Consciousness thoughts - eighth bit
On the face of it,
this would seem to be impossible. There is no way we
can be influenced by something happening in the
future. Since it hasn't even happened yet, how on
earth could it affect us? Time moves forward and we
do things as it unfolds. Some of those things are
pretty dull but others are a bit more dramatic, for
example:
Consciousness thoughts - seventh bit
At that time, I could only base the idea on the
research done by Robert Jahn but last month (jan
2012) I read a fascinating article in the New Scientist. It
reported the experiments of a well-known and
well-regarded psychologist called Michael
Franklin, working at the University of California,
Santa Barbara.
Franklin knew that training students in particular
aspects of a test on the day before the test should
improve their results, something that I think
everyone would agree with. Out of curiosity, Franklin
decided to do them again, keeping all aspects of the
experiment the same but switching the
sequence of the events. Instead of the
students swotting up before the test, he got
them to swot up after the test, then checked
whether there was a pattern between the test scores
and what the students revised. Clearly, according to
orthodox science, there should have been no
correlation, there's no point revising a test after
you've taken it since it'll have no effect on the
results.
In fact, there was. Students did better at a test, on
average, if they studied it the day after
they took it. The difference wasn't great; a matter
of only around 3%, but Franklin did a lot of tests to
make sure that random chance was not a significant
factor. The difference could not be chance. The
students were being affected by their own
future.
RSA Animate on YouTube
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Climate change - the canary in the coal mine has just died
Unfortunately, I read an article in the Independent at
the very beginning of this year which I think is
of huge significance. In the article, to quote,
'Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a
greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon
dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface
of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an
extensive survey of the region.The scale and
volume of the methane release has astonished the
head of the Russian research team who has been
surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic
Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20
years.'
Dr Rupert Sheldrake and morphic fields
Last year, I wrote to Rupert Sheldrake, a fascinating man who developed the theory of morphogenetic fields and is the author of books such as 'Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home' and 'Seven Experiments That Could Change the World', both of which I recommend. I wanted to make him aware of the intriguing research that Luc Montagnier has been carrying out with water and DNA. He very kindly replied and agreed it was very interesting and threw up a lot of questions but he couldn't see on first glance how it could connect to his theory of morphogenetic fields. Here's my reply:
Read More...Consciousness thoughts - sixth bit
Fortunately, as Libet himself pointed out, that
depressing conclusion may not be justified. We may
not control our brains’ actions all the time
but we may be able to suppress certain
actions or initiate actions that our brains
wouldn’t automatically carry out by themselves. If
that’s true, I wondered, are there some situations
which we can use to test that idea?
There is one such possible situation; that of the
optical illusion.
It's hard work listening to climate sceptics
New Scientist caption competition
Being an ardent fan of
the New Scientist magazine, I couldn't resist
entering its caption competition. The picture is
as follows:
My entries were:
'Are you sure this'll be okay, Dr Jekyll?'
and
'And with that final drop, they had created the
world's strongest espresso'
New Scientist are running one every week for four
weeks, no purchase necessary!
Consciousness thoughts - fourth bit
Consciousness thoughts - third bit
Our minds are separate
from our brains and
can influence them.
This is a fascinating conclusion,
although Rene Descartes came up with it over three
hundred years ago so it’s actually no big deal.
Fortunately, thanks to the progress of science, we’ve
now got ways of actually proving that this is the
case. We can use electroencephalograms (E.E.G’s) and
electronic random number generators (R.N.G’s) to test
what the mind and brain can do.
Consciousness thoughts - second bit
Consciousness thoughts - first bit
Read
More...
Supermoons and a fragile tranquility
Our moon doesn’t orbit the Earth in a perfect circle. It goes around our planet in an elliptical orbit. This means that its distance from us changes by small amounts over years and decades. This month, on the 19th to be exact, the moon would soon be nearer to us than it’s been for decades, its so called 'lunar perigee'. As a result, the moon will appear 'up to 14% bigger or 30% brighter' (this nugget of info was clearly lifted from Wikipedia by the article writer. I've put it in quotes because I don't like 'up to'!), especially on the eastern horizon. This is why the event is called a 'supermoon'. Read More...
Climate Change and what trees are made from
“The number of people in the UK who do not believe in global warming has doubled in the last two years, according to a poll from the office of national statistics. Does this represent the common sense of a British public who can see the claims of the climate alarmists dissolve before their eyes?”
It’s an interesting choice of phrase, common sense. Common sense is a very important skill to have. Read More...
Homeopathy and Ben Goldacre
Several people have
talked to me in response to my article ‘A simple
guide to how homeopathy might work’. Of them, most
have been referring to Ben Goldacre’s book ‘Bad
Science’ or his blog page, in particular the
following article A kind of magic. I was interested
to see what Mr Goldacre said on the subject of
homeopathy. I knew that he thought it was no more
than delusion, quackery and the placebo effect but
I did want to find out what arguments he used to
come to that conclusion.
Unfortunately, after reading the article, I felt he
used some invalid methods to support his view.
Although he did stress the importance of scientific
research in establishing whether or not an actual
physical mechanism is taking place - something I
fully agree with - much of his article revolved
around two key approaches.
A simple guide to how homeopathy might work
Note: This is a
long blog entry. If you'd like to read it as a pdf
document, click
here.
Extra note: This long blog entry now has its own web
page
here.
For some reason, a lot of people seem to get very
worked up about homeopathy. They make comments like
‘if it’s only water, we can throw it in the sea and
make everyone well!’ or ‘it’s just a placebo, you’re
all being fooled!’ or ‘it’s quackery and should be
banned!’ or ‘burn them! Burn them all and their test
tubes and little boxes with ground up plants! Burn
them!’ Perhaps I’m getting a little exaggerated on
that last one but you get the idea.
The thing is, homeopathy does seem to work, at least
for some people. Now, it is certainly possible that
their improvements may be down the placebo effect;
that the psychological effect of them taking a
medicine has cured them rather than the medicine
itself. The placebo effect does also work. The only
problem with this idea is that vets have used
homeopathic remedies on livestock with success. It’s
hard to imagine the cows getting better through the
placebo effect.
So if it’s not psychological, what is it? A sensible
first step is to understand the rules and theory of
homeopathy. With that under our belts, we can then
start to investigate how that procedure and theory
might fit with what we do know about how the body
works.