This morning I got an email from the Omega Institute, of Rhinebeck, New York, inviting me to a workshop in New York City with James van Praagh, a prominent spiritualist medium.
It is probably a coincidence that the workshop begins on April Fool's Day, but it still made me happy. The email states, "Do you want to understand more about spirit communication or better interpret messages from loved ones? In this experiential workshop guided by renowned spiritual medium James Van Praagh, you learn to blend your mind with the spirit world and read the signs from loved ones who are guiding your journey daily... Van Praagh, one of the world’s most respected spiritual mediums working today, offers extensive messages and readings throughout the workshop to help you unlock the greater depth of your spiritual self. Novice as well as experienced mediums are welcome."
My initial reaction upon receiving this email was, "Boy, are they barking up the wrong tree." But then I decided to make use of the opportunity, to look into van Praagh's claims a little, and find out who he is and what the workshop is actually claiming to accomplish.
The title of the workshop is, "What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life." So far, I have no problem; there are many things the dead can teach us about life. Among them are "Don't drink and drive," "Smoking is stupid," and "Exercise more and eat less." But I don't think that's really what van Praagh is saying. According to his website, he "is a survival evidence medium, meaning that he is able to bridge the gap between two planes of existence, that of the living and that of the dead, by providing evidential proof of life after death via detailed messages." He claims, basically, that he is able to get a hold of your dead relatives, and bring messages from them to you.
It's not as if this wouldn't be cool if it were true. I, for example, would love to ask my Aunt Florence for her chocolate-almond fudge recipe, which I have never been able to replicate. Unfortunately, however, van Praagh is clearly a fraud, and in fact got caught cheating in what was supposed to be a cold reading he did on Larry King Live. (He claimed to have clairvoyantly picked up on the fact a subject's grandmother had died -- and it turned out that he had talked to the subject earlier, and she had mentioned it to him, along with other information he was then able to use.)
This, of course, has not stopped him from writing a number of books, including Ghosts Among Us: Uncovering the Truth About the Other Side; Heaven and Earth: Making the Psychic Connection; and Talking to Heaven: A Medium's Message About Life After Death. Amazingly, they sell brilliantly well, and in fact, Ghosts Among Us made the New York Times' bestseller list.
And despite his public failure on Larry King, his success has not diminished. Millions are hoodwinked by his act every year. He has, apparently, a three-year waiting list for a twenty-minute reading via telephone, for which he charges $700.
Encouragingly, though, he has many critics. Marcello Truzzi, a sociologist at Eastern Michigan University, has studied van Praagh and others like him for many years, and has compared his hit rate when he is identifying generalities (e.g. someone in your family has died, it was an elderly woman, and so on) and when he is identifying specifics (Grandma Bertha died at age 93 of congestive heart failure). With generalities, he does okay; with specifics, his hit rate drops to zero. Of course, he almost always avoids specifics, and when he hits one it is usually because there has been an extensive leadup during which he fishes for clues, often very subtly, and uses feedback (including head gestures and body language) to guide him in the right direction. When he is deprived of feedback from the subject -- when they don't respond, or maintain a poker face -- his miss rate climbs to nearly 100%. Michael Shermer, a prominent skeptic, calls van Praagh "the master of cold reading in the psychic world."
Van Praagh, for his part, hates Shermer and his ilk. On Larry King Live in 2001, van Praagh said, "... we (psychics) are here to heal people and to help people grow... skeptics... they're just here to destroy people. They're not here to encourage people, to enlighten people. They're here to destroy people."
As you might expect, I take serious issue with that statement. Skeptics do encourage people; we encourage them to use their rational faculties to see frauds like van Praagh for what they are. Grief is a painful, and unavoidable, part of life; and lining van Praagh's pockets to the tune of $2,100 per hour to hear that Grandma Bertha is happily in heaven and wishes you well isn't healing you, it is taking advantage of your anguish to turn a profit.
So, sorry, James, but you won't see me at your mediumship workshop. I will work on unlocking the greater depth of my spiritual self right here at home. And for anyone planning on attending -- enjoy April Fool's Day.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
An education about education
Here in New York state, the news has been full of articles about the governor's proposed budget. Being a teacher (although not insensitive to the effects of cuts in other areas), I have been watching the funding of education pretty closely. And the budget, should it pass, will result in a $1.3 million dollar loss to our little school district alone.
At the same time, a hugely popular cap on property tax increases is likely to pass, meaning that schools' only other source of revenue will be closed off to them. The state has not proposed removing any of the many unfunded mandates schools now labor under. You don't have to be an economist to see the only possible result; cutting teachers, cutting programs, raising class sizes.
I understand the economic stresses of the times, and that something drastic has to be done. I certainly wouldn't want to be in Governor Cuomo's shoes. What has appalled me, however, is the deafening howl of anti-teacher rhetoric that is becoming commonplace wherever these issues arise.
To give just one example, here's a reader response to one of the recent articles about education cuts. It is largely representative of the responses I read, and by no means the most extreme. I have copied it, verbatim, from the source.
"High time teachers are forced to get up off their lazy asses and work for a living. Any time the teachers unions whine about anything, the libs cave in and raise taxes. From what my kids say all the teachers are these days is glorified babysitters. They do nothing but give out worksheets and show films. You can do that as easily with forty kids in a classroom as you can with twenty, so why not fire half of them? Pick out the best ones, and tell the unions to keep their damn noses out of who gets retained and who gets fired. After that, cut a third of the administrators, and for ALL of them get rid of the free-ride health insurance, paid three month vacations, and cushy, state-funded pensions that allow them to retire early. You could balance the budget tomorrow if you did that."
And my response to the response: how about I educate you a little about education?
Get up off my lazy ass and work for a living? This year I am teaching five different subjects -- Introductory and Advanced Biology; Advanced Environmental Science; Brain & Senses (an introductory neurology class); and Critical Thinking. In addition, I am doing after-school, voluntary (i.e. for no pay) independent study classes in Latin, linguistics, and human genetics. Just planning for all of my classes takes a minimum of three hours a day, grading student work another hour or two. Oh, yeah, and there's the teaching itself. If you think that all I do is show films and give out worksheets, come and spend a day in my classes. You will, every day, participate in class discussions of current issues. You will do lab experiments and be expected to use proper technique, and write up your results afterwards. You will be expected to master technical material, and demonstrate that you've understood it and can apply it. You will be expected to use correct spelling and grammar in all writing assignments, and no, "This is not English class!" will not be accepted as an excuse. You will be expected to treat me, and the other students, with respect.
Get rid of the unions? The unions are the only protection we have preventing capricious and arbitrary breaches of contract by administrators and school boards. Note that I am not implying that all administrators and school board members would do those things, but some would, and without unions we would have little legal recourse. I know that unions, too, sometimes fail in what should be the goal of all educators -- to provide the best possible quality of education to students. Rubber rooms, and protection of poor-quality teachers, do happen. But even there, the fault is not always with the unions. The single worst teacher I have ever worked with was retained not because of any kind of union pressure, but because administrators didn't do their job and document her many failings, pressure her to improve, and when that didn't work (which it probably would not have), show her the door.
And just to correct a few factual errors: we do not get free health insurance. I don't get a dime during the summer, and in fact when I was a single dad, I had to work two jobs just to save enough to make my June, July, and August mortgage payments. And no teacher I know of can retire "early" -- I will have to work until I'm 62 not to have major penalties assessed on my pension. And with the current pension formulas, and the fact that retirees have to pay a much greater share of their health insurance costs, many of us can't afford to retire. I know one teacher who has been teaching for 38 years, and if she retired she wouldn't make enough money even to cover her expenses.
If you gut education, cut teachers, break the backs of school districts caught between state mandates and shrinking revenue, you will see the quality of education diminish commensurately. Yes, educators will continue trying to do the best with what we have; that's what we do. But if you are worried about the up-and-coming economic threat from the tens of thousands of highly-educated young people from China and India, the last thing you should do is cut education. "Don't just throw money at the problem," is a nice aphorism, suitable for a bumper sticker, but there's another one that also applies; "You get what you pay for."
Oh, yeah, and "Build new schools, or build new jails: Your choice."
At the same time, a hugely popular cap on property tax increases is likely to pass, meaning that schools' only other source of revenue will be closed off to them. The state has not proposed removing any of the many unfunded mandates schools now labor under. You don't have to be an economist to see the only possible result; cutting teachers, cutting programs, raising class sizes.
I understand the economic stresses of the times, and that something drastic has to be done. I certainly wouldn't want to be in Governor Cuomo's shoes. What has appalled me, however, is the deafening howl of anti-teacher rhetoric that is becoming commonplace wherever these issues arise.
To give just one example, here's a reader response to one of the recent articles about education cuts. It is largely representative of the responses I read, and by no means the most extreme. I have copied it, verbatim, from the source.
"High time teachers are forced to get up off their lazy asses and work for a living. Any time the teachers unions whine about anything, the libs cave in and raise taxes. From what my kids say all the teachers are these days is glorified babysitters. They do nothing but give out worksheets and show films. You can do that as easily with forty kids in a classroom as you can with twenty, so why not fire half of them? Pick out the best ones, and tell the unions to keep their damn noses out of who gets retained and who gets fired. After that, cut a third of the administrators, and for ALL of them get rid of the free-ride health insurance, paid three month vacations, and cushy, state-funded pensions that allow them to retire early. You could balance the budget tomorrow if you did that."
And my response to the response: how about I educate you a little about education?
Get up off my lazy ass and work for a living? This year I am teaching five different subjects -- Introductory and Advanced Biology; Advanced Environmental Science; Brain & Senses (an introductory neurology class); and Critical Thinking. In addition, I am doing after-school, voluntary (i.e. for no pay) independent study classes in Latin, linguistics, and human genetics. Just planning for all of my classes takes a minimum of three hours a day, grading student work another hour or two. Oh, yeah, and there's the teaching itself. If you think that all I do is show films and give out worksheets, come and spend a day in my classes. You will, every day, participate in class discussions of current issues. You will do lab experiments and be expected to use proper technique, and write up your results afterwards. You will be expected to master technical material, and demonstrate that you've understood it and can apply it. You will be expected to use correct spelling and grammar in all writing assignments, and no, "This is not English class!" will not be accepted as an excuse. You will be expected to treat me, and the other students, with respect.
Get rid of the unions? The unions are the only protection we have preventing capricious and arbitrary breaches of contract by administrators and school boards. Note that I am not implying that all administrators and school board members would do those things, but some would, and without unions we would have little legal recourse. I know that unions, too, sometimes fail in what should be the goal of all educators -- to provide the best possible quality of education to students. Rubber rooms, and protection of poor-quality teachers, do happen. But even there, the fault is not always with the unions. The single worst teacher I have ever worked with was retained not because of any kind of union pressure, but because administrators didn't do their job and document her many failings, pressure her to improve, and when that didn't work (which it probably would not have), show her the door.
And just to correct a few factual errors: we do not get free health insurance. I don't get a dime during the summer, and in fact when I was a single dad, I had to work two jobs just to save enough to make my June, July, and August mortgage payments. And no teacher I know of can retire "early" -- I will have to work until I'm 62 not to have major penalties assessed on my pension. And with the current pension formulas, and the fact that retirees have to pay a much greater share of their health insurance costs, many of us can't afford to retire. I know one teacher who has been teaching for 38 years, and if she retired she wouldn't make enough money even to cover her expenses.
If you gut education, cut teachers, break the backs of school districts caught between state mandates and shrinking revenue, you will see the quality of education diminish commensurately. Yes, educators will continue trying to do the best with what we have; that's what we do. But if you are worried about the up-and-coming economic threat from the tens of thousands of highly-educated young people from China and India, the last thing you should do is cut education. "Don't just throw money at the problem," is a nice aphorism, suitable for a bumper sticker, but there's another one that also applies; "You get what you pay for."
Oh, yeah, and "Build new schools, or build new jails: Your choice."
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Apples of the knowledge of good and evil
The latest buzz in the electronic world is a new Apple iPad/iPhone app that allows Roman Catholics to confess their sins.
Called, appropriately enough, "Confession: A Roman Catholic App," it costs $1.99 and is available online. The app allows you to enter how long it's been since your last confession, then you pick a commandment and tick off the sins you've committed against it. The app then takes into account a variety of factors such as the person's age, the severity of the sin, and whether the person has committed the sin before, and suggests an appropriate penance.
Amazingly enough, the Vatican seems to be generally in favor of digital repentance. A Vatican spokesperson, however, was careful to note that the new app should "not be used in place of face-to-face confession," and that "true absolution can only be given by an ordained priest."
Still, you know it will. For your busy Catholic-on-the-go, it sure would be appealing to confess via iPad (two minutes) rather than taking the time to go to church, sit in the confessional, and tell an actual priest what you did wrong (thirty minutes minimum). And after all, is it really any sillier than things like Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels -- where prayers are inscribed on a cylinder that spins on a shaft, and turning the wheel is considered as good as actually reciting the prayer?
So, I've got a few suggestions for new uses of technology in the realm of religion. I'm no software developer -- my technological expertise stalled out somewhere back in the Dark Ages -- so feel free to capitalize on any of these. Remember that I'd like a cut of the cash if they catch on.
For Pentecostals, how about a Speaking in Tongues Translator? I've heard a lot about the whole phenomenon of Speaking in Tongues, wherein a religious person is so filled with fervor that the Holy Spirit descends upon him or her, and the religious person begins to babble. I use that word deliberately, because the usual interpretation is that the speech thus produced is that which was used by all humans before the building of the Tower of Babel, that pivotal moment in the bible during which god taught mankind a lesson by inventing things like "i before e except after c," Greek asigmatic aorist past tense, and the Latin dative case, which causeth language students to toil by the sweat of their brows, lo even unto the present day. So how about some sort of language-analysis software that could allow all of the rest of the congregation to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying through the person? Instead of just frothing at the mouth and saying random syllables, the person could pick up his or her iPad and, well, Type in Tongues. The app would then translate the message for everyone.
For any sects that are biblical literalists, you could have an app that was a Scientific Statement Truth Evaluator. The way this would work is, your young religious person might be sitting in a science class, and hear his or her teacher make a scientific statement such as "the earth goes around the sun." The young person could then enter the statement into the iPad, and the app would analyze it for truth against the entire bible. The app would then respond, "UNTRUE! Joshua 10:12 - "The Lord said unto Joshua, 'Sun, stand thou still over Gibeon.'" It would then follow up with suggestions of what the young person could say to the teacher: "Hey, teacher! How could the Lord have made the sun stand still, if the sun isn't moving? Huh?" The only problem I can see is if the young person put in a statement like, "The father of Joseph, husband of Mary, was named Heli," because Luke 3:23 says that's true, but Matthew 1:16 says his name was Jacob. At that point, the app could cause the iPad to crash. So young people would have to be instructed to ignore any apparent self-contradictions in the bible, that those have no impact on its literal, word-for-word truth. But that's basically what they're being told anyway, so probably no harm done.
Lastly, how about a fundamentalist Muslim Infidel Detector? You can see how today's suicide bombers are kind of taking a broad-brush approach; wouldn't it be better to determine first if the people you're thinking of killing are actually Infidels Worthy of Death, instead of taking out the righteous and the unrighteous alike? With a few taps on the touch pad, you could enter some information about the people in question -- gender, clothing style, amount of skin showing, presence or absence of perfume or jewelry, whether or not the person was wearing a Star of David -- and the app would calculate the likelihood that the person is an infidel, and suggest a possible course of action, from "cry out unto Allah against them" or "beat them with a stick," to "slay them like the unclean dogs they are!" It would take the guesswork out of murderous religious mania.
So you can see that technology has a lot of applications to the religious world. There is a danger, however, as with all of these things; the interconnectedness that this technology is bringing will inevitably lead to exposure to other ideas (unless someone develops a "Diverse Philosophy Filter" app). And this could be dreadful. Wouldn't it be tragic if a 21st century technology took these poor folks and dragged them into, well, the 21st century?
Called, appropriately enough, "Confession: A Roman Catholic App," it costs $1.99 and is available online. The app allows you to enter how long it's been since your last confession, then you pick a commandment and tick off the sins you've committed against it. The app then takes into account a variety of factors such as the person's age, the severity of the sin, and whether the person has committed the sin before, and suggests an appropriate penance.
Amazingly enough, the Vatican seems to be generally in favor of digital repentance. A Vatican spokesperson, however, was careful to note that the new app should "not be used in place of face-to-face confession," and that "true absolution can only be given by an ordained priest."
Still, you know it will. For your busy Catholic-on-the-go, it sure would be appealing to confess via iPad (two minutes) rather than taking the time to go to church, sit in the confessional, and tell an actual priest what you did wrong (thirty minutes minimum). And after all, is it really any sillier than things like Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels -- where prayers are inscribed on a cylinder that spins on a shaft, and turning the wheel is considered as good as actually reciting the prayer?
So, I've got a few suggestions for new uses of technology in the realm of religion. I'm no software developer -- my technological expertise stalled out somewhere back in the Dark Ages -- so feel free to capitalize on any of these. Remember that I'd like a cut of the cash if they catch on.
For Pentecostals, how about a Speaking in Tongues Translator? I've heard a lot about the whole phenomenon of Speaking in Tongues, wherein a religious person is so filled with fervor that the Holy Spirit descends upon him or her, and the religious person begins to babble. I use that word deliberately, because the usual interpretation is that the speech thus produced is that which was used by all humans before the building of the Tower of Babel, that pivotal moment in the bible during which god taught mankind a lesson by inventing things like "i before e except after c," Greek asigmatic aorist past tense, and the Latin dative case, which causeth language students to toil by the sweat of their brows, lo even unto the present day. So how about some sort of language-analysis software that could allow all of the rest of the congregation to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying through the person? Instead of just frothing at the mouth and saying random syllables, the person could pick up his or her iPad and, well, Type in Tongues. The app would then translate the message for everyone.
For any sects that are biblical literalists, you could have an app that was a Scientific Statement Truth Evaluator. The way this would work is, your young religious person might be sitting in a science class, and hear his or her teacher make a scientific statement such as "the earth goes around the sun." The young person could then enter the statement into the iPad, and the app would analyze it for truth against the entire bible. The app would then respond, "UNTRUE! Joshua 10:12 - "The Lord said unto Joshua, 'Sun, stand thou still over Gibeon.'" It would then follow up with suggestions of what the young person could say to the teacher: "Hey, teacher! How could the Lord have made the sun stand still, if the sun isn't moving? Huh?" The only problem I can see is if the young person put in a statement like, "The father of Joseph, husband of Mary, was named Heli," because Luke 3:23 says that's true, but Matthew 1:16 says his name was Jacob. At that point, the app could cause the iPad to crash. So young people would have to be instructed to ignore any apparent self-contradictions in the bible, that those have no impact on its literal, word-for-word truth. But that's basically what they're being told anyway, so probably no harm done.
Lastly, how about a fundamentalist Muslim Infidel Detector? You can see how today's suicide bombers are kind of taking a broad-brush approach; wouldn't it be better to determine first if the people you're thinking of killing are actually Infidels Worthy of Death, instead of taking out the righteous and the unrighteous alike? With a few taps on the touch pad, you could enter some information about the people in question -- gender, clothing style, amount of skin showing, presence or absence of perfume or jewelry, whether or not the person was wearing a Star of David -- and the app would calculate the likelihood that the person is an infidel, and suggest a possible course of action, from "cry out unto Allah against them" or "beat them with a stick," to "slay them like the unclean dogs they are!" It would take the guesswork out of murderous religious mania.
So you can see that technology has a lot of applications to the religious world. There is a danger, however, as with all of these things; the interconnectedness that this technology is bringing will inevitably lead to exposure to other ideas (unless someone develops a "Diverse Philosophy Filter" app). And this could be dreadful. Wouldn't it be tragic if a 21st century technology took these poor folks and dragged them into, well, the 21st century?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The ghost in the machine
In the news today is a story about a theme park in Thorpe, Surrey County, England, which is being altered because the site is haunted.
The Storm Surge, a twenty-meter-tall water slide, was scheduled to be built at the site, until workers began reporting feelings of sudden chills, feelings of being watched, and glimpses of what appeared to be a headless monk.
A paranormal investigation company was called in, and they used the latest in scientific investigative equipment -- Ouija boards, crystals, and Polaroid cameras -- and they came to the conclusion, "Yup. It's haunted, all right." Furthermore, they found out that the site of the water slide was near a place called "The Monk's Walk" (*cue scary music*), which is a path that went from now-ruined Chertsey Abbey to Thorpe Church. Apparently the site was also a burial ground back in pre-Conquest times.
Well, with that kind of psychic convergence, what could the theme park owners do? At great expense, they relocated the ride.
Myself, I would have called in the kids from Scooby-Doo. They would have run around investigating in the Mystery Machine, gotten scared a bunch of times, said "Ruh roh" and "Yoinks" a lot, creating uproarious laughter in the laugh-track, and in the end the headless monk would have been the foreman of the work crew with a sheet over his head, who was using hidden wires and pulleys to float through the air. He would have had some lame reason for staging the whole thing, and would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those darned kids.
Or, maybe, just maybe, there's a rational explanation for the whole thing.
Vic Tandy, an engineer working at a medical manufacturing firm in the British Midlands, is not the sort of person you'd expect would believe in the paranormal. He is a rational, scientific type, educated at Coventry University, and no one was more shocked than he was when, while working late one night, he saw a ghost.
He'd been sitting at his desk that evening, feeling progressively more uneasy. He was certain he was being watched. He kept turning around, sure that someone would be there. And then... someone was. He turned around, and watched as a gray form materialized near the wall, floated across the room, and disappeared. "The hair was standing up on the back of my neck," Tandy reported. "I was terrified."
Some days later, he came to work during off hours because of one of his hobbies -- fencing. He wanted to use some of the equipment to make some adjustments to a fencing foil. He clamped the foil in a vise at his desk.
And that was when he noticed something weird -- the tip of the foil was vibrating. When he touched the foil, he could feel the vibrations pulsing through the metal. And he began to feel the sensation of chill, the feeling of being watched again.
But this time, he had a hypothesis. He had heard that subsonic vibrations can induce hallucinations in people -- in one famous case, there was an office building with a "haunted photocopier room" in which many people had reported paranormal goings-on. In that case, the culprit was vibrations from a furnace fan. So Tandy began to look around, and found a large, newly installed exhaust fan that was running. He switched the fan off.
Instantaneously, the foil stopped vibrating -- and the terrifying feelings vanished.
Why subsonic vibrations have the effects they do on the human brain is poorly understood, but it's been demonstrated over and over. You can take the most rationalistic, skeptical individual in the world, and place him or her in a room with a standing subsonic wave, and (s)he will see ghosts. Imagine the results if you did that to someone who already believed in ghosts!
So, before relocating the water slide, it might have benefited the owners of the theme park to hire someone who owned audio equipment capable of detecting subsonic frequencies. I'd bet cold cash that one of the other carnival rides had a motor that was emitting high-amplitude subsonic sound waves. Damp down those waves, and chances are, you could rename "The Monk's Walk" "Water Slide Way."
The Storm Surge, a twenty-meter-tall water slide, was scheduled to be built at the site, until workers began reporting feelings of sudden chills, feelings of being watched, and glimpses of what appeared to be a headless monk.
A paranormal investigation company was called in, and they used the latest in scientific investigative equipment -- Ouija boards, crystals, and Polaroid cameras -- and they came to the conclusion, "Yup. It's haunted, all right." Furthermore, they found out that the site of the water slide was near a place called "The Monk's Walk" (*cue scary music*), which is a path that went from now-ruined Chertsey Abbey to Thorpe Church. Apparently the site was also a burial ground back in pre-Conquest times.
Well, with that kind of psychic convergence, what could the theme park owners do? At great expense, they relocated the ride.
Myself, I would have called in the kids from Scooby-Doo. They would have run around investigating in the Mystery Machine, gotten scared a bunch of times, said "Ruh roh" and "Yoinks" a lot, creating uproarious laughter in the laugh-track, and in the end the headless monk would have been the foreman of the work crew with a sheet over his head, who was using hidden wires and pulleys to float through the air. He would have had some lame reason for staging the whole thing, and would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those darned kids.
Or, maybe, just maybe, there's a rational explanation for the whole thing.
Vic Tandy, an engineer working at a medical manufacturing firm in the British Midlands, is not the sort of person you'd expect would believe in the paranormal. He is a rational, scientific type, educated at Coventry University, and no one was more shocked than he was when, while working late one night, he saw a ghost.
He'd been sitting at his desk that evening, feeling progressively more uneasy. He was certain he was being watched. He kept turning around, sure that someone would be there. And then... someone was. He turned around, and watched as a gray form materialized near the wall, floated across the room, and disappeared. "The hair was standing up on the back of my neck," Tandy reported. "I was terrified."
Some days later, he came to work during off hours because of one of his hobbies -- fencing. He wanted to use some of the equipment to make some adjustments to a fencing foil. He clamped the foil in a vise at his desk.
And that was when he noticed something weird -- the tip of the foil was vibrating. When he touched the foil, he could feel the vibrations pulsing through the metal. And he began to feel the sensation of chill, the feeling of being watched again.
But this time, he had a hypothesis. He had heard that subsonic vibrations can induce hallucinations in people -- in one famous case, there was an office building with a "haunted photocopier room" in which many people had reported paranormal goings-on. In that case, the culprit was vibrations from a furnace fan. So Tandy began to look around, and found a large, newly installed exhaust fan that was running. He switched the fan off.
Instantaneously, the foil stopped vibrating -- and the terrifying feelings vanished.
Why subsonic vibrations have the effects they do on the human brain is poorly understood, but it's been demonstrated over and over. You can take the most rationalistic, skeptical individual in the world, and place him or her in a room with a standing subsonic wave, and (s)he will see ghosts. Imagine the results if you did that to someone who already believed in ghosts!
So, before relocating the water slide, it might have benefited the owners of the theme park to hire someone who owned audio equipment capable of detecting subsonic frequencies. I'd bet cold cash that one of the other carnival rides had a motor that was emitting high-amplitude subsonic sound waves. Damp down those waves, and chances are, you could rename "The Monk's Walk" "Water Slide Way."
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
She turned me into a newt (I got better)
The last time the Catholic church took on the witches, church leaders didn't mess around. They just burned a bunch of them at the stake, and then looked around for more. And I have to admit Exodus 22:18, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," is pretty unequivocal.
Since burning women is now generally frowned upon in polite society, the church has had to explore other avenues. The latest was just released a couple of weeks ago by Catholic Truth Press, the Vatican's official publisher in the United Kingdom. Entitled "Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers," by Elizabeth Dodd, it uses gentle persuasion and "shared concerns about issues such as the environment" to try to convert Wiccans to Christianity.
Dodd, interviewed by the Daily Mail last week, was asked if she thought that Harry Potter had increased the appeal of Wicca. She replied that any young person who dabbles in magic is risking long-term harm.
"The use of magic, the practice of witchcraft, offends God because it is rooted in our sinful and fallen nature," she stated. "It attempts to usurp God."
I checked to see how much Catholic Truth Press was charging for this updated version of the Malleus Maleficarum. Turns out it's only $3.12...
... but it's sold out.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Did it sell out because people thought it was funny and wanted to have a copy to laugh at? Was it because they seriously think witches are a threat to young people, and wanted to do their part to convert them to Catholicism? Myself, if I had a choice of leaving my kids with a witch or with a Catholic priest, I'd choose the witch in about 0.0001 milliseconds.
Honestly, the Wiccans are an interesting bunch. You may not know that there is actually a Church and School of Wicca, which (in their own words) "...finds its roots in ancient ways. It has psychic connections and sympathy with those who were burnt in the medieval period, and indeed with all individuals who have been oppressed and killed in the name of religion."
Unfortunately, this isn't really all that accurate. Wicca was cobbled together from hyper-romanticized 19th century mystery cults in about 1954 by a retired English civil servant named Gerald Gardner. Gardner claimed that Wicca (which he sometimes referred to as "The Craft") represented a survival of the "knowledge of the Druids" that had been secretly remembered and practiced by initiates since before the time of the Romans, and based upon this Secret Knowledge he developed a whole body of beliefs and rituals for his followers to practice.
The problem is (well, one of many problems is) that next to nothing is known of what the Druids (i.e. the ancient Celtic priesthood) actually believed. The Celts wrote down very little -- they had a lettering system (the Ogham runes) which are poorly understood, and of which very few examples have survived. The Romans wrote down some observation of Celtic ritual, but to say that the Romans are a biased source is a colossal understatement. They thought that the Celts were barbarians (some etymologies claim that the word "barbarian" itself comes from the fact that to cultured Roman and Greek ears, the language of the Celts sounded like "bar-bar-bar-bar-bar") and therefore paid little attention to them except as the Unfortunate Prior Inhabitants of Lands the Romans Want. It probably didn't help matters that the Celts painted their bodies blue and went into battle stark naked. That sort of thing often makes an impression, but it's seldom a favorable one.
And in all of the Celtic lands, thousands of years of oppression from an occupation government, and the anti-pagan efforts of the dominant religion, effectively erased all but bits and pieces of the original beliefs of the Celts. Certain symbols have survived, (e.g. the Green Man and the Horned God), but other than a vague notion of what those represented, we really have nothing in the way of concrete knowledge of what the Celtic peoples believed prior to the Romans.
That said, I have to admit that the Wiccans are really pretty decent folks. Their basic tenet, "The Wiccan Rede," is "An it harm none, do what ye will." Other than the rather pretentious wording, it's a good basic rule for life. Reverence for, and protection of, nature is also something that will get no argument from me.
But I can't help the feeling that the whole thing is, well, vaguely silly. The bizarre, quasi-Middle-English verbiage doesn't help; why "The Wiccan Rede" isn't just "as long as you don't hurt anybody, do what you want," I couldn't say. Maybe "an it harm none" sounds more like what a Druid would say, I don't know. Actually, a good bit of their terminology falls into the unintentionally humorous department. I particularly like "working skyclad" for "running around in the woods naked." Now, I've got nothing whatsoever against running around in the woods naked, other than the problem of giving deerflies and mosquitoes unfettered access to your tender bits; but "skyclad" just sounds preposterous to me. Weddings are called "handfasting." Spells are "magick" (I know if you heard it pronounced, you could hear the "k" at the end and distinguish it from "magic," which is what David Copperfield does).
The costumes also don't help much, although (to be fair) they don't look all that much sillier than the vestments worn by Catholic priests.
Even with all this, Elizabeth Dodd and the other Catholic worrywarts are correct that Wicca is growing. There are now splinter sects (you knew it had to happens sooner or later) -- including the "Reformed Druids of North America" (named presumably to distinguish them from any Unreformed Druids who are running around skyclad in your local woods). A US government website estimates that in 2001, 134,000 individuals in in the US identified themselves as Wiccans, as compared with 8,000 in 1990. That, my friends, is a lot of Wiccans.
There has been a lot of argument over whether Wicca is actually a religion (usually this argument has erupted in the context of the US government's tax-shelter policy toward religions, and in one well-publicized case, the use of Wiccan symbols on a gravestone in Arlington Cemetery). To me, from the standpoint of having a lot of silly beliefs based upon no evidence whatsoever, and involving apparently enormous amounts of wishful thinking, Wicca is clearly a religion.
The amusing thing, to me, is that now you have people like Elizabeth Dodd claiming that the Wiccans need to become Catholics, because her set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs are better than their set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs. I find the whole thing screamingly funny. Hey, the more time they spend yelling at each other, the less time they'll have to send hate mail to me.
Since burning women is now generally frowned upon in polite society, the church has had to explore other avenues. The latest was just released a couple of weeks ago by Catholic Truth Press, the Vatican's official publisher in the United Kingdom. Entitled "Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers," by Elizabeth Dodd, it uses gentle persuasion and "shared concerns about issues such as the environment" to try to convert Wiccans to Christianity.
Dodd, interviewed by the Daily Mail last week, was asked if she thought that Harry Potter had increased the appeal of Wicca. She replied that any young person who dabbles in magic is risking long-term harm.
"The use of magic, the practice of witchcraft, offends God because it is rooted in our sinful and fallen nature," she stated. "It attempts to usurp God."
I checked to see how much Catholic Truth Press was charging for this updated version of the Malleus Maleficarum. Turns out it's only $3.12...
... but it's sold out.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Did it sell out because people thought it was funny and wanted to have a copy to laugh at? Was it because they seriously think witches are a threat to young people, and wanted to do their part to convert them to Catholicism? Myself, if I had a choice of leaving my kids with a witch or with a Catholic priest, I'd choose the witch in about 0.0001 milliseconds.
Honestly, the Wiccans are an interesting bunch. You may not know that there is actually a Church and School of Wicca, which (in their own words) "...finds its roots in ancient ways. It has psychic connections and sympathy with those who were burnt in the medieval period, and indeed with all individuals who have been oppressed and killed in the name of religion."
Unfortunately, this isn't really all that accurate. Wicca was cobbled together from hyper-romanticized 19th century mystery cults in about 1954 by a retired English civil servant named Gerald Gardner. Gardner claimed that Wicca (which he sometimes referred to as "The Craft") represented a survival of the "knowledge of the Druids" that had been secretly remembered and practiced by initiates since before the time of the Romans, and based upon this Secret Knowledge he developed a whole body of beliefs and rituals for his followers to practice.
The problem is (well, one of many problems is) that next to nothing is known of what the Druids (i.e. the ancient Celtic priesthood) actually believed. The Celts wrote down very little -- they had a lettering system (the Ogham runes) which are poorly understood, and of which very few examples have survived. The Romans wrote down some observation of Celtic ritual, but to say that the Romans are a biased source is a colossal understatement. They thought that the Celts were barbarians (some etymologies claim that the word "barbarian" itself comes from the fact that to cultured Roman and Greek ears, the language of the Celts sounded like "bar-bar-bar-bar-bar") and therefore paid little attention to them except as the Unfortunate Prior Inhabitants of Lands the Romans Want. It probably didn't help matters that the Celts painted their bodies blue and went into battle stark naked. That sort of thing often makes an impression, but it's seldom a favorable one.
And in all of the Celtic lands, thousands of years of oppression from an occupation government, and the anti-pagan efforts of the dominant religion, effectively erased all but bits and pieces of the original beliefs of the Celts. Certain symbols have survived, (e.g. the Green Man and the Horned God), but other than a vague notion of what those represented, we really have nothing in the way of concrete knowledge of what the Celtic peoples believed prior to the Romans.
That said, I have to admit that the Wiccans are really pretty decent folks. Their basic tenet, "The Wiccan Rede," is "An it harm none, do what ye will." Other than the rather pretentious wording, it's a good basic rule for life. Reverence for, and protection of, nature is also something that will get no argument from me.
But I can't help the feeling that the whole thing is, well, vaguely silly. The bizarre, quasi-Middle-English verbiage doesn't help; why "The Wiccan Rede" isn't just "as long as you don't hurt anybody, do what you want," I couldn't say. Maybe "an it harm none" sounds more like what a Druid would say, I don't know. Actually, a good bit of their terminology falls into the unintentionally humorous department. I particularly like "working skyclad" for "running around in the woods naked." Now, I've got nothing whatsoever against running around in the woods naked, other than the problem of giving deerflies and mosquitoes unfettered access to your tender bits; but "skyclad" just sounds preposterous to me. Weddings are called "handfasting." Spells are "magick" (I know if you heard it pronounced, you could hear the "k" at the end and distinguish it from "magic," which is what David Copperfield does).
The costumes also don't help much, although (to be fair) they don't look all that much sillier than the vestments worn by Catholic priests.
Even with all this, Elizabeth Dodd and the other Catholic worrywarts are correct that Wicca is growing. There are now splinter sects (you knew it had to happens sooner or later) -- including the "Reformed Druids of North America" (named presumably to distinguish them from any Unreformed Druids who are running around skyclad in your local woods). A US government website estimates that in 2001, 134,000 individuals in in the US identified themselves as Wiccans, as compared with 8,000 in 1990. That, my friends, is a lot of Wiccans.
There has been a lot of argument over whether Wicca is actually a religion (usually this argument has erupted in the context of the US government's tax-shelter policy toward religions, and in one well-publicized case, the use of Wiccan symbols on a gravestone in Arlington Cemetery). To me, from the standpoint of having a lot of silly beliefs based upon no evidence whatsoever, and involving apparently enormous amounts of wishful thinking, Wicca is clearly a religion.
The amusing thing, to me, is that now you have people like Elizabeth Dodd claiming that the Wiccans need to become Catholics, because her set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs are better than their set of unsupported, zero-evidence beliefs. I find the whole thing screamingly funny. Hey, the more time they spend yelling at each other, the less time they'll have to send hate mail to me.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Die Gedanken sind frei
The news this week contains several reports of neo-fascists. On Saturday, police in Luton, England had their hands full with a protest march by the English Defense League, who chanted anti-Muslim (and just general anti-non-British) slogans... but included shouts of "sieg heil!" and the infamous Nazi salute.
Another story comes in from Jamel, Germany, a little town in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, where a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, Sven Krueger, has taken up residence. Krueger has brought in followers, and now Jamel has become a haven for members of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party -- and people passing through the town have begun to see the German imperial flag flown (use of the swastika is illegal in Germany), and posters of a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Nearer to home, a dear friend of mine sent me a photograph she'd taken near her home, where someone had spray-painted the word "nigger" on a street sign. She posted the photograph on Facebook, and wrote beneath it, "To all who believe in social justice, equity, and decency, this is your reminder not to become complacent. Create spaces intolerant of intolerance."
It behooves government leaders to recognize, and address, the sources of xenophobia. It comes in part from people's fear of losing their jobs, or the desperation of those who already have (it will come as no surprise that Luton is a working class town with high unemployment, and the entire province of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has the highest unemployment rate in Germany). It comes from the media exaggerating the risk of terror attacks (your actual risk of dying in a terror attack in the United States or Western Europe is about one in 9.3 million -- about the same as your risk of dying in an avalanche). It comes from the legacy of war, slavery, and oppression. It comes from a natural, if unfortunate, fear all humans have of the unfamiliar.
But it is not inevitable. And even when it is the easiest to fall into xenophobia -- when governmental leaders capitalize on it, magnify it, make it seem like a virtue -- there are those who resist, who raise their voices against those who would have us believe that one country, one ideology, one race has a god-given deed to the moral high ground.
Sophie Scholl was a student at the University of Munich during the early part of World War II. Like all children of her time and place, she was indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, and forced to join fascist youth organizations like the League of German Girls and the Hitler Youth. But unlike many young women and men her age, she questioned the basis of the Nazi philosophy, and was one of the founding members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi political resistance movement.
Another story comes in from Jamel, Germany, a little town in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, where a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, Sven Krueger, has taken up residence. Krueger has brought in followers, and now Jamel has become a haven for members of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party -- and people passing through the town have begun to see the German imperial flag flown (use of the swastika is illegal in Germany), and posters of a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Nearer to home, a dear friend of mine sent me a photograph she'd taken near her home, where someone had spray-painted the word "nigger" on a street sign. She posted the photograph on Facebook, and wrote beneath it, "To all who believe in social justice, equity, and decency, this is your reminder not to become complacent. Create spaces intolerant of intolerance."
It behooves government leaders to recognize, and address, the sources of xenophobia. It comes in part from people's fear of losing their jobs, or the desperation of those who already have (it will come as no surprise that Luton is a working class town with high unemployment, and the entire province of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has the highest unemployment rate in Germany). It comes from the media exaggerating the risk of terror attacks (your actual risk of dying in a terror attack in the United States or Western Europe is about one in 9.3 million -- about the same as your risk of dying in an avalanche). It comes from the legacy of war, slavery, and oppression. It comes from a natural, if unfortunate, fear all humans have of the unfamiliar.
But it is not inevitable. And even when it is the easiest to fall into xenophobia -- when governmental leaders capitalize on it, magnify it, make it seem like a virtue -- there are those who resist, who raise their voices against those who would have us believe that one country, one ideology, one race has a god-given deed to the moral high ground.
Sophie Scholl was a student at the University of Munich during the early part of World War II. Like all children of her time and place, she was indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, and forced to join fascist youth organizations like the League of German Girls and the Hitler Youth. But unlike many young women and men her age, she questioned the basis of the Nazi philosophy, and was one of the founding members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi political resistance movement.
At great risk to themselves, the people in the White Rose published leaflets describing Nazi atrocities toward the Jews. Her father, who worked in a metallurgical plant in Ulm, was imprisoned for criticizing Hitler to a coworker; Sophie Scholl went and stood below his cell window and played "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" ("My Thoughts Are Free") on her flute. This beautiful little song, written in the seventeenth century, states, "no man can know my thoughts, no hunter can shoot them... if you would throw me into the darkest dungeon, it would all be futile, for my thoughts are still free" -- and its message so frightened the Nazis that merely whistling it was sufficient to get you shot on the spot. Scholl and her comrades embodied the message of the song, and succeeded in distributing anti-Nazi literature to tens of thousands of people.
The Gestapo, of course, became desperate to find her and the other members of the White Rose. Extreme political movements always rely on disinformation, and Scholl and her friends were bringing the horrible fact of what the German leadership was doing to the German people themselves. One leaflet said: "Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals … Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!"
In the end, of course, it was almost inevitable that Scholl would be captured; she, and her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were arrested on February 18, 1943, put on trial for treason, and were all executed by guillotine a few days later. Scholl's last words were, "How can we expect righteousness to prevail, when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
Today, when many of our most prominent media spokespersons are encouraging us to believe in fear, to distrust what we don't understand, to rail against those who have different beliefs than we do, we should remember that those who speak the most shrilly are the ones who want to sway us by our emotions, not our rationality. The purveyors of hate don't want you to think; they want you to believe.
Scholl and her friends, who died on a chilly February day 68 years ago, remind us that we don't need to listen. We can speak with the voice of reason and compassion, even while some of our countrymen snarl hatred. We can make the risky choice of speaking on the behalf of what is right.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
The Gestapo, of course, became desperate to find her and the other members of the White Rose. Extreme political movements always rely on disinformation, and Scholl and her friends were bringing the horrible fact of what the German leadership was doing to the German people themselves. One leaflet said: "Since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way … The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals … Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!"
In the end, of course, it was almost inevitable that Scholl would be captured; she, and her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were arrested on February 18, 1943, put on trial for treason, and were all executed by guillotine a few days later. Scholl's last words were, "How can we expect righteousness to prevail, when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
Today, when many of our most prominent media spokespersons are encouraging us to believe in fear, to distrust what we don't understand, to rail against those who have different beliefs than we do, we should remember that those who speak the most shrilly are the ones who want to sway us by our emotions, not our rationality. The purveyors of hate don't want you to think; they want you to believe.
Scholl and her friends, who died on a chilly February day 68 years ago, remind us that we don't need to listen. We can speak with the voice of reason and compassion, even while some of our countrymen snarl hatred. We can make the risky choice of speaking on the behalf of what is right.
Die Gedanken sind frei.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Missing the target
While reading my latest blog post, my wife suddenly burst out laughing. Turns out, she wasn't laughing at my scintillating wittiness, however -- she was laughing at the ads clipped onto my post by AdSense.
AdSense, and other targeted-advertisement software, tries to pick up on keywords in websites, and using those cues, to choose advertisements that are appropriate for the audience. The ads on my Facebook page, for example, often have to do with scuba diving, travel, and music, three things I have identified as hobbies in my profile. This time, however, AdSense sort of backfired.
Yesterday's post, you may remember, was on how the pseudoscience of astrology is a fine example of something called dart-thrower's bias. And the ads? Yes, you've guessed it. My blog yesterday was full of ads for horoscopes ("Find your destiny in the stars!") and for equipment for darts players.
That's the problem with targeted-ad software; it only picks up on keywords, but is unable to tell the context, and (more importantly) if those keywords are being cast in a positive or a negative light. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was after I wrote a fairly virulently anti-religious post, and for the next few days was inundated with ads recommending I be born again in Christ ("visit this website to find out how!"). At first, I thought that AdSense had a pro-Christian bent and was monitoring my posts, and sending me evangelical advertisements when I went too far off the deep end. But no, it's just a function of how the software works.
You never know what the software will notice. I made a passing mention of Geordi LaForge in a recent post, and the next day, there were ads for Star Trek memorabilia. I titled a post about optical illusions "Your Lying Eyes" and got ads for classic rock recordings, including, of course, The Eagles. One of the funnier misses was years ago, when my blog was hosted on a different site, and I wrote about the USA's penchant for aggressive posturing on the stage of worldwide politics. The title of the post was "Tomcat Diplomacy."
For weeks afterwards, there were ads for subscriptions to cat care magazines and websites with humorous cat photographs.
Some of the ads, however, are just plain weird. I'm not quite sure how to take the one I saw a while back which said, "You're Not Ugly, You're Just Fat," and had a link to a diet site. I think it should be evident from my profile photo that although I may have many physical flaws, obesity isn't one of them. For a while I was getting periodic advertisements whose headline said it was "for the discerning gay gentleman." I'm not sure about the "discerning" part; and although I'm definitely male, the "gentleman" part may also be up for debate. However, I can say with some assurance that I'm not gay (though, to quote Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"). I haven't seen that one in a while, so whatever odd keyword the software picked up that led it to conclude that I am gay appears to be gone.
Being that this is a blog that is, at its heart, devoted to science (although I must admit that my attention wanders to other subjects rather frequently), I thought it might be interesting to use the scientific method and run an experiment to see if we can mess around with the targeted-ad software. If it works, it'll be sort of like a computerized game of free-association. I'll throw a few keywords at it, and see what ads it generates. Here goes: "wine, beer, scotch, bourbon, rum, tequila." "Weasel, wombat, aardvark, lemur, lemming, wildebeest." "Crystals, auras, energy fields, telepathy, clairvoyance, ESP."
That should do it. I predict that I should start seeing advertisements for websites detailing how you use the psychic healing power of the mind to cure alcoholic wildlife. I'll keep you posted.
AdSense, and other targeted-advertisement software, tries to pick up on keywords in websites, and using those cues, to choose advertisements that are appropriate for the audience. The ads on my Facebook page, for example, often have to do with scuba diving, travel, and music, three things I have identified as hobbies in my profile. This time, however, AdSense sort of backfired.
Yesterday's post, you may remember, was on how the pseudoscience of astrology is a fine example of something called dart-thrower's bias. And the ads? Yes, you've guessed it. My blog yesterday was full of ads for horoscopes ("Find your destiny in the stars!") and for equipment for darts players.
That's the problem with targeted-ad software; it only picks up on keywords, but is unable to tell the context, and (more importantly) if those keywords are being cast in a positive or a negative light. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was after I wrote a fairly virulently anti-religious post, and for the next few days was inundated with ads recommending I be born again in Christ ("visit this website to find out how!"). At first, I thought that AdSense had a pro-Christian bent and was monitoring my posts, and sending me evangelical advertisements when I went too far off the deep end. But no, it's just a function of how the software works.
You never know what the software will notice. I made a passing mention of Geordi LaForge in a recent post, and the next day, there were ads for Star Trek memorabilia. I titled a post about optical illusions "Your Lying Eyes" and got ads for classic rock recordings, including, of course, The Eagles. One of the funnier misses was years ago, when my blog was hosted on a different site, and I wrote about the USA's penchant for aggressive posturing on the stage of worldwide politics. The title of the post was "Tomcat Diplomacy."
For weeks afterwards, there were ads for subscriptions to cat care magazines and websites with humorous cat photographs.
Some of the ads, however, are just plain weird. I'm not quite sure how to take the one I saw a while back which said, "You're Not Ugly, You're Just Fat," and had a link to a diet site. I think it should be evident from my profile photo that although I may have many physical flaws, obesity isn't one of them. For a while I was getting periodic advertisements whose headline said it was "for the discerning gay gentleman." I'm not sure about the "discerning" part; and although I'm definitely male, the "gentleman" part may also be up for debate. However, I can say with some assurance that I'm not gay (though, to quote Seinfeld, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"). I haven't seen that one in a while, so whatever odd keyword the software picked up that led it to conclude that I am gay appears to be gone.
Being that this is a blog that is, at its heart, devoted to science (although I must admit that my attention wanders to other subjects rather frequently), I thought it might be interesting to use the scientific method and run an experiment to see if we can mess around with the targeted-ad software. If it works, it'll be sort of like a computerized game of free-association. I'll throw a few keywords at it, and see what ads it generates. Here goes: "wine, beer, scotch, bourbon, rum, tequila." "Weasel, wombat, aardvark, lemur, lemming, wildebeest." "Crystals, auras, energy fields, telepathy, clairvoyance, ESP."
That should do it. I predict that I should start seeing advertisements for websites detailing how you use the psychic healing power of the mind to cure alcoholic wildlife. I'll keep you posted.
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