Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Moist

The very wonderful Language Log web site has a great (and rather long) analysis of words that many people dislike. The word they especially focus on is moist.

Apparently a LOT of people, especially women, really hate the word moist. I don’t know that I HATE it, but I have to admit that it sort of gives me the creeps. I think I associate it with an unwholesome kind of dampness — like something that would appear in an H.P. Lovecraft story. Damp is just sort of wet. But moist is possibly putrid, a little sticky, like…rotting flesh.

Good lord — I guess I really do hate the word moist. Why else would such repulsive images come to mind?

Other words I dislike:

Like many people, I dislike the word “panties”. As one person quoted in the Language Log pointed out, it sounds sort of “pedophile-ish”.

I also dislike the word “coupon”. My mother (I think) used to pronounce it “cue-pon” and that drove me crazy so that may have something to do with it. Plus, it sounds vaguely effeminate — in a bad way.

The word “puffy” annoys me.

“Tissue”. I know the Kleenex people are thrilled about this, but I can’t bear to call that sort of product anything BUT “Kleenex”. “Tissue” is a sissy-word if it’s used to describe anything but a part of your body.

I’m sure more will come to mind later but its late now and I should go to bed. What words do YOU hate?

Death By Mosquito — One Way Or Another

The Economics of Mosquitoes – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
I grew up in Minnesota. The state motto is “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” which meant that there was never a shortage of mosquitoes. When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to go in the backyard in the summer because the mosquitoes were so bad. At some point along the line, the government started spending money on mosquito abatement in the Twin Cities, the mosquito problem died down, and our backyard was reclaimed. Minnesota mosquitoes didn’t carry diseases, so they were merely an inconvenience. In areas with malaria, however, mosquitoes are far more than an annoyance.

He wasn’t allowed to go in the backyard?!? Man! Talk about over-protective parents! That’s craziness.

I grew up in Minnesota, too. We had woods on one side of us and a big swamp on another side and do you think we had mosquitoes?

Oh yeah. We had mosquitoes.

And we had mosquito bites. Lots of them. But, you know, after a while you didn’t notice the bites so much. Either that or after the first month or so of summer the mosquitoes could sense that we’d already been bit so many times that we were pretty much tapped out as far as good blood went. The mosquitoes were treating us like good farmers treat their milk cows. Letting us recover a bit between assaults.

In retrospect, far more worrisome than the mosquito bites are the chemicals they used to spray on our swamp to kill the bugs. I remember it well — lovely summer days back in the mid 1960s — and the really cool helicopter would come by and spray stuff all over the swamp. Sometimes the mist — whatever it was — would waft on over to where we were playing. But, hey! We weren’t worried! It was the 1960s! More chemicals for a better tomorrow!

Perhaps even more alarming, some of those chemicals MUST have found their way into the ground water and, like everyone in that part of Minnesota, we got our drinking water from a well.

MmmmMM!

God only knows what was in that stuff.

Demagogues

The Dividing Line on Illegal Immigrants – washingtonpost.com
Connolly, who is seeking a second term as chairman Nov. 6, said during a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors. “We’re not going to demagogue. We’re not going to essentially roll back the welcome mat. . . . That’s not why I ran for office and that isn’t who we are, and we’re not going to do that.” (…)

Baise, who has taken an understated approach to the issue in his own campaign, defended Stewart.

“I don’t think Corey Stewart is demagoguing the issue,” he said. “Corey Stewart is trying to act responsibly and trying to figure out what is the situation in Prince William County.”

You’ve really got to wonder whether these guys actually even know what the word demagogue means. The last time I checked, demagogue was still a noun.

The Secret

I got The Secret [1, 2] from Netflix today. Not to worry, friends, I knew it was crap. I just wanted to see it for myself. I’m watching it right now — as I write this!

According to The Secret, what you think about is what becomes reality. It’s the Law of Attraction.

So, how come the head of Bob Proctor, Philosopher, hasn’t yet exploded?

I understand about the time delay. I’ve been really thinking about it and wanting it for a while though, so I think the very least I should be seeing by now is at least a partial explosion. Maybe an eye.

But nothing.

Disturbingly enough, there are aspects of The Secret that are a lot like Scientology. They even have something very much like the tone scale.

I think The Secret must be working for the creators of this book and movie, at least. I imagine it went something like this: they imagined a long line of thousands of pathetic shmucks anxious to hand over their hard-earned money for a bunch of saccharine platitudes and wishful thinking. And hey! Presto! There they are — lining up to buy into this idiotic (and, frankly, offensive) bullshit.

Yeah, just want it bad enough and it’ll be yours. Those people in Darfur — they’re just such negative thinkers. That’s their problem.

Spinning Dancer Illusion

Look at the animation below. Do you see the dancer spinning clockwise or counterclockwise?

This thing has been all over the internet the past couple of days — usually with the explanation that the direction you see her spinning is an indication of whether you’re “left-brained” or “right-brained” and what that supposedly says about your personality. Well, I kinda figured that whole personality thing was probably bullshit, so I went looking for the REAL explanation for why different people see the dancer spinning in different directions.

NeuroLogica Blog » Left Brain – Right brain and the Spinning Girl
The spinning girl is a form of the more general spinning silhouette illusion. The image is not objectively “spinning” in one direction or the other. It is a two-dimensional image that is simply shifting back and forth. But our brains did not evolve to interpret two-dimensional representations of the world but the actual three-dimensional world. So our visual processing assumes we are looking at a 3-D image and is uses clues to interpret it as such. Or, without adequate clues it may just arbitrarily decide a best fit – spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. And once this fit is chosen, the illusion is complete – we see a 3-D spinning image.

Whether you see it spinning clockwise or counterclockwise is determined by how your visual cortex processes information and it’s got nothing to do with your personality. It is a very cool illusion, though.

If you were wondering, I first see it as spinning clockwise but if I watch it for a while, it will sometimes seem to change directions.

Whoever made this did a really nice job on it, by the way.

Adorable Cat Photo Number 6,832,749

An Example of “Cold Reading”

In a post earlier this week I mentioned a story the Washington Post ran about a woman who believes she contacted the spirit of her dead son through a psychic medium. Although a lot of people followed up (on the Post’s web site) with supportive comments, about a third of the commenters tried, as I did, to explain to the woman how psychics use cold reading to persuade people they know more than they really do. Basically, what it amounts to is that the psychic throws out a lot of general guesses and the client fills in the details themselves — giving personal meaning to what’s really vague. The client tends to remember the “hits” and forget the “misses”. It’s only human nature.

Anyway, the woman who believed the psychic had connected with her dead son, did eventually provide a more detailed account of her experience. It really is an excellent example of cold reading and it will be interesting, I think, to break it down bit by bit to examine exactly what’s happening here.

On Faith: Guest Voices: Now I Know the Dead Stay With Us
Right off the bat (with Justin’s friend and me sitting there waiting and silent) Glenn [the psychic medium] told us two people were there. He said one of them was a gentleman, and he had a lot to say. He said the other one was an older woman, who looked to be grandmotherly aged. He said she was there to cross the gentleman over, and also to give me toughness and strength. Glenn said her birthday was April.

Gigi — the woman seeing the psychic — is middle-aged. EVERY middle-aged person has lost an older woman and a “gentleman”. The psychic may have been fishing for a dead mother and a recently deceased husband since that would have been the most likely scenario for a woman her age. It’s a VERY general statement on the part of the psychic. Look at how GiGi provides her own meaning, though.

All of a sudden, I nearly fell out of my chair. I realized that had to be my maternal grandmother, who passed away at 74 when I was 18, whose birthday was in April.

It could have been anyone. The April birthday — well, doesn’t everyone have at least one dead female relative who was born in April? If Gigi hadn’t been able to think of anyone herself, the psychic would probably have suggested that it was a relative or old family friend who’s birthday she simply didn’t know.

I hadn’t thought of her a lot since her death. But now I remembered how she had always been incredibly strong and self-assertive—both as a young widow and then a bereaved mother– and also, now I realized—SHE SUFFERED THE SAME TRAGEDY AS I HAD!! SHE HAD LOST HER YOUNGEST, MOST GIFTED CHILD WHEN THAT CHILD WAS THE SAME AGE AS JUSTIN…my mother.

If I were the client, I would have filled in my own meaning here — and it would have been just as applicable to my own personal situation as Gigi’s was for her. For me, I would have assumed it was my paternal grandmother. I didn’t know her birthdate so… it could have been April.

So OF COURSE she’d show up with Justin.

Notice how Gigi has once again supplied meaning to the psychic’s extremely general statement? Wouldn’t someone who was really in communication with the dead have been able to simply TELL Gigi that it was her grandmother and her son? No — he comes out with the most likely scenario given the client’s age and sex and the client herself provides the details. She’s on the hook now — all the psychic has to do is reel her in.

She more than anyone understands my pain! I had never thought of that before, and here Glenn was telling me, “Here she is, here for you.” I also then realized that it was probably SHE who has turned me so toward my granddaughters for strength. She once turned to ME, her grandchild, when HER youngest, closest child died…and she’s been influencing me to do the same.

Now the client is really rolling. She’s imbued the psychic’s general guess with TONS of meaning. Meaning SHE provided — not him. But in her recollection of the experience, she will attribute all of this to the psychic.

Then Glenn turned to the young man and said (not knowing he was my son) that this is someone I’ve spent many lifetimes with.

Here’s another perfect example of the client providing the meaningful details. You’ll notice that the psychic never said it was a “young man”. That’s just what Gigi wants to believe. At this point, the psychic may very well still think he’s dealing with a dead spouse situation. The “many lifetimes” thing fits more with that assumption. And, of course, anyone who’s visiting a psychic is going to be a lot more likely to believe in the whole “many lifetimes” thing, too.

I realize that sounds very vague, but I was completely bowled over, because I’ve always called Justin my “soulmate child”. Always, since he was little, and I dearly love my other two sons, but I never felt that way about them.

Again, a very general statement that could have applied to pretty much anyone but Gigi fills in the meaning that makes it relevant to her. If it were me, I might have assumed it was my father.

Then Glenn went on to reveal things about Justin that only Justin could have told him:

Uh huh…sure…

that he’d cut his life short,

That would apply to ANYONE who’s died. People don’t generally visit psychics to get in touch with people who have died of old age.

that he was a daredevil (Glenn used that word); that this gentleman had sometimes done things that other people don’t dare do;

A guess — if someone’s died prematurely, it’s quite possible they were in an accident of some kind. It happens to fit Gigi’s personal situation, so she latches onto it as a “hit”.

and he saw this gentleman taking bows and holding “Emmy awards”.

A total miss — but for some reason Gigi counts it as a “hit”. Maybe it fits with her aspirations for her son.

He saw this guy surrounded by animals. He saw him working with animals.

Lots of people like animals. But what’s with the “working with animals”? What happened to the Emmy awards? The psychic is really fishing here and it’s another miss — the dead guy didn’t “work with animals”. But notice how the client again supplies her own meaning to very general statements. She even finds a way of making the misses fit into what she wants to hear!

Justin and I always shared an intense love of animals.

Her and about 2/3 of the rest of the population of the United States. This is an easy one for the psychic. Most people have had a pet at one time or another in their lives.

Glenn started seeing other people coming forth. He saw my passed away Uncle Don, who died 20 years ago. Glenn saw “A tall, thin guy with big ears, smoking a lot of cigarettes.”

No!! That’s not your Uncle Don! That my grandpa Roy!! See? If you really want to, you can usually think of someone who will fit these kinds of descriptions.

Glenn had my uncle totally down pat, right down to his big ears. And I haven’t even thought of this uncle in decades, much less written of him or talked about him.

And I’ve never written or recently spoken about my grandfather, either. He died when I was two years old. But from the pictures I’ve seen of him, Glenn’s description was dead on. Amazing! Not.

Glenn saw my mother, and called her “a fly on the wall.” Glenn had no idea that my mother died when I was six;

He didn’t need to know. Once you’ve hit middle age, chances are pretty good that one or both of your parents have died. What I want to know is did Glenn say he saw her mother? Or did he say something like, “I see a woman” — and Gigi just supplied the meaning (that it was her mother) herself?

he had no idea that I’ve felt her hovering presence as my guardian angel all my life since I was a child; so it was very, very apt that he saw her as a fly on the wall. That’s exactly what she’s always been to me.

If you’re visiting a psychic, he already knows that you believe the spirits of the dead can communicate with the living. His “fly on the wall” comment just affirms something he already knows you must believe.

Glenn saw something else that blew my mind, that didn’t make it onto his tape, because the tape was only 60 minutes, and he stayed for over an hour, and this was at the end. He saw a dog with Justin. I said, “Of course. That’s Chipper. He died three years ago. He was our dog.”

Classic example of client supplying information for the psychic. Who doesn’t have a dead pet dog in their history?

Glenn said, “Yes, I see a German Shepherd.”

Pay close attention here. This is A MISS. He doesn’t correct the client when she says it’s their pet dog Chipper. The psychic has it WRONG.

And I replied, “No. It can’t be a Shepherd. Chippy was a full-blooded Yellow Lab.” And Glenn insisted, “Nope. This is a German Shepherd. I’m looking at a German Shepherd.”

He can’t back down now. He’s already said it’s a German Shepherd. He knows the client will find some way of making what he says true.

He kept this up for a full minute or two, with me shaking my head, confused, until all of a sudden it hit me, just like a ton of bricks: 17 years ago, when Justin was 10, we adopted a German Shepherd from the aminal shelter. We only had him for a short while, a few months, because he up and disappeared. Justin had been crushed by this. I hadn’t thought of this dog in many years, and neither had Justin. And now here’s Glenn telling me, this Shepherd is sitting right next to Justin.

See? She had to think hard, but eventually she found a way of making it true. And notice how she’s still assuming it’s Justin — even though the psychic has never said a single thing that would make that indisputable. If I were the client, I’d say it’s the German Shepherd dog that supposedly “saved my mother’s life” when she was a child. She told me about it several times. So… it only makes sense that my maternal grandfather would be appearing near that dog. Right?

I said, “Well, where’s Chippy?” And Glenn said Justin said Chippy stays with my mother. That made perfect sense to me, because in life, sometimes Chippy had stayed with my aunt, who’s my mother’s living sister.

The psychic could have said pretty much anything at this point and the client would have found a way to make it fit her circumstances. What I want to know is… why has the psychic still not specifically said it’s Justin — her SON — who he’s seeing?

Glenn also said Justin was talking about a little girl,

I bet that’s not at all what Glenn said. I bet he said something like “the gentleman” is talking about a little girl. It’s Gigi — not Glenn — who is providing the meaning here.

who looks a lot like him, whose name is unusual. Glenn showed me with his hands exactly how high Justin was saying she is. This could only be my almost 4-year old granddaughter, Liya, whose name is not spelled the usual way, Leah. And out of my 4 granddaughters, she looks the most like Justin. She lives in Buffalo. 8 hours from New York. Now you tell me how Glenn could have come up with THAT one on his own.

Sigh… HE DIDN’T. Glenn made a very general statement that might have applied to anyone and Gigi provided the meaning. If Glenn had said the very same thing to anyone else, it’s very likely they too might have been able to think of someone in their lives it would apply to. If it were me, I’d guess “the gentleman” (my father) was talking about one of my nieces — one of whom has a name with an unusual spelling. Keep in mind that unusual name spellings are pretty common these days.

I’VE SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST:

Oh, I bet. This is really just kind of sad.

When he was alive, Justin would visit his friend a lot (the one at the session with Glenn and me). This friend is very cordial, and he always had a beer out for Justin. Justin would always take it, and he’d say “Put it on my tab.”

A pretty common thing to say, actually.

Sure enough, halfway through Glenn said the young man

When did “the gentleman” become “the young man”? I’m guessing that, if indeed the psychic did start referring to him as “the young man”, it was after Gigi let slip in some way that she was looking for contact with a young person.

“Hi buddy” to his friend, and then he said “I’d like a beer. Where’s my beer.” The friend brought a beer over,

They drink beer in the spirit world? Cool.

and Glenn then said: “He says put it on my tab.”

Lucky guess. But, again, something that LOTS AND LOTS of people say. So, not all that remarkable. And, if that hadn’t been something her son used to say, Gigi wouldn’t have thought a thing of it. She’d already decided the psychic was communicating with her son.

Gore Wins Nobel

Gore, U.N. Body Win Nobel Peace Prize – washingtonpost.com
The Norwegian Nobel Committee characterized Gore as “the single individual who has done most” to convince world governments and leaders that climate change is real, is caused by human activity and poses a grave threat. Gore has focused on the issue through books, promotional events and his Academy Award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Some say Gore has overstated the urgency of the global warming situation. The way I see it, even if that’s true — and I have no reason to believe it is — when you take into account how slow people are to get off their butts and actually do something, it really IS a crisis. By the time the skeptics finally get it through their thick skulls that, gee, maybe this really is a big deal, it could be too late to do anything about it. That’s why it’s so important to start NOW.

Our president — known throughout the world to be pretty much a complete idiot — seems to think we shouldn’t do anything until ALL the other big polluters also agree to make big changes. Hello?? We’re not talking about bedtime for eight-year-olds here! Even if the United States is the only country to make changes, it will still make a positive difference in the health of our planet. And once we’ve implemented changes, we could serve as an example of how to do it.

God, how I hate George Bush.

Sorry… just had to say that.

Anyway, congratulations to Al Gore and the scientists of the IPCC.

I so want Al Gore to be our next president. Maybe he’s too good for it, though. Kind of like Jimmy Carter was.

Thou Art That

I wrote this several months ago and never posted it because I thought I might add to it. I guess that’s not going to happen and, now that I read it with fresh eyes, it’s probably fine just as it is. If I’m recalling correctly, the quote that follows comes from Joseph Campbell’s Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor.

If you choose to have a God who is not comparable to any other God, then you must affirm and, as it were, stick with that God. When the God opens to transcendence, so does the believer. When the God closes, so does the believer. But then you may be face to face with something you cannot handle. The best thing one can do with the Bible is to read it spiritually rather than historically. Read the Bible in your own way, and take the message because it says something special to each reader, based on his or her own experience. The gift of God comes in your own terms. God, pure and in Himself, is too much. Carl Jung said, “Religion is a system to defend us against the experience of God.” It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is.

The one basic reality recognized by all people everywhere and at all times is that there is life and there is death and that life comes from death. Ancient people sacrificed animals (and, at times, humans) to bring renewed life to themselves, to their crops, to their livestock, and to all their various efforts. In Christianity, we have the idea of a different sort of sacrife — the sacrifice once and for all of the most perfect specimen, a God and also a man. The Eucharist is a ritualized participation in this sacrifice. This is the body. This is the blood. And by consuming these, you will come to new life. You don’t need to believe in magic to experience the Eucharist as a very powerful ritual. You only need to be in tune with that fundamental fact of living on the earth: there’s life and there’s death and life comes from death.

It’s shocking to a lot of people when I call myself a Christian and yet also say that it doesn’t matter whether Jesus was a real person and it doesn’t matter whether he actually rose from the dead. The story of Jesus is a metaphor for the universal experience of life arising from death.

Hustling The Bereaved

On Faith: Guest Voices: Now I Know the Dead Stay With Us
Justin’s friend and I went online to locate reputable mediums. We learned of Bob Olson, a private investigator who exposes the phonies and recommends the trustworthy. Through Bob, we discovered a very well-regarded medium in New York.

I’m so very sorry for Ms Bloom’s loss and it’s good that she’s past the desire to commit suicide.

There is, however, NO compelling evidence that people who’ve died continue to exist as conscious “spirits” of any sort. All the laws of physics tell us that it simply cannot happen. Unfortunately, once a person’s dead, they’re gone for good. We can remember the person, though — and the good that they’ve done for others does change the world in a positive way. Not only that, the matter that made up a person’s body will eventually break down and recombine with other elements to form new life! That’s all we can be sure of — and, really, isn’t that enough? I think it is.

As for the vultures calling themselves “psychic mediums” who prey on the grief of people like Ms Bloom… They sicken and anger me. I suppose some of them really do believe they’re channeling communications from beyond the grave but it’s just as likely they know exactly what they’re doing and are just in it for the money. (And there’s certainly plenty to be made. Grieving people are easy marks.)

For people who are interested in learning how “psychics” use the “cold reading” technique to persuade people they’re in contact with the dead, I’d recommend Joe Nickell’s article John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved.