James Randi in Memoriam, 1928–2020

Back in 2011 I was going through a period where I felt I wanted to be really outspoken about my atheism, and I heard Richard Dawkins [0] was going to talk at this conference, so I booked a ticket and I attended.

It was the TAM 2011 conference [1] in Las Vegas. I had no idea what was it about. I had never attended a 'skeptics' conference before, only tech stuff. That night at the reception, I met all sorts of interesting characters.

Then this old guy with a cane came up, with a long beard like ZZ Top. I asked him 'who are you'? and he said 'I'm James. I'm a magician'. We chatted completely normally for like two minutes and we both moved on to other people. He was completely natural, absolutely not offended that I didn't know who he was, even if he was the force behind the conference. He was genuinely interested in what were my reasons for attending and my personal story.

I did get to meet many of my heroes in person during those days, and I even scored some 1:1s with them, Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrass Tyson, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss and Bill Nye. But after all this time, my fondest memories are those minutes with Mr. Randi. If I had to make an analogy, he's the most Yoda-like person I've ever met.

His life will continue to be an inspiration many. Me included.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Meeting

Oh my. I cant believe he died a week ago and it wasn't international headlines.

What a life. So much respect for this man on so many levels.

"The man who destroyed skepticism" is a different POV on Randi from Mitch Horowitz at BoingBoing. (I've mixed feelings about Randi's methods. Thought I'd share this in the most recent post.)

https://boingboing.net/2020/10/26/the-man-who-destroyed-skep...

May his nonexistent soul/spirit rest in peace. Requiescat In Pace

Most rational man of all times