You’re probably aware that Google has just launched their ‘predictive’ search engine Google Instant – a web version of the kind of ‘pre’ search which has already made its way into many desktop and phone apps. It’s actually pretty impressive. Not really the kind of news I care about airing here on The Cow, but the reason I bring it up is as a result of this quote, made by Google VP (the usually sensible) Marissa Mayer at the press launch in San Francisco: ((She also used the vacuous phrase ‘It’s a quantum leap forward…’))
We are actually predicting what query you are likely to do and giving you results for that. There is actually a psychic element to it.
No there is not, Marissa. There is actually no psychic element to it. It’s a technological element. PLEASE. The loonies don’t need any more encouragement.
If you answered wooooooooooooo… to the title question, then you were entirely correct! Yes that’s right – today’s post features woo and sound, two of my most favourite subjects.
It was only a matter of time before someone realised that there was a niche for an ‘alternative’ medical treatment based on sound. Today on The Cow, I will examine one such treatment ((Oh yes, there are many more than just one. Perhaps I will cover Tama-Do at some later stage…)) – something named Human Bioacoustics, the amazing cure-all featured on a site called NutraSounds. ((Oh dear. Already with the dumb.)) Human Bioacoustics was created by a personage named Sharry Edwards™, ((Yes, that’s right, she’s trademarked her name.)) who claims that her process ‘has unlimited health and wellness potential.’ Unlimited! Human Bioacoustics can make you weller than well!
BioAcoustics Voice Spectral Analysis can detect hidden or underlying stresses in the body that are expressed as disease. The vocal print can identify toxins, pathogens and nutritional supplements that are too low or too high. In addition, vocal print can be used to match the most compatible treatment remedy to each client. The introduction of the proper ((If you don’t do it ‘properly’, it won’t work…)) low frequency sound to the body, indicated through voice analysis, has been shown ((By whom?)) to control ((‘Control’? What does that mean?)): pain, body temperature, heart rhythm and blood pressure. It has also been shown to regenerate body tissue ((Body tissue regenerates anyway. This means nothing.)) and alleviate ((Alleviate? In what way?)) the symptoms of many diseases (in some cases, even those considered to be incurable). ((Note the equation of the symptoms with the disease itself – a common ploy of pseudoscentific medicine))
Oh yes, there it is! Gobbledigook piled on balderdash layered on crapola. I’ve given you a helping hand with the shifty language and vague promises. I wonder why the disclaimer that is hidden away at the bottom of the NutraSound pages in very small print isn’t placed in slightly closer proximity to the above paragraph?
Disclaimer: Human BioAcoustics, as originated by Sharry Edwards, M.Ed., does not diagnose or prescribe for medical or psychological conditions nor does it claim to prevent, treat, mitigate or cure such conditions. HBA researchers do not provide diagnosis, care, treatment or rehabilitation of individuals, nor apply medical, mental health or human development principles.
Hmm. On the one hand Human Bioacoustics cures everything and then, somehow, when it comes down to a real-world, write-your-name-here-in-blood guarantee, it doesn’t. Is Ms Edwards a little nervous about getting her ass sued off, one wonders? She certainly isn’t shy of making unsubstantiated claims though. In big bold print on her bio page:
Edwards was named scientist of the year in 2001 for her work in BioAcoustic Biology.
Really? Scientist of the Year! Very impressive! That’s not something you could just make up! Let’s see what teh internets have to say about that! Oh, right, here it is. The award was presented to her by a body called the International Association of New Science. Funny… all those links are either dead or seem to point back to organizations with which Sharry Edwards™ has affiliations. She was given the award by her pals! ((Searching on International Association of New Science turns up some frightening crosslinks. The IANS appears to have been concocted by Dr Brian O’Leary a UFO ‘expert’ and Cleve Backster, who is quite famous for writing books about communicating with plants. The frightening part is that the IANS name also appears in conjunction with legitimate research into climate change. These people are being given government money for their idiotic beliefs… If you follow the links even further, it’s worse – there are ties to the whole anti-vaccination hoodoo and a whole other world of medical stupidity.)) Elsewhere she claims that all her work is peer reviewed. I think she is (obviously purposely) conflating the concept of scientific peer review (which is a strenuous intellectual process designed to weed out errors and bad science) with the idea that you get a few of your ‘peers’ to peruse what you’re doing and give you the thumbs up. ((This is what really gets my goat with these kinds of people – they shamelessly trade on the credentials that genuine science affords, while simultaneously bashing all its accomplishments as worthless. If you adopt science, you adopt science. Play properly by its rules, not by some airy fairy ones that you make up yourself! Otherwise, stay off its turf and name yourselves as the magic peddlers that you really are.))
(By this logic, you, my Faithful Cowpokes, could all agree that I was Scientist of the Year and I could boast that on Tetherd Cow! In fact, what a good idea – I need a few endorsements so that I too can plaster it across my banner! Feel free to wax lyrical!)
The phenomenal power of Human Bioacoustics is completely free to all and sundry in the form of the nanoVoice™ ((Yep, Ms Edwards has her whole racket trademarked up the wazoo.)) program, software which is, sadly, only available for PC. ((Well, technically it could be installed under Virtual PC on my Mac, apparently, but I ain’t running VPC just for this piece of crap.)) Of course, you can only freely download the ‘micro’ version – you have to pay (surprise) for the real deal. ((Curious, when the organization that produces it boasts that it is ‘non profit’…)) nanoVoice ‘uses frequency-based biomarkers within the frequencies of your voice to allow you an enlightening peek into your Secret Self.’
I bet you didn’t even know you had ‘frequencey-based biomarkers’ hidden inside your voice. I certainly didn’t and I’ve been working as a professional sound person for thirty years.
This is how it works, as near as I can make out from reading about it: you load a recording of your voice into the program and it analyzes the ‘frequencies’ ((There are those goddamned frequencies again. Teh woo just loves the vibrations and the frequencies!)) and spits out a bar graph in a rainbow of colours. Here’s what the colours supposedly mean (click to get the full chart):
Gee, now what do all those vague waffly non-specific phrases remind me of… oh, that’s it – the local paper’s astrology section! There are some classic howlers:
Yellow (E): ‘uses words first to convey messages and meaning’
Oh yeah, like that’s not going to apply to everyone except mute people.
Green/Blue (G): ‘likes to mix and manage the physical aspects of life’
What? That could mean just about ANYTHING.
Blue (G#): ‘wants to make a difference’
Oh please.
The colours are also arbitrarily tied to various kinds of organs and body parts. When I say ‘arbitrarily’ I mean that there is absolutely no scientific substantiation to say that, for example, the colour green has anything to do with your kidneys, or that the colour blue ‘retrieves nutrients from your bowel’. This is just utter, unmitigated hogwash. And Sharry Edwards™ knows it, or else she wouldn’t have put the comprehensive disclaimer on her site. ((I’m sure she justifies the disclaimer by saying that she ‘was forced to do it’ by the ‘system’ which ‘persecutes her for her beliefs’. A song that we’ve heard many times before.))
For an example of nanoVoice’s extraordinary powers of deduction, you can amuse yourself by visiting an analysis of Mr Mel Gibson’s phone ‘conversation’ with his estranged wife Oksana Grigoreiva, in which he uses bad language, racist terms and is generally an obnoxious prat. I want to say two thing here: first of all, the pages of unbelievable rubbish that you will find here could be attributed to just about anyone, viz:
You have an unusual sense of time. Not having all the information needed to make a decision stresses you. Your reputation is very important to you. You will go to great lengths to protect it. It is important to you that spirituality be a part of everyday life. You think that feeding the mind is just as important as feeding the body. You are aware of how painful thoughtless words can be. You push yourself and others to finish the job. You love new ideas that mean you can have a project to work on. A sense of belonging is important to you.
… and secondly, these ‘frequency’ analyses were made from a telephone recording. To someone like me who knows anything about sound, this constitutes the epitome of ridiculousness. Telephones severely restrict the frequencies of voices, in order to squeeze intelligibility down the lines. Ms Edwards is asking us to believe that her software uses inherent voice ‘frequencies’ to make its divinations, but is simultaneously independent of frequency restrictions. It is the utmost peak of buffoonery. Not only that, it demonstrates without any equivocation, that Sharry Edwards is completely ignorant about how sound works. ((Oh, I’m sure she’d come up with some piece of silliness to ‘explain’ how she can get readings from a telephone conversation – I’d be disappointed if she couldn’t!))
Like many similar pseudoscientific concepts, Human Bioacoustics uses as its basic modus operandi the general ignorance of most people in a specific field of expertise. Few people understand how sound works, but to someone like me who does, Human Bioacoustics, nanoVoice, ‘vocal profiling’ and the ‘Institute of Bioacoustic Biology’ look about as convincing as a pig in a tuxedo.
Good morning Acowlytes! How are your livers this morning? Nice and squeaky clean? Not sure what I’m on about? Then allow me to introduce you to Tsetsinka, Goddess of Liver Cleansing. If you travel over to CureZone.com (‘Educating Instead of Medicating’), you can read Tsetsinka’s mind-boggling instructions on how to cleanse your liver without using oil or lemon juice! Incredible, I know! To you and me it sounds completely ridiculous, but it’s true! Instead of unpleasant oil and lemon juice concoctions, Tsetsinka has come up with a method that uses… oil and LIME juice! And egg yolks!
“But Reverend,” I hear you exclaim, “My liver isn’t even dirty!” Well, Tsetsinka begs to differ. According to her, your liver is a filthy steaming worm-infested putrid lump. You might want to read the entire text of her ‘method’ before we carry on (I was tempted to quote the whole damn thing here, but on reflection I decided you might just prefer to come back for the highlights).
OK. Has the urge to laugh (or vomit) subsided? Very well, let’s begin.
Have you asked yourself… why do i have to endure such unpleasant moments when flushing my liver of Gallstones and filth? I have!
Yes, but more importantly my dear Tsetsinka, have you asked yourself why you have gallstones in your liver?
You certainly don’t have feel unconfortably during the flush at all. there is a much easier and more pleasant way of cleaning your liver ducts and gall bladder, and even your intestants get cleaned from this procedure.
Intestants! Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day. ((It’s a word that imagine could be coined to describe the participants of a medical quiz show…))
I believe you will look at least 10 years younger and more beautiful! No need for oil and lemon juice, when you are using this method. it amazes me that this information is not posted here or anywhere else on the liver detox knowledge pages of this website.
Us it doesn’t amaze so much.
you will experience a perfectly pink tounge in just 3-4 days and your skin will begin to glow like a peach and you will get long, very shiny hair, your nails will grow rapidly and you will feel like you can lift a mountain.
I’m not entirely convinced I want to look like a hairy peach with long nails and a pink tounge. Or tongue, for that matter. Even if I was preternaturally strong.
Tsetsinka goes on to give us a step-by-step outline of her recipe, which consists solely of limes, egg yolks and sunflower oil. A cup of sugar and you could make a nice Key Lime pie, but I digress.
8. using a wooden utencil (any utencil except for metal), gently beat the mixture only a couple of times. simply a couple of stirs are sufficent to get the juice and yolks to mix.
Gee whiz – that’s so EASY! Almost as easy as being able to spell ‘utensil’ and ‘sufficient’ correctly!
11. you may feel the urge to sleep almost immediately after that, so you may want to drink this potion right before bedtime, instead of in the morning. most importantly, be sure that you have not eaten or drank anything in the last 3 hours.
12. when you wake up from your nap, after 2-3 hours have elapsed, you will feel like you have 10 horse powers instead of 1 human power. the energy you will aquire from this is instant and perminant.
Your horse powers come at a cost, however – a depletion of your spelling powers. It’s a small price to pay for having a mane and hooves.
13. your nose will feel clogged. this is because your liver has just purged an incredible amount of tixins and dirt into your intestine. even if there is nothing blocking your nose cavity, your nose will feel clogged. for those who have done Liver Flushes will know what i am talking about. this is the very feeling of stones and gunk leaving the liver and entering the entstine.
Ah, the ol’ enstsine! Just next to the intestants, if I remember my medical studies correctly. Of course I didn’t aquire my doctorate, but luckily I had sufficent utencils to deal with tixins and was confortably able set up my site at CureZone.com!
14. finally, if you have an enema kit, you need to use very warm water to clean out your intestines, and it is imperative that you use 2 full enemas with very warm water, in order to draw the gunk out from the top of the small upper instestine to the lower one and then out. ((Does anyone else get the impression that Tsetsinka is rather… er… fond… of enemas? Just asking…))
I guess if you try every possible combination of letters, you’ll get it eventually.
15. unbelieveable things will come out of you, sometimes green stones, sometimes plaque, sometimes worms and parasites and sometimes just black, black, black filty water.
I…. er… well… BLEURRGGGHHHH. Oh. Sorry about that. Green stones? Plaque? Worms and parasites? Tsetsinka, my dear, you really might like to think about changing your diet.
you will be literally wowed at the results after the first day and double-wowed of the results after the 2, 3,4th day. by the end of the week, you will feel like you can take over the world! yes, the feeling is incredible!
Ehhhh. I dunno…. I’ve never been ‘double-wowed’ by anything Oh… yeah I guess there was that thing that Cindy Lawler could do with her tongue… but passing black black black filt(h)y water doesn’t sound like it would be double-wowing so much as just plain disgusting.
If you feel unconfortable using an enema, stones, gunk, mucouid plaque, worms, parasites and eggs can still come out, but not as full-capacity as when you flush with an enema
Oh, well, yes, with a sales pitch like that everybody definitely wants the full capacity enema. How could anyone possibly resist the allure of a comprehensive flushing sluice of worms, parasites, eggs and mucuoid plaque! My imagination is just going wild here – maybe Tsetsinka should consider whipping that sentence up into a screenplay and seeing if she can get some traction in Hollywood with an Alien sequel!
If you have any questions, email me at neprotivo@yahoo.com! i answer all emals.
There ya go Acowlytes. She answers all emails! Your mission, should you choose to accept it – ask Tsetsinka some questions and get back to us here with the answers!
And if your brain isn’t reeling after all that, then I suggest that for some further mucuoid plaque fun you might like to delve into the thread replies of Tsetse’s ((Oooops. I made a spelling mistake…)) post. Me, I’m having a hard time believing it’s not all some kind of elaborate practical joke. And yet….
Above all, remember : CureZone.com ‘Educating Instead of Medicating’!
If it wasn’t for the constant company of my spammer scammer friends, what a lonely person I would be! Well, that’s obviously what they think anyway, judging by their eagerness to fill my inbox with their irksome pleadings and promises. One of the things that really does continue to amuse me, however, is the impressive level of desperate creativity that the Have I Got a Deal For YOU!-type scammers show in their introductory lines.
Pardon me for not having the pleasure of knowing your mindset before making you this offer and it is utterly confidential and genuine by virtue of its nature.
Well George, my mindset is that I think all spammers are the scum of the earth, and I entertain a probably futile hope that, if you’d had the pleasure of knowing that beforehand, you might not have bothered writing to me.
Mrs Ella Randy adopts a now well-worn approach:
It is indeed my pleasure to write you this letter, which I believe will be a surprise to you as we have never met before, and I am deeply sorry if I have in any manner disturbed your privacy.
Not sorry enough to stay out of my life, unfortunately.
Mr Gregory Adom goes one step further than being merely ‘pleased’:
I am enchanted using this tremendous opportunity to converse with you in this medium of communication.
Enchanted! Well then! I think it is extremely probable that Mr Adom thinks the internet is powered by magic. Allen Azuka takes a rather more strident tone:
KINDLY ATTEND OT THIS. Be informed that my previous mail was not responded and do not know what to take your non response to mean.
Mr Azuka, I think you can take it that my non-response means that I think you are an annoying shit-head and have no desire ot have anything ot do with you.
Burgi Nitzmann attempts the chummy approach:
Hi, how’s your work doing? The answer is quite clear. You’re sleepy, man, I can tell! But take a deep breath, lot’s of people have the similar problems.
Lot’s of people have problems with the use of apostrophe’s too, Burgi, especially spammer’s.
Al Walid Khalid is concerned about ethical matters:
Do accept my sincere apologies if my mail does not meet your personal ethics
Apologies accepted. Now go and kill yourself.
Speaking of killing oneself, Zubair Hoyett affects an air of desperation:
I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here are bad.
It has evidently not occurred to you that if you wish to achieve both those objectives, Mr Hoyett, you’d have to do them in the reverse order. Not that we care either way. Actually, come to think if it, scratch that – I have sympathy for your dog, at least. It’s not his fault that he ended up with a scumbag. Maybe he’ll find a better owner once you’re dead.
Spam buddy Hunke Heinz has been smoking a few too many coleus leaves:
Hunke’s offer, such as it was, rambled on in a similar fashion. I’m not even sure what he wanted from me. Maybe he is just plain mad. I like the appellation though and may henceforth be addressed, by anyone who cares to do so, as Mr Look.
Mrs Susan Shabang has roped the whole family into her spamming schemes:
After careful consideration with my children, we resolved to contact you for your most needed assistance in this manner.
… and Ikuku Masanga has plans for me to change professions:
I have decided to use this medium to extend a prosperous business hand shake with you and welcome you in the Oil & Gas industry.
Petros Alexandrou thinks it’s Christmas already:
Compliments of the season and good day.
…unless he’s just talking about Autumn.
Mr Liu Yan begins his offer:
This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as frivolous could come into your mind, but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.
I’m sorry Mr Liu – the temptation to ignore it as frivolous came into my mind quicker than my desire to consider it as a divine wish and I trashed it. And generally, the only deep sense of anything that I get from any spam is a profound loathing of the perpetrator.
Mr Adrian Davidson is a little too personal for my taste:
How is your day? I am writing with utmost Confidentiality and Trust confides in you; I wish to hint you briefly of my Biography, so that we can both be familiar with each other.
Mr Davidson, I wish to hint you briefly that I don’t want you attempting to be familiar with me in any way at all.
And as for Amar Afiz:
Dear beloved one. As you read this, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday.
I hope that day comes very quickly and painfully for you, Mr Afiz, and believe me, I won’t feel in the least bit sorry when it does.
And finally (until the next flood of rubbish comes down the pike) Mr Philip Ozuol thinks he has transcended the virtual:
This letter will definitely be amazing to you because of its realistic value.
As far as I can tell, Mr Ozuol, the realistic value of this letter is well shifted into the negative, and so its amazement factor is not all that impressive. In other words, if you’d not send it, I’d be having a much better day.
It seems to me that these scamspammers are so enthusiastic about their letter writing and the making of acquaintances that there should be some venue where they can all get together and annoy one another, rather than take it out on me. A Facebook for spammers! ‘Spambook’, perhaps. It could only be a good thing.
While we’re on the subject of television, in the last couple of weeks I’ve also caught a few episodes of a show called ‘Criss Angel: Mindfreak’ playing on A&E. Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, Criss Angel is an illusionist in the tradition of David Copperfield, Doug Henning, Chung Ling Soo (William Robinson) and Harry Houdini. That is, a Grand Illusionist. He does the kind of BIG magic that requires a stage crew of a few dozen people, a room at a venue in Las Vegas and (in case you haven’t inferred it) money.
Criss Angel’s schtick is to attempt shake off the stuffiness and shmaltz of his tuxedoed predecessors and instill into his act a semblance of anarchistic punk, ((Indeed, his logo is the anarchist ‘A’ in a circle, with a kind of Nike-slash flourish.)) but it is, the leather and the chains and the bandana notwithstanding, exactly the same kind of spectacular theatrical routine that has defined stage magic for the best part of a century. You know the sort of thing: cut a girl in half with a circular saw/escape from a locked box dangling over a precipice/make people disappear.
I want to say from the outset that Criss Angel is VERY good at what he does. And what he does, in exact terms, is to make people believe things that seem contrary to the laws of reality. The key words here are ‘believe’ and ‘seem’. ((Criss Angel’s Las Vegas show is, in fact, called ‘Believe’. The word, etched in twenty foot high letters on billboards across the city, seems more like a brute-force brainwashing command than an advertisment.))
Watching his show is a revealing exercise in how the impressionable mind works, and an excellent disciplinary pastime for the rational thinker.
Now I don’t know how Criss Angel accomplishes many of his illusions. I’d be disappointed if I did, because I really like good stage illusionists and I expect them to be able to outwit me if they’re worth their paycheck. But there’s one thing I can tell you for sure: Criss Angel, when performing his act – despite his frequent declarations to the contrary – does not care too much about telling ‘the truth’. ((Just like Britain’s Derren Brown who masterfully uses any method available to trick his audience.)) And neither do his stage crew or his film crew. What you see on Mindfreak is rarely what you have been told you’re seeing. ((I need to point out here that this is not surprising – stage illusionists excel in leading you to believe things that aren’t true. It is, after all, their job. Criss Angel takes things one step further by exploiting the ‘natural’ trust that people have when they see something on television. For some reason it doesn’t occur to most people that a magician on tv would use the medium itself to trick them. Think again folks!))
Here’s an example: Criss appears outside his permanent ‘magic’ home at the Luxor in Las Vegas, with a crowd of ‘random’ bystanders. He reaches into a bush and introduces them to a ‘pet’ that the management of the Luxor won’t let him keep in the hotel: a large scorpion. It’s a real live scorpion for sure – there’s no doubt about that.
The onlookers ook and gasp as he lets it crawl over his hands, and then, with a nice piece of sleight-of-hand, magics it away in a puff of smoke. But the real trick is yet to come. Angel reaches over and grabs an attractive (of course) girl from the crowd and gives her a big kiss, whereupon she mugs wide-eyed and ‘surprised’ and opens her mouth to reveal the scorpion crawling out.
This is one of the the oldest and most frequently-employed gambits in the book of magic – the girl, despite her convincing acting, is indisputably an accomplice. There is simply no other way to achieve a illusion like this. You can’t get a seven-inch-long scorpion into an unsuspecting girl’s mouth without her consent. I know – I’ve tried. ((That’s a joke.)) Seriously – this is the only way this trick can work, and even though no-one wants to believe it, magicians make frequent use of accomplices. ((If you still don’t believe me, watch the video very carefully – despite what Mr Angel wants you to think, there is no way he passed the scorpion from his mouth to the girl’s mouth with that surprisingly chaste ‘stage’ kiss. His ‘mouth acting’ of regurgitating the scorpion is, of course, purely a distraction. Therefore there are really only two possibilities: the scorpion got into the girl’s mouth via real magic, or, when the camera wasn’t on her, and when the crowd was totally engrossed with Angel making the first scorpion disappear, the girl was surreptitiously stuffing a second scorpion into her gob. You decide which of those two scenarios seems most plausible…))
Now I don’t want to seem like I’m making light of Mr Angel’s accomplishments as an entertainer. As I said, he’s good at what he does. Many of his tricks (especially the smaller ones) are quite astonishing. ((Even if quite a few of them have a pedigree stretching back a good many decades.)) But when Criss Angel ranges through the adoring crowd after setting the scene for his next conjuration and proclaims that there’s ‘NO BULLSHIT!’ there’s one thing that’s for certain – the greatest piece of magic in his entire repertoire is his ability to convince his audience that that statement is true.
When I’m at home in my normal life, I don’t watch much tv, but living in LA without my family commitments I do end up with the odd spare half hour at the end of my day that needs to be filled with a little mindless distraction. And if mindless distraction is what you’re after, American television excels. For some reason ((I think it’s some vestige of a long-dashed hope that someday, somewhere, someone might actually make a decent science fiction movie – you know, one that is actually intelligent… Maybe that’s just too much to hope for.)) my brain is drawn to what used to be known as the Sci Fi Channel, but has recently been idiotically re-branded as SyFy. Judging by what SyFy dishes up, I can only assume this naff baby-speak appellation has been applied as an opening gambit in a profit-inspired move to drift the channel away from science fiction programming into a domain that consists of, well, anything that can be loosely assembled under the heading of ‘Crap’.
It’s a category which is headlined by one of SyFy’s own creations, Fact or Faked. Paranormal Files. ((It REALLY annoys me that there is no question mark after the ‘Faked’. If it’s not a question and is just a statement, why do we need a tv show, you morons?)) The premise of the show is this: a bunch of ‘experts’ review a selection of videos sent in each week by viewers, and then pick their favourites to ‘investigate’. The opening credit sequence, weighty with overblown seriousness, introduces us to the members of the intrepid Fact or Faked team:
Ben: Former FBI Agent
Bill: Lead Scientist
Jael: Journalist
Larry: Special Effects Expert
Chi Lan: Photography Expert
Austin: Stunt Expert
Call me shallow, but the very first time I watched the program I took an instant dislike to both Chi Lan and Jael – the former because she’s an opinionated airhead and the latter because I hate her name. Larry is basically an overly-serious nerd, Austin is a gullible prat and Ben looks like he was roped into the whole debacle against his wishes ((No doubt so the producers could flaunt his FBI credentials…)) and is constantly planning his escape from the show.
But you will have sensed that I have saved my vitriol for Bill, the ‘scientist’. Simply put, Bill is an idiot. He is certainly not a scientist in any meaningful sense of the word.
In an effort of forbearance I will refrain from further description of the dumbness of the show itself, and instead just concentrate on a story that was on last night and one that I think demonstrates the full credentials of this team, who must surely all be card-carrying alumni of Scooby Doo University.
The story in question concerns a phenomenon called the Paulding Light Mystery. A video from YouTube shows a tree-lined hill with a bright light waxing and waning in a dusk sky. A ten second long grab (which Fact or Faked repeats over and over) features a mysteriously appealing visual effect as the light is refracted by atmospheric conditions or possibly some kind of lens aberration.
The Facts: If you go to a certain spot just outside the town of Paulding, Michigan, and look toward the south after dusk, you may see, depending on the weather conditions, a bright light just on the top of the tree line. The light may vary in brightness and duration and even sometimes in colour. It is an unusual phenomenon in the annals of the paranormal, in that the light appears quite reliably, with a frequency that has allowed a bit of a tourist industry to have risen around it. In other words, if you visit Paulding, there’s a pretty good chance that you too can see the light.
The Myth: The Paulding Light is said to be the spirit of a dead railway signalman who was crushed to death while trying to warn an oncoming train about another train stalled on the tracks ahead.
So there you have the setup. Let me try and give you some idea of how the Fact or Faked crew typically proceed when investigating something like the Paulding Light.
Dusk approaches. Jael, Austin and Bill have been assigned to this story. They arrive in their Scooby Doo Mystery Machine with a fully decked-out Paranormal Investigation Kit: gas sensors, Geiger counter, FLIR camera system, walkie talkies and a two-person mini all-terrain vehicle. People are already milling about in anticipation of being on television an appearance of the mysterious light.
To fill in some time the team does a couple of vox pops. First of all they badger some poor old lady into saying that she thinks that, yes, the Light is the spirit of the dead signalman. Her demeanour is less ‘genuine conviction’ than ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ Next, a rotund geeky chap steps up to the camera and says that, in his opinion, the Paulding Light might simply be car headlights. Uh-oh. A sensible person! Quick! Cut away to Austin leaping into the ATV – the Light has appeared!
This is as close as Fact or Faked ever comes to presenting anything like a balanced point of view.
The members of the Fact or Faked team then set about deploying their peculiar notion of what constitutes ‘science’ in an attempt to find an explanation for the phenomenon. In this show, Jael and Austin head off to the place where they assume the Light ‘must be’ and traipse around in the dark with the Geiger counter and the gas detector arriving at the conclusion that the Light isn’t produced by radioactivity or swamp gas. Around now I start throwing things at the television. Of course it isn’t, you pillocks – even the most obtuse of dunderheads could make a quick assessment of that theory and throw it out the window. It is obvious that you’d need a mighty outpouring of gas or nuclear energy to generate something as bright as the video shows – that’s not the kind of thing that goes undetected for 40 years. ((These people plainly haven’t got a clue about how nuclear fission works. The amount of radioactivity generated by something that could create a light as bright as the Paulding Light would have contaminated everything within several hundred miles. The lame Ghostbusters-style traipsing-around-in-the-dark-with-a-Geiger counter is nonsense of the highest order.))
Nitwits.
Austin then heads off to a local airport and, with an ultra bright electric torch, ((Now THIS is impressive – 25 million candlepower, according to Austin. Mind you, since ForF plays loose and fast with the facts everywhere else, I’m not sure we can take his word for it. This of course is one of the problems with a show like this – if there are actually any facts present, they get swamped under the tide of make-believe, rendering everything questionable…)) attempts to duplicate the phenomenon by getting a pilot in a light plane to fly low over the area in question. Well, it does make a bright light in the sky, but it’s plainly not the ground-level geographically fixed light that everyone is seeing. How is it that I don’t need to fly around in a plane to figure out that this is also not a plausible contender?
Then the team (grudgingly it seems to me) get down to the most frequently offered explanation for the Paulding Light – that it’s caused by car headlights from either US Highway 45, or the old Highway 45. They choose a segment of the highway that they have deemed the likely place for car headlights to be the culprit and Austin and Jael use their television credentials to get the cops to block off the road. They then drive back and forwards while communicating with Bill back at Sighting Central. Not a sausage. Bill can’t see them.
Instead of even contemplating that the spot they’ve chosen might actually be the wrong stretch of the road, the team hastily dismisses the car headlight explanation. Then, conveniently, before anyone can raise a finger in objection, the Paulding Light has reappeared. Now, with no explanation that satisfies the Fact or Faked ‘professionals’, it falls to Bill to suggest the next course of action.
I want to pause here for a moment and remind you that Bill is featured as the ‘lead scientist’ of this show. Are you containing that concept in your minds? Right then, lets forge on.
So, what is the best scientific strategy that Bill, lead scientist of Fact or Faked, can come up with at this juncture? I hope you don’t snort whisky out your nose like I did, when you learn that Bill’s suggestion is that they try EVP. ((You may remember that I discussed EVP at length on The Cow some time ago, including my personal experiences with it.)) Yes, that’s right, having ‘thoroughly exhausted all possibilities’, Bill, the scientist, determines that they should attempt to contact the Spirit World to find out more about the restless wraith of the phantom signalman. The next few minutes of the show, with Austin, Jael and Bill wandering around the Ottawa State Forest attempting to coax the spirit of a dead railway worker to leave a message on their audio recorders must rank as one of the most risible things I’ve ever witnessed on television. The Scooby Doo-ers seemed genuinely deflated when their recordings turned up nothing.
Jesus H Christ. What kind of dimwitted, brainless lunacy are these people peddling?
And that was where the show ended. With every single scientific explanation exhausted and without any spirit communications from the Ghostly Signalman to set the record straight, as far as Fact or Faked. Paranormal Files is concerned, the Paulding Light remains a total and unfathomable mystery…
The End.
So utterly unconvinced was I by the team’s findings that I immediately leapt from the couch and did what any sensible modern person would do – I searched for the full YouTube clip of the Paulding Light from which Fact or Faked clipped the brief segment that they used on the show.
I’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure. Just listen to the credulous amazement of the onlookers as they gaze upon the perplexing riddle of the Paulding Light! Ponder on why Fact or Faked chose to present to their audience the very small snippet at the head of the clip, rather than a bit at, oh, around about the 1 minute mark. Indeed – listen to someone on the audio track at around 3:15, tell you EXACTLY WHAT THE PAULDING LIGHT IS (as if you need to be told by that point because to any normal rational person it’s as obvious as a pig at a christening).
But heck – view the clip and make up your own mind about what the ‘mysterious’ Paulding Light might be: the spectre of a dismembered signalman? A nuclear explosion? Too much gas? I’m pretty sure you’re not going to come to the same conclusion as the insightful investigators from Fact or Faked.
