Blog 7
28 September 2005
I’m not a scientific guy. The physics questions on University Challenge make me feel nauseous and my continuing ignorance is only validated by the Oxfam models who answer them.
But, with the equator, I want to understand. One foot north of the equator, water empties anti-clockwise, one foot south it empties clockwise. Directly over, it goes straight down with nay a swirl in either direction. Standing on the equator, you can balance an egg on the end of a nail and you weigh considerably less.
The scientific cause of this is the Coriolis effect, which (as I understand it) is a deflection of air and is therefore potentially under the influence of local factors. I’ve tried it and seen both northern and southern hemispheres draining water the ‘wrong’ way. I’m also told that the equator is constantly on the move. In Ecuador, there is a town called Middle of the World which was built directly over the equator. The equator then left town.
I’ve seen these experiments performed on two continents with a bunch of the most sceptical people you could ever meet. If it was manipulation, it certainly wasn’t obvious. How easy is it to drain water without a swirl when it is liberally poured on high? Have you ever tried balancing an egg on a nail? Why, when weighing yourself on the equator are you lighter than a foot in either direction? The cake fans of the party were unconcerned with the science.
Mike in Blog 7 • 1 Comment
27 September 2005
uri-geller.com
When faced with writing about Uri Geller, it is hard not to fall into the trap of sounding perpeptually sarcastic. The man is a massive fraud. As such it’s hard to take any of his claims seriously and it’s ever so tempting just to write in an ironic mode that presupposes his lack of veracity. This is especially true because, unlike a lot of frauds, he seems to know that it is just tricks. Most people who have looked in to how Uri operates get this impression. This is not the self-deception of the scientific fraud, it is the systematic deception of the gullible for personal gain. There was always going to be a magician who went that extra step in insisting it wasn’t just illusion and clever deception, the last trick to learn in this line of work is to stay the right side of the law.
This does leave us with one large unexplained phenomena: how Geller can live with himself? That’s still not sarcasm by the way.
Of course there is a pay off to being such a massive fraud – the weak minded in all walks of life are going to be impressed with you, and a sort of (internally agonised) fame will follow. Uri has managed to get beyond fame and has ultimately become a “brand” now – he even tried to sue IKEA over their “Uri” line of furniture that had bent legs. It’s the name you can trust in new-age pseudoscientific bollocks. So his books, like “Uri Geller’s Little Book of Mind Power”, sell all too well. Like all self-help gift counter-pack books the UG’sLBoMP is full of vacuous drivel – the stuff you, anyone, can make up, to make someone else feel better about themselves (until they realise it’s nonsense). But it’s Uri’s name that makes that extra impulse purchase happen.
When he threatened to sue a 1997 documentary that exposed his fraud, it was over film footage used without his permission. It was not over defamation, but revenue protection. The fair usage/dealing provisions of British copyright laws meant Uri had no chance. To save face he complained to the Broadcasting Standards Council, but (after some exchanges) it was forthrightly rejected.
He even tried to get money out of Nintendo for the spoon-wielding Pokemon Kadabra (Yun-Geller in Japanese). I haven’t found any evidence that Jackie Chan has tried the same over Hitmon-Chan (nor the estate of Bruce Lee over Hitmon-Lee).
Thirty years down the line, though his many lies, exaggerations and craven publicity-seeking are all publicly documented, and though his magician’s tricks are easily replicated, Uri still stands as a man of power – a testament to Barnum’s old line that “the public loves to be fooled”. He’s a man with the supernatural powers of Paul Daniels but with a pathological need to lie and deceive. Someone who makes money out of fraud.
He makes my skin crawl simply by appearing on television.
Now that’s magic.
Alan in Blog 7 • No Comments
26 September 2005
Alix Campbell writes:
Statues, icons and paintings cry and bleed all the time. It can happen to almost any figure – the Virgin Mary, Jebus, any number of obscure saints, and even a Dutch statue of Elvis. Liquids exuded include blood, tears and oil. Usually hailed as miracles, weeping statues are often claimed to have healing properties, or to signal the dawn of a better time for the world, or as warning or remonstration for our wicked ways. Pilgrims rush to the statues for a squint at the bizarre sight, often signalling the dawn of increased profits for whichever house of whichever God houses the leaky icon.
There are two explanations for this strange phenomenon:
1 – It is a sign from God, or another higher power.
2 – There is a rational explanation, possibly, but not necessarily, involving some kind of hoax.
I’m 90% sure it’s number two.
There are numerous accounts of weeping statues, and plenty of photos, often rather grisly, but decent scientific explanations and details of tests on statues are not so plentiful. Most accounts are vague, or recounted by a third party. I could find no impartial accounts – instead there are all sorts of web pages claiming that these are miracles that science has yet to find an answer for. The extent of investigation into this has been to analyse the liquids – tears and blood examined have both been shown to be human. This somewhat empty fact has been accepted as proof of the miraculous nature of these events, but all it really shows is that the liquid can be identified. It does not point to an otherworldly mechanism behind the event. Weeping statues have been ‘faked’ by people curious to see if it could be done, and professional stage magic techniques can recreate similar effects, with no added divine intervention, which suggests that a somewhat less than heavenly explanation could be more likely.
In 1998 a statue of Our Lady housed in a comatose young girl’s bedroom apparently started weeping oil. People travelled for miles to pay to see this, and there were stories of a young boy being healed of a leg injury. However, the oil was analysed and shown to be 80% vegetable oil and 20% chicken fat, and the boy had been expected to recover anyway. It has been suggested that the oil was simply poured on the statue when no one was looking. The family had allowed a film crew in to document the miracle, yet would not allow them to film the statue for any length of time, leading to the above explanation. The family had good reason to allow the film crew in – they were getting paid for it. I would expect that there are people and organisations throughout the world that need money enough to fake a miracle, and there are certainly people gullible enough to believe it.
There is a casualness and subjectivity surrounding the reporting and investigation of weeping statues which means that they do remain a bit of a mystery – there’s never anyone around to really check whether anyone is filling the statue up with blood/ tears/ oil. Tempting as it is to label these inexplicable occurrences, there is really nothing that actually suggests they are anything more than hoaxes. Credulous miracle hungry people are happy to buy into this phenomenon, which is really not so different from a magician’s flashy prestidigitations, and were it not for the religious aspect which seems to make people suspend intelligence and logic, they would be dismissed as a clever fraud.
Also see – Hindu statues drinking milk. In 1995 statues of Ganesh in India started ‘drinking’ milk, and pretty soon statues all over the world were lapping the white stuff up. Although sceptics might say that the milk is absorbed into porous statues, I have to agree with one Parmeesh Soti, who pointed out that “It cannot be a hoax. Where would all that milk go to?” Indeed. Milk doesn’t just disappear. Statues must drink it. Mystery solved.
I hope I’m not wrong about all this. I really don’t want to go to Hell.
Tom in Blog 7 • 1 Comment
Or indeed the face of Elvis burnt into a deBrevilled Toasted Sandwich. Perhaps even the name of Jehovah in the seeds of an aubergine. The commonplace occurrence of this phenomenon has never been explained, but used as definitive proof of God’s existence. After all, how better to prove to his followers that he exists than to keep hinting via the medium of food.
Sceptics would point out much of the following
- We don’t actually know what Jesus looked like to recognise him
- It is just the coincidence of the burning of toast
- Surely there are better ways of proving your existence than spoiling perfectly good toast.
All good arguments, but none convincing enough to disprove the fundamental fact that it keeps happening. What is more disturbing is that people these days try to sell it on eBay.
Even forgetting the logistics of selling a piece of bread more than a week old*, this is unfortunate. After all the major tenet of the Catholic Church is transubstantiation of the communion wafer into the physical body of Christ. If Catholics have no problem noshing down on his body, why would they baulk are chomping into his face. Surely one would expect this phenomenon to occur just so that people can get their fix of Jesus in a number of other tasty flavours. Wafer does get dull after a while: why not smear a bit of marmite on his mug and eating more tasty Jesus toast. It is not meant to be saved, sold or worshiped – Jesus toast is for eating.
*And one can’t even suggest that the mouldy rotting piece of toast resembled Jesus in the grave, considering.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
22 September 2005
In our say and age its called dyslexia, or piss-poor typing. In the Victorian age it was known as automatic writing. Perhaps the two things are not exactly the same, but consider the idea behind automatic writing and then consider the way I wrtie a Freakytrigge rpiece.
The spiritualist version of automatic writing involves the medium going into a trance and then chanelling some spirit, via the medium of the the wrist and pen/ Said medium has no idea what they are writing until revivied and – shock – there is a form of communictaion, often incomprehensible there on teh page.
Now consider a standerd FT piece from me. I have an idea, I quickly go straight to blogger and write it up AS IF IN A TRANCE. All the more, I may well be on a brief break at work which can aslo induce a TRANCELIKESTAte in me. Therefore what comes out is often gibberish, poorly spellchecked and punctuated. Actually i am usually correcting as I go, but the magnitude of the errors is such that they rearly all get sifted out. Tehre are meny readers who find this intencsely annoying, to whom I am aopologetic: but hold. Perhaps these are not slips of clumsiness, poor typing and a slipshod attitude.
PERHAPS MY TYPOS ARE THE SPITIR WORLD RTRYING TO BREAK THROUGH. Think upon that…
(This post has not been editied in any way to show exactly how much the spirit world is trying to break free: Paul is ded.)
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
21 September 2005
Yeah, yeah, yeah the wick effect. But really does some slovenly fatso in a terry toweling bathrobe dropping fag ash on himself and then slowly burning for eight hours really match up to the majesty of Spontaneous Human Combustion. Coursnot.
I was first introduced to the mystery of SHC by the Readers Digest Book OF Mysterious Happenings, my teenaged Bible of the Unexplained. They did not couch it in terms that would be consistent with the wick effect. Instead billious, brandied-up bodies, blinded with their bright blaze. The Digest was big on alliteration, but it stuck. All that were left were smoking boots and that nasty smell of charred flesh and hair.
Burning hair stinks.
In the Digest version the blazes were sudden, often at parties where petticoats went up in flames too (petticoats are not wicks). Of course a fotheringaied fire would nearly always be attached to some form of witchcraft, all well and good in my book. Other, fun theories (unlike the boring old wick effect) include thermals rising from the centre of the earth, sunspots and of course demonic possession.
The problem with the wick effect is that it attempts to explain our unexplained phenomenon with no eye for the drama of the situation. Mucky people burning to death whilst on their todd is not Spontaneous Human Combustion the way I know it. Instead it is Home Alone Burning – not unexplained, not interesting.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
20 September 2005
ok i am PSYCHED yet SPOOKED!!
i. afflicted as i still am by CüRSE of CRåZYFRøG ear, i hunted round various “health” shops this mornin for an EAR CANDLE, but to no avail
ii. then i wz havin lunch w.sistrah becky and quizzed her abt ear candles
iii. she wz not sure she had heard of them, and said “is it like a birthday candle you put in yr ear and light? you’d have thought that would ADD to the wax not diminish it”
iv. then talk moved onto other things and i wz telling an important story and she wz gazin listlessly out the window over my shoulder
v. when her EYES went WIDE and she said “oh my god!! look over there – ” at a small chinese medicine shop across the road ” – can you seewhat i see? or is it a trick off the light off that picture?”
vi. it was NOT the light it was THIS ADVERT
vii. so now i know what i will be doing this EVENING!!
viii. and i will blog the lightly charred results on PROVEN BY SCIENCE very soon
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in Blog 7 • No Comments
19 September 2005
PIEDMONT: ITALY A sad looking corpse of a giant pink bunny is found on a mountainside. Authorities are hunting for potentially dangerous giant drunken Jimmy Stewart plundering the Alps somewhere.
Alternatively it could be art.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • 3 Comments
13 September 2005
I don’t mean false memory syndrome as in the therapy definition. A dangerous buzzword: it allows the defense that childhood memories of abuse have been implanted by “predatory” psychologists. Could this happen? Well certainly, and what is more – if you hate your parents, inventing physical abuse where there was only the slow drip drip of psychological loathing is tempting. Nevertheless the invention of false memory syndrome has made a lot of work for “experts”, who play the game well and make proclamations such as a five year-old has no real long term memory. Not to mention work for the “experts” who say the opposite. Everyone is happy.
But this is not about that kind of False Memory, I mean the kind that isn’t a syndrome. The kind that is a memory of doing something, that you know you have not done. Closely related to Deja Vu (though that is a memory of doing something you are doing now) it has very similar psychological explanations. Mainly that the human brain is so gosh darn complex that we get the sensation of remembrance by accident. Well, that is okay for Deja Vu – as the content of the memory is what we are currently experiencing, but how about false memory? How can we remember something without somewhere along the line creating the content of that memory?
Let me give you an example. I have a firm memory of sitting upstairs in The Blue Posts on Newman Street, with Tom, Sinker, Magnus, Carsmile, Alang, Starry and Alix, doing a round-the-table on the top 23 Unexplained Phenomena. I remember vividly what came in at 23 (False Memory). I remember some of the arguments, the jokes regarding how many different types of ghosts were actually allowed (poltergeist yes, kids with sheets over them, no). I remember a particularly virulent argument re the Bermuda Triangle which involved me and Tom singing the song at least once and being given dirty looks by the Polish barmaid when we shouted “WOMAN ARE YOU MAD”. I remember it well.
AND YET NONE OF THIS HAPPENED!!!!
So come psychologists, bear in mind that I could not have dreamt this, as I do not dream. So why do I remember it, to the extent I have a list of the other 22 Unexplained Phenomena written down.
Pete Baran in Blog 7 • No Comments
12 September 2005
it has been proposed by a sarcastic workmate that my recent ear problems were imposed on me by the gods for the CRÅZY HÜBRIS of my FROGLOVE
i say a bing-bing pAH!!
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in Blog 7 • 1 Comment
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