I predict: I will be wrong.

For those of you not following the news, a magician has been very highly covered recently in the media. You didn't read it? Or you didn't realize he was a magician? Harold Camping the Rapture Preacher is just a bad magician. Or more accurately he is a bad mentalist.

A quick note for those not in the know: A mentalist is a magician/performer who does tricks that seem to involve mind reading, esp, predicting the future, finding lost items, divining thoughts of others, etc. A mentalist however does not solve crimes or look like Simon Baker (well not many of them).

Those of you have seen my show (You haven't seen my show? Why not? What's up with that?) know that I do a few mental magic tricks. I divine a thought of word. I miraculousness create a math equation who's sum is the spectator's thought of number. I generally do not predict the end of the world or some other giant, easy to prove event (see my post on Lying). This is one of the ways Harold Camping went wrong. The other?

When it all goes wrong:

Occasionally I have missed the math equation in my show. Once or twice I've filled in the 16 squares with numbers that should all add to the thought of number with gusto and then when I preceded to solve it, I was wrong. It happens. Magic is an art not a science. Math, of course, is a science but I'm not up there doing math. I using math to entertain. (Never thought I would say that...)

Anyway, what Camping did wrong when his prediction fizzled was, he didn't move on to the next thing. He disappeared for three days. If you get your prediction wrong you have to keep moving. Here watch Sylvia Browne renowned "psychic" and finger nail enthusiast dance around her wrong predictions here:

Man for an older lady she can move! I disagree with Roger Miller, I think you can roller skate in a Buffalo Herd.

Did that video make you a bit sad? I hope so. Harold Camping makes me said. But as a showman, a bit of a huckster, and a lover of the ridiculous, I don't want to see him go into hiding. I want him, Charlie Sheen, and Donald Trump to be on Celebrity Survivor together. Ooo the laughs they give me. I want to see Harold Camping host a new version of You Bet Your Life.

Seriously though, it is a great tradition among magicians to debunk pseudo- sciences. We know most of the methods they are using. In Camping and Sylvia Browne's cases I think the method is called wild guess. The practice of debunking was popularized by Houdini and is currently being carried on by the Amazing Randi, Penn Jillette, and others. I love to fool people. I love to make a bit of money from doing it but I hate when charlatans use magic tricks to bilk people. Several Camping followers gave away all of their money and possessions. Some gave all their money to him! And well as Creed said:

So what's the point of all this? Harold Camping makes me laugh and also makes me sad. I guess he is a really good clown.

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Edd Fairman is a Chicago magician who specializes in comedy for corporate and college audiences.