dead talkers

I have been talking to the dead for my entire life and after 6 years of research I have perfected a new technique that, under ideal conditions, is more than 73% successful.

My objective is to use this new site to share my technique so that others too may talk to the dead.

More than 73% successful! Woo-hoo!

But the website will make you crazy. Just sayin'.

OK, so I couldn't resist posting about corpses again this weekend. I tried - almost made it - but just couldn't quite. I know, I'm weak.

I wonder, do they make a patch for that? Shots that help you quit?

Jim Downey

(Via MeFi.)

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.

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.

It was a half hour before lunch yesterday. I checked in on my mother-in-law (MIL), who was sitting in the front room, reading. Doing this regularly helps her feel less anxious, gives her a chance to ask questions or if she needs something, since she doesn't always remember that she can just call for me.

"How're you doing?"

"I'd like to get up and look out that window."

This is unusual. "Um, why?"

"Because I want to see what's so interesting out there."

"???"

"There was a man here a few minutes ago, and he was looking out that window at something."

No, there wasn't - we'd been alone since my wife left for her office 90 minutes earlier. "A man?"

"Yes. There was a man there, looking out. He seemed to be very interested in something."

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

I was on-call last night. It's a lot easier to do this now that it's only a couple times a week. My MIL had been restless early on, so I went to check on her about 11:00.

"You OK?"

"Yes. But I need to get up."

"Do you need to use the toilet?"

"No. I need to make room for the other people."

"???"

"All the people who are here. I need to let them use the room."