful piece of legislation, and I hope it is effective. But... criminals will find a way around it. Some folks can't take responsibilty for their lives, and they keep con artists in the green.

What exactly is the difference between a psychic and a priest?

Besides the child molestation I mean....

GermanGoggles
That's kind of a sad way to think of things. I'm not saying 'go out and get religion' because that's stupid. I'm just saying "Hey, maybe there is more out there than you think." Keep an open mind.

TheyCallThisWork, it's not sad, it's realistic. Maybe there is more out there, but until I can see proof, there's no reason to believe it. And there's certainly to reason to spend money on it.

what i want to know is, if you are stupid enough to believe your money is cursed, how did you manage to get it in the first place

TheyCallThisWork

To me, it's sad that most people can't accept the fact that no amount of prayer or psychic power is going to replace getting your hands dirty and doing hard work to solve your problems.

Life isn't fair, or easy. The sooner the world stops killing for their imaginary gods and stops waiting for magic to save them, the sooner we can fix this mess.

I say protecting consumers from fraud is a noble goal for the SF lawmakers. Too bad other cities don't have the nuts to follow suit...

GermanGoggles

I don't know what psychic power is. But, I do know that mental concentration is a form of work, and that it gets a hell of a lot done. For instance: mathematics.

It is difficult for me to draw a definite line between alchemy and chemistry.

A Fool and his money is easily departed... and rightfully so

"Keep an open mind" is the first thing a con artist says to his future sucker.


...and religion is also a fraud, too.

Dear America,

STOP PROTECTING OURSELFS FROM OURSElFS, thats not your job

Cardinal
"Uh, GG, you're new around here, huh?"

What makes you say that...?

(everybody's a newbie once)

True. Just as long as they aren't Newbari.

I worked for a psychic hotline. There was an opening, and the curiosity was killing me, so i got trained, and did tarot cards on the phone. The people that call the line for the most part are lonely sorts, looking for someone to talk to, and to listen to them. BUT there are freaks who will call to talk to a psychic about their parrot...i kind of look at these trickery things as a way to part fools and their money.. if they're dumb enough to fall for it...

Cardinal-

In most cases, I'm all about humor... this just happens to be one of the few topics I'm totally rabid about.

On almost every other topic, I usually sit back and enjoy people argue, knowing that it won't change a damn thing. I guess this is one of my few topics I'd slap the crap out of anyone over. Just give me a few minutes with Sylvia Browne and John Edwards...

Or maybe they will zap me into submission with their psychic powers?

"Dozens" of San Fransiscans every year. That's not that many, given that San Franscisco has a fair number of people in it.

Moral -- If you want to con, go for the Stupid Rich. You don't need to score in quantity if you can charge each a large amount of money.

Oh, and somebody calling herself (random, inflammatory guess -- most "psychics" and their customers are female) "Dionysia, Goddess of Light and Direction" probably has been hitting products of Dionysus a bit too much.

AS one comedian put it, "if they're psychic, they should call me."

In an oddly objectivist's way, I say we let these idiots be duped over & over again by these con-men. It's part of cleaning the gene-pool of idiots. Once their broke, either no one will want to reproduce w/ them, or they will die of starvation & homelessness.

Since when is the government supposed to defend people from their own stupidity & gullibility?

The problem with allowing this nonsense is that it will spread to the criminal justice system, financial areas and beyond, like here in the US we ahave the NIH office of Alt/Comp. medicine that simply gives money to frauds so they can do marketing studies on things like acupuncture. If this sort of fraud is not exposed, you could be in court for anything from murder to losing your house because some phony psychic was paid to testify against you. Just look at the witch burnings in Salem Mass years ago to see why it is important. After learning about cold reading etc, it becomes painfully obvious how psychic mediums/faith healers work. I saw James van Praague miss three guesses in a row, and his mark didn't even blink. Same thing with John Edwards, Deepack Chopra M.D., David Eisenberg M.D., its the same tired old group of tricks. Miss Cleo had 1 billion dollars in billable hours in three years. Thats a lot of money to pay politicians to change the laws like the 1994 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic act that basically legalized medical fraud. I have to pay higher taxes and medical expenses because some asshat selling worthless herbs want to be a millionaire? (You do too.)

Dammit, I submitted this link and Drew dropped off my obvious, but hilarious second line. "San Francisco may ban psychic trickery. Shouldn't they have seen this coming?"

Are my tears tears of laughter at how funny that line is or tears of sadness at the line being dropped?

(sigh)