 |
|
Smart weapons, such as the Tomahawk missile is supposed to hit a postage stamp at 300km or more (200 miles or more). But only two out of thirteen actually hit the target. |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Just act paranormal
Posted on Tuesday, July 08, 2008 (CDT) by Isis
 In March, producer David Taylor embarked on an unorthodox talent quest. Travelling around the country, he went looking for Australia's hottest psychics - clairvoyants, mind readers, fortune tellers and other practitioners of the paranormal - whose abilities he intended to test before a live studio audience.
Taylor and his team ultimately met about 100 psychics, each of whom was asked to perform one-on-one readings. He then brought seven of the best to Sydney to take part in The One, a new five-part series that tries to uncover Australia's most gifted psychic. People have a huge interest in psychic phenomena, Taylor says. "Just look at TV shows like Charmed and Supernatural and all the astrology columns in newspapers. It's a subject that has mainstream prime time appeal."
With Andrew Daddo as host, The One is like a version of Next Top Model for supernaturalists: seven psychics undergo a series of challenges designed to test their abilities in clairvoyance, telepathy and mediumship, among others. Two judges, psychic Stacey Demarco and sceptic Richard Saunders, decide at the end of each episode who stays and who goes, until the final instalment, when the audience gets to decide which of the remaining spoon-benders is truly The One.
"Quite
frankly I am sceptical that any of the psychics have the ability they
say they have," Saunders says. His role is to cast a critical eye over
proceedings and "maybe even provide a rational explanation of what is
going on". As a past president and current vice-president of the
Australian Skeptics association, Saunders has certainly seen his fair
share of hokum. He has infiltrated psychic hotlines (and discovered
that most simply read from a script) and once investigated a "haunted"
schoolroom in Campbelltown, concluding that it had more to do with
warped floorboards than a wicked poltergeist.
This time, however, it's different.
"We are using a variety of
tests that will, hopefully, leave very little to chance," he says. "And
there are rules that all the psychics have to go by that will tell us
if they are really using their psychic abilities to discover insights
about people they would not normally have known."
One of the tests, for
instance, involves a young boy "lost" in the bush. "We had a volunteer
boy playing a lost child in the bush out the back of St Ives and the
contestants have to use their abilities to home-in on his location, all
in a reasonably short period of time."
Another test has the
psychics trying to find a single piece of contraband in one of 70
shipping containers. Another sees the contestants taken to Pentridge
Jail, in Melbourne, to find the buried bones reputed to have belonged
to Ned Kelly.
The contestants are a
varied bunch, ranging from Charmaine, 43, a medium with "a healthy
sense of competition", to Jason, 37, a mathematical genius and Reiki
master with an IQ of 160. (Producers' notes say after surviving a
near-death experience Jason abandoned medicine to study science and
philosophy, "in an attempt to better understand our universe".) Rayleen
is 38, and has often assisted police with their investigations, and
Mitchell is a fifth-generation psychic who specialises in clairvoyance.
Ezio is "Australia's foremost authority on spirit communication", and
She is a 44-year-old pagan witch specialising in Tibetan and Hindu
shamanism.
Taylor concedes that
television places unusual pressures on the psychics. "TV is all
schedules and time frames and definitive outcomes. Getting the psychics
to do their thing on cue was a big ask but they all deliver time and
again."
Though initially sceptical
about paranormal phenomena, Taylor now classes himself as more of an
agnostic. "I have a fluctuating perspective, I guess. We didn't come
into it as believers but we don't have a hardline sceptic view either.
And, to be honest, things have happened in the production process that
have been jaw-dropping.
"That's what's good about
this show. Believers will take away one thing and sceptics another.
People in the middle will see some pretty amazing things that will give
them plenty to think about."
The One airs on Seven on Tuesday at 7.30pm.
Copyright: smh.com.au
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No Comments Allowed for Anonymous, please register |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Just act paranormal
by Kosams on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | I watched the show and was impressed especially the 15 minute search for the young lad in dense bush. Jason taught my Reiki Master Lee-Ann so am I related?...yes, in linage. :) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
