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Self in Society Roundup 73
Immigration, education, James Randi, dad jokes, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Immigration Watch
Assaulting Citizens: C. J. Ciaramella: "A North Carolina man has filed a claim seeking damages from the federal government, alleging he was arrested last year by immigration officers despite having valid REAL IDs, then dumped on the side of the road once the officers confirmed he was a U.S. citizen."
Getting What He Voted For Good and Hard: CBS: "Trump voter pleads for fiancée's release after ICE arrest: "They're destroying families.'"
Worker Shortages: Go figure.
Education Updates
AI and Motivation: Sal Khan has a pretty good explanation of why AI alone cannot motivate kids to learn: "Imagine I walk into a classroom and I say, 'Hey kids, my name is Sal. I think I'm a pretty good tutor. I’m just going to sit in the back of the room here, and if any of you have any questions, I'm happy to help you.' Well, you can imagine what would happen. Some of the kids maybe would leverage it, but a lot of kids might be too embarrassed. They wouldn't know how to do it."
Choice Contracts: Lobbyist Ross Izzard pointed something out that I haven't much contemplated before: states typically contract out the implementation of "choice" programs to a single company. These contracts are worth huge amounts of money and so, predictably, involve intense and expensive lobbying. This to me illustrates the central problem with government-involved "choice."
Kids and Screens: Peter Gray via Cowen: "(1) Extensive research refutes the theory that effects of smartphones and social media account for a meaningful portion of the decline in teen mental health in the years following 2010. (2) Smartphones and social media can have both beneficial and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, which tend to cancel out when averaging. (3) Future research should focus on understanding better the ways teens use these tools and how to help them maximize the benefits and minimize the harm." I think screens are very harmful to some children and very beneficial for others. Details matter!
James Randi in Skeptic
Recently Skeptic announced that it had published online 64 columns by the magician and debunker James Randi. (By the way, if you haven't seen the documentary about Randi, An Honest Liar, I consider it a must-watch.) I asked ChatGPT to come up with a "best-of" list; following is what it came up with (with Chat's summaries). My wife and I had the chance to meet Randi in Boulder a few years before his death in 2020, and that was a great experience.
The Indispensable Core1. The Matter of Dowsing
Probably the best single introduction to Randi’s method. It combines the ideomotor effect, the difference between demonstration and experiment, claimant psychology, and practical test design.
2. John Edward and the Art of Cold Reading
His clearest explanation of how mediums exploit fishing, volunteered information, prior contact, selective memory, audience cooperation, and television editing. It is both a case study and a reusable guide to watching psychic performances.
3. Another Farce of New Age Technology Bites the Dust
The LifeGuard "people detector" case may be the fullest miniature of Randi's investigative process: inspect the claim, contact witnesses, identify ideomotor movement, propose double-blind testing, pressure institutions to act, and obtain a definitive failure at Sandia National Laboratories.
4. Million Dollar Madness
The essential statement on the Million Dollar Challenge: what the money represented, why preliminary tests were required, why famous psychics avoided it, and how believers constructed reasons that failure would not count. It also captures Randi's combative public persona particularly well.
5. Applied Kinesiology and Bell Laboratories: The Embrace of Nonsense by the Otherwise Well-Informed
Essential because its target is not an obvious carnival charlatan but highly educated corporate professionals. It demonstrates his point that intelligence and technical training do not immunize anyone against a badly controlled performance.
Classic Investigations and Explanations
6. Uri Geller & the Moving Compass Trick
A compact illustration of Randi's distinctive tactic: reproduce the supposedly paranormal effect through ordinary conjuring, decline to reveal everything immediately, and force observers to consider mundane possibilities before announcing new physics.
7. The Oregon No-Vortex
One of his most accessible visual explanations. Randi reconstructs the "growing and shrinking person" effect with tilted platforms, false horizontals, perspective, and a carefully chosen camera position. An excellent essay on how perception can be perfectly honest and completely wrong.
A lively historical piece connecting Randi to Houdini's skeptical tradition. Its deeper subject is how grief, prestige, ideological commitment, and personal stubbornness can overwhelm intelligence—as happened with Sherlock Holmes's creator.
9. May the Schwartz Be With You
Randi's critique of Gary Schwartz's laboratory research into mediums and survival after death. It is worth reading because the dispute concerns apparently scientific experiments rather than merely a stage performance: controls, judging procedures, sensory leakage, and the difference between statistical anomalies and evidence of spirits.
The Broader Case for Organized Skepticism
10. A Deadly Intellectual Atmosphere
Perhaps his best short manifesto. Its subject is the surrounding culture of bogus products, advertising, credulous institutions, useless detection devices, and educational failure—not any single paranormal claimant. It explains why Randi regarded skepticism as civic work rather than a hobby.
11. An Address to Congressional Representatives
Randi translates his campaign into public-policy terms: government purchases of worthless devices, patent-office failures, scientific literacy, taxpayer protection, and teaching children how rather than what to think. It also contains a concise statement of his intellectual heroes and values.
12. Homeopathy, the French, Psychic Dreams, Testing Astrology, and Numerology
The title sounds miscellaneous—and it is—but the opening six-point comparison between homeopathy and paranormal claims is one of Randi's sharpest taxonomies of pseudoscience. The numerology section also displays his gift for reductio through playful imitation.
13. Medical Quackery Down Under, Think of a Card, A Step in the Right Direction, Raining on Art Bell’s Parade, The Big MEG Takes a Fall
The best representative of the typical "'Twas Brillig' miscellany." It moves from a dangerous homeopathic 'vaccine,' to an Internet card trick, magnetic shoes, media credulity, and a free-energy device. Read this one to experience the column as regular subscribers originally did.
14. Are Science and Religion Compatible?
A useful statement of Randi's refusal to manufacture an easy reconciliation by defining science and religion so loosely that disagreement disappears. It shows the harder-edged secularist Randi, beyond the investigator of spoon-benders.
15. Science Is Not a Notion: Randi on Evolution, Miracles, and Freedom of Choice
A wide-ranging piece touching evolution education, miracle reports, Carl Sagan, drug policy, and freedom of choice. It is less tightly constructed than his best case studies, but unusually revealing of his general political and philosophical outlook.
Essential for the Randi Fan, Rather than Merely the Student of Skepticism
16. Pigasus Flies Again
The Pigasus Awards are Randi in comic-prosecutor mode: homeopathic information transmitted digitally, UFO benefactors, credulous television hosts, and celebrity mediums. The satire sometimes dates more quickly than the methodological essays, but it was an important part of his public identity.
17. A Gardner Centennial
The most personally indispensable article. Randi remembers Martin Gardner as mentor, correspondent, puzzle-maker, punctilious journalist, friend, and foundational figure in modern skepticism. It is warm, funny, grief-stricken, and much less armored than his usual writing.
Quick Takes
Jason Arday: Michael Huemer is not amused. Or, rather, he's sardonically amused? He warns, "The problem with universities is probably worse than you realized."
DGU: NYT: "Some local residents . . . have turned their attention to what they consider the tragedy's silver lining: that Mr. Salinas and another man had drawn their own guns and fired at Mr. Williams, slowing his rampage and forcing him to retreat before he killed himself."
Astor on School Shootings: Bill Barshay: Trying to reduce bullying doesn't seem to help; reducing social contagion by more-responsible news reporting does.
Cowen's Greatest Fear: Cowen pointing to Tymofiy Mylovanov: "US air and naval power still cannot force open the Strait of Hormuz. Cheap Iranian drones and missiles blunt its fleet, and Russia builds the same weapons at scale. The offset that kept the US ahead since the 1940s has stopped working." More. We need to get our shit together. Having an incompetent president at the helm at this time may prove disastrous long-term.
FBI Aids China and Russia: Reuters: "FBI Director Kash Patel says he has forged new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia, two longtime U.S. rivals, over the past year in hopes of gaining allies in combating transnational crime including fentanyl, cyber fraud and child sexual exploitation." What could go wrong?
Weakened Military: NYT: "The U.S. Is Burning Through Weapons in Iran. Russia and China Are Taking Note." WSJ: "U.S. Intel Finds Putin Could Test NATO's Resolve With Limited Incursion."
Will on DSA: George Will: "DSA socialism is Peter Pan politics for sandbox revolutionaries."
Random Dad Jokes:
* What is the favorite social media site for ghosts? Faceboo.
* What is Jesus's least favorite part of word puzzles? Across. His least favorite gym? Crossfit.
* What do they call reproduction among clusters of Dorothy's Rope organisms? A clusterf**.
There's No Vax for Stupidity: U. of Minnesota: "More people requesting 'unvaccinated' blood for themselves or their children."
Dating Amber: This 2020 Irish film is considerably heavier than I anticipated, but excellent, especially the lead performances. Two high schoolers, a boy and a girl, both of whom are gay, date each other to disguise their gayness. The teens, Eddie and Amber, both struggle to come to grips with their sexual orientation in a substantially homophobic culture. The film is funny, as I expected, but it also conveys the trauma of living with profound unearned shame.