Dear James Randi,
I am writing to you in regard to your offer of $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate, under proper conditions of scientific trial, paranormal abilities. I deeply admire your policy of holding those who claim to possess supernatural powers to the rigorous standards of scientific inquiry and rational thought by working with these claimants to develop a preliminary, and then a formal, test of those abilities.
The warning, posted so ominously (and, dare I say, smugly) on your website, that “no one has ever passed the preliminary tests” only deepens my conviction to be the first.
Delightfully, I have not only a love for the scientific method but also a demonstrable paranormal skill! I have the ability to control men’s minds with my vagina.
To test the claim that I can control men’s minds with my vagina, I propose the following experiment:
A statistically significant even number of volunteers will be recruited to participate in the test. Volunteers should be male, heterosexual, and unknown to me, and should have at least $5 on their person. Each volunteer will be assigned to a group: “vagina” or “no vagina.”
In every trial, the volunteer will be seated within a short walking distance of a hamburger stand. Volunteers in the “vagina” group will also be seated within a short walking distance of my vagina. Volunteers in the “no vagina” group will have a leaden wall placed between them and my vagina. To ensure that the “no vagina” group is not motivated by even the suggestion of my vagina, I will not be seen by them, and my voice will be conveyed only through a voice-altering device that masks my gender.
For each trial, I will ask the volunteer if he will buy me a hamburger.
I predict that volunteers in visual proximity of my vagina will be at least 50 percent more likely to comply than those separated from my vagina by a leaden barrier.
I think you will agree that mind control of any kind is certainly a paranormal phenomenon, and that this proposal represents a fair test of my ability to control men’s minds with my vagina.
As anecdotal evidence—which I am aware is not sufficient for your challenge but seems apropos in an introductory note such as this—I have previously obtained a number of hamburgers in this manner.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Dziura
P.S. With fries!
