Frequency flim-flam

One of the things that strikes me, both about many purveyors of alt-med bullshit and their customers, is how little effort they exert even to make their arguments sound like legitimate science.

I mean, it's not like the science is inaccessible, or something.  Whatever else you can say about Wikipedia, it's a pretty good resource for quick, substantially accurate information.  (In fact, a 2005 study found that Wikipedia was close to Encyclopedia Brittanica in terms of overall accuracy.)

So finding out how stuff works is, honestly, only a click away.  Which is why the link a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a couple of days ago is appalling on so many levels.

It's called "A Bright Future for Lyme -- AmpCoil."  What it claims is that it can reduce the symptoms of Lyme disease by 84-93% through "non-invasive sound wave vibrations" delivered by a "pulsed electromagnetic field."  I live in an area of the United States where Lyme is common, and have two friends who have struggled dreadfully with it, so naturally, I wanted to know what this was all about.  I clicked the "Science & Technology" link they provided.  Here's what I found:

When parts of your body become stressed or diseased, they no longer produce the correct sound vibrations.  In other words, your body and its organs are not vibrating at its optimal resonant frequency.  By introducing the tones of healthy organs, minerals, nutrients, electrolytes, enzymes, flora, etc. back into your body, you can relax knowing that the rejuvenation and restoration process is underway... 

All matter (everything around us) is a result of a frequency and if you amplify the frequency, the structure of the matter will vibrate and change.  To many, sound vibration is simply something you hear such as music.  The idea that frequency can have an effect on our familiar physical reality seems a far-fetched notion.  But it's not far-fetched at all - it's quantum mechanics! 

It’s hard to argue against the fact that music makes you feel good, but can sound vibration actually shift your body?  Everything in nature owes its existence solely and completely to frequency and sound vibration.  Sound is the basis for form and shape and the component that holds life together.

Well, I think this might be the odds-on favorite for the Most Highly Distilled Bullshit Ever contest.  Amongst the inaccuracies I found:

1. Disease has nothing to do with "resonant frequencies."  Resonant frequencies (also called natural modes of vibration) are the modes of vibration that an object tends to oscillate at in the absence of a driving or damping force.  A simple example is a child's swingset.  You may have noticed how hard it is to get a swing to oscillate at anything but one frequency -- this is because that is its resonant frequency, the one that requires the least amount of energy input.  It's true that everything has a particular resonant frequency, but it has nothing to do with disease, all it has to do with is mass distribution around the axis of oscillation, which is why you so seldom see sick swingsets.
2. "Amplifying the frequency" doesn't make things improve, all it does is (if you're talking about light) move it toward the violet end of the spectrum, or (if you're talking about sound) raise the pitch.  High frequencies aren't good and low frequencies bad, or else everyone would instinctively prefer piccolos over cellos.  If anything, I suspect the opposite is true.
3. Matter is not the "result of a frequency."  Matter, or at least its distinctive property of mass, is apparently the result of the interaction of its constituent fundamental particles with the Higgs field.  "Matter is a result of frequency" comes as close to a meaningless pseudoscience-babble statement as anything I can think of.
4. Sound vibrations and electromagnetic field vibrations are not the same thing.  At all.  Sound vibrations are compression waves in a medium such as air or water.  EMF vibrations are oscillating changes in the electromagnetic field in space (and do not require a medium to travel through, which mystified the hell out of scientists at the turn of the 20th century, until Einstein came along and said, "Hey, guys, take a look at this.")  Light is an example of an EMF oscillation.
5. Quantum mechanics has zero to do with the effect of sound waves on matter.
6. Sound vibrations have zero to do with holding matter together.

And that's just from the bit I posted.  If you'll check out the link, you'll see that it goes on for pages and pages in that fashion.  Along the way, you find out that the AmpCoil -- the thing they're peddling -- is supposed to cure not only Lyme disease, but fibromyalgia, headaches/migraines, chronic back pain, arthritis, and a host of autoimmune diseases.

One other statement from their home page stood out, that I just have to tell you about:

Imagine the possibilities if harmful pathogens could no longer hide from beneficial hertz frequencies by burrowing into cell walls?

From one sentence, I have two further responses:

1. What the fuck is a "hertz frequency?"  "Hertz" is the unit for measuring frequency.  So "hertz frequency" is a little like saying "inch distance" or "liter volume."
2. I'm not terribly concerned about Lyme pathogens burrowing into my cell walls, for the very good reason that my cells don't have cell walls, given that I'm not a plant.

Then, at the bottom of the page, in teensy print, is the following:

AmpCoil units have not been evaluated by governments and are Consumer Products for personal use.  Disclaimer: The AmpCoil System is not intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of any disease, medical condition, physical or psychological disorder.  It should not be considered a replacement for medical advice or treatment.

Say what?  What, exactly, do you call the following statements, taken right from their website?

• Safe & simple alternative Lyme treatment for everyone.
• The AmpCoil, powered by the BetterGuide App, can help reshape the form and function of vibrational imbalances in the body by re-tuning each and all parts of one’s physiology and anatomy.  AmpCoil is like a tuning fork for the human body!
• The AmpCoil is a non-invasive PEMF sound technology that brings the body back in tune, vibrating in its original, pure state faster than you might expect.

So okay, enough for the ranting.  But what appalls me about all of this is how quickly these claims would vanish into a puff of foul-smelling vapor if you just looked up some of this shit on Wikipedia.  That's all you have to do.  You don't need a Ph.D. in physics or biology.  You don't need to be a microbiologist.  You don't have to understand how to build a machine that can deliver a pulsed electromagnetic field.

All you have to be able to do is to go online and read critically for about five minutes.

What's worst is that there's legitimate research out there on the effect of electromagnetic field stimulation on a variety of disorders.  TCMS (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation) has shown promise in treating cases of intractable depression, for example.  But you will get nowhere (1) diagnosing yourself, and (2) buying an electric field generator, and (3) applying it to random body parts.  All that'll happen is either the placebo effect, or worse, you'll avoid getting legitimate medical care for an actual disease.

Amazingly, the scientists actually know what they're doing.  Listen to them.  [Image is in the Public Domain]

So that's today's dip in the deep end.  Bottom line: do some research.  If someone makes a claim, see if you can find independent corroboration.  And remember what Tim Minchin has to say about this kind of stuff: "There's a name for alternative medicine that works.  It's called... medicine."

*************************

This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just mindblowing fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.

The God-given right to abuse

In today's post, I'm going to allude to two news stories I ran across in the last couple of days that are so upsetting, so completely nausea-inducing, that I am going to omit most of the details and simply direct you to the links if you want to read more.  (If that disclaimer wasn't enough, let me be blunt: serious trigger warning regarding violence and abuse directed at children and teenagers.)

In the first, a man named Isauro Aguirre was just handed the death penalty in California because he had killed his girlfriend's eight-year-old son.  The reason?  He "thought the boy was gay."

The second was written by the young man who was the target of the abuse.  Rex Ogle, now 38 years old, was given forty-eight hours to leave his home with only what he could carry when he was eighteen.  For three months he lived on the street, eating out of trash cans, sleeping outside in all weather, until he broke down and called his grandmother for help.  The reason?

His stepmother had outed him to his father as gay, and his father told him, "If you choose to be gay, then you’re no longer part of this family.  You want to live that lifestyle?  Then do it somewhere else."

"In my father's defense," Ogle writes, "he had offered me a choice."  The choice was that he could leave, or remain part of the family -- as long as he attended church three times a week, asked a girl out and stayed with her (or another girl who was approved by his father), and he promised to "never seek to associate with a person of the homosexual persuasion."

In other words, lie to the world about who he is.  He realized he couldn't do that.  The result: forty-eight hours later, a man stood stern and dry-eyed while watching his own son walking down the driveway, weeping, carrying nothing but what he could fit in a backpack.

In both cases, the defense by the abuser was that "being gay is wrong."  God disapproves.  Therefore, a true believer has the license to abuse, and still claim that he's on the moral high ground.

Readers will no doubt be fast to point out two objections.

First, many Christians don't do this sort of thing.  Which I grant you.  I know many devout Christians who are, I'm sure, as disgusted by the abuse outlined above as I am.  However, one thing I don't hear often is those same Christians publicly denouncing the origin of such behavior -- and the church and political leaders who sanction it.

A second legitimate objection is that Christianity is hardly the only religion that has condoned violence against LGBTQ individuals.  Hell, in areas controlled by strict Muslims, gay men have been pitched off rooftops; if they survive the fall, they're stoned to death.  Which is certainly true.  But since when is "they're doing it too" any kind of justification?

So the general response is to defend evangelical Christianity against any responsibility for this sort of thing.  The interesting thing, however, is that the perpetrators of the abuse themselves are completely unequivocal as to where the reason comes from.  God told them it was the right thing to do, and their defense is "my holy book tells me what is right and wrong."

To which I respond: bullshit.

Sure, the Bible and the Qur'an both prohibit homosexuality.  The problem is, there are a whole lot of other things the Bible and the Qur'an prohibit that no one seems to take especially seriously, even the ones who call themselves fundamentalists.  I'll look at the biblical ones, because I'm not well-versed in the Qur'an, but I have no doubt the same is true there.  (Here's a list of some of the actions prohibited by the Qur'an, but be aware I haven't checked them for accuracy.)

Here are a few prohibitions from the Bible, along with the relevant verse:

• Eating shellfish.  (Leviticus 11:12)
• Tattoos.  (Leviticus 19:28)
• Marrying after getting a divorce.  (Mark 10:11-12)
• Women speaking in church.  (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)
• A man being uncircumcised. (Genesis 17:14)
• Lending money at interest. (about a dozen different verses address this, starting with Leviticus 25:37)
• Women braiding their hair, or wearing gold or pearls. (Timothy 2:9)
• Coming into church if you're handicapped or "have a blemish." (Leviticus 21:17-23)
• Praying in public. (Matthew 6:6)

The fact of the matter is, nobody's following the Bible to the letter.  All of the inconvenient stuff is simply ignored.  So is the stuff that could get you thrown in jail (such as owning slaves and/or killing them [Leviticus 25:44-46] and stoning disobedient children to death [Deuteronomy 21:18-21]).

So why all the focus on LGBTQ individuals?

Because the idea of two guys or two women having sex makes some people feel squinky.  It has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the Bible.  If it did, you'd find the Westboro Baptist Church loonies waving signs around in front of Red Lobster, and way less of this kind of thing:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons A guy saved by Jesus, Romans cross tattoo, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Not to mention way fewer female televangelists like Leigh Valentine, Joyce Meyer, Paula White, and Joni Lamb.

I am sick unto death of people using their religion to justify being horrible to others.  I don't give a flying fuck what you think about what I should be doing with my naughty bits.  It is, frankly, none of your damn business.  There's also the issue that homosexuality has unequivocally been shown to be connected to brain wiring -- i.e., it isn't a choice and never has been.

So disowning or torturing and killing your own child because they're LGBTQ is about as moral as doing so because they have freckles or brown eyes, whatever the Bible says about it.

It is appalling that we are even still having to fight this battle.  A lot of my LGBTQ friends are petrified about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy -- as conservative as he could be, he was at least a swing vote on social issues.  Now, with Donald Trump and his evangelical cronies to pick the next Supreme Court Justice?  No one really doubts that once they've established an ultraright majority, the first thing they'll topple is Roe v. Wade.

And the second thing they'll come after is LGBTQ rights.  In other words, unless we're very lucky, there'll be legal coverage for discrimination based upon sexual orientation.

I hope reading this has pissed you off enough to make your voice heard.  We are at a crossroads, I think, when we will either continue down the road of letting an amoral bunch of wannabe theocrats drive policy in this country, and move us further toward oppression and bigotry, or else enough people will stand up and say, "Stop.  Stop right here."

But that will only happen if we're willing to say that.  Loudly.  Over and over, and regardless of the personal consequences.  Otherwise, I fear that we're headed for a very dark period in history.

*************************

This week's book recommendation is from one of my favorite writers and documentary producers, Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke became famous for his series Connections, in which he explored the one-thing-leads-to-another phenomenon which led to so many pivotal discoveries -- if you've seen any of the episodes of Connections, you'll know what I mean when I say that it is just mindblowing fun to watch how this man's brain works.  In his book The Pinball Effect, Burke investigates the role of serendipity -- resulting in another tremendously entertaining and illuminating read.

Eat like a werewolf

I'm sure that by now all of you have heard of the "Paleo Diet," that claims the path to better health comes from eating like a cave man (or woman, as the case may be) -- consuming only foods that would have been eaten by our distant ancestors living on the African savanna.  The "Paleo Diet," therefore, includes grass-fed meat (cow is okay if you can't find gazelle), eggs, fish, root vegetables, fruits, nuts, and mushrooms.  Not included are dairy products (being that domestication of cattle and goats was post-cave-man), potatoes, salt, sugar, and refined oils.

Despite gaining some traction, especially amongst athletes and bodybuilders, the "Paleo Diet" has been looked upon with a wry eye by actual dieticians.  A survey of experts in the field, sponsored by CNN, placed the "Paleo Diet" as dead last in terms of support from peer-reviewed research and efficacy at promoting healthy weight loss.

But the "Paleo Diet" will sound like quantum physics, technical-science-wise, as compared to the latest diet poised to take the world of poorly-educated woo-woos by storm:

The "Werewolf Diet."

I wish I were making this up.  I also wish, for different reasons, that it was what it sounded like -- that people who sign up find themselves, once a month, sprouting fur and fangs and running around naked and eating unsuspecting hikers. That, at least, would be entertaining.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

But no such luck.  The Werewolf Diet, however, does resemble being an actual werewolf in that (1) what you get to eat is tied to the phases of the moon, (2) it more or less ruins your health, and (3) it completely fucks up any chance at a normal social life.

The site "Moon Connection" describes the whole thing in great detail, but they make a big point of their stuff being copyrighted material, so I'll just summarize so that you get the gist:

You have two choices, the "basic plan" or the "extended plan."  On the "basic plan," you fast for 24 hours, either on the full moon or the new moon.  You can, they say, "lose up to six pounds of water weight" by doing this, but why this is a good thing isn't clear.

The "extended plan," though, is more interesting.  With the "extended plan," you fast during the full moon, then eat a fairly normal diet during the waning part of the moon cycle (with the addition of drinking eight glasses of water a day to "flush out toxins").  On the new moon, you should fast again, only consuming dandelion tea or green tea (more toxin flushing).  During the waxing part of the moon cycle, you must be "disciplined" to fight your "food cravings," and avoid overeating.   "Thickeners," such as sugar and fats, should be avoided completely, and you can't eat anything after six PM because that's when the moon's light "becomes more visible."

Then you hit the full moon and it all starts over again.

Well, let me just say that this ranks right up there with "downloadable medicines" as one of the dumbest things I have ever read.  We have the whole "flushing toxins" bullshit -- as if your kidneys and liver aren't capable of dealing with endogenous toxic compounds, having evolved for millions of years to do just that.  We're told, as if it's some sort of revelation, that our "food cravings will increase" after we've been consuming nothing but green tea for 24 hours.  Then we are informed that the moon's gravitational pull has an effect on us, because we're 60% water -- implying that your bloodstream experiences high tide, or something.  But contrary to anything Newton would have had to say about the matter, the gravitational pull the moon exerts upon you somehow depends on the phase it's in, because, apparently, the angle of the light reflecting from the moon's surface, with respect to the position of the Earth, mysteriously alters its mass.

I mean, I'm not a dietician, but really.  And fortunately, there are dieticians who agree.  Keri Gans, a professional dietician and author of "The Small Change Diet," said in an interview, "This diet makes me laugh.  I don’t know if it’s the name or that people will actually believe it.  Either way, it is nothing but another fad diet encouraging restriction.  Restriction of food will of course lead to weight loss, but at what cost to the rest of your body?  If only celebrities, once and for all, would start touting a diet plan that makes sense and is based on science."

Yes.  If only.  But unfortunately, fewer people have heard of Gans, and (evidently) the scientific method, than have heard of Madonna and Demi Moore, who swear by the Werewolf Diet.  Not that Moore, especially, is some kind of pinnacle of rationality; she is a devotee of Philip Berg's "Kabbalah Centre," which preaches that "99% of reality cannot be accessed by the senses."

Nor, apparently, by logic and reason.

Interestingly enough, today is a full moon, meaning that today we're all supposed to be fasting.  To which I answer: the hell you say.  I'm off to get some coffee, bacon, and eggs. Detoxify that, buddy.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

Let's do the time warp

I find it fascinating, and frequently a bit dismaying, the range that exists in what people consider "sufficient evidence."

There are us hardcore skeptics, who basically say, "Incontrovertible hard data, right in front of my face, and sometimes not even that."  It then runs the whole spectrum down to people who basically have the attitude, "if my mother's first cousin's sister-in-law's gardener's grandma says she remembers seeing it one time, that's good enough for me, especially if it confirms my preconceived beliefs."

I saw a good example of the latter yesterday over at Mysterious Universe in an article by Brett Tingley entitled, "Researcher Discovers Time Warp Near Las Vegas."  Tingley, to his credit, treated the whole thing with a scornful attitude, which (when you hear the story) you'll see was fully warranted.

Turns out "noted paranormal researcher" Joshua Warren, whose name you might know from his television work (some of his finer achievements are Aliens on the Moon: The Truth Exposed!, Weird or What?, Inside the Church of Satan, Possessed Possessions, and -- I shit you not -- Inbred Rednecks), claims to have found a spot north of Vegas where he says that time is running slower than in the surrounding areas.

Okay, let me just state up front that I have a degree in physics.  I certainly wasn't God's gift to the physics department by any stretch, but I did complete my degree.  (I didn't graduate summa cum laude, or anything.  More persona non grata.  But still.)  I bring this up only to say that with all due modesty, I have more knowledge of physics than the average dude off the street.  And I know that because of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, there are just two ways to get time to slow down locally; (1) go really really fast; or (2) get close to a powerful gravitational field, such as a black hole.  Even the Earth's gravitational field, huge as it seems to us, causes a time dilation effect so small that it took years simply for physicists to be able to measure it and confirm it exists.  (For reference; your clock here on the surface of the Earth ticks more slowly, compared to a satellite orbiting at 20,000 kilometers, by a factor of 1 in 10,000,000,000.  So being here on Earth is not exactly the answer to lengthening human lifespan.)

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Kjordand, Treval, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So the whole story is pretty fishy right from the get-go.  But Warren thinks he's proved it.  Here's what he has to say:

At this spot, on June 18 of 2018, I actually measured for the first and only time, time itself slowing down for 20 microseconds.  The weird thing, the real holy grail here, was what we picked up with this brand-new piece of technology.  That signal is always supposed to travel at the same rate of time at any particular place.  The only way that could change is if a black hole approached Earth or something like that, which is never supposed to happen.

You could substitute "never supposed to happen" with "hasn't happened," or "almost certainly never will happen," or "we'd all be fucked sideways if it did happen."  Now, twenty microseconds may not seem like very much, but that kind of discrepancy is not only many orders of magnitude greater than any expected relativistic time dilation effect, it is also well within the range of what would be easily measurable by good scientific equipment.  (Cf. the previous example of the physicists measuring a one-part-in-ten-billion slowdown.)  In other words, if this were real, it not only would be bizarre that it hadn't already been discovered, it would be simple to confirm -- or refute.

But here's the kicker: Warren is basing his amazing, groundbreaking, "holy grail" discovery on...

... one measurement with one piece of equipment.

The equipment itself sounds a little suspicious to me.  It's called a "DT Meter," and no, in this context, "DT" doesn't stand for "delirium tremens," although it might as well.  It's a "differential time meter," and here's how Brett Tingley describes it:

KVVU-TV in Las Vegas reports that Warren made the discovery using a gizmo called a DT Meter, or differential time rate mater.  Warren says the device was created by a Silicon Valley engineer named Ron Heath, who has no discernible presence on the internet.  The device apparently consists of a 100-foot cable with a sensor on one end.  The device sends a signal down the length of the cable and measures the time it takes to reach the other end; theoretically, the device can detect small perturbations or differences in the speed of time itself.

Now, I ask you, which is more likely: that (1) there's a spot in Nevada where time runs slowly, for no apparent reason, or (2) Warren and Heath's gizmo has a glitch?

Of course, that's not slowing down Warren one iota.  He says that the time warp he discovered is the explanation for all sorts of other things for which he conveniently has no proof:

I think it’s really interesting when you consider that this site where we got this reading, showing this time anomaly, also happens to be one of the most popular UFO hotspots in the area.  The big question at this point is not whether or not we have these anomalies, but what’s causing them?  Is this something natural that gives us a window a gateway into another world or another level of reality?  Or is this the byproduct of some kind of weird technology, be it something secret and man-made or something that’s extraterrestrial?

So the "big question" is not whether the anomaly exists?  I think that's a pretty big question, myself.  But no, we're supposed not only to believe his time warp, but that his time warp explains UFO sightings, and is caused by gateways into another world, etc.

What's baffling is that there are lots of people who apparently find this line of... um... well, I can't call it reasoning...  this line of baloney convincing.   Poking about on the interwebz for about ten minutes found lots of places this "discovery" has been posted, mostly by people claiming either that ha-ha, this proves those dumb old physicists are wrong about everything, or that there's clearly a coverup by the government to prevent us from finding out about it, and thank heaven for Joshua Warren bravely posting this online, or even that we should watch this spot closely because it's likely to be where the alien invasion of Earth starts.

All of which left me weeping quietly and smacking my forehead on the keyboard.

Anyhow.  Like I said, I'm glad Tingley scoffed at Warren's claim, because Warren is not even within hailing distance of what anyone with a background in science would find convincing.  But I'd better wrap this up, because for some odd reason I feel like I'm running short on time.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

For sale: One castle. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, one ghost.

I've said for ages that I would love to spend a night in a haunted house.

I would prefer not to spend said night alone, because I may be a skeptic, but I'm also (1) highly suggestible and (2) a great big coward.  I'd like to think that my generally rational view of the world would inoculate me against jumping to conclusions in scary situations, but the reality is that I adopted skepticism as a worldview largely because the other option was letting my anxiety drive me completely batshit crazy.

Anyhow, this all comes up because yesterday I stumbled upon a haunted house for sale.  Actually, not a haunted house; a haunted castle.  Better still, it's right here in the United States, obviating the need for my obtaining a resident visa from one of your usual castle-having nations.  (Although in all honesty, given the current administration, I've been considering emigrating to a small uncharted island off the coast of Mozambique anyhow, even though small uncharted islands rarely have castles, haunted or otherwise.)

This particular haunted castle is Beckett Castle, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.  Cape Elizabeth is right on the Atlantic Ocean -- another appealing point -- and is an easy drive from Portland.  This is a definite advantage, because for much of Maine, the only thing you're in an easy drive from is a shitload of spruce trees.  So the site is pretty much ideal.

Beckett Castle was built in 1874 by the eponymous Sylvester Beckett, who was a lawyer, writer, and publisher.  It has 1,981 square feet of living space, which strikes me as a little small for a castle, but after all, Maine is not generally considered castle country, so I guess you take what you can get.  It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and -- best of all -- a three-story tower.  It's built of local gray fieldstone, but has been recently "extensively remodeled," so it doesn't feature the usual downside of castles, which is lack of indoor plumbing.

It also has a huge rose garden and a "carriage house" that would be perfect as an artist's studio, so Carol would be happy.

Of course, there's the "haunted" part.  Paul Seaburn, over at Mysterious Universe, says that the "primary ghost" is Sylvester Beckett himself, which brings up an interesting question; how do you get appointed "primary ghost?"  Does the class system transfer directly into the afterlife?  Because that hardly seems fair.  You spend your whole life working your ass off as a servant, then you die and become a ghost, and damned if you're not still scrubbing the floors in spirit form.  If that happened to me, I'd say, "fuck it," and leave.  I mean, what are they going to do?  Withhold my ghostly paycheck?  Write a bad letter of reference for the next place I'm planning to haunt?  They could get as mad at me as they want.  I mean they couldn't even kill me, because I'm already dead.

Seems like a nice position to be in.

But I digress.

The previous owner, Nancy Harvey (who died in 2016; her family is handling the sale) was interviewed prior to her death and went on record as saying that she'd never had any paranormal experiences in the place, despite Sylvester's reputation for appearing as a "radiant blue orb" and pulling the sheets off you while you sleep.  Harvey, however, didn't attribute this lack of ghostly goings-on as evidence that the place wasn't haunted; she said that Sylvester didn't disturb her sleep because he was happy about the renovations she'd done.

I guess even when you're a ghost, you care that people are keeping your house in good shape.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to put an offer on Beckett Castle, as attractive as it seems, for the very good reason that the asking price is $2.5 million.  I just don't have that kind of cash lying around.  Plus, I'm not known for my housekeeping skills.  Most of the time, my approach to housekeeping can be best summed up as "There appears to have been a struggle."  One friend said the interior of my house looks like "a museum maintained by toddlers."  So buying Beckett Castle seems to me to be asking for Sylvester to come back and rip the sheets off my bed at one AM and demand to know why I didn't do last night's dinner dishes.

It's a pity, because the place is beautiful, and it's a great location.  But I think for the foreseeable future, we're going to stay here in upstate New York.  If our current house is haunted, I've seen no evidence of it.  Or maybe the ghosts were people who, when they were alive, were also terrible housekeepers, and are happy the place is owned by kindred spirits (as it were).  That'd also explain it.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

Take my hand

Today I'm going to take a detour from my usual fare and tell you about a former student of mine, a young man named Justin.

I first met Justin in my Critical Thinking class, almost two years ago.  He struck me right away as the thoughtful type (in both senses of the word).  He was quiet, friendly, and kind, and always was the first one to laugh at my jokes (which may speak to his kindness as well).  As the semester progressed, he was more and more willing to contribute to class discussions, and what he said never failed to be articulate, interesting, and well-considered.

He tuned in right away on my obsession with UFOs and Bigfoot (not that hard to discern, really, considering the various Roswell-and-Sasquatch-related paraphernalia strewn about my classroom).  He started ferreting out good examples of goofy paranormal claims -- I used more than one of his finds as a basis for a Skeptophilia post -- and I still remember when he took me up on my offer to the class of an optional assignment to use PhotoShop to make the most convincing fake paranormal photograph they could.  His submission -- a wildly creepy double exposure that looked like a ghost floating over a country road -- stayed on my wall for the rest of the year.

So I was glad to see that he'd signed up for my AP Biology class this past school year.  He continued in much the same fashion, participating in a quiet, understated sort of way, coming in early to discuss the latest science fiction movies, asking good questions.  Not a boy who was a splashy presence, but someone who was steady, smart, and pleasant, the kind of student most teachers would love to fill a class with.

Justin graduated from high school six days ago.  I saw him that Thursday evening, laughing with some friends in their caps and gowns, and he asked me to take their picture with his cellphone.

That was the last time I saw him.  Three days ago, Justin committed suicide.

My first thought, when a colleague called me up at 9:30 Monday night to tell me the news, was, "How could I have missed the signs?"  Justin never exhibited the slightest sign of depression to me.  No moodiness, no sudden disinterest in classwork, no distancing himself from friends.  All year long, he was the same constant, easy-going person, almost always with a smile on his face.

Of course, I know from first hand experience that my reaction was ridiculous.  Since his death, I've heard from a couple of colleagues that he'd had bouts of depression, had contemplated suicide, but in the past months had seemed so much better.  One friend, who was especially close to him, said, "I honestly thought he was in the clear."

So did we all.  But we depressives are chameleons.  It's what we do best.  And I use "we" deliberately; I've had serious depression and anxiety as long as I can remember, and until I went public with it -- I first blogged on my own personal struggles about four years ago -- I'd bank on the fact that no one knew.  I never missed work, never seemed down, never did a sudden radio silence.  If anything, people described me as dependable and reliable, and most of all, competent.  I never acted as if I needed help.

The truth, of course, is that a good part of the time, it was a struggle even getting myself to work.  Once there, I put the happy-mask on -- because I was expected to.  Taking charge is part of my job.  Even when I was at my lowest, during the breakup of my (all things considered) disaster of a first marriage, hardly anyone knew what was going on.  To admit it, in my depressive state, was somehow to give it more reality.  Easier to pretend it didn't exist, that my life was just hunky-dory, thank you very much.

So it's not to be wondered at that a lot of us didn't know what was going on with Justin.  Still... I wish I had.  Maybe had someone known, we could have made a difference.  I know hindsight is 20/20, and all that, but suicides always leave the survivors playing out what-if scenarios, as pointless as they are, as unfair as they are to everyone concerned.

But it does highlight that it's absolutely critical we look after each other.  Our society has taught us that going it alone is some kind of virtue, that to ask for help is to appear weak or needy.  We pretend we're fine when we're falling apart, and our closest friends often don't know.

So reach out to the people around you.  Treat people with compassion, even those who don't seem to deserve it; sometimes those are the ones who need it most.  Don't forget to check in with the strong ones, the competent ones, the quiet-but-steady ones, who may not be showing you what they're really feeling -- not until you push them to dig deeper.

And don't forget the Suicide Prevention Lifeline Number, 1-800-273-8255.  If you're hurting, and it seems like you can't keep going, give them a call.  If you have a friend or family member who is in crash-and-burn mode and don't know how to help them, give them a call.  Don't go it alone.  You don't need to.

Because -- as I found out in my case, having attempted suicide twice, once when I was 17 and once when I was 20, when things looked completely hopeless -- the only thing suicide ensures is that things won't get better.  Whatever's gone wrong for you, you can survive it, if you're willing to put out your hand and say, "Please help me up."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

I always try to remember the adage that a family friend told me when I was six.  I was whinging about some classmate that I didn't like, and this friend -- instead of commiserating -- bowled me over by saying, "Always treat people with more kindness than you think you need to, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."  I've never forgotten it.

And to Justin, who lost his terrible battle three days ago: I will always remember you as a kind young man with a fine mind and a ready smile.  I, and your friends and family, will miss you dearly.  I wish I could have helped you, but perhaps, if your life and death push someone else to reach out for help, it won't have entirely been in vain.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

The devil on my shoulder

Me, trying to find a topic for today's Skeptophilia post:  Hmm.  Let's see, what do we have in the news today.  *sips coffee*  Science news, political news, religious news...

Diabolical voice from on my left shoulder:  How about Alex Jones?

Me:  No, everyone knows that Alex Jones is a certifiable wingnut.  Why would I want to...

Diabolical voice:  No, really.  You need to check out what Alex Jones just said.

Me (scowling angrily):  Why?  Everything that comes out of the man's mouth is either complete lunacy, or a desperate plea for attention, or both.  It's total clickbait.  I don't want to...

Diabolical voice:  C'mon.  You know you want to.

Me:  I'm sure there are much better things for me to be reading, not to mention writing about.

Diabolical voice (alluringly):  Alexxxx Jonnnessss...

Me:  Well, I don't know, it seems like a waste of time, but maybe...

Diabolical voice (in a whisper):  Take the bait, little mouse... take the bait...

Me:  Oh, fine, I guess one quick look won't hurt me.

Alex Jones:  Atrazine does have the same effects in mammals as it has in frogs.  And it changes areas of the brain associated with the olfactory nerve.  That's the nose, my friend.  That's the part of your brain that hooks to your nose.  And everything else that make men feel attracted to other men...  The Pentagon developed a Atrazine-type spray that they would spray.  They tested it actually in Iraq.  That's classified but it was -- it got leaked.  You can pull it up.  Gay bomb!  They always take like a clip of me going gay bomb, baby!  And then I show BBC, but they cut the BBC, and it's basically a chemical cocktail, not just of Atrazine.  They add some other chemicals.  It's classified.  But the word is, it's like, what's ecstasy's compound?  I forgot.  MDMA!  They mix that with Atrazine and stuff.  And then they spray that on you and you'll start having sex with a fire hydrant...  I mean, the point is, is that sex is all based not even on visual, men it's mainly -- but it's smells with women particularly.  But they can flip that on.  It's like perfume.  You know, everybody knows about that?  Well, they've got weaponized perfumes, basically that will make men attracted to other men and they want you to do that so you don't have kids.

Me (eyes spinning):  Yes... gay bombs... weaponized sex perfumes... mixed with atrazine and stuff...  "olfactory" means "nose," my friend...  guys humping fire hydrants...  It all makes so much sense, now!

Diabolical voice:  See, isn't this better than some silly story about new advancements in science?

Me:  ... thank heaven for Alex Jones, for having figured all this out!  Otherwise I might have inhaled some atrazine mixed with MDMA, and suddenly gotten the hots for that guy who lives down the street, which would make my life all higgledy-piggledy!  And if he turned me down, I'd have to look for a fire hydrant!

Diabolical voice:  Lucky you have me around, isn't it?

Me:  Really lucky.

Diabolical voice:  Next up: Rudy Giuliani explains how being loudly booed at Yankee Stadium means everyone loves him.

******************************

This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.