And Slaters Go Plop

After a recent conversation with a friend who has been quite taken by a couple of the many water-powered car / free energy concepts I decided to research the topics properly.

Common traits amongst people who make free energy claims are:

• There is a grand conspiracy - the CIA has been making people ‘disappear’ or some such
• Scientists are too set in their ways to accept revolutionary ideas
• Big industry is suppressing the technologies

Something else all of the free energy people have in common is that they are not willing to release their discoveries to the general public for verification.

Here’s my advice to any would-be free energy proponent: Make your discovery public.

It’s that simple. If you reveal your secrets all your problems with the CIA will go away, scientists will be put to shame for being so hard-headed and the big petro-chemical corporations will be brought to their knees.

You’ll win eternal fame. Your name will be held in higher esteem than Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. You will change the planet (for the good) for all time.

I guess what I’m saying here is “Put up or shut up”.

“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address

The chances of winning Lotto (New Zealand Lottery)
3,838,380 to 1

The chances of being killed by an asteroid
3,500,000 to 1

The chances of drowning in your bath
685,000 to 1

We play the lottery against extremely poor odds because our brains are hard-wired to look for positive reinforcement. If we win $10 on the lottery we’ll feel like winners even if we spent $30 to do so. We hear about a friend of an auntie’s neighbour who won the ‘big one’ and it stands out in our mind. We don’t place the same importance on all the millions of misses that no one talks about.

The same thing is true of horoscopes. We pick out a sentence or just a couple of words and because they might just apply to us (usually because they’re fairly generic) we recognise it as a hit.

I admit that there is a certain rush that comes with gambling which can be given a monetary value but I would say that most people, deep down, are expecting a big win one day and almost all of them will give a lot more than they get. This is fine for those with extra income but many gamblers are on benefits or are at the poorer end of the scale and should be spending their money more wisely.

In the last financial year, New Zealanders spent a total of $1,977,000,000 on gambling and I would bet (hyuk hyuk) that just about every dollar spent expected a return of some kind. Perhaps critical thinking should be a subject taught at school?

Bah humbug.

“The amount of years that she will live longer than us because of her [vegetarian] diet is directly proportional to the horror of that diet.”
- Perry DeAngelis 22.08.63 - 19.08.07 (a sceptic of ’some note’).

So long big fella and thank you.

I’m annoyed at the state of New Zealand journalism. It’s embarrassing. Some kids let off some bottle-bombs (probably the kind you see all over You Tube [the dry ice or mentos-in-coke kinds]) and the New Zealand media leaps on it like the attention-deprived inbreeds they are.

This is sensationalist reporting at its worst. Is it any wonder Muslims with issues resort to this kind of thing when you see the reaction they are guaranteed to receive courtesy of a media system that has no sense of balance, ethics or humour?

I can almost imagine them sitting there, failed traffic wardens that they are, just waiting for the opportunity to be just as important as all those savvy foreign journalists who get to wade around in blood and bring the big-hitting items to our TV screens.

When they were reporting the incident did we hear them address the issue that these were remarkably underwhelming ‘bombs’ and that they were really nothing but noise? Did we hear that they might, just possibly, be pranks but that the police had to make the fuss they did as a matter of routine?

If we ever have a real bombing in New Zealand I think we can thank not the idiots who made these bottle-bombs or our involvement in western politics for drawing the attention of undereducated, over enthusiastic fundamentalists. We should look to the organisations that, literally, ‘promote’ violence.

And here is what I like about Derren Brown - he takes the paranormal, makes it his bitch and leaves us broken and slightly violated but a little wiser for it.

It’s got to make you wonder what else you may have swallowed from less honest conjurers.