Jami Lin edited my reply and responded only to what she wanted to address. Here is the email with her rebuttals (in green areas) to portions of my email (in yellow areas). Additional comments display in the white areas. And your point is.....? You don't like that I quote you verbatim and point out where you have a great deal of ugliness in what you tell people?

What She Says Reality Check In explaining spiritual feng shui, I often paraphrase Kabbalistic thought (Kabbalah: an alchemical system of universal knowledge with roots as far back as Babylonia). ...As I delved further into the depth of this statement, even greater truth was revealed. Through many consultations, I have recognized a direct correlation between the energy centers of our bodies, known as the chakras (from age-old Hindu philosophy), and the bagua.

As far as the people perpetuating the scams, well, there is no discomfort that's close to right for them. What they are doing is so evil that "discomfort" is not appropriate. — Penn Jillette Click the frog Whatever Jami Lin learned from taking feng shui courses with just about everybody she tossed into the fertile blender of her mind, pressed the Liquefy button, and poured it out in her writing. The appropriate metaphor for her literary fatuousness (including her woefully deficient "earth design") truly is the poor amphibian in the Cuisinart.

conferences/dan_winters.htm">Dan Winter is an associate of Roger Green who has accompanied him on the lecture circuit. Winter bills himself as “a respected academic,” because he comes “from an academic background.” (The "academic background" consists of a bachelor’s degree in psychology.) Under these circumstances it's disingenuous to use the terms "respected academic" and "academic background." It's like practicing academics without a license, or impersonating an academic. Roger and Dan can toss some otherworldly word salad. Consider this explanation by Winter of the concept "sacred geometry":

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. — Philip K. Dick Roger Green fancies himself an expert on many accounts — Vatu Shastra, feng shui, what he calls "earth sciences" — an impressive list. The truth, however, is not as impressive. He works with unsavory individuals who promote quackery. He advocates practices such as dowsing that are well-known frauds. Looking closely at his methods and rationales makes him angry. His typical type of revenge consists of "borrowing" your e-mail address and registering you to receive spam.

From Rod Harkness, a guy who isn't about to let the facts get in his way. It is as if Mircea Eliade's warnings about "the frightful literature of the dilettanti, the neo-spiritualists or pseudo-occultists" came true on one website. What He Says Reality Check What is Feng Shui An Asian name for an ancient natural science of energetics. (The science is primarily Chinese, but the Japanese derivation is somewhat different and also independently well developed.) Feng Shui literally translates to "Wind-Water," indicating the power of the influence these elements have over shaping the topography of the face of the earth and the peoples [sic] lives who dwell thereon. Asian identifies anyone living on the eastern side of the Hellespont. People orient ("east") themselves for a reason: to face Anatolia (in southwest Asia or "Asia Minor"). Israel and Syria are in the Middle East, surrounded by the Near East and Far East.

History is a science: it is a product of observation, not imagination; in order for the observation to be accurate, authentic documentation is needed. — F. de Coulanges

Cognitive problems bring us to this analysis. Somehow, Alan Stirling interpreted a comment made about his recognition of the year when Black Sect Feng Shui was invented and imported to the U.S. as a commentary on the entirety of his site. He stresses that his school teaches traditional feng shui and he dared FSUR to find the errors in articles on this site (one of the three that were found).

In Feng Shui Made Easy, William Spear explained "the interplay between 'us' and 'other'" as the philosophy of feng shui. Spear also declared that humans are above the limits of the physical world.

We are not just a bag of bones and tissues ruled by certain limiting 'scientific' constructs such as calories, gravity, and other conceptual dogma....We control our own energy.

This sounds very different from Daoists exclaiming "The world is my body!" and "The unspoiled self is one with itself and nature."

Why doesn't Spear's philosophy agree with the Daoists'? Shouldn't the philosophies be the same, or at least similar?

No police force in the world has the power to stop people from preying upon our gullibility. Your only defense is a little skepticism, especially when the evidence is beyond belief. —Dean Edell, M.D. As suggested by a reader FSUR surfed the site of the Nine Harmonies School of Feng Shui. It is easy to see why this site is a winner of a coveted Bad Feng Shui award. Carol Bridges wrote a book (The Medicine Woman's Guide to Being in Business for Yourself) about remodeling yourself as a New Age entrepreneur (read: huckster) that forms the basis of her attempts at feng shui — a wacky plan of action that includes the "essence of feng shui without having to concern yourself with the Chinese bagua" (how convenient!) so your house can sing "the song of your soul."

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. —Bertrand Russell

The medieval European idea of order had a certain mathematical neatness that would have been appreciated by premodern Chinese. But medieval folk in Europe were obsessed by a fear of chaos and the fact of constant change. For them — just as for an Elizabethan — chaos did not mean the same thing as it does for us.

For our ancestors chaos implied a terrifying cosmic anarchy, best explained humorously by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters II as

The DeAmicis have created another mental theme park in this excerpt "Which School Works Best for You? Understanding Why there are Diverse Schools of Feng Shui" from Power Feng Shui (also known as Feng Shui American Style), the newest waste of perfectly good trees churned out by their vanity publishing house.

Before we examine their latest literary atrocity, it would do well for us to recite Michael Shermer's mantra on Baloney Detection.

The DeAmicis are always an entertaining read. This email was received around January 1, 2001. The punctuation and spelling were left intact.

What They Say

Reality Check

Hello, This is Ralph DeAmicis and I'm writing to say that if you were going to interview me you should have informed me of that at the beginning. That is customary in the media.

Ah, the old Internet-is-the-media trick! Posted in Cranks | read more » Hey, It's a Living! Ralph and Lahni DeAmicis started their own publishing company. They offer multilevel marketing of herbal products, a bewildering mix of McFengshui, Western astrology, and psychobabble in one of the slickest and scariest packages on the Web ("feng shui American style" indeed!). In 2000, when questioned about one of their "top-selling" Feng Shui gimmicks, Ralph would rather not expose himself to scrutiny. Perhaps for local-access television in Pennsylvania, styling yourself as a doctor is allowed; and pitching subtly racist and ultimately worthless concepts as "feng shui" is typical. But alas, it's not feng shui, and the broadcast is not of the caliber of Feng Shui Life! Posted in Cranks | read more » Dazzle with Brilliance or Baffle with ... You should carry your intellect the way James Dean carried a cigarette. — Penn Jillette Feng Shui and the Tango in 12 Easy Lessons by the DeAmicis duo contains a variety of odd theories in which the authors take great pride. However, facts fail to agree with their theories. "Facts don't agree?" you can imagine the authors saying, shrugging their shoulders. "Then, so much the worse for the facts." The book is nothing more than another heavy-handed sales pitch that supports faulty conclusions. This analysis covers only a few of the many egregious errors in this book; it would go on for pages, but you'll get the idea from these samples. Posted in Cranks | read more » Goin' South Part 5: Facts are Facts (conclusion) Lindy Baxter claims Rebuttal Climate and the Equator The Compass was developed purely for seasons rather than the climate. With this in mind, arguments about different climatic effects have no foundation on the question of changes to the compass, or its underlying base, the Later Heaven Arrangementof the trigrams. Baxter is confused about the difference between weather, climate, and season, which could be easily cleared up by consulting a dictionary. In addition she has confused Western cosmology and the Chinese concept of season. Posted in Cranks | read more » Goin' South: Part 2 What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!" —Lewis Carroll ("The Hunting of the Snark") Remember, the Equator is a construct Recognize that the division of the planet into hemispheres is a construct — a product of human thinking, a mental note agreed upon by members of our civilization. Just as we agree there are Northern and Southern Hemispheres, we also agree there are western and eastern hemispheres — and all are the result of cartographic conventions, not real phenomena. Posted in Cranks | read more » Goin' South, Part 4: Facts are Facts (continued) Lindy Baxter claims Rebuttal Climate/Weather The lo p'an is NOT based on weather. It is based on seasonal progressions(among many other things).Ernest J. Eitel's Feng Shui discusses this. "Between heaven and earth there is nothing so important, so almighty and omnipresent as this breath of nature. It enters into every stem and fibre, and through it heaven and earth and every creature live and move and have their being Nature is looked upon by the Chinese observer as a living breathing organism Six breaths of nature are cold, heat, dryness, moisture, wind and fire. They produce, mingled with the five planets/elements, the 24 . . . Posted in Cranks | read more » Goin' South, Part 3: Facts are Facts Some months before the posting of this latest installment on the bogus notions of "Southern Hemisphere Feng Shui," Lindy Baxter was given the opportunity to elaborate on her theories and answer many questions. "I regret that I shall not reply," she replied. "I found the tone of your e-mails hostile and discourteous." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Lindy Baxter claims Rebuttal Science has proved that there is a profound difference between the effects of the ordinary magnet and the Earth's own magnetic force. Posted in Cranks | read more » User login Username: Password: Request new password Search Navigation SITE MAP content NEWSFEEDS sources categories How to Think About Things Planetary Issues syndication FSUR is copyright (c) 1995-2006. All rights reserved. Designed By AfterDeath Graphics