Considering the KoolAid

Nothing brings the critics howling for my immediate incarceration in a FEMA Death Camp like when I make fun of the conspiracy theorists.  It doesn't seem to matter how dumb the conspiracy theory is -- like yesterday's, wherein we heard that David Bowie and Alan Rickman are still alive, apparently because of Chaldean numerology and the fact that Matt Groening is a Freemason -- if I call these people and their claims loons, I end up getting hate mail.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I won't bore and/or offend the studio audience with excerpts from said hate mail, much of which had grammar and vocabulary indicating IQ levels barely making double digits.  But I will point out something that I've noted before -- even if you ignore the asinine "evidence" these people quote to support their ideas, we have the troubling little problem that all of the horrible things they say are on the way never seem to happen.

Let's start with "Rex 84."  Ever heard of it?  Here's a brief summary:

Rex 84... was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the United States federal government to suspend the United States Constitution, declare martial law, place military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens who are deemed to be “national security threats,” in the event that the President declares a “State of National Emergency.”  The plan states events causing such a declaration would be widespread U.S. opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad, such as if the United States were to directly invade Central America.  To combat what the government perceived as “subversive activities,” the plan also authorized the military to direct ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels...  

 The Rex 84 Program was originally established on the reasoning that if a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA... 

These camps are to be operated by FEMA should martial law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.

Sound familiar?  The problem is, "Rex 84" was an idea that cropped up during the Reagan presidency as a "contingency plan for dealing with widespread insurrection," but got spun as the president and his cronies (especially Oliver North) wanting to suspend personal liberties, revoke the constitution, declare martial law, and keep Reagan in office beyond his term limit.

Any of that stuff happen?

I thought so.

How about this one:

A 'national emergency' will provide Bush the raw power he needs to cancel the elections and hold on to even greater executive power.  Over the course of his criminal and illegitimate regime, George W. Bush has assumed powers that in cases of a 'national emergency' make of him an absolute ruler beyond the powers of the Congress or the Courts.  It has all been locked up rather neatly and planned well in advance.  A 'decider' by self-proclamation, Bush conveniently 'decides' what is and what is not a 'national emergency.  He is the sole arbiter. 

The 'mechanism' by which Bush consolidates all his power is called Executive Directive 51...  Signed into law on May 4, 2007, it specifies the 'procedures' to be taken in the wake of a 'catastrophic emergency' -- 'any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions'... 

At hearings of a congressional sub-committee in New Orleans, FEMA official Glenn Cannon acknowledged that it had been considering the use of trains to transport large numbers of people to camps and various locations around the United States.  The revelation was ominous as this use of trains is associated with Adolph Hitler's hellish Third Reich.  The camps and the mass transportation of people to them is a cornerstone in Bush's elaborate and detailed preparations for a declaration of martial law.  To every citizen of the US --whether incarcerated in a hellish concentration camp or not --the declaration of martial means but one thing: an absolute dictatorship!

The various scenarios have main points in common: Bush will, upon any pretext, declare a national emergency, cancel the elections, and impose martial law.  With martial law comes absolute power, a ruthless crack down on dissent, mass arrests and mass incarcerations.  A 'pre-text' is never an obstacle to would-be dictators.

That was a hysterical exposé from a guy who calls himself "The Existentialist Cowboy," written in May of 2008.  And at the risk of being repetitive, did any of that happen, either?

Look, it's not that I don't think evil people exist, that bad stuff can happen, that governments can turn into dictatorships.  Even the shallowest knowledge of history proves otherwise.  And I think awareness, intelligent discussion, and access to information are the surest safeguards against these sorts of things ever happening again.

But fer cryin' in the sink, nothing is accomplished by evidence-free fear talk of conspiracies (Masonic or otherwise), FEMA death camps (complete with guillotines), and top-secret communiqués from super-evil brilliant Illuminati overlords who are so top-secret-super-evil-brilliant that a raving wingnut like Alex Jones can see right through them.

And if that makes me a KoolAid-drinkin'-sheeple, then so be it.

Coincidence theories

The deaths last week of entertainment giants David Bowie and Alan Rickman brought forth a torrent of tributes, thank yous, and reminiscences of their many memorable star turns.  I will never, for example, forget Bowie's wonderfully creepy performance as the Goblin King Jareth in Labyrinth, a movie I have loved since first seeing it as a teenager:

As far as Alan Rickman goes, the choices are a little overwhelming -- Sense and Sensibility, Harry Potter, Love Actually, Die Hard, Sweeney Todd, Dogma, and Blow Dry barely begin to scratch the surface -- but for me, the performance that always comes to mind is his fall-out-of-your-chair-hilarious role as the sour-tempered Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus in Galaxy Quest:

It may be a sign that I've written Skeptophilia for far too long that while everyone else was mourning the passing of two beloved entertainers, I was sitting here thinking, "How long will it be before people start claiming that their deaths were (1) faked, (2) predicted by psychics, or (3) part of a conspiracy?" And it brings me no great joy to find that my grim suspicions were correct.  Two days ago, the YouTube channel "Russianvids" posted a fourteen-minute video entitled, "David Bowie & Alan Rickman Death Hoax 100% Staged."

How do we know this, you might ask?  Well, let's start with the fact that a year to the day before David Bowie's death, there was an episode of The Simpsons wherein we hear about a cat with two different-colored eyes named "Bowie."  Add to that the Freemasons, sinister hand signs, the 911 emergency call number, the fact that the Twin Towers were destroyed thirty-three years after they were built, the fact that Jesus was crucified at age 33, and John Carpenter's movie They Live, and you have what lawyers call "an airtight case."

What about Alan Rickman?  Well, both he and Bowie "allegedly" died of cancer at age 69, and the symbol for the astrological sign of Cancer looks a little like 69:

We also hear that both Rickman and Bowie made their last appearance on December 7, which is somehow significant because of the number 7 and Chaldean numerology.  Don't ask me why.

Then there was a long bit about how pretty much everyone is a Mason, presumably with the exception of the guy who owns "Russianvids."  The Masons, he says, all speak in code; "It's a big club," he says, "and you're not in it."  So I'm beginning to wonder if his obvious pissoff against the Masons might come from sour grapes.  Maybe he applied for membership to the Masons, and was turned down, or something.  He certainly sounds like he has an axe to grind.

Anyhow, at this point, my eyes were starting to glaze over.  He says several times that he's "Just Asking Questions," a ploy for sowing doubt that a friend of mine calls "JAQing off," a phrase that I sorely wish I had come up with.  He also says that people like me, who think that conspiracy theorists in general have a screw loose, are "coincidence theorists."  We think everything is a coincidence, apparently.  And honestly, he's not far wrong; I do think there are dark dealings and evil plots, but much of what happens in the world is chaos -- stuff happening for no particular reason, and some of it occurring at the same time, i.e., coincidence.  Which is, after all, what you call it when two random events coincide.

Then once again I did what I should never do, which is to look at the comments section.  I think I keep doing this because I desperately want to believe that most of my fellow humans are not raving wackmobiles, a desire that gets dashed more often than not.  For your amusement, here are a few of the comments on the video.  As always, grammar and spelling are left as-written, because you can only write [sic] so many times:

• yo bro keep doin this shyt you killin em with tht knowledge dem fools cant deny all these facts
• yep, the game is rigged from top to bottom... i'd be willing to bet that most lotto winners are paid actors... hired to pretend the lottery is real. It's a SCAM.
• wow. EVERYTHING is a lie! Funny how we can over look so easily, but then again, i dont pay attention to msm. Great vid!
• 18 months with cancer, 6+6+6
• in an underground city somewhere, where we aren't invited; doesn't matter how devoted a fan you are! If more of them start disappearing like that then we should know that something's up...
• a big false flag is planned for the USA very soon, maybe in march to counterbalance rising frequencies in the period around the first solstice this year. but could be earlier though.

Yes!  Yes!  I see it all now!  Fake lotteries and 666 and underground cities and rising frequencies in the period of the solstice = David Bowie and Alan Rickman are still alive!  How can I not have seen that?

So yeah.  After I finished facepalming repeatedly over all this, I closed the link and sat for a while, whimpering softly and rocking back and forth.  I mean, no one would be happier than me if Bowie and Rickman were still alive; they were brilliant.  But it's gonna take more than an episode of The Simpsons and some random FrootLoop babbling about Freemasons and numerology to convince me of it.

Anyhow, that's today's dip in the deep end of the pool.  I really wouldn't advise watching the YouTube video; that's why I'm here, to kill off millions of brain cells so you won't have to.  Instead, watch Galaxy Quest and Labyrinth some time soon.  It'd be a much better tribute to the memories of two great men.  I know that's what I'm gonna do.

Possessed poodles

The one thing you should never say is "Now I've heard it all."

Especially if, like me, you are an aficionado of woo-woo. If you are a regular reader of Skeptophilia, you have followed me through investigations of Florida Skunk Apes, the discovery of the Millennium Falcon on the floor of the Baltic Sea, plastic cards that will impart "Scalar Energy Fields" to the water you drink, medicines that you download directly into your body, and countless examples of Jesus, the Apostles, the Virgin Mary, and (in one case) Bob Marley showing up on a variety of food items.  And each time, it's been tempting to say, 'Now I've heard it all."

If you did, in fact, say that, you're gonna regret it.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Because following hard on the heels of yesterday's discovery that your computer can be healed by witchcraft, we now we have a  book, written by New York City artist Olga Horvat, called Paranormal Pooch.  Paranormal Pooch is about her dog, Princess, who was...

... possessed by demons.

I kid you not.  Horvat apparently had a run of devastatingly bad luck a while back, including the following incidents:

• Her apartment was infested by bedbugs, and it cost $7,000 to get rid of them.
• Her husband was in an automobile accident, and afterwards came down with a rare autoimmune disease.
• Her daughter was suspended from second grade for putting on a rubber glove and grabbing a classmate, and then blamed the odd behavior on "hearing voices in her head."

And instead of doing what most of us would do, in such unfortunate situations -- including saying to our kid, "Why the hell did you bring a rubber glove to school?" -- Horvat evaluated the evidence, and came to the inescapable conclusion that the whole thing was due to her poodle being possessed.

Don't be fooled by the goofy haircut and innocent-looking eyes.  This is a demonic entity for sure.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Amongst the claims she makes in Paranormal Pooch -- and believe me, there's enough fodder for skepticism in there that I could go on all day -- my favorite is that dogs with pointy ears are more susceptible to possession than dogs with floppy ears, because "The spirit can get in there easier."

Myself, I would think that if a spirit is capable of causing your spouse to get in an automobile accident, it would be capable of lifting a dog's floppy ear to get inside.  But what do I know?

In any case, Horvat solved the whole thing by inventing, and selling (c'mon, you knew she was selling something) "electromagnetic shield pendants" to protect humans and pets from demonic possession.  They only cost $197, which is a comparative steal considering the cost for exterminating bedbugs.  It's received rave reviews, mostly from other wingnuts, including Joshua Warren, renowned psychic investigator: "A CHILL ran down my spine while reading Olga Horvat’s Paranormal Pooch.   Why?  Because her story is so real and her emotions so palpable."

Well, all I can say is that my definition of "real" and Mr. Warren's seem to differ somewhat.

The sad postscript to the whole thing is that four months after she was successfully cleansed of evil spirits, Princess herself fell down the stairs and died.  Maybe she was grief-stricken after losing her satanic companion, I dunno.

I do know one thing, though; I hope like hell that Horvat is never allowed to own another dog.  Because it sounds, all joking aside, like she is not someone who should be trusted to give appropriate care to a pet.  But I have strong feelings about how animals are treated, and maybe I'm being unfair, here.

Oh, and one other thing: now I've heard it all.

Digital witchcraft

My lack of technological expertise is fairly legendary in the school where I work.  When I moved  this year into a classroom with a "Smart Board," there was general merriment amongst students and staff, along with bets being made on how long it would take me to kill the device out of sheer ineptitude.

It's January, and I'm happy to say that the "Smart Board" and I have reached some level of détente.  Its only major problem is that it periodically decides that it only wants me to write in black, and I solve that problem the way I solve pretty much any computer problem: I turn it off and then I turn it back on.  It's a remarkably streamlined way to fix things, although I have to admit that when it doesn't work I have pretty much exhausted my options for remedying the problem.

Now, however, I've discovered that there's another way I could approach issues with technology: I could hire a witch to clear my device of "dark energy."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I found this out because of an article in Vice wherein they interviewed California witch and ordained minister Joey Talley, who says that she accomplishes debugging computers by "[placing] stones on top of the computer, [clearing] the dark energy by setting an intention with her mind, or [cleansing] the area around the computer by burning sage."

Which is certainly a hell of a lot easier than actually learning how computers work so you can fix them.

"I just go in and work the energy," Talley said.  "And there are different stones that work really well on computers, chloride [sic] is one of them.  Also, some people really like amethyst for computers.  It doesn’t really work for me, but I’m psychic.  So when I go into the room where somebody’s computer is, I go in fresh, I step in like a fresh sheet, and I’m open to feel what’s going on with the computer.  Everything’s unique, which is why my spell work changes, because each project I do is unique...  Sometimes I do a magic spell or tape a magic charm onto the computer somewhere.  Sometimes I have a potion for the worker to spray on the chair before they sit down to work. Jet is a stone I use a lot to protect computers."

So that sounds pretty nifty.  It even works if your computer has a virus:

I got contacted by a small business owner in Marin  County.  She had a couple of different viruses and she called me in.  First, I cast a circle and called in earth, air, fire and water, and then I called in Mercury, the messenger and communicator.  Then I went into a trance state, and all I was doing was feeling.  I literally feel [the virus] in my body. I can feel the smoothness where the energy’s running, and then I feel a snag. That’s where the virus got in...  Then I performed a vanishing ceremony.  I used a black bowl with a magnet and water to draw [the virus] out.  Then I saged the whole computer to chase the negativity back into the bowl, and then I flushed that down the toilet.  After this I did a purification ceremony.  Then I made a protection spell out of chloride [sic], amethyst, and jet.  I left these on the computer at the base where she works.

The virus, apparently, then had no option other than to leave the premises immediately.

We also find out in the article that Talley can cast out demons, who can attach to your computer because it is a "vast store of electromagnetic energy" on which they like to feed, "just like a roach in a kitchen."

The most interesting bit was at the end, where she was asked if she ever got mocked for her practice.  Talley said yes, sure she does, and when it happens, she usually finds that the mockers are "ornery and stupid."  She then tells them to go read The Spiral Dance and come back when they have logical questions.  Which sounds awfully convenient, doesn't it?  I've actually read The Spiral Dance, which its fans call "a brilliant, comprehensive overview of the growth, suppression, and modern-day re-emergence of Wicca," and mostly what struck me is that if you didn't already believe in all of this stuff, the book presented nothing in the way of evidence to convince you that any of it was true.  Put another way, The Spiral Dance seems to be a long-winded tribute to confirmation bias.  So Talley's desire for "logical questions" -- such as "what evidence do you have of any of this?" -- doesn't really generate much in the way of answers that a skeptic from outside the Wiccan worldview could accept.

But hell, given the fact that my other options for dealing with computer problems are severely constrained, maybe the next time my "Smart Board" malfunctions, I'll wave some amethyst crystals around.  Maybe I'll even do a little dance.  (Only when there's no one else in the room; my students and colleagues already think I'm odd enough.)

Then, most likely, I'll turn it off and turn it back on.  Even demons won't be able to stand up to that.

Fear, research, and Gardasil

It is a general rule of human behavior that it is way easier to make people afraid of something than it is to convince them that what they fear is harmless.

This principle works on all scales.  The dubiously-ethical "Little Albert experiment," performed back in 1920 by John B. Watson and Rosalie Raynor, showed that you can classically condition humans with no difficulty at all -- the test subject, a nine-month-old nicknamed "Little Albert," was conditioned to fear white rats.  It worked all too well.  The baby developed a fear not only of white rats, but other furry objects (including a teddy bear).

When the test subject was tracked down years later, he was found to have an irrational phobia of dogs.

You can see this same tendency working all the way up to a conditioned fear of "the other" -- other races, ethnic groups, religions, political parties -- a fear that politicians frequently capitalize on to galvanize their supporters, and which once instilled is almost impossible to eradicate.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes some sense.  The evolutionary cost of mistakenly fearing something that's harmless is far lower than the cost of mistakenly not fearing something that's dangerous.  If from a skeptic's standpoint, the tendency is maddening, at least it's understandable.

Even knowing this, I was pretty pissed off by the reactions I saw to a recent study that was highlighted in Phil Plait's wonderful blog Bad Astronomy -- Plait's article was titled, "Gardasil: More Anti-Vax Nonsense Collapses Under the Gaze of Reality."  In it, we hear about a study that did a large-sample-size test of side effects from the anti-HPV vaccine Gardasil, and found...

... nothing.  Nada.  None of the horrible side effects you hear from the anti-vaxxers, which include complex regional pain syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia.  Any incidence of disorders following the administration of the vaccine was no higher than the background rate for unvaccinated teens.

Add to that the fact that Gardasil prevents infection by HPV, which is directly linked to cancer of the throat, cervix, penis, and vagina.  Of these, cervical cancer is the most common; of the 12,900 new cases of cervical cancer diagnosed each year, an estimated 4,100 women will die of it within three years of diagnosis.  So, no common adverse side effects from Gardasil, and the benefit of protecting your children from dying of cancers that are largely preventable.  No brainer, right?

Apparently not.  Here's a selection of responses I saw to the Phil Plait article:

• I don't care what the research says.  I'm not taking that kind of chance with my children.
• Nothing has no side effects.  The risk still isn't worth it.  The pharmaceutical companies cover up the dangers.
• Why would we believe this when the medical research changes daily?  Saturated fat is bad for you, then it's not.  Sugar is bad for you, then it's not.  So they tell us this vaccine is safe, tomorrow it won't be, and then it's too late because you already gave your kids the vaccine.
• Of course they say this.  Gardasil brings in millions of dollars a year.  They have a vested interest in convincing us it's safe.

And so on and so forth.  What, does the research only convince you when something is unsafe?

Let me put this as plainly as I know how.  There is no evidence that vaccinations are dangerous, and that they increase your likelihood of any of the various disorders that anti-vaxxers want you to believe are a result.  There have been repeated large-scale studies by different researchers in different research facilities that have confirmed this result over and over.  Further, do you really want to go back to the day when people died of measles, typhoid, and diphtheria, and those who survived polio were sometimes confined to an iron lung for the rest of their lives?  We now can prevent all of those diseases, and have for the first time come up with a vaccination that prevents cancer.

To refuse to have your children protected against these deadly diseases is tantamount to child endangerment.

And I would like it if, for once, people would overcome their tendency to believe fears more strongly than reassurances, and accept what the scientists have been saying for years.

Mini-sotans

A few days ago, a loyal reader and frequent contributor of topics to Skeptophilia sent me an article about a cryptid I'd never heard of before.  They're called the "Bagwajiwinini," or the "Little People of Minnesota."  This discovery was of particular concern to the reader who sent it, because he lives in Minnesota, so he was understandably interested in having me look into it.

According to the article, the Bagwajiwinini are "2'-3' in height, with a greenish complexion...most likely from the heavy ingestion of plants containing chlorophyll."  Because this is obviously what happens to animals that eat plants, as witnessed by all of the green cows, deer, bunnies, and vegetarians you see walking around.  The article then goes on to tell us that "They live in a darkened world of thick Bracken Fern canopies that can grow up to 3 ft. high.  This enables the Bagwajiwinini to freely roam among forest and it's [sic] edges without detection.  There have been many stories associated with the Bagwajiwinini, including the possibility of human abduction."

Which brings up the inevitable question of how three-foot-tall green dudes can abduct a full-sized human.  I mean, something of the like worked in Gulliver's Travels, but as I recall, Gulliver had assisted in his own capture by falling asleep at an inopportune moment.  So it's hard to see how skulky little fern-canopy-dwellers could successfully overcome an ordinary-sized human.

Of course, there's also the possibility that they mesmerize their victims with music, in the fashion of the Pied Piper.  Ron Shaw, investigator for Cryptid Four Corners International, tells us about "an Ojibwa woman who stated that on one occasion, her son saw a Bagwajiwinini playing a flute.  Another witness, an Ojibwa man, stated that he and his son were hunting, and at point were separated.  The father tracked his son to a root system of a tree where only his legs were sticking out.  He pulled his son free...and told his father that the Bagwajiwinini captured him and were taking him underground."

So that's sinister enough.  I can see why C4CI is investigating, although I do have to wonder why they chose this time of year.  Anywhere in the north is a bit sketchy in midwinter, but northern Minnesota in January... well, let's just say that there are body parts that I'd really prefer not to freeze off.  But I admire their dedication, particularly when you consider the case of Kory Kelly, a 39-year-old hunter who went missing in October, and was later found dead of hypothermia.  This is tragic enough, but the folks from C4CI think that Kelly vanished because he was...

... abducted by Bagwajiwinini.

You can understand why the reader from Minnesota was concerned when he found the article.  Worse still is the photograph of a Bagwajiwinini that someone took:

See it?  Neither did I, until the C4CI people helpfully zoomed in on it:

Can't miss it when I tell you what's there, can you?

Predictably, my guess is that what we're looking at is a combination of a Native legend, wishful thinking, and pareidolia.  As usual.  I'm thinking you're perfectly safe if you live in Minnesota from anything besides frostbite, and that Kory Kelly's tragic death was from hypothermia, not Little People Abduction.  Still, I've been wrong before.  If running around in sub-zero temperatures looking for creatures that probably aren't there floats your boat, then knock yourself out.  Just remember to wear your thermal underwear.

Brains, mysticism, and melting faces

"Well, I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes."

You hear that a lot, in claims of the paranormal.   I was just sitting there, in my room, and the ghost floated in through the wall.   I was outside at night, and I saw the UFO zoom across the sky.  I was at the lake, and I saw ripples in the water, and a dinosaur's head poked out and looked at me.

In a court of law, "eyewitness testimony" is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence, and yet time and again experimental science has shown that your sensory apparatus and your memory are flawed and unreliable.   It doesn't take much to confuse your perception -- witness how persuasive many optical illusions are -- and if you couple that with how easily things get muddled in your memory, it's no wonder that when eyewitness claims of the paranormal are presented to scientists, most scientists say, "Sorry. We need more than that."

A fascinating study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has put another nail in the coffin of our perceptual integrative systems, showing how easy it is to trigger someone to see something that isn't there in a completely convincing way.  Ron Blackwell, an epileptic, was in the hospital having tests done to see if a bit of his brain that was causing his seizures could be safely removed.  As part of the pre-surgical tests at Stanford University Hospital, his doctor, Dr. Josef Parvizi, had placed a strip of electrodes across his fusiform gyrus, a structure in the temporal lobe of the cerebrum.  And when the electrodes were activated, Blackwell saw Dr. Parvizi's face melt.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"You just turned into somebody else," Blackwell said.  "Your face metamorphosed.  Your nose got saggy, went to the left.  You almost looked like somebody I'd seen before, but somebody different."  He added, rather unnecessarily, "That was a trip."

This study has three interesting outcomes, as far as I'm concerned.

First, it shows that the fusiform gyrus has something to do with facial recognition.  I'm personally interested in this, because as I've described before in Skeptophilia, I have a peculiar inability to recall faces.  I don't have the complete prosopagnosia that people like the late great science writer Oliver Sacks had -- where he didn't even recognize his own face in a mirror -- but the fact remains that I can see a person I've met many times before in an unfamiliar place or circumstance, and literally have no idea if I've ever seen them before.  However -- and this is relevant to Parvizi's study -- other human features, such as stance, gait, and voice, I find easily and instantly recognizable.  And indeed, Blackwell's experience of seeing his doctor's face morph left other body parts intact, and even while the electrodes were activated, Blackwell knew that Dr. Parvizi's body and hands were "his."  So it seems that what psychologists have claimed -- that we have a dedicated module devoted solely to facial recognition -- is correct, and this study has apparently pinpointed its location.

Second, this further supports a point I've made many times, which is that if you fool your brain, that's what you perceive.  Suppose Blackwell's experience had occurred a different way; suppose his fusiform gyrus had been stimulated by one of his seizures, away from a hospital, away from anyone who could immediately reassure him that what he was seeing wasn't real, with no one there who could simply turn the electrodes off and make the illusion vanish.  Is it any wonder that some people report absolutely convincing, and bizarre, visions of the paranormal?  If your brain firing pattern goes awry -- for whatever reason -- you will perceive reality abnormally.  And if you are already primed to accept the testimony of your eyes, you very likely will interpret what you saw as some sidestep into the spirit world.  Most importantly, your vehement claims that what you saw was real cannot be accepted into evidence by science. Ockham's Razor demands that we accept the simpler explanation, that requires fewer ad hoc assumptions, which is (sorry) that you simply had an aberrant firing pattern occur in your brain.

Third, this study has significant bearing on the stories of people who claim to have had "spiritual visions" while under the influence of psychoactive drugs.  One in particular, DMT (dimethyltryptamine), present in such ritual concoctions as ayahuasca, is supposed to create a "window into the divine."  A number of writers, particularly Terence McKenna and Rick Strassman (the latter wrote a book called DMT: The Spirit Molecule), claim that DMT is allowing you to see and communicate with real entities that are always there, but which only the drug allows you to experience.  Consider McKenna's account of his first experience with the chemical:

So I did it and...there was a something, like a flower, like a chrysanthemum in orange and yellow that was sort of spinning, spinning, and then it was like I was pushed from behind and I fell through the chrysanthemum into another place that didn't seem like a state of mind, it seemed like another place.  And what was going on in this place aside from the tastefully soffited indirect lighting, and the crawling geometric hallucinations along the domed walls, what was happening was that there were a lot of beings in there, what I call self-transforming machine elves.  Sort of like jewelled basketballs all dribbling their way toward me.  And if they'd had faces they would have been grinning, but they didn't have faces.  And they assured me that they loved me and they told me not to be amazed; not to give way to astonishment.

A generation earlier, Carlos Castañeda recounted similar sorts of experiences after ingesting datura root and psilocybe mushrooms, and like McKenna and Strassman, Castañeda was convinced that what he was seeing was absolutely real, more real in fact than the ordinary world around us.

My response, predictably, is: of course you saw weird stuff, and thought it was real.  What did you expect?  You monkey around with your brain chemistry, and you will obviously foul up your perceptual apparatus and your ability to integrate what's being observed.  It's no more surprising that this happens than it would be if you spilled a cup of coffee on your computer, and it proceeded to behave abnormally.  If you short out your neural circuitry, either electrically (as Parvizi did) or chemically (as McKenna and others did), it should come as no shock that things don't work right.  And those altered perceptions are hardly evidence of the existence of a mystical world.

In any case, Parvizi's accidental discovery is a fascinating one, and will have wide-reaching effects on the study of perceptual neuroscience.  All of which supports what a friend of mine, a retired Cornell University professor of human genetics, once told me: the 21st century will be the century of the brain.  We are, she said, at a point of our understanding of how the brain works that corresponds to where geneticists were in 1915 -- we can see some of the pieces, but have no idea how the whole system fits together.  Soon, she predicts, we will begin to put together the underlying mechanism.  And at that point, we will be starting to develop a complete picture of how our most complex organ actually works.