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How you lot have managed for the last six months without my astrological advice is beyond me, but if any of you have survived you’ll be glad to know – they’re back! A little delayed (I wanted to give the COTG a bit of time at the top), I present February’s stars…
Aries:
Integrating life and work has never been easy, but this month it becomes more difficult as your boss requires that you work a 170-hour week. Your protestations that there are fewer than 170 hours in a week fall on deaf ears, and you are forced to develop a time machine in order to capitulate to his demands. An amusing mix-up in the wiring will send you back in time to the year 1746, where you will accidentally become your own great-great-great-great-great grandparent. The resulting time-loop will enable you to complete the required assignments for your boss, and you’ll have enough time left over to learn the piano, like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day.
Taurus:
On the 14th, your pyjamas will evolve sentience. Although you will be able to conduct rudimentary communications using hand-signals, in the end the difference in intellect will become too great to overlook. Humbled by the fact that your night-attire now has an IQ more than twice your own, you will spiral into depression, whilst your errant PJs go on to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Chin up, though! Towards the end of the month your toaster will become self-aware also, and it’s as dumb as shit. Your lucky exotic fruit is the papaya.
Gemini:
Unfortunately, Tasers feature heavily in your horoscope this month. It’s probably best if you cancel your plans to attend the “Save Our Fleas” protest march. If you really must go along, try not to look quite so, you know… Islamic.
Cancer:
Remember that starfish you threw back in the ocean when you were five? Turns out it was actually the Dragon God of the Eastern Ocean, trapped in the form of an echinoderm. Who would have thought? Anyway, he’s going to turn up this month and offer to grant you a wish. I’d go for next week’s lottery numbers, but no, you’re not going to take my advice on this. Instead, your foolish wish for superpowers will anger the Dragon God, and in a display of divine irony, he will grant you the power to transform, at will, into a starfish. Next time, heed the advice of the stars – or at least the advice of your astrologer. We could have split the money. Nice going, starfish-boy.
Leo:
Venus is rising in Aries this week, meaning that you’ll probably attract a stalker. You should carry Mace, and maybe invest in some heavier curtains, the ones you’ve got in your bedroom are a bit transparent. Well, they are if you’ve got the light on, and someone’s watching, at night, from a rooftop across the street. With binoculars. Nice counterpane, by the way. Your lucky hairdo is the beehive.
Virgo:
Being a Virgo, you’re a sucker for charity cases, so when two angelic children appear on your doorstep with a collection tin, you’ll happily donate half your month’s wages. Imagine how surprised you’ll be to later discover that you’ve accidentally contributed heavily to the charity “Guns 4 Toddlers”, an organisation devoted to providing firearms to the under-fives. With the money you provide, the charity will be able to afford two black market AK47s and a reconditioned Prohibition-era tommygun, as you’ll discover from the polite thank-you letter (scrawled in crayon) that subsequently arrives. You’ll be glad of your donation, though – Mr Wilcox from two doors down doesn’t give them anything, and later in the week will have his patio demolished by a tartrazine-addled two-year old in a Sherman tank.
Libra:
This month, I had planned to try and divine your fate using haruspicy, but when I found out what it actually was, the idea seemed rather less brilliant. I thought it was a kind of condiment. Imagine my surprise when I had to plunge my hands into the heaving entrails of an unfortunate goat! Well, let’s just say my own entrails did their fair share of heaving, and it was impossible to divine anything from the resulting mess. The other people on the course were not impressed, but they should advertise these things properly! “Come and learn the exciting ancient Art of Haruspicy!” screams the brochure, but they never mention the offal, or the screaming – well, at £250 per head for a weekend of guts and wibbly bits, I reckon I can live without it, thanks very much. And they made me pay for the goat! Your lucky household item is a hairdryer.
Scorpio:
In an attempt to impress a loved one, you will decide this month to change your name by Deed Poll to Wotan The Allfather, Lord of Asgard. I’m not saying this is a bad idea per se, I’m just not sure you’ve entirely thought through the implications. It appears that, since the real Wotan is taking an extended leave of absence, you are, in loco parentis, the official guardian of divine Norse layabout and general antisocial delinquent Thor the Thunderer. Responsibility for his antics is going to cost you a small fortune in property damage and paternity suits, so you’d best make sure your legal insurance is up to date. Oh, and your loved one? Not impressed in any way.
Sagittarius:
The machinations of Mercury will spin your love life sideways this week, as the Water Planet (hang on, isn’t Venus the Water Planet?) migrates elliptically into the alignment of the Refused Adenoid. In conjunction with the rising of Saturn, this will inspire both lust and nausea in equal measure amongst those of the opposite gender. When these two aspects collide, you’ll enjoy some of the best sex of your life, but you’ll wake the following morning covered in sick. I’m not sure if this constitutes an improvement on the normal state of affairs. Don’t worry – Jupiter undulating in Sagittarius denotes a high likelihood of your bedspread being cleaned by elves.
Capricorn:
Whilst it was very cool in its heyday, the Funky Chicken is no longer the dance of choice for today’s modern raver. This fact will be made uncomfortably apparent to you when you accidentally gatecrash your teenage neighbour’s party, where you will be made to feel old and ridiculous by the assembled young trendies. The last laugh is yours, however, since their underage antics will draw the attention of the local constabulary, who break up the party with water-cannons. Retiring to your own abode (albeit a little soggily), you will recline in a favourite armchair with a glass of fine port, and contemplate the excellence of your cheeseboard. As with both port and cheese, age brings with it a richer and more mature nature. You still look like a twat on the dancefloor, though
Aquarius:
My study of the stars tells me that there are still no Aquarians reading this blog. You may think you were born under the sign of the Water-Carrier, but I assure you, if you’re reading this, your parents have been lying to you.
Pisces:
Finding the occasional odd sock in your washing machine is fairly common, but finding a shark in there is not. You may need to recruit the assistance of a marine biologist to help you get it out.
Ah, the merry month of May. Well, not so merry if you’re on fire, or suffering from a hideous wasting disease – but thankfully you can avoid such perils merely by heeding the advice in the following extremely accurate predictions.*
Aries:
Have you ever had one of those dreams where you find yourself at work, naked, with all your co-workers standing around laughing at you? Well, next Tuesday, it won’t be a dream.
Taurus:
Now is the time to take risks and burn bridges. Tell your boss what you really think of him, disinherit your children, bet your house on the gee-gees, buy a one-way ticket to Madagascar, or start a fight in your local biker bar. This is the way to find out what living is all about! You can thank me later, when you get back from scraping lemurs out of your bloodied wounds.
Gemini:
You wouldn’t think a simple spelling error could herald the start of a madcap adventure involving naked dwarves, a Chinese Barry Manilow impersonator, a crate of whippets and a crazy high speed journey around the world – and you’d be right, that isn’t going to happen to you this month. In fact, the only thing you’ll mis-spell in May is the word “pusillanimous”, and the only effect will be to make you look a bit pretentious and not very bright. Maybe you should lay off all those highbrow documentaries on economics. Your lucky Lord Of The Rings backdrop is the Hornburg.
Cancer:
A strange mound which appears in your back garden this month will have you calling for the mole-exterminators, but there’s not much they can do – it’s actually the tip of a new volcano. Cursing Bobby Jindal the whole time, you will be forced to watch as your immaculate lawn is systematically consumed by flowing rivulets of red-hot magma, and your garden gnomes melt in the intense heat. On the positive side, the volcano will cap out and go extinct at a little over 2000 feet, and in winter it will be excellent for tobogganing.
Leo:
Yours is a sad and lonely fate this month, as Mercury rises in Capricorn and buggers your love life forever. Under the planet’s ethereal influence, you will leave your current partner and shack up with a swan, who treats you like dirt and doesn’t reciprocate your affections. The swan will soon leave you for another swan, and you will be left a haggard shadow of your former self, doomed to lick the wounds of your failed Cygnus romance for the rest of your miserable existence. Eventually, you will manage to piece your shattered life back together, and get it on with a mallard – but you will never truly love again.
Virgo:
Don’t worry, lots of people think your hair looks very attractive that way. Maybe lose the earrings, though – dead squirrels are so 2007. And they smell a bit funny. Your lucky Act of Parliament is the Taxation of Chargable Gains Act, 1992.
Libra:
Right, I think I’ve got the hang of this I Ching thing. First, I have to count a bunch of twigs… then I put half of them in a pile over here, and – ah, shit, I’ve lost count. Let’s say there were forty-seven of the buggers. Divide by nine, carry the two… Okay, now I have to draw some lines – bit fiddly, with my hands full of twigs – okay, now this line is supposed to turn into that line, which means I have to looks something up… Crap, I’ve dropped the twigs again. What’s this bit say? “The wise man looks around the field.” Oh, hang on, no, I think I got something wrong in the maths earlier. Now I have to look something else up… Damn it, this is too hard! It’s all mumbo-jumbo about wind and dragons and shit anyway. Here’s your fortune: don’t bother with the fucking I Ching, it’s bollocks. Your lucky book is anything that isn’t the I-freakin’-Ching.
Scorpio:
Flashbacks to the Boer War will dominate your life for the next couple of weeks. You would do well to try and ignore them, and attempt to continue living as normal a life as possible. Try to avoid shouting, “Zulus! Faahsands of ‘em!” in crowded public places, for example, especially since the Zulus weren’t actually involved in the Boer War. Steer clear of any military souvenir shops, as well, since you’re more than likely to feel compelled to spend money on a flintlock rifle that you don’t really need.
Sagittarius:
Don’t throw away your old trousers just because the crotch is wearing thin! With a pair of scissors and some rudimentary needlework skills, you can convert them into an attractive pair of chaps. You’ll be all the rage at the next Cowboys and Injuns fancy-dress party!
This suggestion works better with leather trousers – gold lame MC Hammer pantaloons don’t really give the same results.
Capricorn:
A disagreement with your neighbour will ensue this week, when he builds a trebuchet and starts catapaulting dead llamas into your back garden. Since planning laws don’t appear to cover this issue, the local council will do nothing to help, and you’ll have to rely on your own initiative. Fortifying your home with a thirty-foot stone rampart will prove an effective (if costly) solution, but once he starts building a seige tower you’ll have real trouble repelling his assaults. Attempting to find a diplomatic solution, you discover that this was, in fact, just a rather ill-considered way for your neighbour to ask if he could borrow your hedge-trimmer. Lend it to him, and he can stop work on the giant arbalest which has begun taking shape on his patio. Your lucky Lego brick is a three-by-two-peg in red.
Aquarius:
The horoscope for Aquarius this month is really good. I’m talking sex-with-rock-stars good, I mean, totally positive, it’s all going to go swimmingly for you, baby! Of course, being an Aquarius, you’re not reading this – too busy with those popular, fun atheists over at Pharyngula or somewhere, no doubt. So I can pretty much say what the hell I like about your future, and you’ll never know.
I wish I was an Aquarius…
Pisces:
I thought I could do
your horoscope in haiku
But it was too short
*Please note that all actions are taken at the reader’s own risk and that Right To Think is not responsible for any maiming, loss of vision, burns, death, bankruptcy or global disasters that may result from following the advice given.
Back in the days when I supplemented my meagre bookseller’s pay-packet by teaching t’ai chi on the side, I subscribed to a number of t’ai chi related periodicals. I was rummaging through a stack of as-yet-not-unpacked boxes yesterday when I came across a box file full of old copies of T’ai Chi Magazine, probably the best and most noteworthy of them, and I thought it would be a nice trip down memory lane to flick through an issue or two. One of the articles I encountered was an absolutely perfect example of what a woo-ist might call a “scientific study” – and what any right-thinking scientist would call “utter bobbins”.
The article purported to be a study of the effects of t’ai chi practice on sporting performance, and was constructed as follows: A team of university basketball players (the Winona Warriors) were taught to practice t’ai chi movements for ten to thirty minutes per week. The team’s stats were then compared with those of the previous year’s team, and slight improvements in some areas were discovered. Therefore, this study proves that t’ai chi practice improves sporting performance.
Yeah, right.
Okay, let’s go through exactly why this so-called study proves nothing of the sort. Firstly, note the small sample size. The team consisted of only 14 players, not a statistically significant sample in any way. Next, observe the lack of a control group – the team’s performance was measured against that of the previous year’s team, which was made up of different members, played different numbers of games against different opponents in a different season, and, in short, had no common factors to speak of with the test group. That’s a bit like doing an RCT for a new drug on a sample group of ten overweight, transvestite Guatemalans, then comparing against a control group of fifteen Indian tennis-players with gall-bladder problems, ie. utterly without point.
Speaking as an ex-professional t’ai chi practitioner, I can safely say that a ten-minute to half-hour per week practice time is absolutely insignificant, especially when one considers that the study specifically notes the inability of the players to perform the t’ai chi movements unassisted. This suggests that they had not actually “learned” any t’ai chi, but were merely copying the movements of other practitioners. In other words, they might as well have been practicing ballet movements for all the difference it would have made. To give a comparison, the basketballers were taught the sequence of t’ai chi movements in a series of fifteen 45-minute lessons. When I was teaching (and I was a particularly fast and demanding teacher!) I would expect my students to learn the sequence over a course of forty two-hour lessons – more than seven times as much study, and that was just to get the rudimentary shapes correct!
I realise that you’re probably already as flabbergasted at this study’s ineptitude as I was, but let’s finally just take a look at the results which suggest t’ai chi’s effectiveness as a sporting aid. The various factors measured did indeed all show some slight improvement – team assists were up by 2.8 per game, the number of turnovers went from 415 to 452 over the year, and the team’s free throw percentage increased by 2.7%. No comparison was made, however, with any season other than the previous year’s one – meaning that, whilst the figures may show that the t’ai chi team were better than their immediate predecessors, no records are given as to whether those predecessors were a team of good, average or downright dismal skill. For all we know, they may have been the worst basketball team in WSU’s history, meaning that the t’ai chi players would have had to be phenomenally shit in order to show zero improvement.
All in all, this is an absolutely perfect example of how not to conduct a scientific study, but it’s also a good illustration of how the woo-meisters seek to gain scientific credibility for their chicanery. T’ai chi may well contribute to improved sporting performance – but until it’s properly studied in a national trial, rather than one season of a backwater university basketball team, we will never know one way or the other.
Here’s the abstract of a study from last year applying rigorous medical testing to the field of “distant healing”, that is to say, healing in which the patient and practitioner are not in the same room (or sometimes even the same country) at the time of treatment. The researchers looked at a wide range of woo, including Reiki (my own personal bugbear, see here and here), prayer and psychic healing, and concluded that:
“distant healing appears to have no statistically significant effect on mental and physical health”
And that’s why you don’t see Reiki offered at your local GP’s surgery.
Here’s what I’ve seen in the stars this month. Bear in mind that it’s April Fool’s Day today, so in the spirit of tomfoolery, one of the horoscopes below is completely made up! See if you can guess which one.
Aries:
An onion the size of a small dog features in your stars this week. It may mean that you need to peel back the onion-like layers of your personality to uncover the “real” you, or perhaps that you will shed tears (like when you chop an onion) this month. Or it may mean that I should lay off the sherry.
Taurus:
On the 15th, you will discover an old Orange Kit-Kat down the side of the sofa. Since this confectionery has now been discontinued, you realise you could make a mint by auctioning it on eBay. As the bids climb higher, you will fantasise about paying off your mortgage, re-doing the kitchen or perhaps buying that yacht you’ve always wanted. Sadly, midnight munchies strike during the small hours, and before you know what you’re doing, the orangey chocolate is in your belly. Your dreams of fiscal security shattered, you resign yourself to a continued life among the proles.
Gemini:
They say misery loves company, but also that three’s a crowd. With that in mind, you probably shouldn’t attend any parties this month. Your lucky breed of pig is a Gloucestershire Old Spot.
Cancer:
I was a bit stoned when I put your horoscope together so my notes don’t make much sense… Let’s see – “purging Valkyries” – not sure what that was about… “a joyous reunion” – that looks promising… “buy milk” – that’s a note to myself, ignore that bit… “cola-flavoured nipple tassels” – I think there might be some romantic liason in the offing, possibly with a bulimic Valkyrie… “stabbed through the eye” – doesn’t sound so good. Make of that what you will, I’m off down the shops. Your lucky nut is a walnut. Or possibly a wing-nut, I can’t really read my handwriting here.
Leo:
If you could buy a ham as big as your own torso, would you go for it? That’s the question you’ll have to answer on Thursday, when Harry The Hairy Ham-Seller comes round to your home to offer you the largest piece of pig-meat you’ve seen in your life. I suggest you go for it – one can never have too much ham. Unless you die from ham-poisoning – that would be too much.
Virgo:
If you visit a theme park this month, be sure to wear a big, floppy hat. You’ll thank me afterwards, I promise. Also, take a penknife – that trapped child’s leg isn’t going to saw itself off, you know!
Libra:
For a bit of a change, I decided to try and do your fortune with Tarot cards this month. A change is as good as a rest, and all that. Well, bugger me if I can understand what’s going on with them. There’s a bloke on a horse, and a big pile of sticks… oh, the Nine of Wands, that’s something to do with badminton, isn’t it? The Fool – well, that’s either you or me, not sure which yet – the Three of Cups, which has to do with charitable works; a man with a sword, probably means you’ll get a pay rise or maybe lose an armchair, not really sure… hell, I can’t make head nor tail of this shit. I’m going to have a crack at the I Ching next month, maybe that will work a bit better. Sorry.
Scorpio:
You’ll need nerves of steel this month, as a strange series of coincidences arising from a boating accident will culminate in you driving a Formula One car around Silverstone. Although you’ll survive, indeed, do tolerably well (the stars have you in either fourth or seventh place, maybe both), a second series of bizarre occurences will lead everyone to belive that you are, in fact, Kimi Raikonnen, the Finnish race-car driver.
NB. If you actually are Kimi Raikonnen, none of this will seem in the least bit out of the ordinary.
Sagittarius:
A regrettable encounter with an overly boistrous penguin will land you in hospital this month. The injuries are minor, but your self-esteem will suffer more.
Capricorn:
Marmalade is unlucky for you this month, so you should steer clear of breakfast unless you’re feeling courageous. Otherwise, the outlook for Capricorns is generally positive – money, romance, fame, yadda yadda yadda. But seriously, stay clear of the marmalade.
Aquarius:
I know you aren’t reading this, Aquarians, so I’d just like to say what a shoddy bunch of losers you are for not visiting this blog. What is it with you people? What the hell is your problem? You don’t like the font or something?
Pisces:
Stuffing your underwear with tulips might have seemed like a romantic idea at the time, but your significant other is not best pleased – their tulip phobia, successfully repressed since childhood, is now back in force, and strongly associated with your pants. Next time, maybe check these things out first – sponenaeity is cute, but it can also be deadly. I remember my then-girlfriend once jumped out at me from behind a door – my highly trained lethal ninja skills had taken her head off before I could stop myself. They never found the body, though.
Back when I was a Taoist, I followed a path which might be called “Philosophical” Taoism, concerning myself with the underlying worldview of the Tao Te Ching and its instructions on how to live. There are other ways to approach the Taoist faith, though, and one of the sects that I found most peculiar was the school of “Alchemical” Taoism. Historically, alchemical Taoists direct their efforts towards producing and ingesting the elixir of immortality, thus cheating death and becoming indestructible. Since the two primary ingredients of the elixir were cinnabar and mercury (both highly toxic), success rates were rather low…
Now, it seems, the elixir of life is available for sale on the internet (are you surprised?). Yes, you too can become an immortal, through the simple expedient of White Powder Gold. Popularised by pseudohistorian Laurence Gardner (author of Bloodline Of The Holy Grail and other such Da Vinci Code-inspiring tripe), White Powder Gold is touted as the “monoatomic” form of gold (monoatomic elements are those in which atoms are not bound to one another – the noble gases are a good example), which rather ignores the fact that gold atoms don’t actually form molecules anyway – gold atoms align themselves in a lattice-like structure, but effectively there’s no such thing as a “molecule” of gold. Apparently, its monoatomic properties make White Powder Gold a superconductive restorative, which reverses the ageing process, cures all diseases and leads to immortality. “Brilliant,” you think. “We’ll just get the world’s chemists synthesising the stuff in bulk, and we’re sorted!” Sadly, it isn’t as simple as that.
White Powder Gold, you see, can only be made by an alchemical, not a chemical process – meaning that if you aren’t a proper bona fide alchemist, with special achemist consciousness and connection to interdimensional higher powers, all you’ll get from processing gold into White Gold Powder is – a bunch of gold. Well, there’s a shock, and no mistake. Plus, you’d want to avoid infringing David Hudson’s patent for the stuff. Thankfully, some thoughtful alchemists have decided to put their talents to good use fleecing the gullible making this precious substance available for sale for only $90 an ounce plus shipping, so you can start your path to immortality today!
I always thought White Gold was only magical in the Land…
Professor Edzard Ernst, co-author of Trick Or Treatment?, has a good article on the BBC website today about the dangers of so-called “integrated” medicine (that’s the new rebranding for “complementary”, which in turn replaced “alternative”. Still a bunch of steaming horsecrap, though.). Required reading for anyone who still thinks that homeopathy will cure cancer.
With our first child on the way, Wifeshui and I have been discussing possible names. Personally, I’m a fan of alliteration in names, mostly because it tends to be the norm amongst superheroes (Peter Parker, Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, Billy Batson, Reed Richards and so on), and I flatter myself that our daughter might develop a yen for costumed adventuring if appropriately monikered. I can do little but shake my head in awe, then, at the amazing handle granted at birth to Royal Raymond Rife – how could he not grow up superhuman? Well, as it turns out, he didn’t develop immense strength, or the power of flight – but he did develop killer laser eye-beams. Sort of…
Rife was a microscopist and inventor, and is best known today as the creator of the “Rife Microscope”. No reliable schematics exist for the mechanism, but it is generally thought that the Rife Microscope had significantly greater magnification than any other optical microscope of its time (this is the 1930s we’re talking about – modern optical ‘scopes are substantially more powerful), in fact claims have been made that it was even possible to see viruses with the Rife machine. Given that the largest viruses known are only about 300 nm across, that would be a bit of a stretch for a light microscope – most wavelengths of visible light are longer than that – but it was reliably reported in the periodical Science that observations through Rife’s microscope were able to identify Salmonella Typhi bacteria, which are about one micrometre in length and were definitely undetectable with contemporary laboratory scopes. That suggests that some of Rife’s claims, at least, were true.
However, looking at pathogens wasn’t the only thing that Royal was interested in doing with his devices. He claimed that he was also able to kill them, using a “resonance beam” which was projected from his microscope. This beam supposedly set up harmonic vibrations in bacteria and viruses, destroying them in much the same way as an opera diva shatters a wine glass with vocal sound waves. Sounds plausible? Well, it did to the scientific establishment of the 1930s and 40s, many of whom attempted to replicate Rife’s results. Not one of them succeeded. Gradually, it was concluded that Royal Rife’s death-ray was, if not a total con, at least not a viable technology. Interest waned, and the alliteratively-christened inventor would have sunk back into obscurity – but one should never doubt the dedication of the wooists…
Barry Lynes, author of Secret Astrology: Russia’s Past & Future, The Tree War: How to Save the Earth and Bring Together the Nations and Astro Economics (do you see a theme here?) published a book in 1987 called The Cancer Cure That Worked. In it, he claimed that Rife’s work was suppressed by the medical industry and the American Medical Association, and that the Rife machine did indeed kill cancer-causing viruses (including the hypothetical BX virus which Rife claimed caused “all types of cancer”. That fact that 85% of cancers are not caused by viruses seems to have passed him by). Off the back of this book, a number of hucksters started building “Rife Machines”, small boxes of electrical gubbins which claimed to replicate Rife’s nasty-nuking laser beams. The most notable was probably the REM SuperPro Generator, which landed its manufacturers in court for fraud (they lost) and a few years later, the leader of the Royal Rife Research Society was sent down for fraud as well (although he was also in a spot of bother for kidnap and murder at the same time…). Nevertheless, there are still hucksters out there plugging their do-nothing Rife machines to the gullible, and people are still dying for their stupidity.
Whether Rife really could see viruses through his microscope is something we’ll probably never know (though I’m pretty sceptical). What seems absolutely certain, though, is that none of the Rife machines on the market do anything to kill viruses, cure cancer or indeed, achieve anything other than lining the pockets of fraudsters.
Wow. Just when I thought the kookiness couldn’t get any more mental, we hit Faith Of Britain Day. This bunch of crazy hippy women seem to genuinely believe that their “psychic powers” will enable them to “channel the positive thoughts of the entire country”. It’s bound to work, because at least two of them used to be “Scientists”, before they experienced a psychotic break from reality discovered their burgeoning psychic abilities. And, as all good “Scientists” know:
It is a proven scientific fact that thinking about something often causes it to happen.
Good luck, ladies.
Actually, this is a good opportunity to experiment with the paranormal. Why not focus your thoughts this morning on acheiving some highly specific event, one that would be very unlikely to occur as a product of pure chance? I’m going to wish that Richard Branson endows me with a lifetime’s supply of cheese. If the bearded media mogul does indeed call me this afternoon to offer me sixty years worth of fermented cow-juice, then fair enough – I will apologise for criticising this flailing stupidgasm of an idea and will devote myself to exploring my own psychic potential. If, on the other hand, my solidified dairy-product needs remain unmet, then I think we’ll have to admit that Amanda Hart and her crazy cronies are in fact a crock of shit.
***edit*** 3pm and still no call from Richard. Maybe he’s having trouble getting that much cheese together?
Long-time readers will know of my youthful dalliances with the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game (Wifeshui still tells the story of how she happened to look under my bed one day (before we were married) and found a sizable stack, not of porn, but of D&D manuals). My favourite D&D characters were always wizards, eldritch sorcerers able to shape the world to their commands. Of course, I never entertained any notion that such a thing was possible in real life – until now. It turns out that magic is actually highly scientific…
radonicsmagic.com tells us how we can construct machines that “are capable of boosting your mental and magical abilities so that you can perform seemingly impossible feats!” All “from simple materials available at Walmart!” Essentially, these machines combine the powers of psionics, radonics and orgone energy for the purpose of performing powerful magick – that’s psionics as in “(nonexistent) superhuman psychic powers”, radonics as in “(nonexistent) mystical healing energy fields” and orgone as in “Jesus, Wilhelm, what the hell have you been smoking?” Any of this sounding plausible yet? Newsflash for wannabe magicians; just because it’s got a couple of diodes and a capacitor in it does not mean it’s science.
Slightly more creepy than wacky, the site goes on to discuss what you could do with your newfound magick powers. World Peace, anyone? Cure for AIDS? No, the purpose of magick, as espoused by radonicsmagic.com, is “To Get What You Want”, by messing with other people’s brains:
“When used properly, these devices will be your powerful secret weapon that you can aim at any person of your choosing and influence them to do your bidding all without their knowledge. These devices can help you make all your dreams come true.”
Or, you know, you could just try asking nicely…
All these scary psychic powers can be yours for the bargain price of just $29.99. Call me a cynic, but I really didn’t think it worth downloading the documents, even with the special offer of a Radonics Spellbook thrown in. If you’re substantially more gullible more curious about your untapped paranormal powers than me, though, feel free to go ahead and build your own psychic orgone blaster. Be sure to let me know how you get on – by telepathy, rather than e-mail, if you please.
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