Don Lane vs James Randi

Aussie entertainer Don Lane has died of dementia-related illness at age 75.

Lane famously hosted a late-night variety show, The Don Lane Show, from 1975 - 1983. It was almost required viewing in Australian households at the time and I'll say now that, as a teenager at the time, I enjoyed watching it - though more for Burt Newton's antics than anything else.

Among Lane's long list of regular celebrity guests were spoon bender Uri Geller and alleged psychic Doris Stokes. I've little doubt both were popular with viewers, just as today's crop of media "psychics" seem to attract believers, but Lane seemed especially credulous to the point of fawning over his paranormal friends.

Lane's willingness to believe in the paranormal was fully demonstrated when he invited US magician and sceptic James Randi on to his show. Randi explained why he is sceptical of the likes of Geller and Stokes and performed some simple tricks to demonstrate why we should all share his scepticism of extraordinary claims. But rather than accepting his advice, Lane took exception to it and told Randi to "piss off".

The event became a part of Australia's TV history and has been replayed several times over the years on various TV retrospectives. This week has seen it rear its head again in almost every news story about Lane's passing.

If you're wondering what all the fuss was about, Aussie sceptic Richard Saunders has the video...

LCROSS: NASA bogged down

Phil Plait reports that the LCROSS is about to hit the moon (11:31:20 UTC) - about 7:30pm West Australian time (that's about 13 minutes away). But we won't see it from here because the moon ain't up yet.

NASA TV is supposed to be covering the impact live but most NASA LCROSS sites I've tried tonight have either failed to load or only partially loaded, and then slowly.

Meanwhile, JREF forum members point to conspiracy and scare-mongering sites dedicated to the event.

UPDATE:

Okay, it's done. I just had a look outside and there's no moon. It was definitely there when I looked at this time last week. I knew there was a risk from bombing the moon but I at least expected to see a half moon.

Oops!

There's a lot of talk about the US$79 Million "wasted" on this fiasco. To put that in perspective, this is a space mission involving sending a rocket and data-collecting equipment to the Moon. Greg Norman, way back in 2003 spent AUD70 Million on a boat. He sold it in 2004 for a rumoured AUD77 Million. Okay, that's Aussie dollars but the exchange rate averaged around 75 cents throughout that period so it's still almost US$60 Million resale - and that's 5-6 years ago and it's still just a boat. It's never left our atmosphere and we didn't learn anything from it except, maybe, that even $70M won't necessarily buy you something you want to keep longer than a year.

Waiting now for first pictures of the impact to arrive...