Croydon Bob

I've always been a big fan of Peter Hurkos (1911 - 1988), obviously not because he was a "psychic detective" (indeed he was the very first ever psychic detective) but because he was so spectacularly crap at being a psychic. I started a thread about him on the UK-S forum but it didn't get much interest so I'm hoping a blog entry here will spread the word and that some of you will enjoy reading about him.

Randi's encyclopaedia entry on him is here: http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Hurkos,%20Peter.html ...

Those of you who have been an active skeptic for more than the last few years will have noticed that skepticism has become sexy. Suddenly everyone wants to be a skeptic. Skeptics in the Pub has gone from one meeting in London with 20 to 40 fat beardy men, to meetings all over the country, with more than 300 people turning up at the London SitP meetings including (gasp) young men and even women!

I'm not sure exactly why this has happened. It is easy to credit Dawkins, Singh, Goldacre ...