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I do not need to be stopped
There is a person called Jim Carr, who posts on the internet under the name UncaYimmy. He lives in Phoenix Arizona and works from home designing websites. He has taken quite an interest in my presence as a paranormal claimant. He is behind the website Stop Vision From Feeling, seemingly an attempt at copying the work done by Skeptic, Robert Lancaster, who runs the website Stop Sylvia Browne.
I have not read up on Sylvia Browne, but I do know that she symbolizes that which active Skeptics are trying to stop. Sylvia is a practicing psychic medium, and she offers advice from some spiritual source and charges a fee. She has been shown to be repeatedly wrong in her predictions of the future and on cases of missing people. She also presents herself as a woman that lacks compassion and sympathy for others, including her clients. But even at that, she is very popular and has a huge following. She has many readers of her books on woo and appears frequently on television to promote her practice of woo. Sylvia Browne has a huge influence as a woo practitioner, is making a great deal of money in unethical practice, and has also caused a lot of harm and distress with her practice of methods that have not been validated by science.
Robert Lancaster is right in that we may need to stop someone like Sylvia Browne from practicing and spreading her woo, and Robert does a good job in gathering evidence of her inaccuracies and of the harm that is caused by her woo. Robert also manages to stay calm and factual, and presents his case study of Browne in a professional, respectful, and impersonal manner, as it should be done.
What Jim Carr is doing, however, is getting carried away in his dreams of aspiring to become a great revered Skeptic. The target that he has picked, me, to demonstrate his "skepticism" with, is naturally a very good choice for a skeptical project of woo coverage. Like something a junior high school student might pick for a school paper to talk about in front of the class. But as for a hardcore Skeptical mission, I'm afraid I am far too innocent for anything of the magnitude of Sylvia Browne, or the magnitude that Jim Carr had envisioned for us.
I do not offer psychic readings, I make no money off of my claim, I have no books and any of what I share of my claim is distributed freely on my website or in other skeptical forums, and the way I discuss my claim and investigation is all intended as my skeptical analysis of the project. I keep my particular perceptions to myself and do not tell a person what I might have perceived in them. I have presented my claim to a skeptical study and am prepared to falsify the claims as I am headed along that path. Nothing I do makes me the next Sylvia Browne and I have given no reason for anyone to reasonably predict that I would be headed toward being anything of what she is, a practicing woo.
Jim Carr invests in a highly aggressive personal hate campaign against me, with his website and other areas at which he shares his ramblings. He does so in a very emotional negative manner, and some time along the way he lost his ability to see objectively or to think clearly, as all he can see before his eyes is "Sylvia Browne!" and anything of me he interprets to fit with his supernatural prediction, and we all know that psychic predictions of the future often fail, that I will be what Sylvia is. My own prediction of my future is that I will be a Skeptic and Physicist.
I have been wondering about the motives behind his agenda, because they can't be based on reasonable skepticism or on my investigation as it currently stands, and I have been strongly suspecting that it was all because he is deluded (yeah, we don't like that word but let's use it here anyway) about me having a certain future in the woo economy as the next Sylvia Browne. And here we finally have his outright confession to this:
*RSL is Robert S. Lancaster
| Said by Jim Carr in April 3 2010 |
"In this case I chose to actively engage someone whom I felt had not only the motivation but the skills and charm to be another Sylvia Browne."
"Do you think people like Sylvia start out doing guest appearances on Good Morning, America? Even RSL has commented on the importance of dealing with people like this before they become famous."
#287
"I know VFF is not currently a Sylvia Browne. That's not the question. The questions are whether she's can be one and if she's inclined to pursue it." #292
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His personal engagement and negative emotional involvement into his obsession that I be the next Sylvia, is nothing but exaggeration and nonsense. And how he justifies his construct of this fire and brimstone quest of his to destroy what essentially is nothing but a girl's harmless personal journey at investigating elements of her past in woo as she discovers how they be falsified before she then enters the world of skepticism, his justification for countless forms of personal attack against me is in what he imagines I might become, and he admits too, that I am not yet the person he is attacking. It all reaches a level of absurdity, that makes Jim Carr's agenda not much more than a joke. Reminding me of the following joke, which fits just perfectly to what is going on here. I may have all the material necessary and I may possess the required charisma to be equipped to launch a career in woo, would I so choose. But...
From
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A couple goes on vacation to a fishing resort in northern Minnesota. The husband likes to fish at the crack of dawn. The wife likes to read.
One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a short nap. Although she isn't familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat.
She motors out a short distance, anchors, and continues to read her book. Along comes the game warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside her and says,"Good morning, Ma'am, what are you doing?"
"Reading my book," she replies, thinking isn't that obvious?
"You're in a restricted fishing area," he informs her.
"But officer, I'm not fishing. Can't you see that?"
"Yes, but you have all the equipment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."
"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with rape," says the woman.
"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden.
"That's true, but you do have all the equipment."
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I may have all the equipment to become the next Sylvia Browne, but I am handling the woo I have got, in a most careful and responsible manner. Another example is that I have some training in the chemistry lab and with my understanding of chemistry I am much safer to handle what are potentially highly dangerous chemical situations than is someone uninformed of its harms or incapable of respecting those dangers. Similarly, we can consider much of woo to be potentially hazardous, unless it happens to be in the hands of an informed, responsible person such as I. And good things come from both chemistry and woo that is managed in the spirit of education and research. I have no intention of becoming a practicing woo. Instead I am putting my woo through a skeptical investigation, to falsify it, before I then leave it behind and become a Skeptic myself, whether the Skeptical community is ready to welcome me or not, that is where I want to be.
I do wonder what our Jim Carr might be equipped to do in the future. Perhaps we need to start a www.stopjimcarr.com website. I do think he was handling some knives in his kitchen some time ago. And there are any number of crimes he most certainly is equipped of doing.
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