She also co-organizes the Sydney Skeptics Meetup group and helped organise The Amaz!ng Meeting Australia. In 2008 Dunlop joined The Mystery Investigators, headed by Australian Skeptics president Richard Saunders. The program teaches students to use science and critical thinking to investigate claims of the paranormal, such as water divining, spoon bending, and firewalking.
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In 2014, Marshall was awarded the Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon award for being the "perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle" after publicly endorsing water divining. Marshall said 'is there instrumentality that we could create that would enable a machine to find that water?', and that it is CSIRO's job to "push the envelope".
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In 2003 Saunders co-founded The Mystery Investigators Show with Alynda Brown and Ian Bryce. The program teaches students to use science and critical thinking to investigate claims of the paranormal, such as water divining, spoon bending, and firewalking. In 2008 Brown left the show and was replaced by biologist Dr. Rachael Dunlop. In 2013 the show celebrated 10 years of performing.
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The film begins with Kathirvel (Prashanth), a do-gooder going all out to get water for his village. With monsoon repeatedly failing, his village reels under drought, and he runs from pillar to post to get a well dug in the village. He manages to bring Shanmugham (Mahadevan), a water- divining expert, to dig a well. Shanmugham, his wife, and daughter Marikozhundhu (Pooja) come to the village.
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After the war he lived at Pongakawa, near Te Puke, running a cartage company and becoming involved with water divining and oil prospecting. Over the years, the effect of his war wounds became more pronounced with his ability to use his wrists declining and his forearm becoming withered. By 1960, he was on a full disability pension. He was also affected by the Cretan villagers he had accidentally killed at Galatas.
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Predictions have often been made, from antiquity until the present, by using paranormal or supernatural means such as prophecy or by observing omens. Methods including water divining, astrology, numerology, fortune telling, interpretation of dreams, and many other forms of divination, have been used for millennia to attempt to predict the future. These means of prediction have not been proven by scientific experiments. In literature, vision and prophecy are literary devices used to present a possible timeline of future events.
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Jennison was appointed to the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1965 and was the first Professor of Physical Electronics at the University. Within a year he established the Electronics Laboratory (later Department of Electronics and now School of Engineering and Digital Arts) at the University. Prior to his appointment at Kent he was Senior Lecturer in Radio Astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory and Senior Lecturer in Physics, Manchester University. His research interests extended to relativity, studying paths of light in rotating systems, and also to studying ball lightning and water divining.
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He was granted a Life Membership in the organization in recognition of his work on The Great Skeptic CD. He went on to create the Great Water Divining DVD and the "card carrying skeptic card." He founded Sydney Skeptics in the Pub, initiated "The Skeptic Tank" radio show on Net.FM with Stefan Sojka, produced The Australian Skeptics collection on "Theories of Everything" for TVS local Sydney TV, and created several of the Australians Skeptics convention DVDs. He was the acting artistic director and layout manager for The Skeptic Magazine from Australian Skeptics until Tim Mendham was appointed the new editor in June 2009.
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In 1896 the Local Government Board ordered the council to provide an adequate water supply. In July of that year the council rejected the advice given by the county’s geologist and turned instead to Leicester Gataker. He divined water in a field belonging to a Mr Fountaine of Little Park Farm. Trial borings began in that field and in March 1897 Leicester was called back again to re- locate the springs.Home Rule for Amptill by Andrew Underwood published by Ampthill Urban District Council 1974 No ISBN, esp pages 49 & 50 In 1897 and again in 1898 several ratepayers objected to the payment to Leicester Gataker for water divining.
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In the early 1980s Dick Smith brought James Randi to Australia to conduct a test to determine whether those who conduct water divining have any real abilities. They laid out a grid of plastic irrigation pipes which were able to have water flowing or not flowing, and then challenged water diviners to determine with pipes contained the running water. Prior to the testing, the diviners agreed that the experimental conditions were suitable, however, when they were unable to display any ability, they changed their positions and blamed various external influences for preventing their success. This experiment was repeated several times beginning in 2001 using bottled water and bottled sand hidden within paper bags, with similar results.
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The festival regularly features high-profile guests from the fields of science, cinematography and television production. Recent guests have included: Albert Barillé, the French creator of the series Once Upon a Time... (2007); British BBC documentary maker Nigel Marven (2008); Jeff Lieberman, the American host of the Discovery Channel show Time Warp (2009); Andrew Holtz, author of the book The Medical Science of House, M.D.; the undersea filmmaker Steve Lichtag; and the British filmmaker and biologist David Barlow, who films the inside of human bodies. In 2013 Richard Saunders was invited to be a member of the "World Competition Jury" for the 48th festival. He also gave a lecture on the claims of water divining as part of the "Pseudoscience" block and a lecture and workshops on origami as part of "The Beauty of Numbers" block.
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In addition to his two terms of office heading the Australian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Civil Aviation Safety Authority in the 1990s, Smith has engaged in a diverse range of civic activities. Smith is a founder and a patron of the Australian Skeptics. In July 1980, Smith collaborated with renowned sceptic James Randi to test water divining, offering a prize of A$40,000 for a successful demonstration. Within days of Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating's 1995 parliamentary announcement of his intention to make Australia a republic by 2001, public opinion was found to favour Smith as the nation's first president. Then Prime Minister John Howard appointed Smith founding Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation in December 1996 and he served till February 2000. In 2005, Dick Smith gave public support to the asylum seeker Peter Qasim. Qasim was released later in 2005 by the Australian Government after seven years in detention. This support included the offer to visit India seeking evidence of Qasim's claims. In June 2008, he offered a A$50,000 award for investigative journalism into the Government purchase of Super Seasprite helicopters, after the contract was cancelled at a cost of A$1.1 billion.
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