Anti Gravity: Mind Reading This?; April 2000; Scientific American Magazine; by Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Isensed you would eventually read this column. Well, I checked our subscription list and saw that you would read it. Unless you bought this issue at a newsstand, in which case rest assured that my amazing psychic powers told me that you would find this column. In fact, my uncanny abilities actually caused you to turn to this page and begin reading. Yeah, that's it.

Of course, my talents come naturally. Not so for a handful of New York City former welfare recipients who suddenly became big news in late January. Unbeknownst to most of the unfortunate nonpsychic majority of the population, the city's Human Resources Administration was arranging for some on the welfare rolls to find honest work with the Psychic Network, a telephone service offering psychic and tarot card readings. And honest work it was, in the sense that there was nothing illegal about it, provided that the ads hawking it clearly acknowledge, in the finest of print, that the entire enterprise is "for entertainment only." Such logic is interesting, as it apparently means that I could label the proprietors of such services as charlatans, bunko artists and general rat finks without fear of legal action, as long as I included the disclaimer that my comments were for entertainment only, which of course they are. Yeah, that's it.