You think you know your own brain, but ....

I'll bet you think you can hear a song and get the words by decoding the sounds, right?

Visit Skepchick and play the video, then come back. I'll wait.

OK, for any literate person reading this: was it possible to hear the real words of the song while reading the captions? I've known those words for literally 30 years and I heard what the captions said. It's amazing.

Why it's dangerous to believe in magic

"Unfortunately for Colleen and her family she lives in a world where people still believe in magic. They are the victim of a chain of gullbility - people who should have known better victimizing her out of pure stupidity." I couldn't have said it better, so I'll quote Dr. Steven Novella.

To summarize, a psychic told a teacher's assistant that someone whose name starts with the letter "V" was being sexually abused. So the assistant reported that one of her students, Victoria, was being abused. The school board inexplicably called in Children's Aid.

To their credit, Children's Aid promptly found no evidence that anything bad had happened, but everyone in the chain before them behaved badly, from the despicable fraud--sorry, the "psychic"--to the teacher's assistant to the school board. Well, except for poor Victoria and her family, who did nothing wrong.

Cool T-Mobile Feature

I use a BlackBerry Curve on T-Mobile's wireless network. My plan isn't incredibly cheap: 1000 minutes plus unlimited data (including BlackBerry email, which I actually don't use much) for $80/month. I find it worthwhile, because I like the phone, and that includes using the phone as an EDGE modem (ISDN speed) whenever I'm in an area where I don't have Internet access.

About a week ago, I noticed a feature of my phone and plan that I hadn't realized I had: if I'm in an area with WiFi (802.11 wireless networking) set up, the phone switches to "UMA" mode. That's Unlicensed Mobile Access, a confusing acronym that refers to the sending of voice calls over the Internet rather than the cellular carrier's separate network. It's a species of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).

What does this actually mean? It means that if I'm at home, anywhere that has public WiFi, or the I-CON office, my calls travel over the WiFi network and then the Internet instead of T-Mobile's network. I get higher sound quality, and also coverage in places that the cell network doesn't reach well, such as basements and many buildings with steel structures.

And there's no additional cost. The calls do come out of my monthly minutes pool, but I never come close to using that up.

So this whole blog post is just a "thank you" to T-Mobile for letting me use this excellent service.

Journalism is dead

Remember when reporters used to do things like ask questions and think?

Actually neither do I, but I remember when that was the ideal.


Jacksonville's firstcoastnews.com reports that Mr. Anthony Brown is close to having his car run on water. Brown explains that he splits "... the water from the oxygen from the hydrogen ..."

This is gibberish. Water IS hydrogen and oxygen. And yes, you can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but you will ALWAYS use more energy to do so than you get back by burning the hydrogen. Second law of thermodynamics.

What gets me isn't Mr. Brown's being either a charlatan or self-deluded (the only two choices), it's that the reporter, Angela Williams, didn't bother to so much as wake up before writing it. A real journalist would have covered, for instance, a charlatan's looking for "investors" (suckers), but Ms. Williams is either utterly incompetent or simply very lazy.

(I'm compulsively fair: it's also possible that Ms. Williams' editor is looking for meaningless puff "human interest" pieces, which makes him the person deserving the abuse, not her.)

It's distressing.