Finals week for Psychic Sally

Yesterday, you may recall, I posted about alleged psychic James van Praagh receiving a visit from some zombies representing the James Randi Educational Foundation, challenging him to prove that he can do what he claims -- namely, speak to the dead.  And I ended with a fervent wish that the same sort of thing happen to other self-styled mediums, including "Psychic Sally" Morgan.

In a lovely example of synchronicity, I discovered this morning that Psychic Sally is also receiving an unwelcome visit -- from the Merseyside Sceptics' Society.

Psychic Sally has had her share of problems lately.  A month ago, she was accused of receiving information about her subjects in a public "reading" in Dublin through an earpiece, after some of her staff were overheard making suspicious comments in a back room.  Morgan has denied any wrongdoing, stating that they were just off-duty technicians having a chat, and that statement was supported by the theater in which the event was held -- just showing, in my opinion, that both of them know what side their bread is buttered on.

Be that as it may, Morgan filed a defamation suit against the reporters who made the claim, and now is trying to rehabilitate her image.  She has a significant stake in doing so; not only does she perform to sold-out shows, she gives psychic readings over the phone (hundreds of dollars per session; and she has a waiting list almost a year long), and is currently filming the third season of her show Psychic Sally on the Road.  The monetary incentive is, by itself, enormous.

As is just the face-saving aspect.  This woman has spent her entire life building up an image as a psychic; she claims to have seen her first ghost when she was four.  If the allegations of fakery become much louder, she has a lot to lose.

Enter the Merseyside Sceptics' Society.

Just as in the case with van Praagh, the whole idea here is for alleged mediums to put their money where their mouth is.  You say you're a psychic, that you can communicate with the dead?  Okay, let's take that as a working hypothesis.

Now prove it.

The MSS has set up a test for Psychic Sally, to be run on Halloween night -- a time when you'd think the dead would be especially eager to communicate.  All she has to do is to show up at a venue in Liverpool, where she'll be handed ten photographs of deceased women, and a list of ten names -- and she has to match the photographs to the names.  Seven right, and the skeptics who organized it, who include such prominent voices as Chris French and Simon Singh, will give Psychic Sally their stamp of approval.

You'd think this would be child's play for her.  It's what she does all the time -- take photographs from audience members, and "establish contact" with the person in the photograph, and then deliver messages to their loved ones.  If she can really do that, just putting faces to names should be a walk in the park, right?

Interestingly, Psychic Sally hasn't responded to the MSS's challenge.  (Note my shocked expression.)

"If Sally really is able to demonstrate in a very simple test that her skills are in fact psychically derived, as opposed to produced via the various magic tricks and techniques we know fraudulent mediums could use to appear to have psychic powers, then we'll be first in the queue to celebrate her talents," said Michael Marshall, vice president of the MSS.  "But until she can show her readings are genuine, we don't think it's right that vulnerable people are led to believe she's really talking to the dead."

It may not be right, but it is lucrative.  And my guess is that Psychic Sally won't want to risk any further damage to her reputation by taking, and then failing, the challenge.  I'm thinking she's going to skip her exam on Monday night -- which by itself should be damning.

Communicating with the sort-of dead

In a move that left me saying, "Why didn't I think of doing that?", an organized flash mob of zombies recently showed up at one of James van Praagh's psychic medium shows.

Van Praagh, in case you haven't heard of him, is one of the folks who claims to bring messages from the dead to living relatives, and has become filthy rich doing so.  I've always found it interesting that van Praagh's messages to survivors are universally positive -- the deceased are, one and all, in a "place of peace and light and love" and tell the living how wonderful heaven is.  You'd think, statistically speaking, that at least a few folks would end up in hell, and deliver messages such as "it sure is hot down here" or "when you come join me, could you please bring along a fan and a bucket of ice?"

Interestingly, van Praagh's "evidence" that he's actually able to do all this hocus-pocus seems to depend largely on the excellent research abilities of him and his staff.  In a recent appearance on ABC's Primetime Nightline: Beyond Belief, van Praagh wowed Good Morning America's anchor Josh Elliott with information about his life and background -- until it turned out that everything van Praagh said had appeared in a two-year-old interview with Elliott that was available online.

So anyway, you can see why the zombies were pissed off.  If anyone would have a perspective on the whole subject of talking to the deceased, it would be zombies.

Carrying signs that said, "Talk To Us, We Won't Bite" and "Zombies Against Fake Mediums," the zombies demanded that van Praagh come out and chat with them about how he communicates with the dead.  "We'd like to pick his brain," one zombie told reporters.

It probably will come as no surprise that the whole thing was organized by the JREF, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and in fact the head zombie at the demonstration was D. J. Grothe, the president of JREF.  JREF has repeatedly invited van Praagh to give the famous million-dollar challenge a try -- a long-standing JREF offer to the first person who can demonstrate any kind of psychic ability in a controlled, scientifically-monitored setting.  Van Praagh has thus far refused even to respond to JREF's requests.

As far as the zombie attack, JREF claims that they weren't just trying to be obnoxious.  "We're not rabble rousing," Grothe told reporters.  "This is a guy who is taking advantage of people's grief.  He's not performing for entertainment, he's claiming he's giving messages from dead relatives.  He gets people when they are at their lowest and sees them as his target market."

"A magician or psychic entertainer tells you in one way or another that they are going to play a trick on you," he said.  "But Van Praagh looks people straight in the eye and says 'I am honestly communicating with your deceased loved ones, getting messages from them.'  Reasonable people may say, 'You can't talk to the dead,' but others believe this stuff hook, line and sinker.  Thinking that some opportunistic huckster is giving you a message from beyond keeps you from experiencing the natural stages of grief, from dealing with the loss in a healthy way.  It is offensive that he seems to be bilking the bereaved."

"If James Van Praagh is making his living by faking psychic powers and pretending to speak to people's deceased family members, that's truly shameful," Grothe said.

To which I say, "hear, hear."  I would have gladly participated in such an event, and in fact think that while they're at it, the zombies should pay a visit to Sylvia Browne, John Edward, and "Psychic Sally" Morgan.  After all, you're only undead once, you might as well make it count.

Psychic grounding, telepathy, and tinfoil hats

Are you bothered by your psychic abilities?  Do you find yourself unable to tune out others' thoughts?  Is the color of your aura clashing with your favorite shirt?

Maybe you need to do some psychic grounding.  (Read about how here.)

Honestly, I can imagine that it might be inconvenient to be psychic, if such things actually existed.  Especially if you were telepathic.  Consider what it would be like if you really could read the minds of the people around you.  I don't know about you, but my mind is a continuous jumble of random thoughts, most of them inane, weird, and/or irrelevant.  There is frequently musical accompaniment, usually consisting of whatever song I heard on the radio on the way to work.  And like most people, I also often have thoughts that I hope fervently never leave my skull, because of the sheer embarrassment potential.  If my thoughts really could be recorded, sequentially, they'd probably look something like the following:

"I'm hungry...  What did I do with my pencil?... Do I have a faculty meeting today?... Slip slidin' away, slip slidin' away... Wow, she's hot!... Is 'occurred' spelled with one 'r' or two?...  I'm cold... Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia, let me go... Did I remember to remind Carol to pick up cat litter on the way home from work?...  Geez, that guy is wearing a dorky-looking hat..."

And so on.  I would think that being telepathic would be at best highly distracting, and at worst the mental equivalent of being trapped 24/7 in a noisy bar.  I know that there are people I have to interact with on a daily basis that I already want to scream "dear god, will you please just shut up!" at, and that's just from hearing what they say out loud.  If I could hear their thoughts, too... well, let me just say that this could well be at the heart of some seemingly unpremeditated homicides.

Be that as it may, if this is you... help is on the way, in the form of the aforementioned article, which was written by someone who signs his name only as "Nathaniel." 

The gist of shutting down your psychic abilities lies, apparently, in "grounding" yourself.  Nathaniel says that you can do this in the following ways:

1)  Stop noticing weird stuff.  Nathaniel refers to this as the "11:11 effect" -- how you notice when a digital clock reads some time that is peculiar, and once you've noticed it, it jumps out at you every time it happens.  He seems to seriously consider this a psychic ability, and in fact says that training yourself to notice such things more is a way to amplify your abilities if you want them to increase.  

2)  Tell yourself you're not going to be psychic any more, until you say otherwise.  It's important to include the last part, because if you don't you could risk losing your abilities permanently.

3)  Don't give psychic readings for yourself or others, and don't mess with "power objects" like crystals or Tarot cards.

4)  Create a "psychic shield" for yourself to stop negative people from throwing destructive stuff at you.  I read all about this here, and I must admit that I still don't see how this could work, as it seems like all it amounts to is visualizing yourself as surrounded by a shield.  Whether this could help with negative aura energies, or whatever, I don't know, but I suspect it might be less than successful if what the negative person had thrown was, for example, a brick.

So anyway, all of this seems to me like a lot of hooey -- if it really was this easy to gain and lose psychic abilities, all of us would be doing it all the time, constantly picking up each other's thoughts, and I would really have to watch myself when I see Dorky Hat Guy.  Most of what Nathaniel is describing is just wishful thinking, combined with dart-thrower's bias -- the tendency all of us have to notice seemingly odd stuff (such as when the clock reads 11:11) and ignore irrelevant background noise (such as when it says 5:48).  Our attention to such things doesn't make us psychic -- all it reflects is that evolutionarily, it's better to give attention to something that turns out to be unimportant than to ignore something that turns out to be critical to our survival.

So, honestly, I found Nathaniel's advice to be a bit of a disappointment.  I'd hoped for more concrete advice -- something along the lines of, "To avoid picking up the thoughts of those around you, fashion yourself a tinfoil hat.  Make sure that you use at least three layers for best effect, especially if you are using the cheap generic stuff and not genuine Reynolds Wrap."  But maybe it's better that way.  If I had to go around all day with a tinfoil hat, I'd be the one people were thinking "dorky" about -- even if, at the time, my "psychic shield" was keeping me from hearing about it.

Woo-woo round up

It's been another busy week here at Worldwide Wacko Watch.

First, we have news that the Church of Scientology spent years investigating the creators of South Park.

You may remember that about five years ago, South Park made headlines with an episode called "Trapped in the Closet," which featured noted Scientologists Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and ridiculed Scientology in general.  Cruise responded, predictably, by having a tantrum, but this time he didn't assault Oprah; he just announced that he wouldn't help publicize Mission Impossible III, as Comedy Central and Paramount are both owned by the same parent company, Viacom.  Paramount executives basically shrugged and said, "Okay," and Mission Impossible III went on to net nearly $12.48, so it probably wouldn't have mattered if Cruise had helped publicize it or not.

In any case, you'd think that in any normal situation, this would have all blown over and been forgotten, but your mistake would be applying the word "normal" to the Scientologists.  They began to secretly look into South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, trying to dig up dirt about them so as to discredit them.  Marty Rathbun, former Church of Scientology executive and current critic, has made records public that state that the Scientologists were even going through Stone and Parker's trash looking for evidence that they were using drugs or otherwise engaged in illicit behavior.

My general feeling is, anything that keeps the Scientologists busy rummaging through trash is probably in everyone's best interest.

And in case my commentary on this situation induces any Scientologists to look through my trash, allow me to just say up front that what appear to be bags of used kitty litter are, in fact, just bags of used kitty litter, and there is NO ILLICIT DRUG EVIDENCE IN THERE.  No, sir.  Don't even bother going through them, because you won't find anything incriminating.

And the same goes for the blobs of old coffee grounds.


Then, we have a video clip from Brazil that claims to have captured what appears to be an alien taking a piss behind a tree.

Or at least that's what it looks like to my untrained eye.  Let's take a look at a still from the video:

The video, which you can view here, is described by Mike Cohen of All News Web (which bills itself as "the world's only intergalactic news network") as being "highly compelling footage that will be hard to discredit."  This didn't stop Marc Dantonio, of the Mutual UFO Network, from noting that the head of the alien appears to wobble when the wind blows, in the fashion of one of those bobble-head dolls that truckers like to put on their dashboards.

Myself, though, I still like the "alien taking a piss" theory.  After all, I doubt there are many rest stops in interstellar space, so you can't blame the little guy.  When you gotta go, you gotta go.


Next, we have news from the Kemerovo region of Russia that the hunt for the Yeti has been unsuccessful.

You may recall a Skeptophilia post a few weeks ago about an expedition into the wilds of Siberia, looking for the Asian cousin of America's Bigfoot.  The whole thing was the brainchild of Russian Yetiologist Igor Burtsev, who organized a Yeti Conference for researchers from all over the world, and then led an expedition to go see the sites where Yetis had allegedly been spotted.  These included a cave and a "Bigfoot nest."  And, right on schedule, the team found gigantic footprints, broken branches, and bits of hair.  Case closed!  The Yeti is real!

Well, maybe not.  Dr. Jeff Meldrum, an American researcher who went to the conference, isn't buying it.  He said the whole thing went a little too easily to be convincing -- it had the air of something staged.  The hair has yet to be analyzed, and the footprints, Meldrum said, "show depth and line characteristics that are consistent with fakes."  As for the "nest," Meldrum became suspicious of it when he noticed that the "bent and twisted saplings" had actually been notched with saws.

Another curiosity is that the alleged Yeti footprints are only from right feet, as if the Yeti that produced them had been engaged in a game of hopscotch.

So, I guess we have to place this one in the "probably not" column.  Too bad.  Because it would have lent critical credence to our next story, to wit:


A brief report has come in from comically-named High Knob, Virginia, where a fellow named Tyler Bounds allegedly struck a Bigfoot with his car Sunday night at around 2 AM.  We're unsure how much to credit this story, however, as (1) there was no blood or hair on the car, and (2) Bounds is an associate of Matt Moneymaker, of Animal Planet's "Finding Bigfoot," which made history as the only paranormal television show that jumped the shark faster than Monster Quest.  So we'll just state for the record that in the dark, an oak tree can look a lot like a Bigfoot, and move on.


In the Obituaries Section, we regret to inform you of the passing of Malcolm Dent, 67.  Dent was a boyhood pal of legendary Led Zeppelin rocker Jimmy Page, and was the curator of Boleskine House in the Scottish Highlands during the twenty years Page owned it.  Boleskine House is famous as having been the occult headquarters of Aleister Crowley, famed Satanist and self-styled "wickedest man on earth."

Crowley, who died in 1947, was infamous during his lifetime for holding rituals of black magic at Boleskine.  He belonged to the occult organization called "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn," but founded a couple of others, Ordo Templi Orientis and Thelema, when it became apparent that one organization wouldn't provide him with nearly enough people of either gender to have sex with.  Boleskine House became known as a center of depravity and amoral behavior, so you can kind of understand Page's interest in owning the place.


So, that's the news here at Worldwide Wacko Watch.  We keep Watch on the Wackos, so we can bring the stories straight to your doorstep.  As usual -- All the News That's Fit to Guffaw At.

Comet Elenin redux

I'll bet you thought that earthquakes were caused by plate tectonics.  I'll bet you buy your 9th grade earth science teacher's explanation that as the Earth's crustal plates move around, they sometimes slip and release large quantities of energy, causing destructive events such as the one that occurred Sunday in eastern Turkey.

A lot you know.

Earthquakes, according to Mensur Omerbashich, are caused by the alignment of the Earth with the Comet Elenin and some other astronomical body.  He presents his theory, along with his data on the incidence of earthquakes above magnitude 6, in table form here.  My general opinion is that his argument should be completely convincing to anyone, as long as they have waffle batter where most of us have brains.

Here I thought that Comet Elenin had broken up and disintegrated, and I'd hoped that along with it the wingnuts who for some reason connected it with the Planet Nibiru, Mayan prophecy, the Rapture, and UFOs.  But I should know better by now.  It takes more than just some silly facts to dissuade these people.  I suspect that long after the shattered remnants of Elenin are once again winging their way into the cold darkness of outer space, they will still be blathering on about how it is about to "go into alignment" with the Sun and Orion's Belt, resulting in gravitational anomalies that will increase our likelihood of tripping over curbs.

It is, sadly, a waste of breath to explain to this bunch of clowns that if you have a system of nine planets (I'm still clinging desperately to the hope that the astronomers will give us back Pluto), a star, over a hundred moons, and probably thousands of asteroids, various combinations of them will always be "in alignment."  Couple that with the fact that the Earth has experienced 181 earthquakes above magnitude 6 thus far in 2011, and I could have found a nonexistent pattern without even breaking a sweat.  This might well explain Omerbashich's whine that his "scientific paper" has not received any attention from "mainstream scientists," who continue to "ignore this valuable warning tool."

None of this, however, is likely to make any difference to people who've already decided that a tiny, broken-up chunk of ice hurtling away from us in far-off space has something to do with what happens here on Earth.  It's all well and good for me to babble on, day after day, about causation/correlation issues, confirmation bias, and so on, but if you aren't willing to examine your favorite theory's assumptions -- whether it's astrology, homeopathy, astral projection, flower essences, or Comet Elenin -- none of it will make the slightest difference.

To quote Thomas Paine, "Arguing with someone who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

Spirit guides and orgasms, or your money back!

This morning, I was sitting at my computer, drinking coffee and hoping that the caffeine would jumpstart my brain despite being awakened at 5:30 AM by my dogs, who definitely do not understand the concept of "the weekend," and I happened upon the following advertisement:

"The Unexplainable Store (TM) !  100% Guaranteed!  Altered State of Consciousness or YOUR MONEY BACK!!!"

Naturally, I had to click on the link, and it brought me here.

The homepage, as you may have just discovered, has dozens of little links with titles and cartoon images for things like the following:

• Astral Projection
• Lucid Dreaming
• Remote Viewing
• Past-life Regression
• Spirit Guide Contact
• Shaman Consciousness
• Christ Consciousness
• Immune System
• Endorphin Release
• Serotonin Release
• Allergy Relief
• DNA Stimulation
• Fountain of Youth
• Orgasms

(The last one's cartoon drawing is just some fireworks, so don't get your hopes up.)


To save you a little time, and countless valuable cells in your prefrontal cortex, let me tell you what you find if you click on the links.

Each one starts out with a brief description, basically telling the reader how nice it would be if you had a spirit guide, shaman consciousness, stimulated DNA, the knowledge of past lives, and so on.  They feature sentences such as the following:

Imagine a world where communication with the dead is possible.  What could we discover about others, and even ourselves?

and

How often do you use wisdom gained from your past to plan your future?  What if there were a whole other life filled with memories and experiences?  What would you be able to do with the added wisdom of a whole other life?

Now, when I first started clicking on these links, I expected each one to lead to a pitch for a different product, as allergy relief has little to do with (for example) orgasms.  But no, each one ultimately led to an advertisement for the following:

Binaural Beats- Sine wave generators are used to create two separate frequency waves, which are introduced to each ear independently. The brain reacts by creating a third tone, making up the difference of the two. It instantly reacts to these frequencies causing a Shift In Consciousness. Using this technology, your brain can be programmed to weed out interferences and open up the communication channels inside your mind that are blocked by your own consciousness. 

Isochronic Tones- If you are looking for the most effective type of brainwave entrainment, Isochronic Tones are the way to go. Isochronic Tones also use equal intensity tones, but the pulse speed is greater, causing the brain to synchronize with the rhythm.  In 1999, Thomas Budzynski Ph.D.  published a case in the Journal of Neurotherapy which showed that a group of 8 college students increased their GPA with the use of audio brainwave stimulation, and their GPA continued to increase even after the brainwave entrainment was finished...

In the realm where Alpha and Theta waves exist, creativity becomes infused with the deep subconscious thoughts that comprise our dreams.  In this state, the deepest and oldest thoughts manifest and are pushed into your consciousness, allowing you to finally understand things that may have been significant to you for several years without you even being aware.  Irrational behavior becomes crystal clear and transparent.  Your true motivations, fears, hopes, and dreams become clear so you can set out to become the person you really want to be!

And you can download both of these INSTANTLY for only $38!  ($14 for the "binaural beats" and $24 for the "isochronic tones;" no explanation for why the "binaural beats" are cheaper.)  They have a sample that you can listen to (only a 45-second clip, not enough to have a full past-life regression or anything), and my general reaction is that it sounds like someone playing New Age synthesizer music with a washing machine running in the background.

So, anyway, I'm thinking that if you are interested in contacting a spirit guide, or whatever, this probably isn't going to do it for you.  But I do encourage you to take a look at the site, and listen to the clip.  Let me know if it triggers you to experience some shaman consciousness, or to have a lucid dream.  If it makes you have an orgasm, however, that's between you and your "binaural beats."

Pat Buchanan and the death of American culture

In his most recent column, "Is America Disintegrating?" (read the whole thing here), Pat Buchanan laments the passing of his vision of America.  No more, he says, are we a nation of a common blood, faith, language, history, customs and culture:

I argue that the America we grew up in is disintegrating, breaking apart along the fault lines of politics, race, ethnicity, culture and faith; that the centrifugal forces in society have now become the dominant forces...  We are not now and will not (in thirty years) be "descended from common ancestors."  We will consist of all the races, cultures, tribes and creeds of Earth — a multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual stew of a nation that has never before existed, or survived...  The moral consensus and moral code Christianity gave to us has collapsed...  There was a time not so long ago when the nation was united on a common faith, morality, history, heroes, holidays, holy days, language and literature.  Now we fight over them all.

I question this on a variety of grounds.

First, his bemoaning of the increasing multiculturality of America ignores the fact that a little over a hundred years ago, a significant chunk of citizens -- including my wife's ancestors and my own -- did not speak English.  My ancestors spoke French -- both on my dad's side, where they were recent immigrants, and on my mom's, on which they had lived in North America since the 1600s and in what would become the United States since the 1780s, resisting the forces of assimilation and acculturation by sheer stubbornness.  My wife's ancestors spoke Yiddish, and maintained their cultural identity even in that enormous mixing vat that is New York City.  Far from threatening the fabric of American society, they enriched it.  And more of us today are of mixed ancestry -- of a really homogenized genetic background -- than ever before.

Second, and more importantly, Buchanan's idealization of life prior to the most recent influx of immigrants -- the apogee of the white middle class, the Leave It To Beaver squeaky-cleanness of the 1950s -- was hiding a good many ugly secrets.  The unity of a common set of morals, standards, language, and the rest came at a significant cost.  This "moral consensus" was at the root of the assumption of inferiority of those of other races and religions, leading within our borders to bigotry, persecution, and denial of basic rights to African Americans, and outside our borders to colonialism and exploitation.  It was at the root of "keeping women in their place," denying them the opportunities that men had in every venue.  It was the root of the demonization of those who were different -- of atheists, of homosexuals, even of free-thinking men and women who simply elected not to marry or pursue traditional careers.

Would you really return to the 50s?  Would you return to a time when being of a different race meant that you couldn't eat in the same restaurants, work in the same offices, even drink at the same water fountains as whites?  Would you return to a time when talented, brilliant women had only two choices -- to buck a system that was set up to keep them from succeeding in the career of their choice, or to cave in and become secretaries, lab assistants, or wives?   Would you return to a time when conformity was the gold standard for behavior?

I'm not saying that our society isn't facing problems.  I'm no sociologist, capable of teasing apart the causes of immigration (legal or otherwise) and proposing policy for governing our nation's response.  I understand that the changes we will undergo to respond to shifts in culture, language, and religion may well be painful and difficult.  I'm merely saying that this is hardly the first time we've had to face these kinds of problems, and that the shifts we've seen in morality since World War II have not all been negative.  Americans are freer now than they have ever been to express themselves, to pursue careers they find meaningful, to practice the religion of their choice -- or no religion at all.  Yes, there problems with poverty, crowding, and resources stretched too thin and too far.

But I think, to paraphrase Twain, that rumors of America's death will turn out to be vast exaggerations.