CNN’s “expert” advice on ghost hunting

It is available here.

I will go through the main points and translate them into normalspeak.

First tip:

“Nighttime is good for ghost-hunting because the absence of noise, people, and other distractions of the day helps your sixth sense stay in tune with your environment.”

-Garrett Moffett, tour guide and author

If you are reading this, your ancestors were good at Hearing Things Go Bump In The Night. Earlier in human history, it was better in terms of survival and reproduction that someone be more sensitive to sensory input than to be indifferent. Those hominids were better at hunting prey and escaping predators, and they were able to pass on their genes more successfully than others. There was no evolutionary consequence for overreacting to a faint noise or something in one’s peripheral vision, but failing to react to such stimuli could have life or death consequences. Because our species has lived for so long as basically nomadic hunters and gatherers in the wild, there is an asymmetry in our psychological evolution where instant fear pays off in the historically wider sense where critical inquiry does not.

Scientology

I haven’t really gone after Scientologists here yet, so I better get started. Luckily, they recently supplied us all with some ammunition.

Start at 2:40

Scientists Mess With Memories Again

A while back, I wrote about scientists creating false memories in humans via digitally altered video. Just a few days ago a similar report came out dealing with fruit flies, except it was using lasers and genetic engineering. Now scientists are experimenting on the memories of mice.

Unlike the fruit flies experiment, the triggered memories are actually real ones. But it similarly uses genetic engineering in order to fine-tune the details. The main finding here, as far as I can tell with my semi-retarded understanding, is that only a small number of neurons in the brains of the subjects needed to be activated in order to trigger the memory. Here is what I believe the lead author of the paper in question looks like:

Stupid theme park management is stupid, even by those standards

I think I’ve been somehow sent back in time to the 12th century, except it’s in a different possible past since this one appears to have things like working computers which erroneously report the current year as 2009. It can’t possibly be 2009, because of this:

“SPOOKED bosses at a theme park have suspended six members of staff and called in an exorcist after a late night seance on their top horror ride sparked a string of ghostly happenings.”

It’s like a Monty Python skit. OH NO YOU EVIL ONES HAVE SUMMONED SPIRITS ONTO THIS PLACE, BEGONE YE, THOU ART BANISHED WITHOUT PAY. QUICKLY, FETCH THE EXORCIST SO THAT WE MIGHT ONCE AGAIN KNOW PEACE.

‘Uncanny Valley’ for monkeys

So there’s this psychological phenomenon called the uncanny valley. The valley refers to a dip in our approval of simulated human forms when it starts to approach very closely to actual humans while still being distinguishable. We like Homer Simpson as he is – safely confined in two dimensions, his skin a completely uniform yellow, his big goofy eyes, exactly three hairs sticking out of his head in a way that never happens with actual bald people, four fingers, et cetera. But when he looks like this

… we get a queasy reaction.

The AAI / Maher / Dawkins controversy recap

OK, I’m going to try to summarize all this crap at once.

It all started last year when Bill Maher did his Religulous movie. Besides the boring autobiographical stuff and the stupid ending, it was pretty funny.

Then, a few months ago, the Atheist Alliance International decided to give Maher the Richard Dawkins Award, which they give out at their annual convention. People who pay attention to people like Maher here in the States got all up in arms about it because one of the criterion for the award is to promote science. Bill Maher’s an alternative medicine kook who’s against vaccines and doesn’t believe in the germ theory of disease. Here is a good summary of the problems with giving this award to Bill Maher. And just as a side note, what’s kind of weird about this is that nobody seemed to have a problem with giving Penn this same award while he was denying anthropogenic global warming, but whatever.

Capitalism: A Love Story

OK, when I first heard the title of this movie, I thought Moore was going to try to restore Marx and talk about how misunderstood he is by today’s society. Of course I figured it would mostly be about the bailouts and the fatcat bankers and all that stuff, too. But the “love story” bit sounded, at least to me, like there would be some mention of Marx.

Anyway, the reason I thought about Marx was because although he hated capitalism for all the reasons which are pretty well understood, he also kind of loved it at the same time. In only a few decades, the Industrial Revolution had driven advances in technology the net effect of which had been rarely, if ever,  seen in human history. So for Marx – at least as I read him – capitalism was this necessary transitional stage which served the purpose of getting us the tools we need to form a more just and equitable society. That’s kind of an important part of his theory of history which is often overlooked. Marx is probably one of the most misunderstood philosophers ever, except maybe for Nietzsche.

What Do You See?

Here: