Stupid People
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omnibrain | October 12, 2009Seriously, a cat named George is a registered hypnotherapist with three professional organizations in Britain. The article not only presents these organizations as full of shit, it highlights the absolute stupidity of almost all applications of hypnosis.
Here's the details:
Chris Jackson, presenter of Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria, registered pet George with three industry bodies.
Each one accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George's credentials.
It follows a similar investigation by an American clinical…
omnibrain | October 2, 2009Seriously... well not about the Zombie thing. Maybe if him and his family weren't such assholes people wouldn't do this kind of thing. Well, maybe people shouldn't do this to begin with. Here's the schtick from ESPN:
In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williams' head, which had been severed and frozen for storage, was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williams' frozen head with a monkey wrench.
Seriously... look what they did to his head!
omnibrain | September 21, 2009
I was reading an article this morning that I found on fark (yeah yeah...) and for once I actually read the comments underneath the main article. I was pretty surprised on the consistency of the attribution errors that the religious folks were making and thought it would be something interesting to share here and get your thoughts.
For the setup here's the (really pretty amazing!) story:
On the hike, Cole started fooling around by walking in the water. It was not incredibly steep, but the water had lots of slippery algae and rocks.
To Johnson, it looked dangerous. She pleaded with her…
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…
omnibrain | December 23, 2007Why Duck and Cover of course! Check out this great video from the cold war:
omnibrain | December 16, 2007I always joke around that I would make the worst therapist since my 'therapy' would consist of something like this:
Surprisingly (well maybe not that surprisingly since the internet appeared) this method seems to be practiced somewhere seriously. The Kadir-Buxton Method involves:
making a fist of both hands, and striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time and pressure with the soft part of the inner hand which is where the thumb joins the hand.
So let me get this straight... I hit someone hard in the head and it cures things like: Manic depression, eating disorders,…
omnibrain | December 10, 2007
Yeah you heard me right... there is no good reason why Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or any of the other tabloid celebs are so paid attention to. They contribute nothing to society - and they aren't even that attractive. Dr Torkel Klingberg and Fiona McNab have come up with a potential explanation as to why these celebrity vampires have come to take over the press - inability to filter out irrelevant stimuli. Basically... the U.S. is undergoing a pervasive bout of ADHD.
Here's some of the study details from BBC news (which of course overblows the significance of this research just like I…
sb admin | December 10, 2007 This will probably never be made into an anti-drug ad campaign, but I can't imagine a stronger deterrent.
Angel's Trumpet is a flower that contains scopolamine and other alkaloids. It's known as a "biogenic drug" and presumed by naive recreational drug users to be harmless because it's a plant. However, it can cause psychosis, delirium, visual hallucinations, agitation, incoherence, aggressive behaviour, memory problems and "convulsive sobbing" as well as somatic symptoms and well, things like this incident.
A case study describes an 18-year-old male with no history of mental disorders who…
omnibrain | November 14, 2007David Ng from The World's Fair has decided to start another meme.... Here's the lowdown:
Anyway, this meme asks that you come up with your own scientific eponym. What's that exactly? Well, first read this excellent primer by Samuel Arbesman, which basically provides a step by step description of how to do this effectively. Then have a go at your own blog. If all goes well, I'd like to create a page at the Science Creative Quarterly, that collects (and links to) the good ones.
So onto the Higgins-Levinthal Dictum:
Also known as "the why fat smoking republicans are responsible for 9/11 number…
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 | September 14, 2007In what sounds like a whole lot of hand waving (but hey! I study vision what do I know!), scientists have 'discovered' that creepy old men running after their daughters friends has led to an increase in life expectancy for human kind. Just think that people like Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, and Michael Jackson have led to your grandma living a much longer life. Ok.. maybe not M.J. since he likes little boys and they don't have babies but Woody Allen - totally!
Basically...
Human ability to scale the so-called "wall of death"--surviving beyond the reproductive years--has…
omnibrain | July 2, 2007There has been a whole lot crap floating around the press in the last couple weeks since the trial started that is seeking to link vaccination with higher incidence of autism. Now a survey funded by one of these anti-vaccination groups is correlating, through a random telephone survey, more mental health issues like ADHD with vaccination. So why do you think this correlation exists? Is there a simple way of simply explaining away this correlation (think less pirates = more global warming).
Here's some of the info from medical news today:
The survey, commissioned by Generation Rescue,…
omnibrain | June 8, 2007I know you probably can't see the image and text very well - so just go ahead and click on the picture for this damn funny parody in full size.
omnibrain | May 31, 2007Heaven forbid animals drink some soda! and then enjoy it! This is probably the least bothersome form of animal testing out there. Trust me... animals looooove sugar!
Here's the snippet from the NYT article:
Under pressure from animal rights advocates, two soft drink giants, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have agreed to stop directly financing research that uses animals to test or develop their products, except where such testing is required by law.
Researchers at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought the assurances after discovering studies financed by the companies that used animals…
omnibrain | April 17, 2007People like Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson feel the need to put themselves in the public eye by espousing ridiculous opinions meant to inflame people and get support for their money making endeavors. I have NO idea where these con artists get the idea that if there weren't violent video games and movies this kind of thing wouldn't happen. Was there anything like modern media around when the largest mass murder in a school happened? The Bath Disaster occurred On May 18, 1927, when
45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew…
omnibrain | April 2, 2007Is this an April Fools Joke?!
Here's a challenge for everyone - see how many you can debunk!
1. Men's brains are larger, but as they age, they also shrink faster than women's brains.
2. Women's brains operate at a higher temperature, due to burning more glucose.
3. Women use more of their brains when they think.
4. In general, men are better at math and women are better at language skills. This is suggested by research on the brain that has found that the "gray matter" in men's brains is more active during thought while the "white matter" in women's brains is more active. Gray matter is the…
omnibrain | March 28, 2007It seems that college dropout of Facebook fame, Mark Zuckererg, may need to go back to college and take some psychology courses to learn something about aging and intelligence.
According to VentureBeat, Zuckerberg told attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford this weekend that old people (you know, over 30), are just well, a little slow.
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and…
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…