I will post this without comment.
OK, I lied. I have one comment.
I so know what I’m gonna show in my talk at the next TAM.
Tip o’ the lint trap to Beleth from the JREF chat room Skeptics Rock.
-
About Bad Astronomy
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. 
Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. -
-
Subscribe to BA using an RSS Feed
-
Death from the Skies!
Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising -
Social/Networking/Cool Stuff
-
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space - DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
May 24th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
I laughed.
A lot. THIS IS GOLD.
May 24th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
ahuauhauha poor Randy. Next week, Richard Dawkins’ Youth: 10 minutes of his “Elton John on Ice” figure skating + celtic poetry presentation…
May 24th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
He must have been desperate, was Uri be aggressive with his law suits at the time?
May 24th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
The avocado paint job on the dryer is classic. Only a decade like the ’70s would think that was a nice look!
May 24th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Ahaha! Niiiice.
I think those guys at Bounce truly did something he can’t explain. Worthy of the challenge money, perhaps?
May 25th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Randi is not only a great magician he has great oratory and presentation skills as well. I’m always in awe of him. Was he well known at the time as a magician?
Bounce no longer has the embossed design I guess **poof** it disappeared!
May 25th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Troy, you might want to look into your source. The logo is gone only after the sheet is used.
… or they’ve had product design changes sometime in the last 30+ years.
May 25th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Priceless
May 25th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Randi has true bouncebackabilty
May 25th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Wow, he really is amazing. Can’t wait to hear your presentation on this one.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:00 am
Where did they find a woman less tall (?) than Randi? I noticed that she is always standing slightly behind him, probably creating the illusion by the perspective.
After all, there had to be a logical explanation.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:17 am
I heard he shaved off his beard for that commercial. The beard you are seeing is actually a prosthetic.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Awww come on folks! Randi was an entertainer and a public personality. There’s nothing illegitimate about doing a commercial and I am sure it’s to be understood that he’s in character and doesn’t actually think bounce is magic.
Just the same… I still may use this to poke some very light-hearted and well-meaning fun.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Now I need to come up with a science experiment/magic trick where Randi’s face appears on a sheet of bounce.
May 25th, 2007 at 10:00 am
SpaceCadet: In the Shire, where else?
May 25th, 2007 at 10:03 am
You are truly a BAD astronomer! Jeeze, he almost died and now you poke fun at the old guy? He’ll be so mortified that he’ll swallow a bunch of homeopathic pills and then you’ll be sorry!
May 25th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
To his credit at least he was hawking a product that actually works.
Nothing rankles me more than the deluge of late night infomercials for herbal remedies, new age crap, fad diets and religious hucksters.
OEJ
May 25th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
My source was checking an actual Bounce dryer sheet. Agree with one eye jack, Randi isn’t a commercial whore like Bill Cosby (I like this New Coke better…), I don’t think he’d hawk something that didn’t work.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Oh, my god. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone finds Randi pushing dryer sheets!
May 25th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Hahahahhahhahahhahahhahhahahha.
May 27th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
we laugh cuase we love the guy, and thats the true measure of friends, or enemies
May 29th, 2007 at 8:01 am
I’d be curious to find out what year this is from. Definitely looks mid-70s. Was Randi well enough known at the time that viewers would already know who he is, or at least that he’s a famous magician, without any introduction?
Or was he just being an anonymous actor in a commercial? Some people here seem to be implying this, but I don’t think that’s it - I think he was already famous enough that this was a celebrity endorsement.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Oh yes…
There needs to be a sizable presence of Bounce dryer sheets at the next TAM…wrappings for plaques, props (they keep popping out in the darnedest places), things like that.
Priceless doesn’t begin to describe it…
aaaaaaaaaHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…
May 30th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Hey - Didn’t Jamie from Mythbusters star in one of those “Mr. Whipple - Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” commercials when he was a kid? I think they even showed it in an episode. It reminds me of that.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:59 am
No, it was Adam who appeared in the Charmin commercial, not Jamie.
And Randi had been on television and radio fairly often throughout the sixties, so I imagine there were quite a few people who knew of him.