Michael Crichton believes in Spoon Bending!!

[ReasonedFaith]

Hmm, I see a laudatory post about Crichton and his speech. Perhaps I should post the article on "Spoon Bending" which quotes Crichton as being a "believer" in the phenomena.

I sent this to Randi last week, from front page article in the Silicon Valley "Metro". Quotes Randi extensively also.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/me...ding-0348.html

"Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton once
published a nonfiction book, Travels, in which he
recounted globe-trotting endeavors, including a
visit to one of Houck's PK Parties in 1985:

The one thing I noticed is that spoon bending seemed to require a
focused inattention. You had to try to get it to bend, and then you had to
forget about it. Maybe talk to someone else while you rubbed the spoon.
Or look around the room. Or change your attention. That's when it was
likely to bend. This inattention took learning, but you could easily do it.

"..On Crichton's website, he responds to a question
from a fan about whether or not he still believes in
the spiritual experiences he wrote about in
Travels.

Of all the things I wrote about, spoon bending seems to stick in the
rationalist throat. It just bugs people. I don't know why it occurs. I have no
explanation. I can't describe it any better than I did in the book. But I have
no doubt that it occurs. More than seeing adults bend spoons (they might
be using brute force to do it, although if you believe that I suggest you try,
with your bare hands, to bend a decent-weight spoon from the tip of the
bowl back to the handle. I think you'd need a vise.) But to see a little kid of
8 or 10 running around with a thick bar of aluminum that he has bent--not
a lot, but enough so that if you roll it on a table, it doesn't roll flat--is to
realize that whatever is going on, it's not brute force. I think that spoon
bending is not "psychic" or bugga-bugga. It's something pretty normal, but
we don't understand it. So we deny its existence. "

[Brown]

We've discussed this before. (Here is one thread where I've talked about it. Here is another.) Basically, Crichton discloses a lot of hints in "Travels" as to what's probably going on, but he doesn't seem to be able to put the pieces together.

Let's see... people getting frustrated... a community pile of spoons... bending happens when attention is NOT being paid... Hmmm.

Gee, is it possible that someone takes a spoon from the community pile, and after having no luck with it, bends it out of frustration (or as a joke) when no one is looking, then returns it to its original shape and throws the metal-fatigued spoon back on the pile? Is it possible that someone else picks up that metal-fatigued spoon and finds that it bends easily?

Also, Crichton admitted that there was deliberate bending going on, and that he bent spoons with his fingers.