What’s Jesus Spending All That Money On Anway?

I just don’t get it. I’m so…angry? Is angry the word? Maybe. Frustrated is more like it I suppose. My mother stopped by my apartment this morning to drop off some things I left at her house last week. She was on her way to church. She was complaining about how broke she is. My mother is retired and between her rent and her bills, her retirement and Social Security don’t go very far.

She asked me if she could borrow a few bucks until the 21st when her SS check arrives and I gave her what little I could.

On her way out the door she mentioned that she had to remember to “write her check.” I asked her what she was talking about and she said that she had forgotten to write her tithe check for church. I stared at her for a few moments. I asked her why, if she only had thirteen dollars in her checking account and no money coming in for nearly a week and a half, she was writing a check to her church? She replied that, “you have to tithe. You have to give to the Lord.” When I protested (I was gobsmacked, really) that I’m sure Jesus would understand that she was broke she got angry with me and left, adding, “that’s just the way I feel.”

She took the money I gave her when she went. I was so surprised by her determination to give her (wealthy) church more money (that they don’t need as badly as she does) that I didn’t have the chance to ask for it back. Not that I would have. She’s crazy but she’s my mother and as much as I complain about her I love her to pieces. But really now. Does Jesus need her check for thirteen dollars?

Boy, those churches sure got a good racket going on, don’t they?

I’m Having A Nerdgasm

LOL I’m posting this entry from Vim. For those of you who don’t know, Vim is a text editor that has been around for ages and comes standard on most UNIX-based systems. It’s got a learning curve to it but it’s a heck of a lot of fun once you get into it (and it also makes shell scripting a breeze). I’ve used it for a while now (it’s one of the things I missed during my brief flirtation with Windows) but I never realized I could post to my Wordpres blog from it. This makes me happy, especially since I’m almost always working in terminal and it’s a pain in the butt to get out of the terminal and open up a blog client and write my entry and post it and then go back to my quiet little shell.

OK, it’s not THAT much of a pain in the butt but it’s still, like, five extra steps plus using the mouse which I do as little as possible. So I’m pleased. I’m feeling extra geeky tonight.

Testing

Testing blog client software…please ignore. Or not. You can read it if’n you wanna.

Tell Me This Isn’t the Most Awesome Thing You’ve Seen All Day

Super Mario Brothers Theme Played on TESLA COILS

From the link:

“Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved.”

It made my night.

Nanotube Made into World’s Smallest Radio

Nanotubes: is there anything they can’t do? I submit that there is not.

Nanotube Made into World’s Smallest Radio

Finally! Back to the Loving Arms of Linux!

Several months ago, in a fit of MADNESS, I got rid of my adorable little Ubuntu OS and installed Windows XP on my box. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. I was obviously drunk. Tonight I got fed up with the whole thing and formatted it and slapped Ubuntu back on to it.

Oh, yes. I’ve missed you so much, baby. Let’s never fight again.

Blogging the Ghost Hunters: Hour Six

LAST HOUR. Thank you, imaginary baby Jesus.

It appears that the loud banging noise Jason and Grant heard a few minutes ago was one of their stationary cameras falling over or, as Grant put it, “oh man, something took out our camera!” Yes, something. Like the wind. Or a crew member. Or a faulty tripod leg. I’m sure that’s what he meant. Or maybe not. He just offered that, “whatever is on this floor doesn’t want to be caught.” Clearly. How convenient.

I’m worn out, people. I’m on the last leg of our ridiculous journey and running out of steam. I want to take a moment to pimp the Skeptical Analysis of the Paranormal Society (or SAPS) which has some very good takedowns of claims by TAPS. Also, you might want to take a look at The Skeptical Viewer, a Ghost Hunters fan site that takes a hard look at the ‘evidence’ TAPS presents each week. They aren’t completely skeptical so you might want to take some of their articles with a grain of salt but they’re honest about it and they do a good job of debunking TAPS’ claims. They are responsible for the article I linked to earler about TAPS’ doctoring of FLIR footage. They have another pretty good takedown on an episode in which TAPS claimed to have observed a lamp moving on its own.

Back to the body chute where Dave Tango and one of the uppity dowsing ladies are trying to communicate with a…wait for it…shadow. I haven’t seen the wrestler in a while. I’m a little worried about him. This show would have been about a hundred times better if they had made him investigate in his teeny little wrestling bikini.

Commercial break. So what do you all think of the trailer for the new Beowulf movie? Frankly the CG looks amazing and is probably enough to get me into the theater. I just don’t know if I can take that much Angelina Jolie. Woman annoys the shit out of me for some reason. Sweeney Todd on the other hand looks terrific. I am a huge Tim Burton fan. These commercials are so much better than the show, even the one for Value City Furniture. It’s like the show is the commercial and the commercials are the show. When the ads are over I know it’s time to grab a snack and head for the bathroom.

I kind of feel guilty for bitching about how boring this episode is. I mean, they’re finding exactly what I would expect them to find - nothing. But being a live show it’s not like they can manipulate the footage into something more exciting than it actually is. I look for that to happen next week when they present the best of the ‘evidence’ collected tonight. Should be interesting to see what they twist it all into.

Hey! There’s the wrestler. I kind of like him even though he’s wearing jeans over his tiny, shiny panties. At least he’s honest about the fact that he’s a true believer. Apparently he heard the voice of a woman giggling. He thinks it’s a ghost. I think it was one of the crazy dowsing ladies cackling while they beat another Hunt the Hunter contestant into submission.

Something supposedly touched the wrestler. He screamed and took off running, yelping all the way. Terrific. It only took five hours and forty minutes for something to actually happen. So what was it that set him off? He thinks maybe something touched him on the shoulder. Or maybe he heard a noise. He’s about as coherent as Ozzy Osbourne on a coke binge at the moment. Of course, not a damn thing was caught on camera.

Commercial break. Fifteen more minutes people! I made it! I’m not sure I actually accomplished anything but I said I’d do it and I did it, lucky for you.

And we’re back. Jason and Grant are comforting poor, discombobulated Elijah Burke, assuring him that his manliness is still intact. He’s cute. They should give him his own show. He could scream and run from nothing for an hour and then failt to articulate what he was screaming and running from. I’d watch it. As long as he was wearing the panties.

It’s coming to an end finally. So what did we witness tonight? A ball rolling, a few shadows, Steve tripping over a bush and Elijah Burke heading for the hills. That’s it. Six hours. A ball, a shadow, a clumsy investigator and a screaming wrestler. Fabulous. Award winning television. I can see why so many viewers become true believers. Who wouldn’t be convinced by evidence like this?

My brain is mush. Goodnight!

Blogging the Ghost Hunters: Hour Five

Four down, to to go! Yay! The investigation continues and the team begins to break under the strain of looking at nothing all night. Steve and Dave Tango just heard an airplane. Their response? Throw their flashlights toward the sky and exclaim, “airplanes! What is up?” Airplanes are up, you jumpy little woos.

Oops! Something that felt like ‘branches’ just tried to grab Steve’s leg! Even though there is clearly a leafy bit of something in the exact same spot he insists that it couldn’t possibly be that. Oh no. It must have been Timmy! Or maybe the skunk. That skunk gets around.

OH YEAH. Those grabby little ghosts are in for it now! Heather just whipped out the divining rods, baby. Are you impressed with the scientific attempts at debunking? I know I am! Oh my goodness the rods crossed! There must be a ghost nearby! Isn’t this exciting you guys? I mean, the movement of the rods couldn’t possibly be caused by the human hands holding them, right? Five minutes of screen time spent staring at a woman holding a couple of bent coat hangers. Coat hangers that aren’t even moving anymore. Good times, y’all.

Weird. The show just cut back from commercial and obviously they weren’t ready yet. The host was still talking to production and he said “Are we doing what we did in pre-tape?” Production said yes and then they began with a segment where the team comes together and talks about what they’ve just experienced. Wonder what went down during ‘pre-tape’? How much of this was planned and how much wasn’t?

Now they’re bringing in the contestants in the Hunt for a Hunter contest in which the audience will vote to see who will be the new member of the TAPS team. Yeah, that’s a good way to decide who will fit in best with your scientific team of debunkers - let the audience choose. Reality show TV audiences are notoriously good judges of character.

What time is it? Is it two o’clock yet? 1:10!? 1 freakin’ 10!? Time is moving backwards.

I’ve made a decision. If there IS an afterlife and we get to choose what we do with it I am going to make it my mission to follow ghost hunting teams around and fuck with them.

Oh no! My cable system is running a system test! What if I miss something? What if one of the team members sees his own shadow? What if the lady with the divining rods makes one of them move? What if another airplane goes by? What if the ghost skunk decides to ghost spray someone (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease)?

Phew, the test has ended just in time for me to watch another Hunt for the Hunter contestant try to prove he’s just as credulous and prone to imaginative outbursts as the rest of them.

Just out with the dog again and I noticed that one of my neighbors has a sign up that says, “No Treats! Please do not disturb!” and there’s nary a bit of toilet paper or shaving cream to be found. Kids these days. No ambition. In my day that would warrant a good tricking and no bones about it. Amateurs.

Sheesh, divining rod lady and her partner are certainly bitchy with the new contestant. They’re grilling him like a burger on the Fourth of July and acting like regular queens of the castle. You hold coat hangers and talk to nothing, ladies. Calm down.

I’ll give the TAPS team this at least - they aren’t Most Haunted. Have you ever watched Most Haunted? It’s like a loud green headache generator. (See French and Saunders’ parody of the Most Haunted team here on Youtube.)

Hey. Hey. Guess what’s happening now? Jason and Grant are walking down a dark hallway chasing shadows. And they just heard a banging noise. Aren’t you sad you missed this show? Aren’t you glad I’m here to keep you up to date with the latest exciting developments? You probably did something boring like go to a Halloween party or trick-or-treat with your kids or sleep when you could have spent six hours watching plumbers chase shadows. But not me. I watched the whole thing! Who’s the fool now?

Oh.

Blogging the Ghost Hunters: Hour Four

TAPS team member Steve Gonsalves wrote an article for the TAPS site called Guarding Against Skepticism in which he suggests that evidence should be presented to skeptics in a certain manner in order to get them to take it more seriously. The title alone should be enough to give you pause. Guarding Against Skepticism? If your evidence is good enough it should stand on its own. You shouldn’t have to find a way to frame it in order to guard against skeptics.

Anyway, this article annoys me and as there is STILL NOTHING HAPPENING I’m going to take a closer look at it.

The second paragraph begins, ” Be your own skeptic, don’t believe it until you see it.” Already we have a problem. People are very good at misconstruing what they see. The unreliability of eyewitness testimony is well-attested. If science has shown us anything it is that even when we see something with our own eyes we can’t necessarily believe it. We need good, solid evidence to back up what we think we have seen before we can begin to piece together what is going on around us. On a practical, day-to-day level, yes, we must rely on what we see but we’re talking about evidence for extraordinary claims here. It is not enough to rely on your eyes. If you’re trying to “be your own skeptic” you must go much further than this.

[We interrupt this blog post to report that Jason and Grant have picked up a small blob of 'ambient light' on their infrared camera. Maybe it's the ghost skunk. We should definitely trust what these boys say about their FLIR evidence. After all they would never deliberately DOCTOR FLIR FOOTAGE and then try to cover it up, would they? Astonishing! Back to you in the studio, Consuela.]

Gonsalves goes on to talk about the precautions a paranormal investigator must take when looking for photographic evidence of spiritual activity: “When taking pictures, we all know to make sure it’s not raining, no dust in the air, no camera straps, no smoking on the premises and no breathing in cold weather.” Let’s look at these one by one, shall we?

1. Raining. I’ll give him this one. Easy enough to determine if it’s raining and avoid taking pictures of it.

2. No dust in the air. That’s realistic. As we all know, old houses and abandoned buildings tend to be free of dust. Please. Where are these people investigating? Cleanrooms? There’s dust everywhere. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the vast majority of ‘orb’ photos look just like pictures of DUST.

3. No camera straps and no smoking. Two more gimmes. I’m going to assume they are smart enough to keep the strap out of the lens and make sure there’s no smoking going on. I’ve never seen TAPS put forth a picture that is obviously smoke or a camera strap as evidence (but there are plenty of other groups who have - just Google “ghost picture’ and take a look at some of the crap people try to pass off as evidence.)

4. No breathing. Yeah. Good luck with that, Steve.

He goes on to talk about taking control picture during the investigation. “For example, say you are investigating a case where a woman knows where the activity is, and can tell it’s in the same room as her. You take a few pictures in the area she says it is, and also take a few pictures in the same area when she says it’s not there. This way, when you present these pictures as evidence you can say, “When she said the ‘entity’ was present we took these pictures with the fog like mist. When she said the ‘entity’ was gone, we took these control pictures we took came out clear of the fog like mist”. So we have control pictures validating our paranormal pictures.” Yes because no one could possibly fake this sort of evidence. Steve himself admits that even just a puff of breath on a cold night can cause such images to form. Easy to fake. And if he thinks that the presence of someone claiming to be able to detect ‘activity’ and entities makes his claims MORE substantial rather than less he’s really drunk the Kool Aid.

And finally there was this little bit that I thought was quite funny:

“One other thing I want to address is the lingo we use when talking about our research, and more importantly presenting our evidence. Try to stay away from words that may cast a negative shadow on our research. Words such as “ghostbuster”, “ectoplasm” and “psychic”. Not that these things don’t exist, it’s just that these words and words like them reflect negatively on our research…Try to use phrases like mysterious fog, strange mist, or even ectoplasm-like mist instead of ectoplasm.”

Yes, those are much better. I just rolled my eyes so hard I saw through time.

(Am I being mean? I feel like I’m being mean. I think that Steve is a decent guy. He seems quite friendly and thoughtful and well-meaning. That’s why the fact that he is passing off this claptrap as a way to present ‘evidence’ irritates me even more. I hate to see good people with blinders on. Also, I am getting fed up with this show and the way they keep trying to make a big deal out of NOTHING every two seconds.)

Blogging the Ghost Hunters: Hour Three

The team is doing a lot of fishing for EVPs (electronic voice phenomena.) Paranormal investigators claim that EVPs are noises that are inaudible while an investigation is going on but which turn up when the recorders are played back. They believe this is one way spirits attempt to communicate with the living.

There are a lot of ideas put forth by skeptics to explain EVPs - from cross modulation to apophenia to auditory pareidolia. All are good, solid theories that make sense. Our brains are very good at picking patterns out of noise. They are designed to do so. Our ears are also very good at picking up radio signals, even cross-modulated radio signals. It’s called HEARING. You would think that a paranormal investigator who considers himself a ‘debunker’ would abandon such such subjective ‘evidence’ as worthless for determining whether supernatural activity exists. But no. It’s gotta be spirits.

Guys, I gotta tell you. I don’t know if I’m going to make it through all six hours. It’s so BORING. I think I’d rather stare at the wall and think for six hours than sit through this. At least then I might encounter a little common sense. But I said I would persevere and I will. Only three more hours to go. I wonder if I can find a way to work all this into my NaNoWriMo word count?

I think this is as good a time as any to talk about EMF (electromagnetic field) detection as Jason and Grant are talking about its use in pinpointing paranormal activity. One of them mentioned something that, if they were thinking clearly, would show them how useless EMF detection actually is for attempting to substantiate reports of supernatural activity. Apparently, studies have shown that when electromagnetic fields are passed through certain parts of the brain, auditory and visual hallucinations can result as well as feelings of paranoia and the sense of not being alone. (See the section on electromagnetic fields here as well as The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences[PDF], the Induction of an Illusory Shadow Person and the very interesting Wired article This is Your Brain on God.) All of these correspond perfectly with the experiences reported by people who have witnessed so-called spiritual activity.

If this is the case then finding a strange EMF reading in an area where spiritual activity is said to take place shouldn’t be a huge surprise. What is so frustrating is the way that paranormal investigators like the TAPS team, knowing that EMF can occasionally cause disturbances in the brain that cause delusions that mimic supernatural activity, still try to claim it is a good method of finding ‘ghosts’. It makes no freaking sense. If they are detecting anything at all it is merely naturally occurring electromagnetic fields that MIGHT affect individuals sensitive to the fields and cause them to see and hear things that aren’t really there. If anything it DEBUNKS the idea that there is something supernatural afoot. It’s like saying that since people who drop acid sometimes see things that aren’t there that taking LSD is a good way to determine whether spirits are present. So stupid. And yet they love to go on and on about EMF.

Of course, all this presupposes that these aren’t just idiots flapping about using equipment for something it was never meant to be used for to find something that isn’t there. Which is clearly what is really going on.

NEWSFLASH! The ball has not moved in two hours. Just thought you’d like to know.