FACTOID # 10: The total number of state executions in 2005 was 60: 19 in Texas and 41 elsewhere. The racial split was 19 Black and 41 White.
 
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Encyclopedia > Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal

The Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) was founded by Irishman Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who wrote, "The normal consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits.". The committe claims that there is no such thing as "normal", and there are no existing "normal" people (i.e., people existing in the average). For example, no one has 2.3 children. Irish ethnicity is common in the world, as many people are descended from Ireland or share an Irish heritage. ...


The Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish pounds (around $700,000 American) to anyone who can produce "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."


Robert Anton Wilson is the American director of the committee. Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson or R. A. W. (born January 18, 1932) is a futurologist, libertarian, and author of the Schrödingers Cat trilogy (1979), a complex spoof of conspiracy theories. ...


The Origin of the Committee

CSICON began with a conversation Finnegan heard in a pub between two men named O'Brian and Nolan. They were discussing the strange weather. Another man named Sean Murphy interjected, "Ah, Jaysus. I've never seen a boogerin' normal day. And I never met a fookin' average man neither".


This inspired Finnegan, and the next day he wrote a two-page outline on a new science he dubbed patapsychology. The paper began with the sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolf Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." Patapsychology is the philosophy that there is no such thing as normal. Its name is derived from Parapsychology as a catch-all for paranormal studies, but it is not limited to purely psychological pheomena. ... Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945), a German politician who was the founder of the Third Reich (1933-1945), is widely regarded as one of the most significant and reviled leaders in world history. ...


References

  • Wilson, Robert Anton. Robert Anton Wilson | CSICON (http://www.rawilson.com/csicon.shtml) Retrieved Feb. 27, 2005.
  • Disinformation: The Complete Series Disc 2: DisinfoCon. (1999) Lecture by Robert Anton Wilson. Distr. Ryko Distribution.

  Results from FactBites:
 
Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal information - Search.com (312 words)
The Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) is featured in the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, who claims American directorship of the committee.
According to Wilson, it was founded by Irishman Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who wrote, "The normal consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits." The committee claims that there is no such thing as "normal", and there are no existing "normal" people (i.e., people existing in the average).
The committee's name is a parody of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and the million-pound challenge a parody of the prize offered by James Randi for evidence of paranormal abilities.
Cosmic Trigger: Volume 3 (4619 words)
CSICOP (Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) believes that the "normal" actually exists somewhere, and not just in some Platonic spook world.
They claim it exists everywhere., and that nothing else at all exists anywhere.
One wall-climber is George Rathjens, professor of political science at M.I.T...."(Sagan's) claim that the original nuclear winter model is unimpeached [he says]...is the greatest fraud we've seen in a long time"....Russell Seiz, a fellow at the Harvard Center for International Affairs...gibes at [Sagan and his co-authors] for mixing physics and advertising.
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