From the mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR"). The Annals of Improbable Research is a journal devoted to humor in the sciences.
January / February, 1996 (ISSN 1076-500X)
As reported in the popular press, both the CIA and the KGB are hiring psychics. And they pay well.
If you are interested in whether or not you have paranormal powers, just sit down in a quiet corner and mentally send your name and address to Wojtek Bourbaki, AIR's resident ESP expert. If you don't receive notification from us within three days you have no powers.
In the name of national security (any nation, any form of security) and economic growth (in either direction), The Annals of Improbable Research is offering this service free of charge.
In the last issue of mini-AIR, we offered, free of charge, to test any reader who wished to know if he or she has paranormal powers. Testees were instructed to sit in a quiet corner and mentally send us their names and addresses. Alas, we had to terminate the testing program after readers in England and Israel reported a rash of bent spoons and then mentally lodged police complaints against us. We are now engaged in extra-cognitively presenting evidence to demonstrate that, whatever is bent or twisted, it is not the spoons.
Our paranormal testing program has already had one commercial spin-off. Our engineers have developed a truly foolproof data security protocol. It is called PGP-Y -- "Pretty Good Parasychology." The mechanism is simple. You imagine that you have transmitted data to someone; that person then imagines that he has received them. Using PGP-Y, any type of information can be transmitted over the Internet with complete security. The key is that the data are transmitted high over the net -- so high that the data actually travel above the net rather than within it. The data are transmitted telepathically (and for those who distrust electronic funds, we also have a scheme for transmitting cash and gold plate telekinetically.)
AIR owns the copyright on their material. However, this web page is ART's. (Just don't want to give the impression that we're trying to claim something that isn't ours.)
[an error occurred while processing this directive]