The Newsstand Sophisticate

It’s impolite, and probably poor character, to take delight in the misfortune of others, but I can’t help but feel gleeful upon hearing that hogwash peddler Uri Geller (the man who mostly uses his fantastic “psychic powers” to solve one of mankind’s most vexing problems—how to bend spoons with your mind) has been forced to withdraw a frivolous copyright threat to people who posted video on YouTube of him failing to bend spoons on The Tonight Show. Geller’s company will also have to pay a settlement and allow use of the clip under a Creative Commons license. Well done, Electronic Frontier Foundation. (And a posthumous tip of the hat to Johnny Carson, who made sure the spoons given to Geller on that long-ago Tonight Show were normal spoons, untouched by Geller or any of his assistants, and which thus proved resistant to the psychic vibrations.)