Parapsychology
omnibrain | May 2, 2011When everyone thought extrasensory perception had disappeared into the same embarrassing past as phrenology it came back with a vengeance. In a recent article by Daryl Bem titled Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect evidence was presented that some have found very hard to ignore. Others have completely trashed the experimental methods and statistics (obviously... it IS science after all). There are a number of available pdf's of both the article and the commentary floating around the internet if you do a google search.…
omnibrain | November 30, 2010Unless dogs only have telepathy for knowing where not to pee in the house I don't know why anyone would assume they had it at all. Anyway, check this out from weirdexperiments.com:
Just found this picture from around 1920. In this telepathy experiment between human and dog Karl Krall (on the right) tried to detect the thinking radiation he assumed to flow between the two. Krall was a rich dealer in diamonds who had founded his very own institute for paraphysical research in Munich. He had also taken care of the famous horse Clever Hans (who performed arithmetic in Berlin in 1904) after his…
omnibrain | January 25, 2008Via Modern Mechanix:
Reading Thoughts by Radio
Can thoughts be read by radio? "Madam Radora" seems to prove that they can. Madam is not a human being, but a life-size automaton shown at the Permanent Radio Fair in New York. Her "thoughts" and movements are controlled entirely by wireless; no wires of any kind are attached to the table whereon she rests, and a liberal reward is promised the person who can prove that this is not true. Persons desiring to ask questions simply stand before "Madam Radora" with their hands resting on a special pedestal carrying a number of electrical contacts.…
omnibrain | January 8, 2008Unsurprisingly the James Randi Educational Foundation has had a problem giving away their million dollar prize to someone who could demonstrate scientifically under controlled circumstances that they could perform some sort of paranormal ability. They aren't even that specific on what kind of paranormal ability it has to be. It could be ESP, telekinesis, talking to ghosts, oh hell even showing the existence of a ghost - no talking needed. Many have stepped up, usually confused individuals, but none have been able to claim the prize. For some strange reason no big name has stepped up to…
omnibrain | January 4, 2008The mind is a complicated and a still very much unknown entity. The earliest conceptions of the mind didn't even have it placed in the brain, instead it was very much separate from the body. This is of course all very silly, the only possibility is that the mind wholly and completely resides in the neural system and that system is responsible for every aspect of the mind, from perception, to language, and even for experiencing the presence of a higher power.
With all of these misperceptions of the mind it isn't surprising that people could think that this soul of ours could interact with…
sb admin | October 31, 2007Another in the hilarious vintage BBC Look Around You series, this is 4 - Ghosts. Bwa-ha-ha.
sb admin | October 29, 2007
You lol'ed at science education spoof Look Around You: Brain, and now for Halloween here's Look Around You: Ghosts. In this nine minute pseudoscience mockumentary you'll learn things like, "Ectoplasm is perfectly safe to eat, and tastes like pig's milk." Spooky!
sb admin | October 26, 2007In time for Halloween:
Trailer for Central State: Asylum for the Insane. A filmmaker prowls a closed mental institution to "...uncover the mysteries left behind when the facilities closed in 1994." There's lots of shaky handheld camerawork in poorly lit tunnels, and shakier rumours of ghosts, but no exploration into the disappearance of former patients. Homelessness and prisons, that's scary, not the supposed ghosts that a supposed psychic says are "like a tornado" in the building.
What's actually "menacing and still threatening" is not an old hospital but the stigma attached to mental…
omnibrain | July 6, 2007Well I guess Boeing does a lot of government research so it really isn't surprising that they would be involved with some of the really stupid things the military has been involved in. Thankfully their research didn't focus on flying their planes psychically (well that we know of). From Danger Room, a Wired Blog:
Boeing researchers don't just spend their days designing killer drones and networked tanks. They also investigate unexplained powers of the mind, sometimes. Especially if those times are the late '60s.
This study, New Correlation Between a Human Subject and a Quantum Mechanical…
omnibrain | May 29, 2007Growing up I used to read Omni magazine and would always see all sorts of devices that supposedly could induce lucid dreams or tapes that had subliminal messages recorded along with Bach to create special brain states where you'd be particularly receptive to messages like - "you will be psychic... you can lift objects with your mind...you will be rich and successful... you will quit smoking crack...etc etc etc" Let me tell you - I'm not psychic or rich! Although...I never did take up smoking crack so maybe the tapes did work! I eventually forgot about these tapes and devices for many years…
omnibrain | April 17, 2007Dr. Janet Hall of Melbourne Australia has found a number of new ways to use hypnosis to 'cure' her patients phobias. These phobias are completely new to me ;)
She said one Indian woman with a sperm phobia overcame her fear in three sessions and was now pregnant.
Another woman used the therapy to successfully overcome the fear that her husband was going to be "swallowed up" during sex.
I wonder if hypnosis can cure my fear of pseudoscience?
link
omnibrain | March 23, 2007I found this entertaining snipit on some random website. I never realized that Tony Robbins (whose whole sctick revolves around firewalking) was such a fraud. It seems that you can delete a single memory (this time without that crazy drug) by visualizing it, making it black and white and then 'sending' it away from you.
Here check it out:
With this exercise you can actually 'delete' anything at all. I learned this memory-delete exercise from Tony Robbins, and it's based on the mental visualization principles from Neuro Linguistic Programming. Here's what you do.
1. Make a picture in your…
omnibrain | February 11, 2007It's the end of an era (and also a lot of embarrassment for Princeton and scientists in general) for the Princeton Parapsychology lab.
From the NYT on Friday:
Over almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events.
But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its…
omnibrain | February 7, 2007Direct from the Horses Mouth:
NEURO-KINETIK NEURO-KINETIK NEURO-KINETIK NEURO-KINETIK NEURO-KINETIK
Parapsychology/"psychic research" is presently not having sufficient number of man hours devoted to it. Yet, this field of endeavor can be a significant part of mainstream science. Via a conceptual overlap in subject matter, even laboratories connected with experimental psychology, physical anthropology, etc. could (via the enabling technology of brain imaging) locate the neuroanatomical basis for the generation or reception of parapsychological/psychical energies.
The main obstacle to…
omnibrain | January 19, 2007More psychic pets! Wooo... aren't you excited? I uhh... am?
by Craig Hamilton-Parker
Does your pet read your mind, see into the future, know the time or can find you wherever you are? Professional TV psychic, Craig Hamilton-Parker, believes many pets have psychic powers. Here he reveals the evidence and has designed some simple experiments to test your pet's paranormal potential.
Hmm... It's almost like he's one of those people who calls himself by his own name... weird. But not quite as weird as
the whole pet psychic idea to begin with.
Scientific research is slowly beginning to…
omnibrain | January 17, 2007It looks like there are a couple of interesting articles/TV shows out there in the last couple days highlighting some Omni Brain topics of the last few weeks.
You know how I love the mind control people, It looks like the Washington Post has a great article on it...
Mind Games
New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.
And of course you all remember the severed dogs head! National Geographic is producing a show about the Russian research that came up…
omnibrain | January 12, 2007For those of you who don't know, James Randi setup a million dollar prize for a psychic to prove that they are truly psychic. Here are the details:
Currently, claiming the money takes a few steps: An initiate first has to submit a notarized application, agree with the foundation on a test protocol, then pass a preliminary test administered by independent local investigators. Should the would-be psychic pass the first test, under the agreed-upon rules, all that remains is to repeat his or her success in front of Randi -- then, poof, a psychic millionaire is born.
No one has won the prize yet…