New from the Why Didn't I Think Of That First department, we have a guy who performs psychic healing just by looking at people.
Here I thought you had to at least do something to affect a woo-woo cure -- swing some crystals around, say a chant or two, give your patient a homeopathic pill that doesn't contain any medicine -- at least something.
Enter the Croat healer known only as "Braco." Braco, now touring the United States, gets paid big bucks to sit on a stage for a half hour and stare at the audience. He doesn't say a word -- just stares, then gets up and leaves, and goes backstage to collect his paycheck. His gaze is said to have "healing powers." "People aren't even sure what they're feeling," devotee Sahaja Coventry told a reporter at Braco's latest appearance, at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland. "But it is a sweetness, it is a loving energy and some people get physical healing, some just feel a sense of peace."
If I had to sit there for a half hour in a dimly-lit room in total silence for a half-hour, I bet I'd feel a sense of peace, too -- I'd probably fall asleep. But of course, that's not what Coventry et al. are talking about. Neither do they think they're being hypnotized, which is another possibility. They really think that Braco is doing something with his eyes, somehow affecting "energy levels" in the room. Braco, of course, does everything he can to beef up this claim; children and pregnant women are not allowed to attend, because the "energies could be too strong," and he does not let his face be broadcast on television for more than seven-second clips, presumably to prevent some sort of electronically-transmitted overdose of Braco Stare.
My objections, of course, are the usual ones. First, show me the mechanism. If you think this guy's gaze can cure your chronic headaches, show me how that could work in such a way that it eliminates the possibility of auto-suggestion. Another of his followers who attended the session at Cleveland hinted at the problem when she said, "You have to have an open mind and an open heart, more or less to get this feeling." Why on earth should this be so? If the guy is doing something real, how could my attitude make any difference? You'd think it'd be even more impressive if Braco cured someone who thought he was a fraud.
Second, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing flies in the face of how vision actually works; because when you see, it's not because something's going out from your eyes, it's because something's going into your eyes (namely, light reflected from the object you're looking at). Vision is receptive, not productive. The ancients didn't get this, and we see this in some relic expressions like to "throw a glance" at someone, and in holdover beliefs such as the "evil eye." Certainly, the eyes and face can communicate information; a lot of work has been done on the ease with which the human brain can pick up on subtle "microexpressions," and how that effects social interaction. But that's not what Braco's followers think is happening, here -- they really think that some "force" is leaving his body through his eyes, and traveling to you, and changing your mental and/or physical condition. To which I say: I seriously doubt it.
In any case, if you'd like to see him (or, actually, to have him see you), you can check out his tour schedule at Braco.net. Be warned, however -- on his website there's a giant photograph of him, and it will look out of the monitor at you in a highly scary fashion. I suggest putting on eye protection before clicking the link, and whatever you do, don't leave it staring at you for more than seven seconds! Don't say I didn't warn you.
Honestly, though, like I said initially, I kind of wish I'd thought of it first. It seems an easier way to make a living than to do what I do, which is to stand in front of bunches of high school students talking all day long. If I could make a living just by staring at people from a stage for a half-hour every few nights, I'd could ditch all the lesson plans and paper grading and so on, and have a great deal more free time than I currently have. But Braco seems to have cornered the Psychic Stare market, so I'll have to come up with a different angle. Hey, I know! Maybe you could just send me a check for a hundred dollars, and I'll stare lovingly at your signature for five minutes. It will communicate healing energy through the psychic link established through your signature. You'll feel better immediately. Trust me.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Witches, vampires, and irrationality
My mom, although she was generous to a fault with her friends and family, was very suspicious of strangers. I blame this in part on the fact that during the last ten years of her life, she watched the show Cops every night. If you expose yourself, even willingly, to a continual parade of thieves, arsonists, murderers, and other no-goods, you're bound to come away with the view that the world is a pretty shady place, and most of humanity unscrupulous at best and dangerous at worst.
It is perhaps an occupational hazard of writing a blog such as this one that I often find myself wondering if humans are honestly capable of any shred of rationality. I realize that, like my mom, I'm deliberately opening myself to a skewed viewpoint -- every day I seek out examples of weird beliefs and bizarre behavior, so I shouldn't be surprised that I come away with the jaundiced attitude that my fellow humans are, by and large, a bunch of wingnuts. Still, some of the stories I ran into this morning leave me shaking my head and wondering how natural selection hasn't replaced us with a more sensible, intelligent dominant species. I think that dolphins, for example, might well make better Lords of the Earth, given some of our behavior.
For example, we have a murder case in Florida, in which 18-year-old Stephanie Pistey is accused of killing 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot. All of which would be tragic but not relevant to today's topic, except that Pistey maintains that she killed Hendershot because she's "a vampire-werewolf hybrid." According to the reports, Pistey "talked calmly and rationally" about her beliefs, which included the fact that "bloodlust is just part of who we are."
Of course, I'm sure that when Pistey comes to trial, her defense will try to prove that she's mentally unbalanced. Which is clearly a true statement, but then, how mentally unbalanced do you have to be before you're honestly not responsible for your actions? It's hard to believe that anyone who had not completely lost touch with reality (and there's apparently no evidence that Pistey is schizophrenic) would be so convinced that she was part vampire, part werewolf that she would kill someone. But that's evidently exactly what happened here. Clearly Pistey believes that vampires and werewolves are real, and it's to be assumed that she didn't come by that belief on her own.
Just yesterday, we had news that a couple in Oregon were found guilty two days ago of second-degree manslaughter for allowing their premature newborn to die. The couple believed that praying for the child, and anointing him with "blessed oil," would cause god to save his life -- teachings promoted by their church, the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City. Amazingly, the judge agreed to a "religious exemption" -- meaning that the couple will likely spend less than 18 months in jail for the offense. One has to wonder what other homicidal lunacy might become excusable as long as it's based on religious grounds.
Speaking of which, we have the cheery story that our allies in Saudi Arabia have beheaded a Sudanese man for witchcraft. The man, Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al-Fakki, was arrested in 2005 for "casting a spell to reconcile his divorced parents," and found guilty of sorcery, which is a capital offense in Islamic religious law. He was executed by beheading last week. And lest we think that such medieval beliefs are limited to the Middle East, we have a story from Uganda that four people were banished from their village for witchcraft, and a businessman in Indonesia is currently awaiting trial for using "dark magic" to harm his competitors in the marketplace. Apparently, the fact that there's no such thing as Black Magic doesn't mean that you can't be convicted of it in a court of law.
I think I'll end with a story about an archaeological dig in Piombino, Italy. Archaeologists searching for the tomb of St. Cerbonius, alleged to be in the vicinity, came upon the bones of a woman, who was between 25 and 30 years old at her death, which occurred in about 1200 C.E. What caught the attention of the researchers was the fashion in which she was buried -- she had several nails driven into her jawbone, and there were more nails struck into the ground near her body. (The cause of death is as yet undetermined, and it's to be hoped the nails were hammered into her after she'd died -- but that's not certain, unfortunately.) The archaeologists stated that according to writings from the time, this was the way the bodies of witches, warlocks, and vampires were treated -- the nails were intended to keep them from coming back from the dead and harming the living.
How far we've come in 800 years.
It is perhaps an occupational hazard of writing a blog such as this one that I often find myself wondering if humans are honestly capable of any shred of rationality. I realize that, like my mom, I'm deliberately opening myself to a skewed viewpoint -- every day I seek out examples of weird beliefs and bizarre behavior, so I shouldn't be surprised that I come away with the jaundiced attitude that my fellow humans are, by and large, a bunch of wingnuts. Still, some of the stories I ran into this morning leave me shaking my head and wondering how natural selection hasn't replaced us with a more sensible, intelligent dominant species. I think that dolphins, for example, might well make better Lords of the Earth, given some of our behavior.
For example, we have a murder case in Florida, in which 18-year-old Stephanie Pistey is accused of killing 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot. All of which would be tragic but not relevant to today's topic, except that Pistey maintains that she killed Hendershot because she's "a vampire-werewolf hybrid." According to the reports, Pistey "talked calmly and rationally" about her beliefs, which included the fact that "bloodlust is just part of who we are."
Of course, I'm sure that when Pistey comes to trial, her defense will try to prove that she's mentally unbalanced. Which is clearly a true statement, but then, how mentally unbalanced do you have to be before you're honestly not responsible for your actions? It's hard to believe that anyone who had not completely lost touch with reality (and there's apparently no evidence that Pistey is schizophrenic) would be so convinced that she was part vampire, part werewolf that she would kill someone. But that's evidently exactly what happened here. Clearly Pistey believes that vampires and werewolves are real, and it's to be assumed that she didn't come by that belief on her own.
Just yesterday, we had news that a couple in Oregon were found guilty two days ago of second-degree manslaughter for allowing their premature newborn to die. The couple believed that praying for the child, and anointing him with "blessed oil," would cause god to save his life -- teachings promoted by their church, the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City. Amazingly, the judge agreed to a "religious exemption" -- meaning that the couple will likely spend less than 18 months in jail for the offense. One has to wonder what other homicidal lunacy might become excusable as long as it's based on religious grounds.
Speaking of which, we have the cheery story that our allies in Saudi Arabia have beheaded a Sudanese man for witchcraft. The man, Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al-Fakki, was arrested in 2005 for "casting a spell to reconcile his divorced parents," and found guilty of sorcery, which is a capital offense in Islamic religious law. He was executed by beheading last week. And lest we think that such medieval beliefs are limited to the Middle East, we have a story from Uganda that four people were banished from their village for witchcraft, and a businessman in Indonesia is currently awaiting trial for using "dark magic" to harm his competitors in the marketplace. Apparently, the fact that there's no such thing as Black Magic doesn't mean that you can't be convicted of it in a court of law.
I think I'll end with a story about an archaeological dig in Piombino, Italy. Archaeologists searching for the tomb of St. Cerbonius, alleged to be in the vicinity, came upon the bones of a woman, who was between 25 and 30 years old at her death, which occurred in about 1200 C.E. What caught the attention of the researchers was the fashion in which she was buried -- she had several nails driven into her jawbone, and there were more nails struck into the ground near her body. (The cause of death is as yet undetermined, and it's to be hoped the nails were hammered into her after she'd died -- but that's not certain, unfortunately.) The archaeologists stated that according to writings from the time, this was the way the bodies of witches, warlocks, and vampires were treated -- the nails were intended to keep them from coming back from the dead and harming the living.
How far we've come in 800 years.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Voodoo, dragonflies, Planet X, and sex with evil spirits
New from the Be Careful What You Wish For Department, in yesterday's post I asked my loyal readers to send me links to stories of woo-wooism worldwide, and within a couple of hours I received four stories which, although I appreciated the gesture, left me wondering how much weirder people can get.
First, we have a story from Telford, Shropshire, England, about a teacher who used some very unorthodox methods to get her students to behave.
Roslyn Holloway, now an ex-employee of the Lord Silkin Trust Secondary School, was a teacher of special education for kids aged 13, and her tenure at the school was marked by abusive behavior (she smacked one misbehaving kid with the heel of her hand, and pulled another by the hair so hard that a hunk of it came out), racial epithets, and general verbal harassment. However, what makes this story merit a mention in Skeptophilia is what finally got her fired. (As if all of the above weren't enough.)
During a social studies lesson, she took a doll out of a bag, and wrapped a student's hair around the doll's leg, and threatened to drop the doll to "make his leg hurt." Then, she said that she was planning on dropping the doll into a bucket of water if the student didn't stop talking in class, and if she did, he would "be found, mysteriously drowned."
What I find most disturbing about this whole incident is that this nutjob was allowed to teach for eight years before the voodoo incident finally got her canned.
Holloway upped stakes after her dismissal, and moved to the Shetland Islands, where, it is to be hoped, she will never be allowed around children again. Or anyone else, for that matter.
On a lighter note, we have a report from London regarding a dragonfly that is actually a remote-controlled drone operated by an alien parasite.
The report, made by a man who identifies himself only as SpaceCowboy1954, appeared in a YouTube video (which you can watch here). The video, which is approximately as interesting as watching your fenders rust, features eight minutes of footage of what appears to be an ordinary dragonfly zooming around, accompanied by an annoying, monotonous syntho-pop soundtrack evidently performed by a musician who has not yet mastered the concept of "changing chords." For those of you who would like to cut to the chase, the punch line of the whole thing comes at 6:02, at which point the dragonfly's head appears to split, allowing an "alien head to peek out, just like a Transformer."
After watching the video, wasting eight valuable minutes of my life that I'll never see again, I've come to the conclusion that the guy has been engaged in some creative video editing, as the shots with the "alien" are far blurrier than most of the shots of the plain old dragonfly. Be that as it may, you should definitely be on the lookout for alien insects next time you're outside, because who knows what they may be up to? This one was certainly involved in some very sinister circling of the park bench, and we all know what that means. Next step, world domination.
Speaking of world domination, no roundup of recent weird news would be complete without an update on what Nibiru is doing.
Nibiru, of course, is the mysterious tenth planet, that either is in a highly elliptical orbit extending beyond Pluto, and only visits the inner solar system every few thousand years, or else is in a stable circular orbit exactly on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, either of which would explain why we never see any sign of it. This recent Nibiru news takes the second view, and claims that further, (1) it was somehow known to the Hopi, who called it the "Blue Katchina," (2) has no atmosphere or water, but still (3) is the home of the alien race called Annunaki, who (3) were the gods mentioned in the Old Testament, and who were (4) mining gold there until things got screwed up by the fact that (5) Planet X is approaching, which may or may not be the Comet Elenin, and Planet X has (6) pushed Venus further from the sun, which will (7) cause the Earth's magnetic pole to flip, resulting in (8) seriously bad stuff that will of course peak on December 21, 2012.
I wish I was making all this up. So that I can at least maintain some credibility with my readers, here's a link to the webpage that gives all the details on the upcoming catastrophe.
There's more, of course, but my brain cells were screaming for mercy as it was, so I'll leave you to look at the article on your own if you're interested. And if major sectors of your brain die in agony from reading this stuff, don't say I didn't warn you.
Last, we have a story from Malaysia, where a man called police claiming that he wife was having sex every night with an "evil spirit."
The unnamed man, in his 20s, described to police that his wife would go to bed in the normal fashion, and then wake him up in the middle of the night moaning. A "professional medium" hired by the man told him that an evil spirit was coming to her at night and proceeding to have its way with her, and if he didn't take action, she could end up conceiving a "spirit child."
The police "listened patiently" to the man's story, but finally told him that they were not able to arrest the "invisible man," because he was, well, invisible, which would make him kind of difficult to handcuff.
If I'd been the policeman on duty, I'd have told the guy, "Look, buddy, like I don't have enough to worry about, with robotic alien-controlled dragonflies, teachers threatening students with voodoo curses, and the fact that the world's going to end soon." But I doubt that'd have worked, anyhow, given that most guys are pretty picky about their significant others not cheating on them, even if the significant others are cheating with someone who doesn't, technically, exist.
So, folks, keep those cards and letters coming. We here at Worldwide Wacko Watch just love the attention, and even if it means facing the fact that a significant percentage of humans are total loons, we're willing to deal with our pessimism about humanity in general to bring these stories to your doorstep.
First, we have a story from Telford, Shropshire, England, about a teacher who used some very unorthodox methods to get her students to behave.
Roslyn Holloway, now an ex-employee of the Lord Silkin Trust Secondary School, was a teacher of special education for kids aged 13, and her tenure at the school was marked by abusive behavior (she smacked one misbehaving kid with the heel of her hand, and pulled another by the hair so hard that a hunk of it came out), racial epithets, and general verbal harassment. However, what makes this story merit a mention in Skeptophilia is what finally got her fired. (As if all of the above weren't enough.)
During a social studies lesson, she took a doll out of a bag, and wrapped a student's hair around the doll's leg, and threatened to drop the doll to "make his leg hurt." Then, she said that she was planning on dropping the doll into a bucket of water if the student didn't stop talking in class, and if she did, he would "be found, mysteriously drowned."
What I find most disturbing about this whole incident is that this nutjob was allowed to teach for eight years before the voodoo incident finally got her canned.
Holloway upped stakes after her dismissal, and moved to the Shetland Islands, where, it is to be hoped, she will never be allowed around children again. Or anyone else, for that matter.
On a lighter note, we have a report from London regarding a dragonfly that is actually a remote-controlled drone operated by an alien parasite.
The report, made by a man who identifies himself only as SpaceCowboy1954, appeared in a YouTube video (which you can watch here). The video, which is approximately as interesting as watching your fenders rust, features eight minutes of footage of what appears to be an ordinary dragonfly zooming around, accompanied by an annoying, monotonous syntho-pop soundtrack evidently performed by a musician who has not yet mastered the concept of "changing chords." For those of you who would like to cut to the chase, the punch line of the whole thing comes at 6:02, at which point the dragonfly's head appears to split, allowing an "alien head to peek out, just like a Transformer."
After watching the video, wasting eight valuable minutes of my life that I'll never see again, I've come to the conclusion that the guy has been engaged in some creative video editing, as the shots with the "alien" are far blurrier than most of the shots of the plain old dragonfly. Be that as it may, you should definitely be on the lookout for alien insects next time you're outside, because who knows what they may be up to? This one was certainly involved in some very sinister circling of the park bench, and we all know what that means. Next step, world domination.
Speaking of world domination, no roundup of recent weird news would be complete without an update on what Nibiru is doing.
Nibiru, of course, is the mysterious tenth planet, that either is in a highly elliptical orbit extending beyond Pluto, and only visits the inner solar system every few thousand years, or else is in a stable circular orbit exactly on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, either of which would explain why we never see any sign of it. This recent Nibiru news takes the second view, and claims that further, (1) it was somehow known to the Hopi, who called it the "Blue Katchina," (2) has no atmosphere or water, but still (3) is the home of the alien race called Annunaki, who (3) were the gods mentioned in the Old Testament, and who were (4) mining gold there until things got screwed up by the fact that (5) Planet X is approaching, which may or may not be the Comet Elenin, and Planet X has (6) pushed Venus further from the sun, which will (7) cause the Earth's magnetic pole to flip, resulting in (8) seriously bad stuff that will of course peak on December 21, 2012.
I wish I was making all this up. So that I can at least maintain some credibility with my readers, here's a link to the webpage that gives all the details on the upcoming catastrophe.
There's more, of course, but my brain cells were screaming for mercy as it was, so I'll leave you to look at the article on your own if you're interested. And if major sectors of your brain die in agony from reading this stuff, don't say I didn't warn you.
Last, we have a story from Malaysia, where a man called police claiming that he wife was having sex every night with an "evil spirit."
The unnamed man, in his 20s, described to police that his wife would go to bed in the normal fashion, and then wake him up in the middle of the night moaning. A "professional medium" hired by the man told him that an evil spirit was coming to her at night and proceeding to have its way with her, and if he didn't take action, she could end up conceiving a "spirit child."
The police "listened patiently" to the man's story, but finally told him that they were not able to arrest the "invisible man," because he was, well, invisible, which would make him kind of difficult to handcuff.
If I'd been the policeman on duty, I'd have told the guy, "Look, buddy, like I don't have enough to worry about, with robotic alien-controlled dragonflies, teachers threatening students with voodoo curses, and the fact that the world's going to end soon." But I doubt that'd have worked, anyhow, given that most guys are pretty picky about their significant others not cheating on them, even if the significant others are cheating with someone who doesn't, technically, exist.
So, folks, keep those cards and letters coming. We here at Worldwide Wacko Watch just love the attention, and even if it means facing the fact that a significant percentage of humans are total loons, we're willing to deal with our pessimism about humanity in general to bring these stories to your doorstep.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Woo-woo news briefs
Things are hopping down here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, and this week we have three stories sent to me by faithful readers of Skeptophilia.
First, we have a story regarding a theoretical physicist, Henry Sapp, who claims that there is nothing incompatible between quantum mechanics and ghosts. Here's a quote from his writing on the subject:
Then we've got a story that there is a direct relationship between the number of UFO sightings and global warming, and that the increase in global temperatures is causing aliens to visit us in progressively greater numbers. The author of this article speculates that the aliens are coming here with good intentions, to warn us that our behavior is destroying our biosphere, and that we should take heed and stop burning fossil fuels and so on.
You'd think, being superpowerful aliens who can come here in spacecrafts, that if that was their message they would be a little more direct about it, rather than just flying "silver orbs" around and hoping that we'd look up and say, "Wow, did you just see that big silver orb zoom across the sky! It's an alien spacecraft! I'm going to run out and buy a Prius right now!" You'd think that they'd just tie a big banner to the back of one of their orbs that said, "Hey, Earth people! Stop burning fossil fuels! We mean it!"
You'd be wrong, evidently. It's the same thing as with all the crop circles; they're supposed to be alien communiqués, but if so they're pretty obscure ones.
Last, speaking of aliens, we have a report from a guy named Paul Schroeder that he's had reptilian aliens visit him while he was taking a shower.
By his own description, Schroeder once was a confirmed atheist but he changed his tune when he saw aliens float him out of his bed, because apparently he was convinced that the aliens were trying to steal his soul and for that to be true he had to have a soul in the first place. Since his abduction, he's had a variety of contacts with aliens of several races, including "Grays," "Darks," and "Reptilians." It's a member of the last-mentioned species that came and joined him in the shower.
He said he knew something was wrong when the shower, instead of energizing him, was "draining him." Showers are supposed to be an "ethereal cleansing," and not just get the grease and dirt off, but wash all the schmutz off your aura or something. And evidently this one wasn't doing the trick. Then, suddenly, he felt a burning sensation on his skin, and had "sudden, unprovoked sexual urges and negative ideations," and he knew there was an alien with him in the shower.
For the record, I'm not making any of this up.
Then, suddenly, the alien was able to draw enough energy from him and from the shower, not to mention from all of the unprovoked sexual urges that were happening, and it materialized! "It stood under five feet upright, had catlike slit eyes, and closely resembled a scaled monitor lizard, in both aspect and facial structure," Schroeder writes. "That reptilian viewed me with its head tilted, cocked sideways, birdlike; it had piercingly studied me with an alert intelligence that had radiated curiosity. After just a few seconds, the creature vanished."
Schroeder is worried that now the alien has seen him naked, it will be stalking him, which seems a little conceited, frankly. "Post abduction, alien abductee predation is done both through implant energy drains and by inserting alien astral attachments, within the layered human psyche towards a goal of eventual possession," he writes. "These bizarre beings, highly technological and equally interdimensional and intergalactic, use us as we ride horses."
Right. That's believable. Implant drains and aliens as spirit equestrians. This is only slightly less ludicrous than the guy who wanted to transmute base metals into gold using the Philosopher's Stone he'd made from his own urine.
In any case, there you have it. Quantum mechanics and soul survival, global warming and UFOs, and alien soul-suckers in the shower. I hope you've found this week's News In Brief enlightening, and trust that you'll continue to send me links to webpages by wingnuts. As usual, our motto here is: All the News That's Fit to Guffaw At.
First, we have a story regarding a theoretical physicist, Henry Sapp, who claims that there is nothing incompatible between quantum mechanics and ghosts. Here's a quote from his writing on the subject:
I do not see any compelling theoretical reason why this idea could not be reconciled with the precepts of quantum mechanics. Such an elaboration of quantum mechanics would both allow our conscious efforts to influence our own bodily actions, and also allow certain purported phenomena such as “possession”, “mediumship”, and “reincarnation” to be reconciled with the basic precepts of contemporary physics.Hmmm. Okay. As far as I can tell, this is a little like saying that there is nothing incompatible between organic chemistry and federal tax law. It's a true statement, but it doesn't really tell you anything. Quantum mechanics has nothing whatsoever to say about "survival of the spirit," being that it is about the behavior of matter and energy at the submicroscopic scale. Being a theoretical physicist, you'd think he'd know this. As for the rest of the woo-woo world, I really wish they'd give the whole quantum mechanics thing a rest, as I've seen it used to support crystal healing, telepathy, and homeopathy, usually accompanied by some statement that "quantum theory shows that reality isn't like we think it is" and therefore we should all accept whatever bizarre version of reality is currently on display. They really need to find a new subject to attribute all of their mystical stuff to. I suggest organic chemistry.
Then we've got a story that there is a direct relationship between the number of UFO sightings and global warming, and that the increase in global temperatures is causing aliens to visit us in progressively greater numbers. The author of this article speculates that the aliens are coming here with good intentions, to warn us that our behavior is destroying our biosphere, and that we should take heed and stop burning fossil fuels and so on.
You'd think, being superpowerful aliens who can come here in spacecrafts, that if that was their message they would be a little more direct about it, rather than just flying "silver orbs" around and hoping that we'd look up and say, "Wow, did you just see that big silver orb zoom across the sky! It's an alien spacecraft! I'm going to run out and buy a Prius right now!" You'd think that they'd just tie a big banner to the back of one of their orbs that said, "Hey, Earth people! Stop burning fossil fuels! We mean it!"
You'd be wrong, evidently. It's the same thing as with all the crop circles; they're supposed to be alien communiqués, but if so they're pretty obscure ones.
Last, speaking of aliens, we have a report from a guy named Paul Schroeder that he's had reptilian aliens visit him while he was taking a shower.
By his own description, Schroeder once was a confirmed atheist but he changed his tune when he saw aliens float him out of his bed, because apparently he was convinced that the aliens were trying to steal his soul and for that to be true he had to have a soul in the first place. Since his abduction, he's had a variety of contacts with aliens of several races, including "Grays," "Darks," and "Reptilians." It's a member of the last-mentioned species that came and joined him in the shower.
He said he knew something was wrong when the shower, instead of energizing him, was "draining him." Showers are supposed to be an "ethereal cleansing," and not just get the grease and dirt off, but wash all the schmutz off your aura or something. And evidently this one wasn't doing the trick. Then, suddenly, he felt a burning sensation on his skin, and had "sudden, unprovoked sexual urges and negative ideations," and he knew there was an alien with him in the shower.
For the record, I'm not making any of this up.
Then, suddenly, the alien was able to draw enough energy from him and from the shower, not to mention from all of the unprovoked sexual urges that were happening, and it materialized! "It stood under five feet upright, had catlike slit eyes, and closely resembled a scaled monitor lizard, in both aspect and facial structure," Schroeder writes. "That reptilian viewed me with its head tilted, cocked sideways, birdlike; it had piercingly studied me with an alert intelligence that had radiated curiosity. After just a few seconds, the creature vanished."
Schroeder is worried that now the alien has seen him naked, it will be stalking him, which seems a little conceited, frankly. "Post abduction, alien abductee predation is done both through implant energy drains and by inserting alien astral attachments, within the layered human psyche towards a goal of eventual possession," he writes. "These bizarre beings, highly technological and equally interdimensional and intergalactic, use us as we ride horses."
Right. That's believable. Implant drains and aliens as spirit equestrians. This is only slightly less ludicrous than the guy who wanted to transmute base metals into gold using the Philosopher's Stone he'd made from his own urine.
In any case, there you have it. Quantum mechanics and soul survival, global warming and UFOs, and alien soul-suckers in the shower. I hope you've found this week's News In Brief enlightening, and trust that you'll continue to send me links to webpages by wingnuts. As usual, our motto here is: All the News That's Fit to Guffaw At.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Our Lady of the Holy Television Screen
My friend Mark was working on a home improvement project, and generating a great quantity of dust. After working for some hours, he went into his living room, and found the following eerie image in the dust patterns on the screen of his television:
The bit of the image in the lower right-hand corner looked, to Mark's eye, like a woman holding a baby, and he immediately thought, "Hey, look! It's Mary and Jesus!" And, of course, he had to send the image to me.
Fortunately, however, Mark is also an electrical engineer, and knew what had happened. While he was working on his project, his kids had been watching television, and had paused the DVD they were watching for a long time. The cathode-ray tube in the television, bombarding the screen with positively-charged particles to create the same image for ten minutes or so, had left a residual pattern in the dust that had adhered to the screen. All he was seeing was the ghostly afterimage of the last bit of the film his kids had been watching before they turned the DVD player off.
Ah, natural explanations. They're wonderful things.
Of course, not everyone looks for such explanations. Some people don't even seem to want to look for them. Take Bishop David Ricken, of the Roman Catholic diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Bishop Ricken was one of a group of Catholic theologians who investigated the site of an alleged miracle -- a chapel in Champion, Wisconsin, where in 1859 a Belgian immigrant named Adele Brise supposedly saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The chapel, and Brise's nearby grave, have become a mecca for believers, who think that their being at the site of the miracle will somehow heal disease.
But it's not the beliefs of the devout pilgrims I want to look at here; it's the actions of Bishop Ricken and his group, who after an inquiry into the claim decided that it was true, and certified the chapel as the site of a miracle.
And my question is: how on earth would you certify that a miracle had occurred over 150 years ago? Brise herself is long dead; anyone who knew Brise is also long dead. All we have are written records of her story. How can that constitute evidence, even in the least scientific definition of the word?
Interestingly, an article at Catholic.org describing the claim (read the whole thing here) states that Brise's claim is the only "validated" appearance of the Virgin Mary in the United States; two others supposed visitations, at Necedah, Wisconsin and Bayside, New York, were investigated by the church and "found to be false." How, pray tell, do you tell a false claim of something for which you have only anecdotal evidence from a true one?
In any case, the apparition Brise claims she saw -- of a shining woman in white who told Brise to "gather the children in this wild country, and teach them what they need for salvation" -- led her to become a Franciscan nun, and later to found a Catholic school. So it's pretty clear that Brise herself thought she'd seen Mary, if her later actions are any indication.
But lots of people do lots of things for specious reasons, or no particular reason at all -- there's no way now, even if you believe in the basic tenets of the Catholic religion, to verify her claim based on any reasonable criteria for certainty. This didn't stop Ricken, of course, and nor does it seem to dissuade the hundreds of pilgrims who go to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to search for healing.
It's all too easy to fool the human brain -- given the deep-seated need by the devout to see the object of their worship, coupled with the lengths this sometimes drives them to -- self-imposed sleep deprivation, fasting, and other forms of denial of bodily needs -- it does not take much of a stretch to attribute such visions to hallucination. And just as in the case of Mark's apparition of Mary and Jesus on his television screen, the natural explanation certainly is a more plausible version of what happened, however Ricken and his trio of theologian friends think they can certify the veracity of a claim from 150 years ago for which there is no tangible evidence whatsoever.
The bit of the image in the lower right-hand corner looked, to Mark's eye, like a woman holding a baby, and he immediately thought, "Hey, look! It's Mary and Jesus!" And, of course, he had to send the image to me.
Fortunately, however, Mark is also an electrical engineer, and knew what had happened. While he was working on his project, his kids had been watching television, and had paused the DVD they were watching for a long time. The cathode-ray tube in the television, bombarding the screen with positively-charged particles to create the same image for ten minutes or so, had left a residual pattern in the dust that had adhered to the screen. All he was seeing was the ghostly afterimage of the last bit of the film his kids had been watching before they turned the DVD player off.
Ah, natural explanations. They're wonderful things.
Of course, not everyone looks for such explanations. Some people don't even seem to want to look for them. Take Bishop David Ricken, of the Roman Catholic diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Bishop Ricken was one of a group of Catholic theologians who investigated the site of an alleged miracle -- a chapel in Champion, Wisconsin, where in 1859 a Belgian immigrant named Adele Brise supposedly saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The chapel, and Brise's nearby grave, have become a mecca for believers, who think that their being at the site of the miracle will somehow heal disease.
But it's not the beliefs of the devout pilgrims I want to look at here; it's the actions of Bishop Ricken and his group, who after an inquiry into the claim decided that it was true, and certified the chapel as the site of a miracle.
And my question is: how on earth would you certify that a miracle had occurred over 150 years ago? Brise herself is long dead; anyone who knew Brise is also long dead. All we have are written records of her story. How can that constitute evidence, even in the least scientific definition of the word?
Interestingly, an article at Catholic.org describing the claim (read the whole thing here) states that Brise's claim is the only "validated" appearance of the Virgin Mary in the United States; two others supposed visitations, at Necedah, Wisconsin and Bayside, New York, were investigated by the church and "found to be false." How, pray tell, do you tell a false claim of something for which you have only anecdotal evidence from a true one?
In any case, the apparition Brise claims she saw -- of a shining woman in white who told Brise to "gather the children in this wild country, and teach them what they need for salvation" -- led her to become a Franciscan nun, and later to found a Catholic school. So it's pretty clear that Brise herself thought she'd seen Mary, if her later actions are any indication.
But lots of people do lots of things for specious reasons, or no particular reason at all -- there's no way now, even if you believe in the basic tenets of the Catholic religion, to verify her claim based on any reasonable criteria for certainty. This didn't stop Ricken, of course, and nor does it seem to dissuade the hundreds of pilgrims who go to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to search for healing.
It's all too easy to fool the human brain -- given the deep-seated need by the devout to see the object of their worship, coupled with the lengths this sometimes drives them to -- self-imposed sleep deprivation, fasting, and other forms of denial of bodily needs -- it does not take much of a stretch to attribute such visions to hallucination. And just as in the case of Mark's apparition of Mary and Jesus on his television screen, the natural explanation certainly is a more plausible version of what happened, however Ricken and his trio of theologian friends think they can certify the veracity of a claim from 150 years ago for which there is no tangible evidence whatsoever.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Breaking the speed limit
When researchers at CERN announced last week that it appeared that they had found an instance of a neutrino traveling faster than the speed of light, it was only a matter of time before the woo-woos got involved.
I just didn't realize that "a matter of time" was measured in milliseconds.
Here is a sampling of some of the responses to this announcement that I found on various webpages the day the findings were released. These are direct quotes, and no, I didn't make any of them up.
"This finally proves a mechanism for faster than light travel of information, and shows how telepathy could work."
"Aliens have had this technology for millennia. Hopefully this will shut up all the skeptics when they talk about 'vast interstellar spaces' as if this would be a problem for a technologically advanced species."
"Faster than light particles (tachyons) travel backwards in time. There will be tachyon pulse (reverse chronometry) in the future which will help us visit the distant past. This is only the beginning."
"So what? Quantum entanglement is faster than light, too. It's all the same thing."
"There never has been an 'ultimate speed limit' on the ethereal realm. Einstein's artificial distinction has begun to crumble."
Well, first, folks, I want you to know how much it took out of me to read all of this, not to mention copying all of the above quotes, which were selected from reams of such nonsense. It leaves me feeling in need of some kind of mental restorative. But being that it's too early for a shot of scotch and the coffee's not done brewing, I will just have to suck it up and soldier on with this post.
Second: are these people really safe to let outside unsupervised? I mean, really.
Okay, let's clarify a few things, and leave behind telepathy and reverse chronometry (whatever the hell that is), and look at what really happened. Here are the facts in the speed-limit-breaking neutrino case:
1) The neutrino in question was clocked traveling 0.002% faster than the speed of light. To put things in perspective, this would be like a cop pulling you over for driving 55.001 miles per hour in a 55 mile-per-hour zone. So it's not like we're talking "Warp 8, Mr. Sulu," or anything.
2) The potential for experimental error is enormous. One of the questions that came up at the seminar where the results were reported was whether the moon's pull on the terrestrial crust was sufficient to warp the geologic plates and cause an error in the distance measurement. With a small deviation from predictions like this, the likelihood that it is an unaccounted-for confounding factor is astronomically high.
3) Also, it bears mention that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is one of the most comprehensively-tested ideas in all of physics. While it's possible that Einstein could have missed something, it's not really all that probable -- experimental error is far more likely. All of the hype that "this would rewrite the physics texts if it's verified" is correct, but still, I'm with Michio Kaku, who said about the findings, "I'm still putting my money on Einstein."
Regarding all of the woo-woos, it really amazes me that they have the guts to blather on about a topic about which they clearly are ignorant. It's not that I'm claiming to know everything; there are many subjects on which I know absolutely nothing. Take football, for example. If I started babbling about the Boston Celtics' chances of winning the World Series this year, I'd probably end up making a fool of myself, so I leave such matters to people who actually know what they're talking about.
The aforementioned woo-woos, however, seem to have no such inhibitions, and in fact proudly trumpet their lack of knowledge in public forums. And if they're challenged by someone who clearly has more knowledge than they do, they react with indignation. One such poster, when confronted by a person who sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, used the Shakespeare card. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he retorted. By which, I think, he meant that any damnfool thing the woo-woos say has to be true, because Shakespeare said so.
Anyhow, the whole thing is kind of maddening. And I predict that within six months it will be found that this measurement resulted from some kind of experimental inaccuracy, and will be withdrawn. Nevertheless, I will end on a hopeful note, with my all-time favorite limerick:
I just didn't realize that "a matter of time" was measured in milliseconds.
Here is a sampling of some of the responses to this announcement that I found on various webpages the day the findings were released. These are direct quotes, and no, I didn't make any of them up.
"This finally proves a mechanism for faster than light travel of information, and shows how telepathy could work."
"Aliens have had this technology for millennia. Hopefully this will shut up all the skeptics when they talk about 'vast interstellar spaces' as if this would be a problem for a technologically advanced species."
"Faster than light particles (tachyons) travel backwards in time. There will be tachyon pulse (reverse chronometry) in the future which will help us visit the distant past. This is only the beginning."
"So what? Quantum entanglement is faster than light, too. It's all the same thing."
"There never has been an 'ultimate speed limit' on the ethereal realm. Einstein's artificial distinction has begun to crumble."
Well, first, folks, I want you to know how much it took out of me to read all of this, not to mention copying all of the above quotes, which were selected from reams of such nonsense. It leaves me feeling in need of some kind of mental restorative. But being that it's too early for a shot of scotch and the coffee's not done brewing, I will just have to suck it up and soldier on with this post.
Second: are these people really safe to let outside unsupervised? I mean, really.
Okay, let's clarify a few things, and leave behind telepathy and reverse chronometry (whatever the hell that is), and look at what really happened. Here are the facts in the speed-limit-breaking neutrino case:
1) The neutrino in question was clocked traveling 0.002% faster than the speed of light. To put things in perspective, this would be like a cop pulling you over for driving 55.001 miles per hour in a 55 mile-per-hour zone. So it's not like we're talking "Warp 8, Mr. Sulu," or anything.
2) The potential for experimental error is enormous. One of the questions that came up at the seminar where the results were reported was whether the moon's pull on the terrestrial crust was sufficient to warp the geologic plates and cause an error in the distance measurement. With a small deviation from predictions like this, the likelihood that it is an unaccounted-for confounding factor is astronomically high.
3) Also, it bears mention that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is one of the most comprehensively-tested ideas in all of physics. While it's possible that Einstein could have missed something, it's not really all that probable -- experimental error is far more likely. All of the hype that "this would rewrite the physics texts if it's verified" is correct, but still, I'm with Michio Kaku, who said about the findings, "I'm still putting my money on Einstein."
Regarding all of the woo-woos, it really amazes me that they have the guts to blather on about a topic about which they clearly are ignorant. It's not that I'm claiming to know everything; there are many subjects on which I know absolutely nothing. Take football, for example. If I started babbling about the Boston Celtics' chances of winning the World Series this year, I'd probably end up making a fool of myself, so I leave such matters to people who actually know what they're talking about.
The aforementioned woo-woos, however, seem to have no such inhibitions, and in fact proudly trumpet their lack of knowledge in public forums. And if they're challenged by someone who clearly has more knowledge than they do, they react with indignation. One such poster, when confronted by a person who sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, used the Shakespeare card. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he retorted. By which, I think, he meant that any damnfool thing the woo-woos say has to be true, because Shakespeare said so.
Anyhow, the whole thing is kind of maddening. And I predict that within six months it will be found that this measurement resulted from some kind of experimental inaccuracy, and will be withdrawn. Nevertheless, I will end on a hopeful note, with my all-time favorite limerick:
There was a young woman named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Heated discussion
BBC News reported yesterday that Ireland has documented its first case of Spontaneous Human Combustion.
Michael Faherty, 76, of Ballybane, Galway, was found burned to death on December 22, 2010. Investigators noted that Faherty's body was completely incinerated, and while there was damage to the living room in which the body was found, the body itself was clearly the source of the flame. No trace of accelerants was found, and there was nothing suggesting foul play. After a nine-month inquiry into the case, the inquest was finally held last week, and Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin ruled that Faherty's death was caused by Spontaneous Human Combustion.
SHC has been the subject of a lot of speculation, and there are a few cases that seem to admit no other explanation -- most notably the famous case of Mary Reeser, who died in 1951 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Reeser was found by her landlady to have been consumed to ashes, along with the armchair in which she was seated. The only part of her body remaining was a few of her bones, and her left foot, still encased in a slipper. Just as in Faherty's case, the room she was in showed little damage -- candles had melted into puddles of wax, and a mirror had warped and cracked from the heat -- but once again, the flames seemed to have arisen from her body.
Other instances of alleged SHC exist, some more believable than others. One of the others is the case Maybelle Andrews, who supposedly suddenly spouted flame on the floor of a crowded dance hall in 1938 and was burned to ashes in five minutes in front of her horrified dance partner, leading to a new and macabre definition of the phrase "hot date." However, investigators have tried to substantiate this claim and found that it seems to be spun from whole cloth, probably by writers for the questionable journal Fate in the 1950s. Andrews herself seems to be entirely fictional, and the story apparently cobbled together from various other tales of uncertain pedigree.
And some of the attempted explanations I've seen don't help much, either. More than one website I looked at attributed SHC to causes that were clearly pseudoscientific bunk, such as the one that said that one possibility was that "Electrical fields that exist within the human body might be capable of 'short circuiting' somehow, causing some sort of atomic chain reaction that could generate tremendous internal heat." This is only marginally more plausible than the one that said that SHC was clearly the result of "visitation by malevolent spirits, and a resulting violent discharge of the victim's psychic life energy."
Sorry, I'm not buying either of those explanations, and not just because both of them are unscientific horse waste. As with many of these sorts of claims, any kind of rational inquiry into SHC is clouded by the vast amount of nonsense, misinformation, and outright fabrications that have been tangled up with the whole subject. Five minutes' worth of research showed me that one person whose name I saw on more than one list of "victims of SHC" - Phyllis Newcombe - is actually documented in records as having been the victim of burns sustained when her dress caught fire accidentally, and she died not because she was "consumed to ashes" in the usual fashion, but of sepsis from an infection some days later. (Read about the case here.) Other names on typical lists of victims are from hundreds of years ago, or are simply lacking in documentation.
So, just like with other Amazing Unexplained Mysteries, a lot of cases of SHC seem to be either (1) fiction, or (2) entirely explainable without recourse to any sort of woo-woo Violent Discharges of Psychic Energy. But this does leave a handful of cases that are well enough documented that they aren't easily dismissed -- and this includes Reeser's case, and the more recent case of Faherty. How can these be accounted for?
It turns out that, as odd as it might seem, there is in fact a plausible natural explanation for SHC. Studies have shown that if a deep burn occurs from a natural trigger (a match, a dropped cigarette, or an upset candle), and the triggering flame is able to burn through the upper layers of skin, it can ignite the fat layer underneath -- and fat burns quite well, generating enough heat to burn the entire body. (I don't even want to know how they studied this, and in fact I'm trying hard right now not to think too much about it.) So, as weird and tragic as SHC is, there's a completely reasonable scientific explanation for it -- as, I believe, there is for damn near everything.
Michael Faherty, 76, of Ballybane, Galway, was found burned to death on December 22, 2010. Investigators noted that Faherty's body was completely incinerated, and while there was damage to the living room in which the body was found, the body itself was clearly the source of the flame. No trace of accelerants was found, and there was nothing suggesting foul play. After a nine-month inquiry into the case, the inquest was finally held last week, and Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin ruled that Faherty's death was caused by Spontaneous Human Combustion.
SHC has been the subject of a lot of speculation, and there are a few cases that seem to admit no other explanation -- most notably the famous case of Mary Reeser, who died in 1951 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Reeser was found by her landlady to have been consumed to ashes, along with the armchair in which she was seated. The only part of her body remaining was a few of her bones, and her left foot, still encased in a slipper. Just as in Faherty's case, the room she was in showed little damage -- candles had melted into puddles of wax, and a mirror had warped and cracked from the heat -- but once again, the flames seemed to have arisen from her body.
Other instances of alleged SHC exist, some more believable than others. One of the others is the case Maybelle Andrews, who supposedly suddenly spouted flame on the floor of a crowded dance hall in 1938 and was burned to ashes in five minutes in front of her horrified dance partner, leading to a new and macabre definition of the phrase "hot date." However, investigators have tried to substantiate this claim and found that it seems to be spun from whole cloth, probably by writers for the questionable journal Fate in the 1950s. Andrews herself seems to be entirely fictional, and the story apparently cobbled together from various other tales of uncertain pedigree.
And some of the attempted explanations I've seen don't help much, either. More than one website I looked at attributed SHC to causes that were clearly pseudoscientific bunk, such as the one that said that one possibility was that "Electrical fields that exist within the human body might be capable of 'short circuiting' somehow, causing some sort of atomic chain reaction that could generate tremendous internal heat." This is only marginally more plausible than the one that said that SHC was clearly the result of "visitation by malevolent spirits, and a resulting violent discharge of the victim's psychic life energy."
Sorry, I'm not buying either of those explanations, and not just because both of them are unscientific horse waste. As with many of these sorts of claims, any kind of rational inquiry into SHC is clouded by the vast amount of nonsense, misinformation, and outright fabrications that have been tangled up with the whole subject. Five minutes' worth of research showed me that one person whose name I saw on more than one list of "victims of SHC" - Phyllis Newcombe - is actually documented in records as having been the victim of burns sustained when her dress caught fire accidentally, and she died not because she was "consumed to ashes" in the usual fashion, but of sepsis from an infection some days later. (Read about the case here.) Other names on typical lists of victims are from hundreds of years ago, or are simply lacking in documentation.
So, just like with other Amazing Unexplained Mysteries, a lot of cases of SHC seem to be either (1) fiction, or (2) entirely explainable without recourse to any sort of woo-woo Violent Discharges of Psychic Energy. But this does leave a handful of cases that are well enough documented that they aren't easily dismissed -- and this includes Reeser's case, and the more recent case of Faherty. How can these be accounted for?
It turns out that, as odd as it might seem, there is in fact a plausible natural explanation for SHC. Studies have shown that if a deep burn occurs from a natural trigger (a match, a dropped cigarette, or an upset candle), and the triggering flame is able to burn through the upper layers of skin, it can ignite the fat layer underneath -- and fat burns quite well, generating enough heat to burn the entire body. (I don't even want to know how they studied this, and in fact I'm trying hard right now not to think too much about it.) So, as weird and tragic as SHC is, there's a completely reasonable scientific explanation for it -- as, I believe, there is for damn near everything.
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