(Inspired by Billy Cox's There Is No Elephant In This Room over at the Herald Tribune and Terry Bisson's They're Made Out of Meat).

I went back to the psychiatric hospital today, to see Shermie, Dawkie, Frenchie, Wisie and all the other guys.

As soon as they saw me they said, “Where’ve you been hiding yourself?”

“Hiding myself?” I said, “I’ve been outside.”

To a man they all burst out laughing.

“What’s the joke?” I asked.

They give me that warm, friendly, amused, slightly disapproving but above all very knowing look of theirs.

“What?” I spluttered, but they just kept looking at me.

“Okay, humour me and pretend I don’t know what you mean…” I said.

“’Outside’,” they said, “You know full well there’s no such thing.”

“There isn’t…? Then, where’ve I been all this time?”

They give a weary collective sigh. “You’ve been hiding of course. It’s what you do - you pretend. You pretend there’s an outside, hide, then hope we won’t realise.”

“An’ have you ever checked to see whether I’m hiding?”

“Two things - first: there IS no outside, therefore you HAVE to’ve been hiding; second: searching for you’d only pander to your delusions.”

“…but haven’t I offered to prove to you loads of times there’s an outside by letting you watch me leave?”

“Yes, and several times we’ve offered to test your alleged ability to LEAVE but you’ve always refused to submit to SCIENTIFIC testing.”

“Ye’, but that’s only because the only way I know of getting out of here’s via the front door whereas your idea of scientifically testing me’s to lock me in a safe in the basement wrapped in hundreds of chains and padlocks because - or so you claim - if I really CAN leave this place then I should be able to LEAVE under what you insist on calling ‘scientifically controlled conditions’; an’ all I keep on sayin’ is since I’ve only ever claimed to be able to leave by the front door, why can’t I just be allowed to LEAVE by the front door?”

“WHAT front door!!!???”

“Okay, OKAY, sorry, SORRY, I guess I’m making you tetchy now…you probably need your afternoon nap…”

“Our WHAT?”

“Your nap – don’t all the inmates of this place have to take an afternoon nap?”

They burst out laughing, pounding down their fists on their thighs so hard I feared they might break their legs.

“You’re nothing if not consistent,” they said, flicking away tears from their eyes.

“Okay,” I said, “It’s been nice seeing you guys, again. I guess I’m jus’ go’n’o go now…”

“’Outside’, of course?”

“Er, well, ye’ - where else…?”

“Well off you go, then, playing your little hiding away game…with all the other ‘visitors’ from ‘outside’ who’re either really just fellow patients or complete figments of your imagination nobody else can see…”

“Oh, before I finally leave the high security area, is there anything you’d like me to pass on to any of your personal psychiatrists on my way out?”

Well that was it - they now doubled up and began stamping on the floor so hard I genuinely thought some of them’d be sick from an inability to stop laughing.

“Oh, dear, you’re a natural comedian if nothing else, but this’s the one area where your little ‘routine’ needs seriously reworking: you see, according to the ‘logic’ of your psychotic narrative there’re 'other' parties ‘out there’ who’re not only smarter than us, and know more than us, but who supposedly hold us in subservience to them in some way; yet to anyone with even the teensiest scrap of intelligence – or, indeed, sanity – it’s perfectly obvious it is US who’re the epitome of all intelligence in the world, US who’re the ones who REALLY know what’s actually going on, and therefore US who hold everyone else in subservience to US.”

I was actually almost tempted to try reasoning with them again, to try explaining to them one final time that until they came out of their delusional state of psychotic omniscience they’d never even get the chance to so much as leave their ward, never mind go 'outside', but since they seemed so happy and content ensconced in their comfortable little dream world where they were the lords and masters of all they surveyed, who was I to try to force them to wake up.

Over at scientificblogging, Camillo Di Cicco has put up The Medium Religion, a piece about philosopher Boris Groys' contention, 'the revival of extremist religion worldwide, in the face of a secular and skeptical world, depends on the broadcast of video and distribution of data, particularly through the Internet.'

Di Cicco finally sums up Groys' position, 'In older times, religious rituals were practiced "in isolated sacred places. Today, "ritual, repetition and reproduction have become the fate of the entire culture. Everything reproduces itself -- capital, commodities, technology and art."

'Video recordings, digital images transmitted to countless many, are attempts to generate belief and passion, and function in some ways like "a Byzantine icon," says Groys.

'"The digital file functions as an angel - an invisible messenger transmitting a divine command."'

Setting aside the issue so does the latest Coco Pops advert, I can only respond, uh-oh!

I don't know whether Groys's of the same mentality, but many Dawkinians seem to be of the growing persuasion such a possibility justifies the outlawing of 'destructive' memes, though one guy's 'destructive meme''s another guy's 'life enhancing inspiration': for instance, how many people REALLY believe - as Richard Dawkins seems to assert - Mozart would've composed better music if he'd've been inspired by Darwin and Natural Selection rather than God and Religion?

To me that's as silly as saying because I'm madly in love with my girlfriend, everybody else ought to be too!

It wouldn't really matter if these sorts of ideas were left at the academic level, but China and Google give a hint just how things could develop if our governments were to go down that 'saving us from ourselves' route.

For instance, would Dawkins REALLY approve if, in the spirit of egalitarianism, governments decided Evolution was a dangerous meme because it could be taken as implying some people were better than other people?

To get some idea where that kind of thinking could really lead think of Pol Pot being in control of the entire web.

This is a response to thefloppy1's observation, "the root of religions are fine, it's the greed, ego and power crazed idiots that run it that are dangerous."

I pretty much agree, 'floppy', though that whole thing about religions being the root of all evil's probably the greatest red herring of 'em all.

The real problem, or so I maintain, is we as a species have minds dangerously prone to becoming inflamed by concepts/ideas/ideologies/'all encompassing undeniable higher truths'.

If we take a shine to an idea - e.g., black holes or/and dark matter/energy - suddenly we start seeing the bleedin' things everywhere: any day now someone's go'n'o win the Nobel Prize for 'discovering' our bumholes're really black holes, their contents, dark matter.

Similarly, if we take a deep downer on an idea - such as communists or witches - then suddenly we start seeing them everywhere - hence the persistence of phrases like 'witch hunt' and 'reds under the bed'.

Now we have Dawkins supposedly intending to arrest the Pope - that guy's's obsessed with religion as any of the religious maniacs he wants to save the world from.

Such people always remind me of the guys asked by their wives, "Why did you hit me?" to which they indignantly respond, "You MADE me hit you!" as if they're the victims, and'd merely been defending themselves.

Then again that was Pol Pot's justification for exterminating Buddhist monks, people who wore glasses to read books instead of take his word for it, basically anyone who might disagree with him about anything.

It's not like, say, soccer, where it's an incontrovertible scientific FACT Liverpool Football Club's immeasurably superior to Man U!

Congratulations to the Amazing Randi on his admission he's gay, though I'm in agreement with him over his resentment of the term.

I only hope some of his sceptical chums don't turn out to be closet homophobes, and I certainly hope some of those who consider themselves in fundamental disagreement with him over his position on matters paranormal don't reveal themselves to be homophobic either.

My one quibble with him, though, is how someone who's long seen and experienced the world from a different point of view to what's still considered the norm - heterosexuality - can't conceive there're people out there who also genuinely perceive and experience the world differently from the norm: psychics, mystics, call them what you will.

Right up to the present day there're people who still think homosexuals should be electroshocked, lobotomised, brainwashed, physically beaten into submission - whatever it takes - in order to save them from themselves; yet there're also people out there who view psychics as similarly mentally ill and openly call for the same sort of treatment to be prescribed for them.

Similarly, just as many homosexuals over the ages've been forced into shady activities over the ages to get by or even survive, so've many psychics - but that doesn't mean all homosexuals're bad people, so why does it seem to be taken by some as proof all psychics're woo-woo merchants, shysters, crooks?

Some people'll tell you homosexuality is merely an affectation of young people, an indulgence for effect, a device merely to shock, something they hope they'll ultimately grow out of - but during the documentary about the Girl With the X-ray Eyes, one of her sceptical detractors said the same thing about her.

Others'll tell you even if it's true homosexuals can't help themselves, they still should be marginalised and kept out of sight, not celebrated on shows like Will & Grace - but this is exactly the same thing many of the sceptics're trying to do to the psychics!

All I'm saying is, isn't it possible that just as homosexuals have their own unique non-heterosexual way of perceiving and interacting with the world, isn't possible exactly the same's true of so-called psychics, (a term, by the way, "I use...because it’s recognized and accepted")?

This is was inspired by Jenny Randles’ Ufology in 2020: Does ufology have a future? over at the Fortean Times.

What intrigues me’s NOT what the UFO/paranormal fraternity/sorority gets up to over the next ten years but what their nemeses the so-called sceptics’re go’n’o get up to.

We've very recently had the case of one bunch of scientists forming a committee to reach over the heads of less powerful, less media sussed, less influential colleagues who differ with them to declare to the general public the notion a giant meteorite killed off the dinosaurs is now an ESTABLISHED scientific 'fact'.

Before that we had the big Darwin versus Everything Else push which started last year, culminating in the BBC’s Darwinius Masillae fossil documentary selling the idea everything the God of the Natural Selectionists’d ever claimed had been scientifically proven by someone suddenly fortuitously realising Darwinius was actually the missing link – and this in spite of the scientists who claimed and continue to claim it's not even a precursor to the ape lineage.

We’ve also had the recent outbreak of younger scientists and their mentors claiming Science’s become akin to a feudalistic medieval court in which their superior or even breakthrough research’s being excluded from being published or even merely referenced in order to advantage the more mediocre less important work of high ranking establishment scientists who’ve built reputations based on past glories to establish strangleholds on media access, or the work of more middle ranking scientists who understand quality of work’s less important than knowing how to maximise the advantages of the networking system and arse kiss your way up the pecking order.

But you see what I’m getting at here? A clear party politics style pattern of let’s use our more powerful and greater influential media connections to cut out or discredit those who disagree with or oppose us, with the ultimate purpose of establishing us as the sole arbiters of what’ll constitute acceptable scientific ‘truth’.

So when I read Richard Wiseman on Alex Tsakiris’ Skeptiko describing the gradual emergence of new paranormal paradigms as “jumping from one ship to another. It used to be card guessing, dream telepathy, and there’s Ganzfeld, there’s remote viewing. The reason those jumps have occurred is this stuff does not replicate…I think the healthier attitude would be to say, “Hold on a second. How can we stop this? How can we stop this happening in the future so that in the next ten years we’re not in the same position again and we can reach some kind of closure?”” I find myself wondering whether such sentiments coming from such a media savvy self promoter professional sceptic as Richard Wiseman means the next phase of the big Darwin push’ll be an attempt to establish with the likes of such media powers as the BBC the idea of a specific time limit within which the paranormal field, (UFOs, ghosts, Bigfoot, ESP, etc)’ll be required to deliver EXTRAORDINARY definitive proof of itself, after which it’ll be come taken as established scientific fact as PROVEN untrue.

In short, the next ten years might see a push in the media to deliberately marginalise UFOs et al. out of existence, and if it succeeds these may be looked on as halcyon days.

alanborky

Over at the Times Online Eureka Zone blog, guest poster Martin Robbins has put up his piece The Homeopaths Strike Back which, far from being a pro or even neutral piece on the subject of homeopathy is an out an out hatchet job. It'd've been more honest if he'd crowingly titled it The Homeopaths Strike Out.

Setting aside the issue of his flippance over the homeopaths' own differences in opinion over the number of shakes required, (which might be a clue to the effect detected by Madeleine Ennis, namely the more shakes the greater the quantum entanglement), I'd like to turn the whole thing on its head and make another point.

Why do various scientists - and countless hordes of Science's camp followers - expend so much time and energy going after those interested in various paranormal and New Age subjects?

It can't be because they're convinced if only they tell adherents of such subjects how it's all a load of nonsense somehow that'll make them go, "Oh, no! Really? Why didn't somebody tell me before now? God, I've wasted so much of my life! I feel such an idiot..." because they've been saying it for centuries and the penny still hasn't dropped.

In fact, if anything, scientifically discredited phenomena like the stones dropping out of the sky reported by ignorant peasants, mega waves reported by yarn spinning old sea dogs, red and green flashes of light above thunder storms reported by aeroplane pilots with brains pickled by alcohol, not to mention showers of fish, ball lightning, continents that fit into each other, etc., have all been subsequently embraced.

Is it then because their scientific creativity's abandoned them, or they can't get a grant to pursue the research they really want to do?

Is it because they think everybody but them's idiots and they must keep repeating their message until they finally get it into our thick skulls?

I don't know.

What I DO know is I'd love to be able to snap my fingers and make the source of all this 'scientific' obsessiveness - homeopathy, astrology, religion, Bigfoot, alien abduction, UFOs, Nessie, ghosts, New Agery in general, etc. - vanish off the face of the earth.

Because then I could do a Felix the Cat and roll about the floor in side-splitting laughter as all The Professor types turned on each other in the scientific blood bath that'd inevitably result the moment that happened.

Look at what's going on over Global Warming - that's only a pale shadow of the innumerable internecine controversies bubbling under the surface of ALL the sciences.

Look at the recent big propaganda push to re-establish the idea the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant meteorite - maybe they were. But that wasn't Science - that was one set of scientists going over the head of another set of scientists disagreeing with them to make sure the unwashed masses unquestioningly believe THEIR assertions, not unlike a larger, richer, more powerful, influential, and media astute political party using all their resources to knock out a smaller potential political competitor before they can gain more ground.

And the laugh of it's just like people no longer unquestioningly trust their political leaders, the more scientists descend into the gutter of politics and media manipulation, the more people distrust scientists.

In short, for all some scientists and supposedly scientific types mock and even attack the likes of homeopathy, they NEED New Age and paranormal subjects as buffers to prevent them from turning on each other, because far from scientists being the noble detached objective placidly contemplative aloof selfless types some imagine, they're as nutty, cracked, obsessive, greedy, selfish, self-concerned, petty, ambition, image conscious and downright deceptive as all the rest of us.

This was inspired by Michael Hanlon's blog The Mystery of the Silent Aliens on New Scientist's CultureLab.

I wonder when members of stone age level tribes living deep in the Amazon rain forest report seeing mysterious aerial craft - planes? - or beings somehow LIKE tribesmen yet also NOT like tribesmen - helicopter crews? - passing overhead through holes in the jungle canopy, do the other tribal members laugh at them and say, "If there really were such things then why haven't those who use them visited our tribal wise men or at least acknowledged our tribe's existence?"

If they do, then I wonder what answer we'd give them if we were to one day suddenly pop up in their midst:

Because we didn’t want to culture shock you?

Because until now you had nothing we wanted?

Because we didn’t want to get dragged into your endless tribal wars over issues and beliefs which to us’re so piddlin' you seem practically insane?

Because we didn’t want to be bothered by tribal potentates endlessly jockeying for position and seeking preference with OUR kind through offers of unlimited prestige, status and influence among YOUR kind?

Because we didn’t want to be bothered by wizards offering us the opportunity to magically transform mountains of our supposedly precious materials and indispensable goods into even greater mountains of your supposedly precious materials and indispensable goods?

Because we didn’t want to be offered our pick of tribal members for the purpose of initiating any sexual activity we liked, in return for allowing every sordid detail of the whole thing to be luridly embellished before being repeated up and down the jungle ad nauseam by the drums of the jungle telegraph?

Because we didn’t want various tribes and tribal federations imagining they had a privileged relationship with us, only to become mortally offended, paranoid and finally downright hostile if we happened to open lines of communications with other tribes and tribal federations without their express permission or supervision?

Because we didn't want many of those who'd inevitably take an initial shine to us turning us into idols they could make offerings to or threaten in return for favours we couldn't in all conscience grant?

Because we didn't want many of those who'd inevitably be initially suspicious of our intentions gradually becoming more and more confirmed in their prejudices until, thanks to our complete failure to make any kind of ingratiating overtures, they finally denounced us as demons?

Then again, maybe we'd just keep on doing what we do now, coming and going as we please and just generally ignoring the locals until chance forces us into what's for them strange and confusing encounters, but for us opportunities to screen for suitably discrete individuals capable of acting as our eyes and ears in return for thrilling secrets and the odd exhilarating joyride.

As one who believes we should proceed AS IF climate warming IS proven - if only because sooner or later it's likely to become true - I deplore those who're hostile to the so-called deniers but have nothing critical to say about the compilers of various reports who lazily cobbled together any old material and came up with outrageously exaggerated scenarios to clinch them receiving unquestionable authority, simply because with all the hysteria they were generating they thought they'd already won the argument.

An approach and attitude which's appalling for two reasons:

1) in their arrogant assumption they didn't need to - or, even, SHOULDN'T HAVE TO - explain or answer to anyone, they risked the complete loss of credibility for global warming as even a possibility, (and already a number of honest scientists've admitted Science as whole's been brought into disrepute by their antics);

2) but for being challenged by the so-called deniers none of their errors would've come out, in which case when the same people who compiled the sloppy reports rushed - "Doing NOTHING is NOT an option!" style - to devise and carry out their 'solutions' for Warming we'd've probably ended up with a cackhanded outcome far more catastrophic than when the Mars Cimate Orbiter was lost due to the conflict between one part of its program handling everything in feet and inches, while another part carried out all its calculations in metric.

If the situation's as critical as some suppose, then we need cool-headed precision and accuracy, not the hot-headed wild-assed shots in the dark approach of people who'd be called cowboys if they approached fixing your roof in the same manner.