Place of Stuff

I’ve been pretty lax in my posting.  Back in 2007, I posted about the Forer Effect and had every intention of following it up.  Now you know why I don’t make New Year’s resolutions!  To rectify that, let’s talk about cold reading.

With the Forer (or Barnum) Effect, we saw how making generalised, non-specific statements can both apply to anyone and be used by anyone.  People are always happy to believe nice things about themselves and to completely ignore the things that don’t apply.  Something to remember about these fraudsters is that of their methods is used in isolation - they couple Barnum Statements, Cold reading and Hot Reading together to make the “mark” believe that they have special powers.  Cold Reading is especially effective in a group setting, with one psychic and a large audience.  In fact, the bigger the audience the better this works.

So what is cold reading?  In short, it is a method where the questioner makes vague statements and asks open questions to the mark to get the person to provide information.  At the same time, they make it seem as though they knew this already and thus reinforce their powers in the mind of the believer.  Worryingly, this even works on pre-recorded shows that can be taped by the home viewer and seen over and over again.  You would have thought that this would stop the phenomena, but it doesn’t.  The joy of being human, I guess.
Continue reading ‘What Is Cold Reading?’ »

Short line to say Happy New Year to all who read this site.

If you follow the Mayan Calendar/End of the World type stuff, just 3 short years until you know for sure whether the world will really be ending or whether the Mayans just couldn’t count beyond 2012. Fun Fun Fun!!!

Happy New Year and I hope 2009 brings all sorts of goodness to you.

I won’t bore you with my personal journey with Linux (it’s pretty much try, give up, try again, give up, try again, distro hop, pick a distro), but based on this comment, I thought it would be worthwhile discussing how best to try Linux out and the reasons you could find it useful to do so and why you may not find it so useful…  Call it a belated Christ-/Mithras-/Horus-mas present to the world.

First, the reasons people test out Linux.  These are many and varied, but the main ones seem to be: they heard it was cool, it was sold as a major panacea for all computing ills, they are geeks and think it’s de rigeur to do so, it looked good on a friend’s PC, it solves a problem they have, they are sick of lock in and viruses.  There are other reasons, but I think these are representative.  Here’s the thing: none of these reasons are bad reasons.  I have tried various things out over the years for similar reasons - some I have stuck with and some I haven’t.  The more rabid Linux evangelists will tell you that you have to try it and that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t.  I’m not going to do that.  It would be great if the balance were tipped from proprietary OSes to the FOSS way, but I am realistic enough to know that this isn’t going to happen soon.  We are making major inroads, particularly on the server front, but by being realistic I have more chance of being persuasive.

If you are planning (however vaguely) to try out Linux I cannot stress this enough: do your research.  Look at the more popular distributions and check that your hardware is supported and won’t have any major issues.  Google is an excellent resource for this, Linux is an operating system that wouldn’t have come in to being without the internet and problems and fixes are discussed widely all over the place.  Head over to Distrowatch and see what people are looking into, hit the various websites that distributions have and see what they look like and make sure that you feel comfortable with the look and feel of the distribution.
Continue reading ‘How To Test Out Linux’ »

Have a look at the screenshot below these words.

My PC is all infected with those nasty viruses.  I had no idea that my browsing was so unsafe and that I was such a poor computer user.  Oh, that’s right, I run Linux and I don’t have a C:/ or D:/ drive or any viruses.   This is a genuine public service announcement: after Christmas, lots of you will be returning your PCs and laptops to the store because they run slowly or not at all.  A number of you will have had these problems after clicking one of those free virus scan ads.  They are a scam and will put viruses onto your hard drive.  So, a plea: for the sanity of the poor techs and salesmen who gave you a perfectly good machine either browse sensibly or install Linux (even better, do both) and you’ll never have to worry about this sort of nonsense again.

Click for bigger

You all know my views on psychics by now, I hope.   The fact that so many people are still taken in by them is a real source of discomfort for me.  Their tricks and scams have been so well publicised that it is a testament to how deluded humans can be that they are still able to practice.

Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous speaker on atheist, anti-religious and sceptical viewpoints out there (though James Randi gives him a great run for his money!).  Derren Brown is a British illusionist who focuses on suggestion and who is guaranteed to entertain.  As someone involved in stage magic he is in an excellent position to notice when someone is running a con or using any one of the usual tricks that psychics use.   With thanks to the nice people at Bad Psychics (the largest sceptical and medium debunking site in the UK) for bringing this to my attention, I bring you the first part of an interview in which Brown and Dawkins discuss the phenomena of psychics, the reasons why people go to them (and why they shouldn’t) and the tricks that psychics use to make you believe in them.  This is an informed interview between two intelligent and experienced men.  Each part is around 10 minutes long and the next part will (or should) load automatically.

The first part is provided free online.  If you would like to support the work Dawkins and other people do, consider purchasing ‘The Enemies of Reason: The Uncut Interviews’ on DVD by clicking on this link.  The video can be seen after the jump:
Continue reading ‘Richard Dawkins Interviews Derren Brown’ »

As predicted by me old mucker Mr Corey, I am letting you know that I have now installed WordPress.org 2.7 - this is a major milestone and gives an entirely new look to the dashboard.  Get it here and learn about the install here and the upgrade here.  WordPress.com users were upgraded a few days ago.  Learn more here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/