Woo

Offered without further comment . . .

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

. . . because none seems necessary.

Jim Downey

Source at U.N. tells of secret UFO meeting February 12, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me the things that people will do to themselves in the quest for kicks or 'enlightenment'. Like this:

Diary Entry: 03-22-00

This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull. I read that this increased one's consciousness permanently. I read about the supposed de-conditioning properties. I read about more parts of the brain working simultaneously as there would be more blood up there to help this happen. The arguments for it all seemed to be quite lengthy, quite detailed, thought out and researched, and very intelligent. The arguments against it were based solely on the opinion that it is 'crazy' and talk like, "What's more conscious than conscious?". I heard from an acquaintance on telephone that she was glad she had done it, felt more mental energy, and had days of brilliance. I came to believe that the key to a permanent consciousness increase was a hole in the skull, to restore the full brain pulsation of infancy.

I like a good ghost story as much as the next guy. Always have. Have even had some fun with such at the expense of friends.

But there is a difference between enjoying and believing.

This past week the San Fransisco Chronicle had a piece about a para-normal conference held in the city titled "Investigations of Consciousness and the Unseen World: Proof of an Afterlife." From the article:

These academics take their paranormal work seriously; they also risk ridicule on campus and struggle to find sources of funding to investigate what happens after we die. One of the issues they face is whether an afterlife is provable by scientific method. Some, like Julie Beischel, who co-founded Arizona's Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential, think it is.

Did you know that dead ants, when ground up, will serve as an "aphrodisiac, a kidney purifier and general cure-all"? But not just any dead ants - only special ants being sold by the Yilishen Tianxi Group of China. Of course.

But here's the twist - this scam wasn't foisted off on the Woo-cure-seeking public in China. Nope, it was foisted off on ignorant farmers and former peasants as a get-rich-quick scheme. See, these suckers were sold "ant farms" and told that they would recoup a 30% on their investment in a matter of weeks. Here's the story from the LA Times (bugmenot to get around their stupid registration):

The boxes at the heart of the ant farming business are made of cardboard with a 2-inch-square plastic window and a small feeding hole framed so badly with duct tape that they look like the work of a careless teenager with a box cutter.

Am I a bad person because I laughed and laughed and laughed at this item from the BBC, via ectoplasmosis?

Thieves cut off man's 'holy leg'

Police in southern India are hunting for two men who attacked a Hindu holy man, cut off his right leg and then made off with it.

The 80-year-old holy man, Yanadi Kondaiah, claimed to have healing powers in the leg.

* * *

Police say the reason for the attack could be because Mr Kondaiah told too many people of the alleged magical powers of his right leg.

"This might have motivated some people to take away his leg hoping to benefit from it," a police spokesman said.

Yes, I am a bad person. Because I find it funnier than hell. Remember, all you Woo-merchants, be careful what you claim.

Jim Downey

I suffer from a mild form of bipolar disorder, as I have written about previously. Looking back, it started in adolescence, though I didn't understand what was going on until my mid-20s. It is mild, though, and I have never suffered either a hypomanic or major depressive episode (though I have had some very dark periods), and have been able to control the disorder with minimal impact on my life. In this sense, I guess you can say that I am a little bit crazy - nothing major, nothing which requires hospitalization or heavy pharmaceuticals, nothing which puts my life at risk. I'm just a little bit crazy.

*As in Bad Science, Ben Goldacre's brilliant blog and column in The Guardian. If you're not familiar with his writing, you should be. And you should certainly take the time to read his recent post about homeopathic medicine. An excerpt:

And there is the rub. Because Winterson tries to tell us - like every other homeopathy fan - that for some mystical reason, which is never made entirely clear, the healing powers of homeopathic pills are special, and so their benefits cannot be tested like every other pill. This has become so deeply embedded in our culture, by an industry eager to obscure our very understanding of evidence, that even some doctors now believe it.

Enough is enough. Evidence-based medicine is beautiful, elegant, clever and, most of all, important. It is how we know what will kill or cure you. These are biblical themes, and it is ridiculous that what I am going to explain to you now is not taught in schools.

So. Would you be at all surprised to find out that over the last 50 years your tax dollars have gone to support such things as remote viewing, spoon bending, even attempts to walk through walls or kill with a thought?

Probably not, if you've been paying attention to what your government has been up to, and the strangeness that surrounds any authoritarian organization such as the US military and (so-called) intelligence agencies. But to see it all nicely wrapped up in three one-hour long programs for the UK Channel 4 is something else altogether. From the Google video site hosting the programs:

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s Crazy Rulers of the World explores the apparent madness at the heart ... all » of US military intelligence.

Ah, so a has-been pop musician from the 60's is going to open up a new "meditation-based college" and solve all his country's problems. From the AP story:

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Donovan, famous for '60s pop hits such as "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Mellow Yellow," has announced plans to open the Invincible Donovan University, where students will adhere to the principles of transcendental meditation.

"I know it sounds like an airy-fairy hippie dream to go on about '60s peace and love," said the 61-year-old singer, who was born Donovan Leitch in the Maryhill area of Glasgow. "But the world is ready for this now, it is clear this is the time."

Um, sure, Donovan - there hasn't been anyone else who has done something like this. Go for it, buddy.

According to the news report, he's hooked up with David Lynch to build this school. Why?

I know it's Halloween, but this one is just silly as hell.

A civil engineer from Boston named Christopher Ogden had his dad take a picture of him in a high-contrast outdoor setting with a low-power CMOS-based camera phone. A typical camera phone, in other words. The resulting image seems to show a second, eerily spooky man in the light and shadow areas of the tree trunk behind Ogden.

This is not the surprising part, or the silly part. Low-resolution digital images often include artifacts due to the poor quality of the lenses on a camera phone, and also due to the low-power-consumption CMOS technology that enables a digital camera to be shoehorned into a tiny little cell phone. Whereas your typical "real" digital cameras allow a great deal of control over such things as exposure and focus at the moment the picture is taken, camera phones usually only have one control: "take a picture".

In other words, there's a hell of a lot more to quality digital imaging than simply increasing the number of megapixels in the camera's image sensor. Camera phones take muddy, distorted, pixelated pictures full of odd digital artifacts. That, my civil engineering friend Christian Ogden, is what we like to call a "fact".

The other not-silly part of this story is the fact that humans are pattern-seeking animals. We see human faces and figures everywhere - in tortillas, on plate glass windows, or in the pattern of a water stain seeping from the wall of an underpass. So, again this isn't so surprising.

What is silly is the engineer's assertion that digital cameras have the ability to capture images of supernatural things.

[link] "I’ve never really believed in apparitions," Ogden said. "I believe in an afterlife and all that, but I've heard a lot of stories about similar things occurring with digital cameras' spectral system picking up what the typical eye can’t see."

Ah. I see. Well, I suppose that as long as he's not one of those nasty, dirty, stinking, immoral, uppity atheists, then we should believe him. I mean after all, he's a civil engineer. Why, that's practically almost a real scientist!

Personally, I prefer this ghost.

(*with apologies to Steely Dan)

So, a couple days ago, I was hitting some of my usual haunts, and on MeFi came across a link to something truly amazing: the most advanced personal energy system available today!

Personal energy system? Huh? Some kind of new sports drink? Maybe a reworked diet fad? Or a new way to charge your, uh, personal massagers?

Nope. They're talking Sympathetic Resonance Technology! Wow! Even the name is impressively scientifical! What is Sympathetic Resonance Technology? I'm glad you asked:

The Q-Link’s fundamental technology can be understood by imagining a tuning fork that vibrates at a certain pitch. Similarly, the Q-Link’s Sympathetic Resonant Technology™ (SRT™) is tuned to optimize the human energy system through resonance. As it interacts with your biofield, it leads to a rebalancing and restoration according to your individual needs.

"Uncle" Leonard has lived on my mother in law's street for more than 40 years. My mother and father-in-law have known him for 30 of those years, and my wife, Mrs. Inscrutable, has known him since she was a little girl. She always called him "Uncle Leonard" or "Uncle Len". I met Len when I married into the family and immediately liked the old coot.

Len is 80 years old and strong as an ox. His eyes are clear, his brain works great, and he's deeply intelligent with a childlike sense of humor that infuses all that he says and does. He knows everything that is to know about big and small game hunting here in Arizona. He's our "hunting buddy", and we go hunting with him 3 or 4 times a year at least - more if we can get the time off. Working for 40 years of his early life as an electrical engineer erecting power poles and stringing high-power electrical lines through some of the most desolate desert and high-country wilderness in the state of Arizona means that he also knows every trail, track, and road. In many cases he created the trail or road when he and his crew were wiring-up the state in the 40's and 50's.

He is a crack shot. I have seen him take down two javelina from more than 400 yards, one right after the other, with perfect behind-the-ear shots. This is in the desert, and a javelina is about the size of a medium-sized dog - and they are sand-colored. It wasn't luck - he shoots like this *every time*.

My point is that Uncle Leonard isn't a wild-eyed, deluded fruit-loop new agey weirdo. He's one of the most down-to-earth, hard-nosed materialists I've ever met.

However, he dowses for water. Successfully.

More after the fold...