Michael Prescott's Blog

Atlas briefly shrugged

As a goof, today I contributed a little mini-screenplay for Atlas Shrugged: The Movie to a comments thread on the blog Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature.

The blog admin was kind enough to hoist this thing from comments and make a separate post out of it.

So I thought I'd link to it.

A few explanatory notes. 1) Angelina Jolie, slated to play Dagny in the movie, is pregnant. 2) The movie is expected to run two and a half hours. 3) The movie will be set in the present day, despite the very dated contents of the book. 4) Vadim Perelman has signed on as the director. 5) Spike Lee's movies are always labeled "A Spike Lee Joint."

So there you go.

Having said all that, I should add that it won't be funny unless you're familiar with the book.

And even then, maybe not.

That's cold, baby

Skeptical of global warming? I know I am. And according to a story in Daily Tech, the latest data give additional grounds for doubt.

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Daily Tech also notes,

Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Sounds like it's time to fire up the grill and burn some fossil fuels! You know - to save the planet and all.

Getting a rise out of ectoplasm

In his book After Death -- What? Researches in Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena (1909; Aquarian Press edition 1988), turn-of-the-century scientist Cesare Lombroso recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. One of the most striking chapters is Lombroso's account of "seventeen séances held in Milan in 1892 ... séances in which the most marked precautions were taken, such as searching the medium, changing her garments, binding her and holding her hands and feet, and adjusting the electric light on the table so as to be able to turn it off and on at will." (pp. 40-41)

The subject of these experiments was the controversial Sicilian medium Eusapia Palladino, who was said to be able to levitate tables, make musical instruments play themselves, produce cold winds in a sealed room, and materialize hands and faces. Eusapia was an eccentric character known for her propensity to cheat when she thought she could get away with it, a tendency that discredited her in the eyes of many researchers. (The fact that she was a coarse, uneducated, and flirtatious peasant woman also factored into the disrepute in which she was held in genteel circles.) Nevertheless, when properly controlled and observed, she produced some remarkable phenomena, which are difficult if not impossible to explain by any normal means. Indeed, the premier magician of the day, Howard Thurston, witnessed one of Eusapia's séances and stated publicly that her phenomena could not be duplicated by any trickery known to him.

What follows are a few excerpts from Lombroso's treatment of the Eusapia sittings. It should be noted that the table used in the experiments was not Eusapia's; it was "made expressly for the purpose" by the researchers. (p. 41)

After recounting some partial levitations of the table Lombroso writes:

It was natural to conclude that if the table, in apparent contradiction with the law of gravitation, was able to rise on one side, it would be able to rise completely. In fact, that is what happened, and these levitations are among those of most frequent occurrence in experiments with Eusapia. They were usually produced under the following conditions: The persons seated around a table place their hands on it and form the chain there. Each hand of the medium is held by the adjacent hand of the neighbor on each side; each of her feet is under the foot of her neighbor; these furthermore press against her knees with theirs. As usual, she is seated at one of the short sides (end) of the table, -- the position least favorable for mechanical levitation. After a few minutes the table makes a lateral movement, rises now to the right and now to the left, and finally is lifted wholly off its four feet into the air, horizontally, as if afloat in a liquid, and ordinarily to a height of from 10 to 20 centimetres (sometimes, exceptionally, as high as 60 or 70), then falls back on all four feet at once. Sometimes it stays in the air for several seconds, and even makes fluctuating motions there, during which the position of the feet under it can be thoroughly inspected. During the levitation the right hand of the medium frequently leaves the table with that of her neighbor and remains suspended above it. Throughout the experiment the face of the medium is convulsed, her hands contract, she groans and seems to be suffering.

In order better to observe the matter in hand we gradually retired the experimenters from the table, having noticed that the chain of several persons was not at all necessary, either in this or in other phenomena. In the end we left only a single person besides the medium, and placed on her left. This person rested her feet on the two feet of Eusapia, and one of her hands on the latter's knees. With her other hand she held the left hand of the medium, whose right lay on the table in full view of all, or was even lifted into the air during the levitation.

Inasmuch as the table remained in the air for several seconds, it was possible to secure several photographs of performance. [Two of these are included in the book.]

A little before the levitation it was observed that the folds of the skirt of Eusapia were blown out on the left side so far as to touch the neighboring leg of the table. When one of us endeavored to hinder this contact, the table was unable to rise as before, and was only enabled so to do when the observer purposely allowed to contact to occur. It will be noticed that the hand of the medium was at the same time placed on the upper surface of the table on the same side, so that the leg of the table there was under her influence, as much in the lower portion by means of the skirt as in the superior portion through the avenue of the hand. No verification was made as to the degree of pressure exerted upon the table at that moment by the hand of the medium, nor were we able to find out, owing to the brevity of the levitation, what particular part was in contact with the garment, which seemed to move wholly in a lateral direction and to support the weight of the table.

In order to avoid this contact it was proposed to have the levitation take place while the medium and her coadjutors stood on their feet, but it did not succeed. It was also proposed to place the medium at one of the longer sides of the table. But she opposed this, saying that it was impossible. So we are obliged to declare that we did not succeed in obtaining a complete levitation of the table of all four of its legs absolutely free from any contact whatever, and there is reason to fear that a similar difficulty would have been met in the levitation of the two legs that stood on the side next the medium. [pp. 43-46]

While performing some experiments with a balance, the same "blowing out" of the medium's garment was observed.

In this experiment of the balance, also, it was noticed by some of us that success seemed to depend on contact of the garments of the medium with the floor upon which the balance was directly placed. The truth of this was established by a special experiment on the 9th of October. The medium having been seated on the balance, that one of our number who had taken upon himself to watch her feet soon saw the lower folds of her dress swelling out and projecting in such a way as to hang down from the platform of the balance. As long as the attempt was made to hinder this movement of the dress (which was certainly not produced by the feet of the medium), the levitation did not take place. But as soon as the lower extremity of the dress was allowed to touch the floor, repeated and very evident levitations took place, which were designated in very fine curves on the disk that registered the variations of weight. [pp. 47-48]

The movement of the dress naturally gives rise to suspicion that some sort of fancy footwork was at play. But the researchers swore that Eusapia's feet were not responsible for the movement. If there is any reality to ectoplasm, then it may be the case that some sort of invisible ectoplasmic protuberance was causing the dress to move, and that contact between this ectoplasmic rod and the floor or table was necessary in order to achieve results.

In any case, the preceding observations pale in comparison to a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."

Among the most important and significant of the occurrences we put this levitation. It took place twice, -- that is to say, on the 28th of September and the 3rd of October. The medium, who was seated near one end of the table, was lifted up in her chair bodily, amid groans and lamentations on her part, and placed (still seated) on the table, then returned to the same position as before, with her hands continually held, her movements being accompanied by the persons next her.

On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were held by MM. Richet and Lombroso, she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said, "Now I lift my medium up on the table." After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and M. Richet and I are sure that we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and (M. Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision, while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the positions of the hands.

Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head.

On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances, MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia. [pp. 49-50]

The researchers' impression of being touched by "a hand" during this levitation is particularly interesting, and perhaps adds weight to the hypothesis of ectoplasmic extensions at at work.

Now, I'm well aware that there are ways of tilting a table and making it appear to levitate, though it would seem that the researchers' precautions were sufficient to prevent fraud in these particular tests. But even if Eusapia managed to fool them with regard to the table, how in the world could she simulate the levitation of herself and the chair she was sitting on -- transporting it from the floor to the table itself, and then back again, while closely observed?

My kingdom for a spell-checker

I've often thought it would be handy to have a spell-checker that could correct text in online dialogues, like comments threads and chat rooms. After a little research, I found a good one - and it's free!

The program is ieSpell, which works with Internet Explorer. It can be downloaded here.

Some of the freeware I've tried has been disappointing, but this nifty little program works just fine.

Document dump

A collection of links for weekend reading ...

Long-time reader Bruce Siegel points me to this CNN video about an Ontario, California, infant whose heart stopped for nearly two hours. Miraculously the child has fully recovered. He's too young to talk, but could the last few seconds of the news report indicate he had an NDE?

A couple of people in comment threads have pointed out Greg Taylor's article on the Million Dollar Challenge, which is well worth reading.

Want more criticism of the Challenge? I wrote a four-part series of blog posts on the topic, starting here.

Also in comments, Ross W notes this highly impressive NDE. 

Stupid criminal stories are always fun. Here's a good one. (HT: Ace of Spades.)

I continue to recommend the Physical Mediumship Newsgroup in Spiritualist Chatroom (free registration required) for the latest on l'affaire David Thompson.

Crazy

From comments, an insightful remark by Michael H.

We're all nuts, and don't know it. I think the key is to be crazy enough to know we're crazy. We can start accessing wisdom and genuine reason once we stop telling ourselves we already know everything. In the meantime, it's probably best just to be amused.

I think this applies not just to academic disputes but to politics, personal relations, and life in general.

Who's in crisis?

On a comments thread, Leo mentioned (somewhat off topic, but we'll let that pass) that he'd been engaged in online debate with a skeptic. Among his other arguments, the skeptic had this to say:

Crisis apparitions.. the people are in a crisis. Under great emotional stress people are very likely to have their perceptions altered(the time slowing down effect is a good example, which I believe has been found to be a manipulation of the memory of the event and not the perception of the actual occurrence of the event) and it's not a stretch for them to believe they see loved ones.

This and other pronouncements were presented with an air of authority, an almost condescending weariness at having to explain the patently obvious.

But here's the rub. "Crisis apparitions" are events in which a person sees the apparition of a loved one and later learns that the loved one in question was having a crisis at the time. Usually the loved one was dying at that moment, a fact that the percipient was unaware of.

In other words, the person in crisis is not the percipient, but the person whose apparition is perceived.

Here is a fairly standard crisis apparition case from the 19th century, cited in an article by Scott Rogo:

I sat one evening reading, when on looking up from my book, I distinctly saw a school-friend of mine, to whom I was very much attached, standing near the door I was about to exclaim at the strangeness of her visit when, to my horror, there were no signs of anyone in the room but my mother. I related what I had seen to her, knowing she could not have seen, as she was sitting with her back towards the door, nor did she hear anything unusual, and was greatly amused at my scare, suggesting I had read too much or been dreaming.

A day or so after this strange event, I had news to say my friend was no more. The strange part was that I did not even know she was ill, much less in danger so could not have felt anxious at the time on her account, but may have been thinking of her; that I cannot testify. Her illness was short, and death very unexpected. Her mother told me she spoke of me not long before she died ... She died the same evening and about the same time that I saw her vision, which was the end of October, 1874.

Note that the person relating this story was most definitely not in a crisis. He was sitting and reading a book. The apparition itself scared him, but he was apparently quite relaxed until then. And this case is typical of thousands - literally thousands - that have been collected.

Thus the skeptic's apparently knowledgeable debunking is based on a faulty assumption: "The people [meaning the people who see the apparitions] are in a crisis ... under great emotional stress ... their perceptions altered."

Not so. The people who see the apparitions are not under stress, not in a crisis at all.

Now, anyone who has studied the subject of crisis apparitions must know this. We can conclude, then, that the skeptic has never studied the subject. He knows literally nothing about it. He does not even know what the term "crisis apparition" means.

Yet he is sure he knows it's all bunk. And he is willing to state as much with confidence and conviction.

How much of skepticism fits this description? How much of it is mere bluster by people who have never looked at even one case study of the phenomena they deride?

And why should anyone take them seriously?

Those who don't learn from the past ...

Apropos of my recent post on the connection between social Darwinism and Nazi eugenics programs, here's an opinion piece from the British newspaper The Daily Mail. The title: "Why we should sterilise teenage girls ... temporarily at least."

The idea is that temporary "contraceptive jabs and implants" should be administered to all girls between the ages of 12 and 17. This would put an end to young teenage pregnancies.

Who came up with this alarming notion? A "government minister" by the name of Dawn Primarolo. Accirding to Wiki, she's the Minister of State for Public Health in the current Labour governmemt.

The Daily Mail's columnist, Fay Weldon, sees nothing wrong with Primarolo's idea. Quite the opposite. It's "rather sensible." Quoth Weldon:

We are moving into a science fiction age in which life itself can be created in a test tube, and it seems that, before long, perfect babies could be bred at will, largely free of hereditary disease and illness.

So, in my view, there is little point any more in feeling shock-horror at the idea of mass sterilisation.

Far from "shock-horror," Weldon feels we should view the proposal as the vehicle for a plethora of "social improvements."

Once you stop your under-20s having babies, there's no end to the social improvements you could make.

If girls go on to college instead of minding babies, fewer children overall will be born. The more educated a girl, the fewer babies she is likely to have - education and fertility rates being in inverse proportion.

The maternity services, now so very over-stretched, would be better able to cope. Young mothers would not have the priority they now do when it comes to housing, and accommodation would be set free for those unfortunates clamouring on the waiting lists.

Education would benefit, too. Classrooms would be less plagued by fatherless lads whose ambition it is to cause nothing but trouble.

Why, it'll be a utopia! The sole drawback is "gender unfairness." But that little problem, too, can be solved.

Shouldn't boys under 17 have their tubes tied, too? It takes two to make a baby.

What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Perhaps the Government should start thinking about how that would work.

Seventeen comments have been left by readers. Only one is sharply critical.

If anything contravenes a person's human rights it would be this. It is a shocking proposal and a disgrace.

A couple of others raise questions about the idea. But the majority of comments are strongly positive.

Should be compulsory, for all the reasons given.

I agree, except I would extend the age of sterilisation from 12 to 20+ years.

Brilliant! Someone has FINALLY said what needs to be said.

I love it. Keep them sterile until they marry. No more unmarried trollops with kids by various fathers living off the taxpayer. Better still, keep them sterile until they pass an intelligence test.

Finally! Someone who speaks some common sense!

I think it sounds like a brilliant idea. Saving the girls from themselves. We could use it in Australia. I think it's amazing what science can do and would do a lot of good if it became mandatory for 14-17 year olds. Imagine how many ways it could change society!

It wouldn't exactly hurt the causes of managing our overpopulation and climate change crises, either!

Incidentally, there is no overpopulation crisis in Britain, where the birth rate is barely at replacement levels. But concerns about overpopulation and everybody's favorite bugbear, global warming, are merely a tissue-thin screen masking the real intent behind this proposal. In two of the comments, the actual neo-Hitlerian agenda comes goosestepping into the open:

There is one ethnic minority group who have ALWAYS had children out of wedlock. It's part of their culture. Their men rarely stay around to bring up the children. They have been able to gain access to all our welfare benefits without giving anything back. They will refuse to have this implant for fear of losing their gravy train. We all know who they are, but are afraid to say anything for fear of being called racist. If we could implant them and then all the white Vicky Pollard's, plus any drug addicts, we'd save ourselves an awful lot of money. Then we could start sterilising all the young men these girls associate with.

And:

Please stop the yob culture from reproducing and raising yet more feral animals to blight the UK.

So here we go again. Reread the quotes in my social Darwinism post, and you'll see the same attitudes, the same mindset, the same philosophy at work. Something must be done about the "inferiors" who are reproducing too fast. Their human rights are irrelevant since they are hardly human at all. They're "feral animals." Anyway, the good of society is what counts. If we can build a better species through forced sterilization and test-tube babies, how can we let some outmoded concepts of personal freedom stand in our way? Anyone who objects simply lacks common sense, or the stomach to do what all thinking people agree is plainly necessary.

Besides, what could possibly go wrong?

----

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades, Doubleplusundead)

What's in a name?

Some quick links for those interested in the Shakespeare authorship controversy...

First, check out Mark Anderson's Web site and his blog. (The Web site I knew about; the blog was news to me.)

Want more? Here's the Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook, which includes links to relevant articles and Elizabethan texts. This site is run by Mark Alexander (not Mark Anderson). Jeez, how does anyone tell these two guys apart?

Reincarnation fans, and you know who you are, may also want to look at Alexander's WitNit blog, which discusses (among other things) his possible past lives.

Garden plot

Recently, Michael H. in comments suggested that I look into the ideas of Sydney Banks. I visited Banks's Web site and also checked out a Web video he produced. The video, a self-promotional piece titled "Letter to Oprah," left me distinctly unmoved; it seems to be nothing but an attempt to get the author booked on the popular talk show. Some of the material on the Web site, however, was interesting, so I ordered -- and read -- Banks's book The Enlightened Gardener.

The Enlightened Gardener is a series of conversations between an English gardener and four American psychologists visiting the United Kingdom for a professional conference. The idea is that the psychologists end up learning more from this apparently simple gardener than they do from their credentialed colleagues.

I have to say that some aspects of the book left me cold, especially the repeated device of having the American characters react with amazement to even the most seemingly banal statements made by the gardener. At one point, for instance, the gardener remarks that mind and brain are different -- that the mind has to do with the spirit while the brain has to do with the body. One of the psychologists responds in astonishment that he's never heard an idea like that before. Really? Where has this guy been living? In a cave?

There are a lot of moments like that. I began to feel a certain amount of sympathy with Tom, the most cynical of the psychologists, who is constantly making sarcastic put-downs of the gardener's wisdom (though of course he comes around in the end).

Despite the book's defects, there is something intriguing about The Enlightened Gardener -- a hint of larger and more transformative ideas hidden behind the title character's sometimes trite pronouncements. The book itself alludes to this possibility when one of the characters observes that the gardener's remarks are analogous to shorthand, and that to appreciate the full meaning of his philosophy, one has to look beyond the symbols.

The dominant idea seems to be that thought profoundly affects who we are, how we behave, and how we see the world. Now, this seems like the most obvious truism imaginable, ripe for one of Tom's knee-jerk retorts. But as the book gradually makes clear, what the gardener means by "thought" is not simply the particular thoughts that we happen to hold in our minds at any given time. Instead, he is talking about the process or phenomenon of thought itself.

At one point, there is a brief discussion about emptiness and its relation to being. The gardener compares emptiness to formlessness, while being is form. Form emerges out of formlessness. Similarly, what the gardener calls Universal Thought is formless thought, contentless thought, and it is out of this formless thought that our particular, specific thoughts (or thought-forms) emerge.

To me, this is an intriguing and meaningful idea -- though I grant that it may seem pointless and meaningless to others. It's useful to me if I see my own personal thoughts as arising out of a formless background, somewhat like ripples arising on the surface of a lake or, to take a more "scientific" analogy, like virtual particles emerging from the quantum vacuum. (This is only an analogy; I'm not saying that there is necessarily any connection between thoughts and quantum phenomena.)

Universal Thought is one aspect of the gardener's holy Trinity; the other two aspects are Universal Consciousness and Universal Mind. Clearly, these are three different ways of looking at the same thing. There can be no thought without consciousness, and there can be no consciousness without mind. Again, what's useful is the idea of formless consciousness preceding and giving rise to the form of our particular consciousness; or formless mind preceding and grounding our particular form-specific minds. If we strip away forms and penetrate to formlessness, we encounter "wisdom," or "original thought," "uncontaminated" by the forms we impose. We can then see our particular thoughts, consciousness, and minds as what they are: constructions or fabrications, which may be helpful to us or detrimental, but which are not, in either case, the ultimate or true reality. And once we see them for what they are, we need not be imprisoned by their constraints.

This is, I admit, rather vague, and I'm not sure these revelations would have the life-changing effects that the book seems to grant them. But I think there's something here ... though I could be wrong. The Enlightened Gardener has the strange effect of suggesting the answers to great mysteries but not quite unveiling them. Maybe there are no answers and the whole thing is an exercise in self-delusion. Or maybe there are answers, but, like snowflakes, they melt away when you try to catch them in your hand.

I don't know what to think. And maybe that's the point.