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Another way that people are using the Internet in a psychic way is to bring many minds together and direct their thoughtsall at the same timetoward accomplishing a certain goal. Recently, for instance, organizers used the Internet to establish a prayer event intended to promote world peace. On August 22, 1998, the World Peace Prayer Ceremony was broadcast between 3:30 and 4 p.m. Eastern time. It claimed to be the first peace rally of its kind. |
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If you're interested in making friends with folks much, much farther away, The Internet can help you contact them. Or rather, you can help the Internet contact them: There's now a new program that enables you to contribute your computer power to the Web for UFO sightings. It's billed as ''a grand experiment that will harness the spare power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extrater-restrial Intelligence (SETI). With a program called SETI@home, computer users from around the world will participate in a major scientific experiment. The program works like a screen saver: Whenever you're not using your computer, it starts to analyze data taken by the world's largest radio telescopein hopes that some of the signals it picks up are from faraway civilizations. |
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From the silly to the sublime, the Internet has something for everyone. It enables anyone to express their views. In addition to learning more about peoples' personal experiences with psychic phenomena, you can tap into information on the truly esoteric side. And, of course, you can find a lot on information from psi's critics, as well, as we'll show you in the next section. |
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Admittedly, some of the paranormal events that people describe seem a bit . . . shall we say, far-fetched? Just as the phenomenal world has its extremists, so does the purely physical world. These people who are committed to questioning everything call themselves skeptics. |
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Skeptics take their beliefs so seriously that they have formed several different organizations. The best-known is probably The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, founded in 1980 by scientists, academics, and science writers, including Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ray Hyman, James Randi, and others. Its self-described goal is to encourage "the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminate factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public. It also promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues." |
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