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News Briefs 17-08-2006

By Gregon

Short and sweet today, because it’s just too nice a day outside…

  • Another review of Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (Amazon US), this one from the New York Times. Good to see some mainstream exposure on this, although there have been plenty of other very knowledgable researchers who have published on these topics previously.
  • The Great Zawi waters down talk of KV64 discovery by Nicholas Reeves: “Mr. Reeves wants publicity more than conducting his work through a scientific approach”. I’ll just hand the Pot a mirror to check his colour…
  • 2500-year-old figurines may be predecessors to Terracotta Army.
  • Israel-Hezbollah war endangers archaeological sites and ecosystems. People too, apparently.
  • Strangers in our skies – a guide to UFO sightings in Ireland. Chariots of the leprechauns?
  • Astronomers set to vote on 12 planets for our Solar System.
  • Space Shuttle Atlantis set for launch on August 27th.
  • Crew members of new James Bond film say aeroplane set is haunted. Seems to be a reliable way of getting publicity these days, to claim a haunted set.
  • Can you see the ghost in the library?
  • Big cat stalks Sydney’s west-sieede. What’s a few westies and Uni students…
  • Fastest evolving human gene is linked to brain development. And I thought it would have been the gene linked to idiotic wars and genocide.
  • Frozen mice parent healthy offspring, redefining the word ‘frigid’.
  • Whale fossil sports some seriously scary teeth.
  • Neolithic stone carving of Big Dipper discovered in northwest China.
  • Circles cropping up across county fields. Probably a bit out-dated to call them ‘circles’ these days…
  • David Copperfield says he’s found the elixir of youth. Obviously he’s found the elixir of money too….wish I could afford to throw down $50 million on a few islands.

Thanks Kat.

Quote of the Day:

I do not think this is a door, and there is nothing behind it.

Zahi Hawass (on the ‘Gantenbrink Door’)

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
Related

17 Comments

  1. Slipping up greg , no comment on the tool tour 😉
    Sydney 24th January, 2007
    Melbourne 31st January, 2007
    Dates in NZ, Queensland, Adelaide and Perth to be announced.

    http://www.ticketmaster.com.au/search/search.asp?type=EVENT&search=tool

    With the venues and dates its looking good for BDO headline spot …. Next year is looking good allready. Could be expensive too ..

    And your little friend has been hanging near Area 51 again
    http://toolband.com/newsletter/

    1. Mythology
      [quote=lostmort]And your little friend has been hanging near Area 51 again[/quote]

      Little? I’ll have you know he’s 7 foot 3, drinks Stella in Gallon glasses, and in another 24 hours will probably have a healthy tan. At least one of these things is true anyhow (perhaps two…).

      Thanks for the tour dates Lostmort, and hope to see a Brizzy date soon. Damn, could the band pick a hotter time of year to come and play?

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  2. Thank you Mr Reeves for all your efforts, but
    Thank you Mr Reeves for all your efforts, but your usefulness has ended and now the Great Z will take over.

    First the black market and now not releasing the find through the Great One; naughty naughty!! You should have realised that written correspondence to the Supreme Office of Antiquities gets lost regularly. Only written applications by worshipping subordinates and cheques reach their destination on time. Inside word from the Supreme Office is that plain brown paper bags will also reach the appropriate desk it they are filled with multiple copies of green paper.

    Surely you don’t think that you as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries qualifies you to investigate this further. Let the experts do their job!

    I’ll bet you can’t identify mummies by sex and age just by observing them; this takes “special qualities”. You probably don’t wear the correct style of hat either!

    AAiek

  3. NY Times on ‘Ghost Hunters’
    The NY Times introduces the book with:

    “In “Ghost Hunters,” Deborah Blum’s sympathetic account, these “psychical researchers” are not simply a bunch of smart men (and a couple of women) obsessed with a dumb idea”

    The statement is an obvious betrayal of the bias of the reviewer, but beyond that, it’s just – to paraphrase – a “dumb statement”. I don’t understand the mentality of those who would call investigations in the evidence for survival of death a ‘dumb idea’…it is, perhaps, the greatest idea. That one question, and answer, could possibly make numerous debates and philosophical conundrums redundant in a single pass.

    I might add, for the publisher, that “Ghost Hunters” is a stupid title for the subject matter.

    Kind regards,
    Greg
    ——————————————-
    You monkeys only think you’re running things

    1. After reading the review…
      I would think it as fair as anything’s likely to be, given the subject material; I don’t see any particular bias, pro or con…certainly it does seem quite respectful of beliefs that the more materialistic among us might regard as being unconnected to reality.

      Viewed in light of what I’ve seen of your writing, I can’t help wondering if you’re not grabbing one point out of the review to suit your own bias and taking it out of context to boot. Granted, the bit you quote could hardly have been better calculated to set off someone of a certain turn of mind but the over-all tone of the review looks quite different, to me at least.

      If the book is half as balanced as I find the review to be, I suspect it may be a good read; I’ll have to pick it up. Thanks for posting the link.

      Cheers

      So many idiots…so little time.

      1. Greg’s right
        Actually, no Binro, Greg’s right. The “dumb idea” line is bad writing, no ifs or buts about it. You can’t make a statement like that in a review and take it no further, without context nor explanation, and it clearly shows that the reviewer thinks the paranormal is dumb and not worth bothering about. I get that impression all the way through, despite the reviewer’s “sympathetic” attitude to Blum herself.

        We all die, and no one knows what happens when we do, so how exactly is investigating this mystery a “dumb idea”? That’s the point Greg’s making. Failing to investigate the mystery of what happens when we die, or at the least wonder about it, would be the dumb thing to do. I just find the reviewer’s attitude to be a wee bit smug (especially towards writers).

        1. >>…it clearly shows that
          >>…it clearly shows that the reviewer thinks the paranormal is dumb and not worth bothering about.

          I think it mainly shows that the reviewer is covering his or her butt, career-wise. It’s a pervasive tactic in all mainstream media that I find very offensive. I completely stopped watching Denver’s Channel 7 news the day they reported on crop circles in Mich., and then all had a little giggle about it. If they reported it because they knew their audience would be interested, why doesn’t it ever occur to them that by snickering about the story afterwards, they’re also snickering at their audience? The same goes for the book reviewers. The publication knows that many of us want to read books about the paranormal, but feel obliged to give a nod to what they believe is concensus reality before telling us about it, thereby unconsciously denigrating their readers’ interest in the process. It always makes me think, how stupid can they be?

          Kat

        2. To each their own…
          but I think you’re missing something fairly obvious. One can get hung up on the “dumb idea” bit or one can consider what comes immediately afterwards, the “courageous freethinkers willing to endure the establishment’s scorn.” You’re more than welcome to take whatever view you wish but it would be disingenuous at best of the reviewer to deny that general opinion is quite divided on the matter of life after death. Some people believe yes and some no and a few are undecided and the polar extremes of opinion on the matter tend to view eachother with contempt…I wonder why.

          The reviewer cites material that would seem to support the premise; I can’t see how it is anything other than fair to also mention the frauds and charlatans, the bottom-feeders who prey on the vulnerabliity of the grief-stricken, among others. If one’s going to discuss the strengths of a case, must one not examine the weaknesses as well? Or is it rather that some people perceive a slight to their beliefs and therefore procede to condemn the review because it isn’t a ringing endorsement of their pre-existing opinions? One would hope it’s not the latter because someone who would choose his reading material in such a way is clearly looking for something which cannot be called open inquiry.

          For my part, I am a pragmatist. I do think it rather vain and idle to spend much time thinking about a question whose answer will-or won’t-become self-evident, altogether too soon, without any effort on my part and regardless of whether I think it a good or bad thing…particularly in a world where so many people die before their time. Worrying and wondering about whether there’s anything after death apart from decomposition would be a fairly harmless amusement if it weren’t for the fact that it seems to stop some people from living while they’re alive.

          One could argue it a number of ways but perhaps it would be best if the question remained forever undecided, on this side of the grave, anyway…the mind boggles at what the effects would be if the matter were resolved. Like I said, chacun à son goût.

          So many idiots…so little time.

          1. On the flipside
            [quote=Binro the Heretic]For my part, I am a pragmatist. I do think it rather vain and idle to spend much time thinking about a question whose answer will-or won’t-become self-evident, altogether too soon, without any effort on my part and regardless of whether I think it a good or bad thing…[/quote]

            Personally, I think that there would be more than a few people in the world who would feel a lot better if they knew that their dear departed was winging their onwards ‘home’…it would make the sudden loss of an infant, or the news that your spouse has terminal cancer, perhaps a little easier to bear. I think humanity could do with knowing that there’s more to life than political will to power and 108 inch plasma screens.

            It’s certainly not a “dumb question” in any case, and theoretically, it is provable (by receiving unequivocable evidence from a discarnate). However, it is probably not a falsifiable theory (that is, you can never say with absolute conviction “there is no afterlife”)…something which no doubt drives skeptics mad.

            As pointed out by Michael Grosso, considering how much we spend each year on technology of death (ie. the military), perhaps we could spare just a little to investigate the chance that we survive it.

            Good point about living in the now though, I agree wholeheartedly.

            Kind regards,
            Greg

            p.s I’d suggest perhaps you add your name to your sig line – at the moment, it looks like you are responding to the previous comment by calling them an idiot. Putting your name in between would make it obvious that it is a sig line…before someone new here takes offense.

            ——————————————-
            You monkeys only think you’re running things

          2. On this day, of all days,
            your post takes on a poignancy you could not have foreseen. Still, there are a few things that merit mention.

            I wish I could speak to the son I never knew. I wish I could ask if he was aware of what was happening to him, if he knew he was loved, if it hurt when he died. I wish I could ask if he has dreams, where he is, what he feels and what he might think of those on the other side of the gulf separating him from the rest of us. I wish I could tell him of the dreams I’d had for him and his life, ended before it had properly begun.

            I wish I could talk with my father and ask his pardon for not being there to wish him farewell when he died. I wish I could talk with my mother and tell her that I did the best I could. I wish these and many other things…I don’t think that one can get to a certain age without having left things unsaid that needed to be said, without feeling the need to say again what perhaps wasn’t said enough and to unsay what should never have been said. But in fact I do not order my perception of the universe on the basis of what I wish.

            Let’s return to the infamous review again. In a sense, the most telling thing that the reviewer relates from the book is the quote from James near the end of the review…:“I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling,” he said. It surprises me that the same folk who were put off by the “dumb idea” remark would not be equally put off by this; one can hardly infer from this anything but that he thought he was looking for something which did exist, rather than seeking to establish whether it did or didn’t, and in doing so he did a number of believers a disservice…it sounds as though all the evidence gathered in years and years of work do anything but support the concept of the existence of the soul.

            Maybe that’s the problem, belief. Maybe it shouldn’t be believers looking into this, maybe it should be done by someone possessing a little skepticism or at least a better grasp of scientific method and less willingness to ignore negative evidence. The reviewer says of Lenora Piper: “Hundreds of times she was wrong. But then there were those frequent occasions when she seemed endowed with otherworldly power.” That’s great, and she doesn’t specify how often “frequently” was, but when an experiment fails hundreds of times, it behooves the experimenter to consider that either he has no understanding of what he’s looking for or he is crafting his experiments very poorly.

            You say: “I think humanity could do with knowing that there’s more to life than political will to power and 108 inch plasma screens.” True enough but I guess it depends on whether you see life as being sufficient unto itself or as merely a dress-rehearsal. I can’t help thinking that if more people tried being the best folk they can be in this life, the next life, if there is one, would pretty much take care of itself. Perhaps you’re right, maybe people would take a different view of things if they knew there was something else coming; a casual reading of history would suggest though that it would also lead people to say things like “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”

            I tend to think that Belief and the Search for Truth may be uncomfortable partners and not just because Belief requires Faith while Proof denies Faith but because Belief seems to lead folk to ignore negative evidence and that simply isn’t helpful.

            Greg, I’m not trying to change your mind or that of anyone else but I’m still seeing what looks a lot like a lack of open-mindedness and objectivity. I learned the futility of arguing Beliefs some time ago and I’m not trying to do so now but please re-examine your position vis a vis your unhappiness of the “dumb idea” bit. Maybe I’m wrong and if so please show me how but tell me just how you know that the “dumb idea” wasn’t an allusion to other books that do treat the concept as a dumb idea. Is that Bad Writing? Apparently so, to some folks…but I still maintain that the review in toto is quite balanced and the colleagues I’ve asked to read the review agree. It would seem that reviews can be damn tricky things to write.

            The whole issue seems counter-intuitive, in a sense. Has anyone calculated how many people have died in the course of getting to a living population of 6.5 billion? I certainly haven’t but you’d think it to be a pretty large number; shouldn’t we be tripping over souls left, right and center? If opinion on the matter is so divided but the matter is so important, wouldn’t you suppose that one or two souls might have found some way to contact the living, in some really clear and unequivocal way? I don’t Know, I don’t think that anyone truly Knows, I can’t even see an obvious reason why anyone could Know on this side of the grave. In this regard what I do Know is this: I will treat each moment I am given with those I love as a gift I may not receive again…in the absence of proof it seems like a viable coping strategy.

            Anyway, it’s been interesting, in places. Whatever the review’s faults may be it does seem to have sparked some discussion. My best wishes to you.

            May things work out as you hope.

            Cheers

            So many idiots…so little time.

          3. In conclusion
            [quote=Binro the Heretic]Maybe that’s the problem, belief. Maybe it shouldn’t be believers looking into this, maybe it should be done by someone possessing a little skepticism or at least a better grasp of scientific method and less willingness to ignore negative evidence. The reviewer says of Lenora Piper: “Hundreds of times she was wrong. But then there were those frequent occasions when she seemed endowed with otherworldly power.” That’s great, and she doesn’t specify how often “frequently” was, but when an experiment fails hundreds of times, it behooves the experimenter to consider that either he has no understanding of what he’s looking for or he is crafting his experiments very poorly.[/quote]

            Hi Binro,

            First, I think if you surveyed the field of ‘survival’ research, you’ll find that there’s at times too much skepticism. See for example the “super-psi” explanation, which has become the (strange) way to explain away strong evidence for survival, by basically saying “well, the medium may have picked up information telepathically from an individual she is completely unaware of on the other sides of the planet…therefore, survival is unproven in this case”.

            Additionally, I’d encourage you to familiarise yourself with the Leonora Piper case – there is some astonishing material in there.

            [quote=Binro the Heretic]Greg, I’m not trying to change your mind or that of anyone else but I’m still seeing what looks a lot like a lack of open-mindedness and objectivity. I learned the futility of arguing Beliefs some time ago and I’m not trying to do so now but please re-examine your position vis a vis your unhappiness of the “dumb idea” bit. Maybe I’m wrong and if so please show me how but tell me just how you know that the “dumb idea” wasn’t an allusion to other books that do treat the concept as a dumb idea. Is that Bad Writing? [/quote]

            You’re over-reading the situation Binro. I have no belief in an afterlife, or the evidence for it at this stage. What I do believe, however, is that there is a lot of very interesting evidence suggestive of some type of afterlife (and that covers a very wide range), which is willingly ignored by people indoctrinated in a materialist paradigm who will find any particular reason to ridicule the quest for an answer, without being conversant with the research in the slightest (from mediums like D.D. Home and Leonora Piper, to NDE research, to Ian Stevenson’s reincarnation memory research etc).

            [quote=Binro the Heretic]The whole issue seems counter-intuitive, in a sense. Has anyone calculated how many people have died in the course of getting to a living population of 6.5 billion? I certainly haven’t but you’d think it to be a pretty large number; shouldn’t we be tripping over souls left, right and center?[/quote]

            Lazy thinking Binro.

            I should point out, I don’t have much of an issue with the review (if you read how I wrote up the link in the news, this is pretty obvious). I just wanted to point out that the reviewer made a very lazy statement, one which implies that the search for evidence for an afterlife is a “dumb idea”. A statement which I disagree with completely.

            Kind regards,
            Greg
            ——————————————-
            You monkeys only think you’re running things

          4. Actually, I have been…
            after putting up my last post I’ve done a bit of looking in to Piper and James both; what I’ve seen so far certainly suggests some strange happenings. I’ve ordered Blum’s book…I hope I can make time to read it.

            My reading so far shows some fascinating things and at least one thing that is quite depressingly predictable. I cast no doubts on the integrity of Piper or James; I concede that they approached matters as honestly as they could…but on James’ part there seems to be a fundamental flaw in his method, that once he got over his initial skepticism he did not let it visit him again.

            This looks to be a problem. James was impressed by what he saw as evidence that Piper was actually in contact with spirits but as stunning as her successes might have been he does not seem to have devoted any particular effort to examining her failures. That’s a pity because understanding why she failed in some cases would likely have shed much light on why she succeeded in others. It’s not uncommon when people look, not for truth, but for data to confirm the conclusion they’d reached before they started…they overlook that no experiment is ever a complete failure, that it provides at least negative evidence and if you can at least see the shadows then you’re on the way to seeing the light that cast them. It’s a great pity that whatever Piper’s gift was, it was largely wasted by poorly directed inquiry.

            The larger issue here is what I alluded to when in a moment of levity I said that there shouldn’t be any shortage of souls to work with. At first blush it doesn’t make much sense that Piper should have been able to achieve so much in some cases and bomb out in others. Is one not justified in thinking that there would be those dear departed who would be as interested in contacting some of we the living just as much as some of us wish to contact them? There are problems here of the sort that crop up when there may not be a sufficiently rigorous attempt to establish whether one is looking at genuine phenomena or just misinterpreting effect.

            Pity that there aren’t more Lenora Pipers around…I somehow imagine that it will be some time before anyone achieves what she might have.

            Cheers

            So many idiots…so little time.

          5. James and Hodgson
            [quote=Binro the Heretic]My reading so far shows some fascinating things and at least one thing that is quite depressingly predictable. I cast no doubts on the integrity of Piper or James; I concede that they approached matters as honestly as they could…but on James’ part there seems to be a fundamental flaw in his method, that once he got over his initial skepticism he did not let it visit him again.[/quote]

            Hi Binro,

            Exactly why he brought in the skeptical “axe-man” Richard Hodgson to investigate the possibility of fraud. Hodgson looked into many possibilities to explain Piper’s “gift” (including hiring private detectives to follow Piper and her family to check whether they were researching information), but became convinced when the identity of George Pellew appeared – one of the convincing pieces of evidence was the ‘spirit’ being able to identify at sight certain people known to the living Pellew (30 cases of recognition out of 150 sittings, with no cases of misidentification).

            On the flip-side, there is the case of the ‘Bessie Beals’ personality, which opens up a whole different can of worms (actually, I found an article last month which had the footnote that the Halls may have been dishonest in their claims of not knowing a Bessie Beals, but I can’t remember where I saw it…if anyone sees it, please do let me know).

            There is a very good summary of Piper at survivalafterdeath.org:

            http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm

            Kind regards,
            Greg
            ——————————————-
            You monkeys only think you’re running things

          6. This gets more vexatious by the moment
            Yes, I’d been aware of Hodgson from my initial reading…though if I hadn’t been, finding out about him wouldn’t have changed my opinion. For the quality of the minds involved the whole effort looks like a dog-and-pony show and the further I look into the story the less satisfying the effort becomes…it just gets steadily more irksome. From what I’ve seen thus far James and company would have done the field of study a favor if they’d left it alone.

            Assume that Homo sapiens has a soul..what about H. neanderthalensis? H. ergaster? H. habilis? What about Austalopithecus and the great apes? Cats, badgers and butterflies? Is it supposed to be just us or is there a wider definition, and if so what’s the cut-off point? Where do souls come from, is there a fixed number or are they created as needed? Why do they exist, what purpose do they serve and who is responsible for the sometimes dreadful quality control?

            I don’t intend that the fore-going questions and all the others that could be asked be thought of as in any way flippant; this is literally meaning-of-life stuff, for those inclined that way. And, if you momentarily ignore all the peripheral questions and look just at the central issue: is there an undying part of us?…one cannot help but consider that the finding of an irrefutable answer would be a tectonic event as far as many of our assumptions are concerned. Greg, you and others mention that confirming the existence of a soul would be a good thing, something Humanity could do with. If the soul exists, if our flesh-and-blood life is but a brief candle before an eternal existence as something else, how is our in-body life not lessened in value? On the other hand, if there is no soul, if this existence is the only one we will know, does this life not become almost infinitely more precious, a vanishingly brief flash of light in an eternal night? A clear answer to the question of the existence of the soul would cast even our basic morality into turmoil…if there is a soul, what is murder? What does a murderer take away from his victim if he sends that victim early to his eternal existence? Or, if there is no soul, does murder not become infinitely more heinous, a taking-away of all the time a person has or ever will have? I suggest that there isn’t much about us that wouldn’t change in some way and not necessarily in any good way if something like a clear answer is found.

            It’s not something that I often say and not just because an eternity that involves my ex mother-in-law is not something I care to contemplate but I’ve come to believe that a clear answer may not be a desirable thing. If there is a soul and the afterlife it implies then death would be just a step into a wider and possibly grander existence; if there isn’t then death becomes just an endless sleep with no dreams of all the things you left undone or did in error or didn’t do enough. If the answer to that question becomes known while we’re still alive a lot of folk will have their most cherished assumptions and beliefs overthrown and that’s something I’m not particularly keen on seeing. And, aside from that, I see a certain poetic correctness in this issue remaining pending…somehow it would be quite apt if an answer to a question about the nature of being dead were only and could only be found after death.

            In any case, any questions I’ve asked are purely rhetorical. I’m inclined to think that I may be better off devoting my spare time to matters more urgent and less problematic.

            Cheers

            So many idiots…so little time.

    1. Tense
      [quote=Lee]Zahi was right. Gantenbrink’s so-called door was really a plug, and there was nothing behind it.[/quote]

      Was being the operative word. The humour in the QOTD is that some 10 years later, Zahi says “we can see another sealed door, it looks to me like it is sealing something. It seems that something important is hidden there. This is one of the first major discoveries in the Great Pyramid in some 130 years, and now what we need is time for further analysis.”

      And in particular, the laughable history of the QOTD was meant as a commentary on this statement regarding Nicholas Reeves’ claim about KV64: “For this reason, I am writing you to state that the information is not true”…
      😉

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  5. Larger brain = larger weapons?
    [quote]Fastest evolving human gene is linked to brain development. And I thought it would have been the gene linked to idiotic wars and genocide. [/quote]

    The two don’t need to be incompatible.

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