Jewellery

Jewellery or jewelry (/ˈdʒuːᵊlᵊri/) consists of small decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes, and the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal, often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as shells and other plant materials may be used. It is one of the oldest type of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery. The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common. Historically, the most widespread influence on jewellery in terms of design and style have come from Asia.

Mediumship

Mediumship is the practice of certain people—known as mediums—to purportedly mediate communication between spirits of the dead and living human beings.

Attempts to contact the dead date back to early human history, with mediumship gaining in popularity during the 19th century. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians—and the practice started to lose credibility. The practice still continues into the 21st century, with high-profile fraud uncovered as recently as the 2000s.

Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship. An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability.

Several different variants of mediumship exist; arguably the best-known forms involve a spirit allegedly taking control of a medium's voice and using it to relay a message, or where the medium simply "hears" the message and passes it on. Other forms involve materializations of the spirit or the presence of a voice, and telekinetic activity.

Robert Hickman

Robert Hickman (born 26 December 1942) is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Richmond in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

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Psychic

A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities. Psychics may be theatrical performers, such as stage magicians, who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot reading to produce the appearance of such abilities. Psychics appear regularly in fantasy fiction, such as in the novel The Dead Zone by Stephen King.

A large industry and network exists whereby psychics provide advice and counsel to clients. Some famous psychics include Courtney Davy (famous psychic detective with her partner in crime) Edgar Cayce, Ingo Swann, Peter Hurkos, Jose Ortiz El Samaritano,Miss Cleo,John Edward, and Sylvia Browne. Psychic powers are asserted by psychic detectives and in practices such as psychic archaeology and even psychic surgery.

Critics attribute psychic powers to intentional trickery or to self-delusion. In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject and concluded there is "no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." A study attempted to repeat recently reported parapsychological experiments that appeared to support the existence of precognition. Attempts to repeat the results, which involved performance on a memory test to ascertain if post-test information would effect it, "failed to produce significant effects", and thus "do not support the existence of psychic ability," and is thus categorized as a pseudoscience.