Unexplainable malarkey

A regular reader and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia sent me a link yesterday, with the message, "Oooh, look!  Another company has discovered that it can sell bogus woo-woo stuff using your favorite words -- frequency, field, energy, and vibration!"

Regular readers undoubtedly know how pissed off I get when people use scientific words and can't even be bothered to look up the actual definitions.  It's even worse when they use said misused scientific words to rip people off, although clearly some of the responsibility lies with the consumers, because after all, they could also bother to look up the actual definitions if they wanted to -- caveat emptor, and all of that sort of thing.

So, anyway, I clicked the link, and it brought me to a site called "Unexplainable Frequencies."  My first reaction was that I don't see how a frequency can be unexplainable.  I mean, it's either 638.7 Hertz or it isn't.  In any case, even from the title I knew this site was gonna be good for a few faceplants.  Here's the banner headline on the homepage:

LIFE IS FREQUENCY

Everything In Existence Has It's Own Frequency Signature. Every Person, Every Animal, And Every Planet Vibrate At it's Own Rhythm. Pure Direct Frequencies Can Help You Heal, Grow, And Change.

Evidently, one of the things that "Pure Direct Frequencies" doesn't do is to help you to learn the difference between "it's" and "its," and that you Don't Need To Capitalize Every Word To Make Your Point.  But maybe I'm just being picky, here.

Further down the page, we find out that we can purchase mp3s ("hundreds of thousands sold," they tell us, which makes me despair for the human race).  These mp3s contain sound recordings with "frequencies" that supposedly  help us to accomplish things in a variety of areas, including:

• Manifestation
• Wealth
• Visualization
• Astral Projection
• Lucid Dreams
• Spirit Guide
• Chakra Work
• Remote Viewing
• Psychic/ESP
• Christ Consciousness
• IQ Increaser

So, I decided to listen to some sound samples.  I picked "IQ Increaser," because heaven knows some days I could use some help in that department.  The description said:

Our custom IQ/ Memory Booster recording is in a category of it’s [sic] own, and is one of our top rated products for good reason.  We begin the session by penetrating your body’s own unique energy field with a low vibrational frequency designed to create feelings of “total knowingness.”  You will begin feeling connected and well rounded within the first few minutes.  You may confuse your new disposition with overconfidence but as you will soon see it’s intended.  Change requires confidence you can’t achieve your desired result unless you believe it’s inevitably going to happen.

We’ll then begin blasting your brain with a frequency directly related to Intelligence.  In fact those with brain functions operating in this range are considered geniuses.  This will help your brains [sic] capacity for learning and understanding complex concepts.  In addition to boosting your intelligence this portion of your session can aid arthritis pain, stop involuntary eye movements, and regulate the pulses in women.

Midway through the recording you will begin reflecting on your session and without realizing it you will be recollecting fine details about the past ten minutes.  We manipulated your brain into a higher memory state through frequency and tone.  You will remember things more easily and think deeper than you ever knew you could.  You’ve only unlocked the ability you’ve always had.

You’ll then begin feeling more in tune to what’s really happening around you and enjoy feelings of enlightenment.  You wont realize its happening but we’ve been channeling vibrations towards your cerebral cortex.  You’ll begin to feel your forehead getting warmer and tingling in your spleen.

Your session concludes with another fortifying frequency associated with the functioning of the cerebral cortex.  We want to encourage your brain to store information more efficiently.  When your session concludes we encourage you to try memory games to test your new found ability.  You will notice a considerable difference between your memory skills before and after use.

All of this sounded pretty hopeful, although I wasn't sure how I felt about having my spleen tingle. Nor is it clear why it only helps women with their pulse.  Maybe guys' hearts are tuned to a different unexplainable frequency, I dunno.  But either way, I figured it was worth the risk.  So I started the clip, and closed my eyes.

The Astral Sleep by Jeroen van Valkenburg (1998) [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jeroen van Valkenburg artist QS:P170,Q91911584, The Astral Sleep, CC BY 2.0]

After about 45 seconds, I had an amazing experience!  I said, "Huh."  And I stopped the clip.  Listening to "IQ Increaser" is about as interesting as reading a telephone book.  It turned out to be a bunch of slowly shifting electronic keyboard noises that just kind of go on and on.  I experienced no spleen tingles, my forehead is still the same temperature, my cerebral cortex is still un-vibrated and lacking in total knowingness, and my thinking processes seem as fuzzy as ever, although that last one may be because I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet.  I can't imagine listening to this stuff for an hour -- it gives new meaning to the word "monotonous." It sounds like music that was rejected by Music From The Hearts Of Space on the basis of being too ethereal.

The best part of the whole site, however, is the "Testimonials" page.  To listen to these people talk, you'd swear that listening to the keyboard noises caused major life changes, or at least multiple orgasms.  Here are a couple:

"I bought this mp3 to help me visualize and calm my mind's chatter.  I was surprised how quickly my brain winded down and melted away, leaving me in a perfect visualization state.  This recording did what it claimed."

"I been playing this frequency for a few days now in the background when I relax and it certainly does do something weird to my mind.  I will continue to play it regularly."

Myself, I don't think see how your brain melting is a good thing.  But I suppose it had to already be partly melted in order to purchase this malarkey.

But here's my favorite:

"I been listening to the astral projection custom session and I can sometimes feel my body tingling and starting to shift around.  I think I will be traveling the astral plane before I know it.  Thank You Unexplainable Frequencies!"

So, evidently, there are at least a few people who have achieved positive results, although my own personal opinion is that anything they accomplished by listening to "Unexplainable Frequencies" could have been accomplished without them.  Sorry if you're one of the Satisfied Customers, but "Unexplainable Frequencies" is a lot of pseudoscientific horseshit.

Anyhow, that's today's heaping helping of woo-woo.  More people using words about which they obviously don't have the first glimmer of understanding.  I suppose we should look on the bright side, however; I never saw that they used the word "quantum."

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The spirit is willing

Yesterday's post, wherein a set of musical pitch combinations that was supposed to induce a "mind-blowingly intense hands-free orgasm" ended up inducing nothing more than a puzzled frown and a head-tilt, prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me an email saying, "Well, if the 'binaural beats' didn't juice up your libido, maybe 'astral sex' will."  And he provided a link to a page on the site Mysterious Universe called, "Astral Sex is the Latest Thing in Out-of-Body Experiences."

My first thought was to wonder how astral sex would work, given that sex is one of those things that (insofar as I understand it) pretty much requires that you and your significant other both have bodies. But according to "astral projection specialist" Steve G. Jones, the whole point is that with "astral sex," you're "more than naked," and you and your friend kind of merge your souls together, or something.

Which brings up a number of questions, first and foremost of which is, how do you become an "astral projection specialist?"  Do you go to Woo U. and major in Soul Travel?  Most importantly, how do you study a phenomenon which even the Wikipedia page labels unequivocally as evidence-free pseudoscience?

That, of course, doesn't stop Steve G. Jones, who says that "astral sex" is totally real, and he gives us some fascinating details on how it's done.  Instead of foreplay, you spend the time beforehand "getting into a meditative state that is somewhere in the sweet spot between awake and asleep."  Then, apparently, you just float together, and proceed to engage in some out-of-body bow-chicka-bow-wow.  It doesn't end in orgasm, however, at least not in the usual sense:

That intertwining depends on how adept you and your partner are at astral projection. The merging of souls or energy is the ‘orgasm’ that is reportedly a combination of both physical and astral pleasure that is said can still be felt after each person returns to their physical bodies.

Which I guess is fine if that's what you're after.

Then we're cautioned that there's a sketchy side of "astral sex."  Because you're out-of-body when you're doing it, there's nothing (except for morality) to stop you from merging with someone while they're asleep, without their permission.  The result for the unwitting object of your attention is that they'd dream of having actual sex with you, but it's really not something you should do.  It's critical, Jones says, to ask the permission of the person you're intending to get down-and-dirty with.

I wonder how that'd go, don't you?  You're in a bar, looking for a hookup, and propose to the nice-looking person sitting next to you that you'd like to seal the deal with them.

"So we'll both go to our respective homes," you say, "and meditate for a while, and meet in the astral plane for some hot spirit-on-spirit action."

I don't know about you, but if someone approached me with this kind of proposal, I would suddenly remember a pressing engagement elsewhere.

But the possibility of non-consensual astral sex isn't the only hazard of playing the etheric field, says Steve G. Jones.  Besides unscrupulous human spirits, there are also demons who are eager to have their way with you.  And both genders are at risk.  There are incubi, lustful male spirits looking for human women to couple with, and succubi, the female equivalent who are trying to find a human man.  No matter how horny you are, Jones cautions, it's best to stay away from these entities, because they can "sap your energy."

Charles Walker, Incubus (1879) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So you'd think that the astral plane would somehow be more refined and genteel, but what goes on there doesn't strike me as any better than your typical nightclub.

Anyhow, there you have it.  If yesterday's libido-enhancing "binaural beats" didn't do it for you, there's still the possibility of "astral sex," which at least has the advantages of not passing along STDs and having zero risk of pregnancy.  I doubt it'll ever replace the real thing, however, regardless of how nice a "spirit orgasm" is.

Death planet approaching

A couple of days ago, I looked at the fascination we have with things that are dangerous -- tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, supernovas.  Today we are going to consider the fact that this fascination is apparently strong enough that if there are no horrible natural disasters forthcoming, people feel the need to make one up.

This comes up because of a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia wherein we find out that in South America, they have their own version of Nibiru, the fabled tenth planet (or ninth, if you agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson and leave Pluto out of the mix) that visits the inner Solar System every so often, sowing chaos and destruction.  Sort of like the way your least favorite relatives come to visit, bringing along their horribly-behaved children, resulting in a thousand-dollar bill from the plumber just to get the toy cars unstuck from the u-bend in the toilet and the wads of LaffyTaffy out of the bathroom faucet.

Turns out that the South American version of Nibiru is called "Hercolubus."  And over at a site called the Alcione Association, we find out that Hercolubus is on its way, and boy, are we in for it:

Hercolubus, a planet so called by the sages of antiquity, is a gigantic world, 5 or 6 times bigger than Jupiter. In the past it put an end to the Atlantean civilisation and it is approaching Earth again. 

The impending approach of this heavenly body to our solar system will happen soon, so that everybody will be able to see.  It will bring about great upheaval in all corners of our planet.

Well, we wouldn't want any corner to feel left out, so I suppose that's fair enough.

In its present encounter, the progressive approach of Hercolubus will bring about all type of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tidal waves, which will become more and more frequent and intense until total devastation comes about.  When Hercolubus moves near the Earth, its gigantic gravitational force will attract the molten magma towards the Earth’s surface so that earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions will increase in number and will reach unheard-of magnitudes.

What strikes me about all of this is that these people really don't understand how gravity works.  Do they think that the gravitational pull on liquids is stronger than on solids, for some reason?  It reminds me of the explanation Tom Weller gave in his phenomenal spoof of middle school science textbooks, Science Made Stupid (and if you haven't read this, go immediately to this site and read it, but don't try and drink anything while doing so or you'll be buying a new computer).   He explains the tides thusly:

We sometimes speak of the tides causing the oceans to rise or fall. Of course, this is a fallacy.  Actually, it is the land that rises and falls. 

As the Earth rotates, the moon's gravitational attraction is greatest first on one side, then the other.  Land masses, being rigid, are pulled up or down accordingly.  Oceans, being liquid, are free to flow back to their normal level.

We then find out that "Hercolubus" is going to cause the pole to shift.  We can already see it starting, because the ice caps are melting, or something.  Because clearly the ice melting at the poles will affect the magnetism of the core of the Earth, which will in turn cause the whole planet to turn turtle, kind of like a kayak capsizing.

The reality is scary-looking enough.  [image courtesy of NASA]

So how are we going to escape all of this bad stuff?  Apparently, what we all need to do is to learn how to do astral projection:

Along the course of history, different people with Awakened Consciousness have told about such cosmic phenomenon.  A very clear and current example is the little book entitled ‘Hercolubus or Red Planet’ written by V.M. Rabolu, the great Colombian researcher in esotericism. T hat book can be qualified as a ‘document about the future written with full consciousness’. 

Based on his direct and conscious experience, its author, V.M. Rabolu, teaches us in his book the systems to eliminate our psychological defects and the techniques for astral projection as the only existing formulas to face the forthcoming times.

So I guess the idea is that when "Hercolubus" comes and everything on Earth kinda goes south, we can just astral project ourselves right the hell out of here.  Although that does bring up one problem; isn't the idea of astral projection that your soul goes away somewhere, and your body gets left behind?  It'd be a little inconvenient if your soul goes for a vacation on, say, Neptune, and comes back to find that your body has been obliterated by all the molten magma being pulled around by Hercolubus's crazy strong gravity.

You can see how that would kind of be a bummer.

Anyhow, here's one more thing for all of us to worry about.  The whole Nibiru thing seems to have calmed down some, especially now that 2012 has come and gone without the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse showing up.  But Hercolubus seems to run on its own timetable, so I guess we're not out of the woods yet.  My advice is to work on "eliminating your psychological defects."  Then, even if V. M. Rabolu is wrong about Hercolubus and the Earth flipping over and everything, at least you'll be less defective, which sounds like a good thing.