This is the very last blog on Spook, but it's a good one. The grand finale. I'm finishing this book then I'm planning on starting The Time Traveler's Wife because I've kind of wanted to read that since 6th grade. My science teacher had a hardbound copy that sat on the shelf above her desk, and I must have stared at it a lot to still remember it so clearly. The Beaufort Wind Scale must have not totally captivated my attention....
What has been captivating my attention is Spook! It's excellent!! The newest installments (I just plowed right through and finished the last 80 odd pages) are all equally interesting, so I have to just do the highlights if I have any hopes of people reading this post and commenting. Actually, the whole commenting thing is freaking me out a little bit. I don't like it when people read my writing. Should I ever decide to write when I grow up, I will definitely use a pen name. Hmm, now I have to just think of one...
Anyhow, the first interesting tidbit is the theory that certain electromagnetic fields cause hallucinations. This makes me think of Lost, which makes me think of the whispers that they hallucinate on the island which is an electromagnetic anomaly which makes me think that I should consult Lostpedia to see if anyone else has this thought which just revealed to the entire world that I'm a flagrant, dorky Lost fan... These comments are going to kill me...
Wow, am I having trouble concentrating on my topic. This is incredible. Give Athena a couple days off from school and she freaks out. I'm one of those people who needs constant oppression or else I start referring to myself in the third person and chatting away madly about Lost. And don't even get me started on Mad Men, which is pretty much the best show ever.
The whole hallucination-in-electromagnetic-fields thing is interesting, because certain people are more susceptible to them. Meaning that some people sense a weirdness in the atmosphere better than others.... What if that's what a medium is? I've always wondered about extremely detailed scientific explanations. Does the fact that our universe started with the Big Bang signify that there is no God? Because we can explain the behavior of every entity by analyzing the tiniest part of its composition, does that not make its very existence a miracle? Does science explain things and take away the supernatural, or does it simply explain the supernatural? We should think of a new word for things that don't seem to be true. Supernatural is wrong, because what if talking to ghosts is natural...to some who can sense them in electromagnetic fields... Wow, where did Athena, the angry skeptic, go? You gotta love winter break.
My other favorite part of the last section of the book is the idea that the sensing of a ghost is due to infrasound. It's kind of similar to the electromagnetic abnormalities in a way (at least more closely related to that then ectoplasma for an example.) Infrasound is a real phenomenon. It's what whales and elephants use to communicate, and possibly tigers as well! Tigers use it for intimidation because it unsettles you. Ok, so here goes. First of all you have to hear the tiger growl and tell me if you feel something weird.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/145th/fig2.wav
I felt a little clench in my stomach (the infrasound comes after the initial audible roar) but that might have been the chemicals in Diet Coke burning through my stomach (I tried to quit it, I really did...) Then I played it for my brothers since one was incapacitated by a minor elective surgery and the other was incapacitated by Halo 3. The Halo player said he felt something, but he thought if might have been due to the game.
So yea, infrasound is a low frequency sound wave that can pool up in places with little ventilation and thick walls, such as [gasp] an old castle or crypt... Hmm, maybe we have an explanation for ghostly presences. Because infrasound causes you to feel unsettled, get it?
On another vein of thought, the idea sprouted to use high amounts of infrasound as a kind of weapon since:
“In strong doses, infrasound has been alleged to cause all manner of bodily unpleasantness: nausea, salivation, ‘extreme annoyance’, rapid pulse, vibrating visual field, ‘intolerable sensations in the chest’…”
And the list goes on. I have to include one of her jokes, because they're good.
“I used to have a neighbor who shoots high-decibel Eagles songs out his windows, causing nausea and extreme annoyance at a fraction of the cost. I’d have loved to get my hands on a retaliatory blaster.”
So, I HIGHLY recommend this book. It's good. Plain and simple. However, maybe it would be better for summer when you have time on your hands...
Monday, December 29, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Spook by Mary Roach
Another week on the same topic... So sorry about that, but I've really been having trouble reading this book in my spare time. I'm in a state where if I have free time, I want to do something completely mind-numbing and effortless. I've read another chapter though entitled "Can You Hear Me Now?: Telecommunicating with the dead".
My favorite part concerned a Wilson Van Dusen who worked in an institution for the insane, senile, etc. Apparently through interviews with his patients who claimed to hear voices, he determined that these voices came from another world (as in heaven, hell or purgatory). However, through scans of brains during auditory hallucinations, it was determined that the speech part of the brain was activated, meaning these voices are a sort of inner-speech. It's kind of disappointing each time Roach puts forth another theory and then disproves it. They're all so crazy and exciting. The more I read this book, the more I think that nothing interesting ever really happens...
The rest of the chapter focuses on the time when things such as the telephone and telegraph were invented. Roach points out that the belief in mediums was of the same plausibility as the belief in these gadgets at the time. Out of the inventors, however, Edison, Tesla, and Bell all seemed to think that a human spirit would most likely leave the body and not fool around with mediums while the assistant of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Watson was convinced that the dead did communicate to the living. He also thought that he had a halo...Weird...Obviously, he never got anything proven.
It's incredibly interesting though, to think how skeptical people must have been about that new technology. At this day and age, I'm willing to believe basically anything that's invented. We're moving at such a rate of innovation that nothing really seems impossible to a certain degree. Obviously I wouldn't believe a teleportation machine could be made at this time, but in a couple of generations, who am I do say it can't happen? I wonder if our minds are more open nowadays. It seems kind of presumptuous to consider all people before our time incapable of thinking as clearly as us, but all of our strides in humanity must've somehow raised the average intelligence of people, right? Actually, apparently not with our sophomore class...I'm still hanging my head in shame...
My favorite part concerned a Wilson Van Dusen who worked in an institution for the insane, senile, etc. Apparently through interviews with his patients who claimed to hear voices, he determined that these voices came from another world (as in heaven, hell or purgatory). However, through scans of brains during auditory hallucinations, it was determined that the speech part of the brain was activated, meaning these voices are a sort of inner-speech. It's kind of disappointing each time Roach puts forth another theory and then disproves it. They're all so crazy and exciting. The more I read this book, the more I think that nothing interesting ever really happens...
The rest of the chapter focuses on the time when things such as the telephone and telegraph were invented. Roach points out that the belief in mediums was of the same plausibility as the belief in these gadgets at the time. Out of the inventors, however, Edison, Tesla, and Bell all seemed to think that a human spirit would most likely leave the body and not fool around with mediums while the assistant of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Watson was convinced that the dead did communicate to the living. He also thought that he had a halo...Weird...Obviously, he never got anything proven.
It's incredibly interesting though, to think how skeptical people must have been about that new technology. At this day and age, I'm willing to believe basically anything that's invented. We're moving at such a rate of innovation that nothing really seems impossible to a certain degree. Obviously I wouldn't believe a teleportation machine could be made at this time, but in a couple of generations, who am I do say it can't happen? I wonder if our minds are more open nowadays. It seems kind of presumptuous to consider all people before our time incapable of thinking as clearly as us, but all of our strides in humanity must've somehow raised the average intelligence of people, right? Actually, apparently not with our sophomore class...I'm still hanging my head in shame...
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Research Paper
Research Question:
What is more important, the development of critical drugs or animal welfare?
Wohlsen, Marcus. "Animal Rights Protesters Torment Scientists." Hanford Sentinel 7 Jul. 2008: n.p. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3726&artno=0000279901&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Animal%20Rights%20Protesters%20Torment%20Scientists&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y> .
Marcus Wohlsen is an Associated Press writer who attended UC Berkeley which is the institution this article is discussing. This article states that actions taken against professors who do animal experimentation are becoming increasingly radical and dangerous. A website has even been set up which gives names, addresses, and alleged cruelties to animals for the general public to see, but no serious injuries have yet been reported. This article is important to my research because it offers the negative side of protecting animals by systematically terrorizing scholars and attempting to stunt medical research. Many call these protestors terrorists and one professor claims that it is, "the greatest threat to academic freedom that I've seen in the history of this campus." Yet the animal-rights protectors maintain that they are only revealing these researchers for their moral bankruptcy as a duty to society because animals have a right to live.
Rucker, Philip. "Med School Is Asked to Stop Animal Use." Washington Post 2 July 2008: B.1. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3879&artno=0000284810&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Med%20School%20Is%20Asked%20to%20Stop%20Animal%20Use&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y>.
Philip Rucker is a staff writer at The Washington Post and was previously interned at The Washinton Post, at the Times-Picayune, in Corporate Communications at Humana, and in Economic Develpment at Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce as well as being a legal assistant at Russel M. Stookey, P.C. This article discusses the use of live animals for training at the Uniformed Services University. Apparently live ferrets and pigs are killed in a way that "inherently and unavoidably causes pain, distress, and suffering to those animals." This article repeatedly highlights that these actions are not neccessary and avoidable, but it is pointed out that they are not very frequent, only occuring at 8 of the all 154 of these schools in the nation. The dean of medicine points out that thousands of times more pigs are slaughtered on a daily basis in places such as Iowa for food, so the attention that they are getting is diproportianate to the actual cause and unneccessary. Altogether, this article contrasts from the piece in the Hanford Sentinel because it focuses more on the cruelty to animals and does not mention any irrational actions taken by opposers to these actions. It helps back up the pro-animal side of the argument.
What is more important, the development of critical drugs or animal welfare?
Wohlsen, Marcus. "Animal Rights Protesters Torment Scientists." Hanford Sentinel 7 Jul. 2008: n.p. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3726&artno=0000279901&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Animal%20Rights%20Protesters%20Torment%20Scientists&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y> .
Marcus Wohlsen is an Associated Press writer who attended UC Berkeley which is the institution this article is discussing. This article states that actions taken against professors who do animal experimentation are becoming increasingly radical and dangerous. A website has even been set up which gives names, addresses, and alleged cruelties to animals for the general public to see, but no serious injuries have yet been reported. This article is important to my research because it offers the negative side of protecting animals by systematically terrorizing scholars and attempting to stunt medical research. Many call these protestors terrorists and one professor claims that it is, "the greatest threat to academic freedom that I've seen in the history of this campus." Yet the animal-rights protectors maintain that they are only revealing these researchers for their moral bankruptcy as a duty to society because animals have a right to live.
Rucker, Philip. "Med School Is Asked to Stop Animal Use." Washington Post 2 July 2008: B.1. SIRS Researcher. SIRS Knowledge Source. 7 Dec. 2008 <http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SMN0307-0-3879&artno=0000284810&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=&title=Med%20School%20Is%20Asked%20to%20Stop%20Animal%20Use&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=N&ic=Y>.
Philip Rucker is a staff writer at The Washington Post and was previously interned at The Washinton Post, at the Times-Picayune, in Corporate Communications at Humana, and in Economic Develpment at Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce as well as being a legal assistant at Russel M. Stookey, P.C. This article discusses the use of live animals for training at the Uniformed Services University. Apparently live ferrets and pigs are killed in a way that "inherently and unavoidably causes pain, distress, and suffering to those animals." This article repeatedly highlights that these actions are not neccessary and avoidable, but it is pointed out that they are not very frequent, only occuring at 8 of the all 154 of these schools in the nation. The dean of medicine points out that thousands of times more pigs are slaughtered on a daily basis in places such as Iowa for food, so the attention that they are getting is diproportianate to the actual cause and unneccessary. Altogether, this article contrasts from the piece in the Hanford Sentinel because it focuses more on the cruelty to animals and does not mention any irrational actions taken by opposers to these actions. It helps back up the pro-animal side of the argument.
Spook by Mary Roach
More interesting human behavior from this book. Apparently in an experiment people have interpreted white noise as being entire dialogues (which they in turn say is the undead speaking to them through telephones).
First of all, this reminds me of one day in physics class last year when we were listening to sounds of higher and higher frequencies. Eventually, it went so high that it was a faint buzzing in the back of our heads and the teacher asked if we could hear anything still and a couple kids said yes. It turns out it was off and she was just playing a joke on us. People seem to always be eager to hear or to see something because they think they should be able to. Strange...
People are so willing to believe things. What could cause that desire in us to take meaning out of everything we hear or see? I mean, think about it. White noise is interpreted into entire sentences and phrases! Is that too much curiosity or too much imagination inside us? I think it's the former because if we were all incredably imaginative there would be a lot more good books out there... So, is this curiosity a product of our basic animal instincts or a habit that has developed as we've grown into a distinct and strange race of animals?
I personally think a desire to take something meaningless and interpret as something incredibly important must have developed as we've become independant thinkers with a solid base of knowledge to work from. It's a new thing, and it's stupid. It's basically an illustration of how often people start running their mouths on whatever they believe to be true because they want to believe it. It's an annoying and egregious display of ignorance.
Maybe there are new and interesting sounds on tapes left in empty rooms because you aren't there filling the vacuum with your useless chatter? People who think something but aren't sure about it should probably stay quiet until they are sure.
First of all, this reminds me of one day in physics class last year when we were listening to sounds of higher and higher frequencies. Eventually, it went so high that it was a faint buzzing in the back of our heads and the teacher asked if we could hear anything still and a couple kids said yes. It turns out it was off and she was just playing a joke on us. People seem to always be eager to hear or to see something because they think they should be able to. Strange...
People are so willing to believe things. What could cause that desire in us to take meaning out of everything we hear or see? I mean, think about it. White noise is interpreted into entire sentences and phrases! Is that too much curiosity or too much imagination inside us? I think it's the former because if we were all incredably imaginative there would be a lot more good books out there... So, is this curiosity a product of our basic animal instincts or a habit that has developed as we've grown into a distinct and strange race of animals?
I personally think a desire to take something meaningless and interpret as something incredibly important must have developed as we've become independant thinkers with a solid base of knowledge to work from. It's a new thing, and it's stupid. It's basically an illustration of how often people start running their mouths on whatever they believe to be true because they want to believe it. It's an annoying and egregious display of ignorance.
Maybe there are new and interesting sounds on tapes left in empty rooms because you aren't there filling the vacuum with your useless chatter? People who think something but aren't sure about it should probably stay quiet until they are sure.
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